Oculus: We’ll support VR on Mac, if Apple builds a good computer

4 Mar 2016

Throwing a particularly barbed comment towards Apple, Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey has said the virtual reality (VR) headset, the Oculus Rift, won’t work on Mac until Apple releases “a good computer”.

The pre-orders for the Oculus Rift headset began at the beginning of this year, with some baulking at the rather hefty price tag of just under $1,500 for a bundle to go with PC gaming setups.

However, those who pray at the altar of Apple and its Mac computers have been left rather envious due to the decision taken by Oculus to not create a version compatible with its series of computers.

Just to add fuel to the fire, Luckey spoke just the other day at a Xbox One press event to Shack News about the topic, something which has since garnered him much negative attention.

When asked about the likelihood of the Oculus Rift being made available on Mac, Luckey bluntly responded: “That is up to Apple. If they ever release a good computer, we will do it.”

He went on to clarify this by saying that even Apple’s high-end computers – such as the Mac Pro – are out of reach for the Oculus Rift’s requirements.

‘Not a single machine out there that supports it’

“It just boils down to the fact that Apple doesn’t prioritize high-end GPUs,” he said. “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 specs.

“So, if [Apple] prioritises higher-end GPUs like they used to for a while back in the day, we’d love to support Mac. But, right now, there’s just not a single machine out there that supports it.”

Oculus’ chief architect, Atman Binstock, had a somewhat more measured response to the same question last May, saying that developments on the OS X operating system, as well as Linux, were put on hiatus while they focused on developing a Windows version first.

It’s interesting to note also that the Oculus Rift’s competitor, the HTC Vive, once promised that it was to be compatible with OS X, but the recently-released Steam VR performance test released recently is only compatible with Windows.

Woman wearing Oculus Rift image via Stefano Tinti/Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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