Even software companies that rely heavily on Mac users have been slow to update their software to be compatible with Apple’s new chips, and they have a solid base of Mac users. Gog does not have a solid base of Mac users. I also don’t view it as Gogs responsibility to update other companies software to work on a new platform.

There’s a bit of irony in this since there are windows users here who complain about gog dropping support for older versions of windows but that gog will likely only support older versions of Mac OS now.

What you are suggesting is this is a collection of abondonware. Where is the value in that if you have to roll your own? I get it, a lot of gaming companies fly by night and don't update their code past a year or two. These are long gone games that GOG (known before as Good "Old" Games) bottled up for use on modern systems. Sounds like that has changed.

If that is true, then essentially I'll curb purchasing from here on out. Is this not just competition to Steam at this point. If so, why bother?

If you want to play gog games then you need to use a computer that meets the minimum recommended specifications.

So you know how Valve did their whole Proton thing that was basically an "Option 3" while also catapulting the development of Wine ahead several years? Because they were concerned that there was a non-zero chance of Windows going gilded cage?

Now might be a good time for GOG to do the same for a project like Sheepshaver, Basilisk II, vMac, and PearPC, roll em into a united umbrella, develop a non-copyright system ROM that can shapeshift according to certain detections, and Robert's your uncle.

That is what I would suggest, if GOG even had even ⅖ of the talent pool of developer work. It wouldn't be unrealistic to think many had done code in 68k, but POWER and others might prove a trifle hard.
Sometimes, those minimum specifications are complete nonsense. There's no world where I need 512 MB of ram to play Commander Keen 1-5. Nor any version of Direct X, a 3D graphics card, or 1.8 Ghz of speed.

thy , now i understand a little what this topic is about

I bought an M1 Macbook Air like almost 2 months ago. So far it is amazing. Truth be told, I come from a Thinkpad X230 so basically anything newer than 4 years was going to rock my socks off in terms of performance, and I wasn't actually a fan of MacOS but Lenovo reeeeaaally dropped the ball when it comes to screen and speaker quality. I found unacceptable that I have to play the "display lottery" in order to get a screen that is decent and that I have to calibrate myself (not to mention speakers are "ok" on the most expensive models only) when buying a Macbook I got an amazing screen for sure, speakers are simply amazing for a laptop and to be honest I found the keyboard to be just great (yes, coming from an X230, I know, sacrilege). Also, after a couple of weeks MacOS is almost second nature now and I actually prefer it over the "good ol' Windows".

HOWEVER, I was already fed up with Windows 10, and I'm in the process of getting back into film editing (and sound post-production) which my old laptop just couldn't handle anymore so jumping to MacOS and the Apple "ecosystem" wasn't that crazy. If I were only considering everyday use and gaming, I would have jump over to the AMD Thinkpads and not even care about screen quality. And due to the whole "film and sound editing" Linux just wasn't an option (I need professional grade tools and since neither Adobe, Avid or even Vegas are available on Linux I just couldn't consider it as an option).

Basically... If your primary use of the computer is everyday life and multimedia creation, with MAYBE some light gaming on the side (primary retro or emulation or if you want to really tinker with things for some heavier games), then the M1 is going to blow ANYTHING out of the water (except for dedicated GPUs, of course). If you need (and I mean NEED) a Windows only software, forget this processor exists (or Apple for that matter since Intel is going to stop being an option this year), and if you're a gamer, yeah, forget about Apple and honestly I would forget about Intel too since AMD is destroying it (specially at those prices).

I've read in the tech media that Apple's M1 ARM chips are very competitive at running Intel/AMD x86/x86-64 code at speeds that often meet or exceed Intel's own chips. Assuming the x86 binaries provided by GOG do actually run on the M1 chips I would assume that GOG would not be in any major hurry to build custom builds of everything for the M1 unless there were a major benefit to doing so, such as major improvements in performance or stability etc. Since all of these games are by definition over 20 years old, it's unlikely that any of them run with low performance on any modern CPUs whether running natively or emulated.

