Hello,

I recently got an M1/Silicon Mac and it seems that games that worked before on Intel Macs don't work anymore.
Those games appear to be the ones which use DosBox and/or Wine to run on Intel Macs. For example, Alpha Centauri crashes the Mac to a sort of soft restart - the Mac is not really restarting, but after starting Alpha centauri nothing happens for a while, then the Mac is terminating all running apps, a behaviour I have never seen on Intel Macs. Can anyone confirm this, do you see this too with your M1 Macs?

I don't blame GOG for that problem - you can't expect that Wine would run on that Rosetta2 compatibility layer.
What I am asking for howver is to have some sort of indication if a game that is declared as "running on Mac", for example when using the Mac filter in GOG Galaxy, is actually running on Wine or Dosbox.
Even better would be if those games would be filtered out and not shown, like changing that filter to "Intel Mac" and "M1 Mac" or something.

What is the easiest way to see if a "Mac" game is using DosBox or Wine?
And do you think such an enhanced filter for M1 Macs could be added?

Thanks!

See that new Mac as a bigger iPad with a keyboard.

DOS games say "This game is powered by DOSBox" in the system requirements. Wine-based games like Alpha Centauri are already not listed as Mac compatible since Catalina was released because of the 64-bit thing (which was obviously preparation for M1 Macs). There is a M1-compatible version of DOSBox, so you can still play DOS games.

So, all games currently listed as Mac-compatible should work, though DOS games would require some manual effort first. As for "you can't expect that Wine would run on that Rosetta2 compatibility layer", apparently the CrossOver folks did get it to work actually. Previously, they also got 32-bit apps to work on 64-bit only systems, so they seem pretty committed.

I presume that when M1 Macs become more commonplace (which I think will happen because they are now on everyone's lips and soooo sexy), both game developers/publishers and stores like Steam and GOG will start taking it more seriously. You will just have to wait, I guess.

I am anything but an Apple fan (I generally just dislike their premium prices and embracing the walled-garden philosophy), but I admit M1 Macs did get me somewhat excited, thinking that finally Apple made a product I could see myself buying. I am just excited about the the new chip design that does seem to offer many benefits, like good performance for little power usage / heat generation.

And my new colleague that just started at our work asked, and got, one too as his work laptop! Damn, he really is on the edge of modern technology, but then that guy owns a Tesla as well, so...

Anyway, my excitement lowered when I learned that:

- The SSD drive is soldered to the motherboard, so you can't replace it yourself, either to replace a broken SSD, or replace it with a bigger one. Booo! I feel that really was a stupid move from Apple. Or I dunno, maybe they make more money that way from dedicated Apple enthusiasts, but at least it made me think I will definitely NOT buy a M1 Mac with my own money.

- The models with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD cost close to 2000€ here. Yikes! Premium prices... More like, "cremium prices"!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ9yBgTp9UQ

Anyway, I still wouldn't mind getting one for a work laptop since then it is not me paying for it. I just need to arrange an accident to my current Windows 10 work laptop. Well, quite surprisingly, the M1 Macs seem to beat so many high-end Intel and AMD CPUs, even the desktop models. And they do that using quite little power (electricity) and generating considerably less heat. Hence you need to recharge them less often as well, quite good for laptops.

It just appears at this point that the ARM-based CPU design (+ their own GPU design and whatever x86-translation they added to the chipset themselves) is considerably more efficient than the designs we are used to on Intel and AMD PCs.

In a way, it is the Tesla of PCs/laptops, both in being on the bleeding edge of the technology, and having lots of media sexiness. I bet almost all car-owning M1 users have a Tesla. We PC users are driving our gas-guzzling monsters.

Yes, Macs are not bad per se but not that suitable for gaming even if that is improving steadily.
When people ask who makes the best processor I now have to answer: It depends, as Intel, AMD and Apple all win in some tasks speedwise even if the Macs usually win in power consumption.

