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Oculus Rift will support Macs 'when Apple makes a good computer'

Oculus Rift will support Macs 'when Apple makes a good computer'

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Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has poured water on the idea of his Rift virtual reality headset supporting the Mac by saying that Apple doesn't make any computers powerful enough to run it.

"That is up to Apple and if they ever release a good computer we will do it," Luckey tells ShackNews when asked about Mac support. "It just boils down to the fact that Apple doesn’t prioritize high-end GPUs. You can buy a $6,000 Mac Pro with the top of the line AMD FirePro D700, and it still doesn’t match our recommended spec."

"There’s just not a single machine out there that supports it."

Apple's high-end Mac Pro computers come with dual discrete GPUs, but they're designed for professional applications rather than gaming. Advanced VR headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive require a gaming-focused graphics processor as capable as an Nvidia GTX 970 or above to meet the manufacturers' recommendations.

"If they prioritize higher-end GPUs like they used to for a while back in the day, we’d love to support Mac," Luckey continued. "But right now, there’s just not a single machine out there that supports it. So even if we can support it on the software side, there's just no audience of people that can run the vast majority of software out there."

Apple CEO Tim Cook has expressed an interest in VR, saying on the company's most recent earnings call that "I don't think it's a niche. It's really cool and has some interesting applications." For the foreseeable future, though, Apple's Mac platform won't be able to play host to the most advanced implementations.

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