So I honestly doubt GOG would be likely to add support for M1 until video game companies start shipping their games specifically for the M1 and there is enough customer demand for it. It'd just using up development/engineering resources on something that has no real world major gains, tying up those finite resources that could have been spent on other projects that have a greater impact on the larger customer base.

Do any video game publishers ship any video games exclusive to M1 Macs yet, or even have M1 binaries available? If not it's likely only a matter of time I imagine, and eventually GOG will likely have those available here in the store. I still doubt they'd rebuild custom DOSbox/scummvm just for M1 though if the existing products work just fine with no major issues. So few people are likely to even care, and for those that do it seems they can build it themselves easily enough.

I've got no stake either way of course, but just speculating on the probable logic behind any decision making that might go on internally at GOG concerning something like this.

If I'm not mistaken, Larian Studios is making BG3 for M1, Original Sin 2 was ported and even Metro Exodus was made available for M1 (and there are some other games). But is not even 10 or 15% of the whole "mac gaming" that is available for Apple Sillicon yet. Those M1 versions though are not available outside of the Apple Store though (so far).

Media creation is precisely the reason I dropped Apple products. Their insistance on dropping interfaces without any kind of backwards compatibility has caused many content creators to drop Apple. There's a lot of people who do music production that had thousands of dollars invested in equipment that used Firewire and dropping all support for that pissed off me and many other people enough to drop Apple altogether.

I get that it's an old interface standard, but they should've provided something to allow it's continued use for people who had an outlay on equipment that required it. It was a kick in the teeth to the creative professionals that have supported them so long.

Yes, dropping support for SD Cards, Firewire, and anything other than USB-C was one of the more idiotic moves that company has ever made. For someone just starting and with USB-C on a slow but steady adoption as THE universal port, I don't think the same thing can happen anytime soon (though it can still happen, yes).

I'm not remotely interested in Apple hardware, but I'd like to throw in that I have an ARM-based laptop running Linux and DOSBOX/ScummVM work on it just fine. I also have OpenXCOM and OpenMW running on it (although OpenMW runs pretty badly, as it is based on an SoC and the GPU is quite weak), as well as a SNES emulator.

(edit: only thing is, it can't run WINE, since WINE is an x86 compatibility layer, not an emulator)

It really is an amazing chip.

I test drove a Macbook Air M1 for a few months, and that kind of power in a fanless laptop is amazing.

IntelliJ IDEA ran better than I've ever seen, and with Crossover (WINE) it ran several GOG games (e.g. Anno 1701) flawlessly, some less so (Shadow Tactics).

Add its extreme battery efficiency and the instant responsiveness when opening the lid, and you've got a compelling machine.

When I recently passed it on, I considered buying one for myself. But since I didn't feel confident Apple would keep supporting Rosetta indefinitely, I chose a Windows Ultrabook with a Ryzen 4700u chip instead. That chip also impresses with how much it can handle before it needs to start the fan.

can u install other os on that M1?

Apparently yes! Linux!

https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/21/22242107/linux-apple-m1-mac-port-corellium-ubuntu-details

Then again, as the MacOS is apparently based on UNIX, I guess that is good enough, you don't necessarily get extra geek points for replacing it with Linux... At least I consider running e.g. FreeBSD on a PC even geekier and more hardcore, than any Linux. Maybe that is just me.

If my current Windows 10 work laptop stops working at some point, I considering asking my boss for a Apple M1 laptop (my colleague already got one, but a measly 256GB SSD/8GB RAM version apparently, as better models were out of stock). I am interested in trying out the more power-efficient ARM-based M1 design, what can it really do.

As long as I don't have to pay for it myself... The higher premium price and not being able to expand RAM or replace the SSD (at least without voiding your warranty) just kills my desire to buy one with my own money... I save my own money for e.g. an XMG Neo 15 gaming laptop with AMD Ryzen CPU and Geforce RTX 3070 or something like that...