Also, I use petrol or Diesel as fuel in cars. Gas only really used in busses with the tanks on top of their roofs. Remember that one bus that tried taking a shortcut under a bridge that was too low? BOOOM!

If you want maximum gaming performance, no question about it, it still is a desktop PC with some high-end, power-hungry Intel or AMD 16-core CPU and NVidia Geforce RTX 3090 SLI. Just slap a 5000W power supply to the system and you are fine.

However, laptop gamer that I am, I have a growing interest on newer technologies that are trying to do things more efficiently. It seems the Apple M1 chipset (and its successors) are very well optimized, even if they still lose in raw power to the above-mentioned monsters.

I'd just wish PC makers would start adopting such M1-like technologies as well, without the Apple-weaknesses like premium prices and soldering SSDs to the motherboard. (Microsoft does have ARM-powered Surface Pro "PCs", but Apple has apparently done much better job with their M1 design, being more powerful etc., and MS seems to love the idea of walled gardens as well).

I have a similar growing interest to electric cars as well, as their electric engines are so much simpler in design and more efficient that the combustion engines. You don't even need to service the electric car motors much at all, as they don't need motor oils etc., and also the transmission is so much simpler and fool-proof in electric cars, no need for different shifts and the "gas pedal" responds much more directly than with combustion engine cars.

Too bad the batteries in electric cars are still their weak point (still being very expensive, taking time to recharge etc.)... I am considering buying an electric car as my next car, but damn, e.g. the new Citroen C4:

- the gasoline version prices start under 20.000€
- the electric version prices start at 35.000€, up to well over 40.000€ with extras.

Oh my... Do I really want to pay that much more for the car just being electric? Not sure... In this case, "gas" as in "gasoline".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas-guzzler

If you think exploding gas (not gasoline) busses are bad, wait until we start getting hydrogen-fuelled cars. BIG BADA-BOOM! MULTI-PASS!!!

Plus, hydrogen has a "nice" feature that if it finds even the slightest tiny hole somewhere, it will leak out quite fast. So if you had your hydrogen car parked for a week or two, you might find all its hydrogen fuel has just leaked to the air, leaving you with an empty tank. They have to make the hydrogen tanks REALLY tight and secure (also for collisions).

Anyway, for now hydrogen cars are far too expensive because they need platinum for their fuel cells, and platinum is quite expensive. Until they come up with a cheaper replacement material...

Too bad I am probably still going to pass as they probably still solder the SSD to the motherboard... :( Yes I know, and I was even considering a "maakaasu"-car as my next car, as the fuel costs are lower than with the heavily-taxed gasoline here in Finland.

But now it seems in EU there is a dwindling interest to "gas cars" overall, both EU and the Finnish parliament are really pushing everyone to buy electric cars, or not drive at all. So I decided to pass gas cars as they seem to go the way of Iomega ZIP drives (I have one! Broken.) and OS/2 Warp. Sound ideas that will have a short life...

Hmm, if you start up any program and the system gets busy for a while and then the operating system starts terminating lots of programs and not just the faulty one, that is almost always a sign of a memory leak, usually in the program that you just ran. It gobbles up memory hand over fist and eventually exhausts the memory pool causing an out of memory condition upon which time the operating system logic attempts to shut down programs algorithmically attempting to figure out which one is the problem until it gets it. The logic doesn't always get it the first try for various reasons, and a reboot is often required because important background services often get terminanted etc.

My educated hypothesis would be DOSbox or some other dependency of the game has a memory leak in it when running on an M1 Mac, or whatever emulator the Intel code is running inside (not sure how that works on Mac) might itself have a leak perhaps.

Might be worth searching google for "DOSbox memleak Apple M1" and see if anything comes up.

Here's my thing, though. Having seen the history of Apple in the past, and given how they do like to shunt legacy into the bin, I can't exactly say I fully trust them to continue the support of x86 indefinitely; even if it is practically 0 cost to them.