This is a weird one in some ways. They basically are using a wrapper script of sorts around the Wine project.
Apple published some of this on their Github. The thing that baffles me is why didnt they assist in the project upstream development. It seems like the main project Wine really didnt even know they were doing this until the WWDC. That community would have embraced Apple helping to patch certain blobs for making Wine run better on MacOS.
Remember khtml? They didn’t contribute; they forked. That’s their m/o.
Ouch, yea the only downside with that methodology is maintaining it while also keeping up with the active project (Wine). Apply has always been a bit weird about open source, which I get they want to maintain a level of control.
I’d be curious how this plays out for them longer term since it could possibly create diverged paths to what Valve (Proton) have been pushing towards for years. Do i necessarily think Windows emulation for gaming on either platform is the longer term play…no… but its sorta the gaming world we are stuck with at the moment.
The one aspect I will be keeping a eye on is how Apple handles some of the newer titles. Specifically ones with anti-cheat / drm. One of the reasons I haven’t been able to switch my sons computer over to Linux fully is because Fortnite (I know…) doesn’t play well with Wine due to its anti-cheat).
Regarding anti-cheat hacks: I’ve noticed the same thing with GTA on Crossover. It works great in single-player mode, but it thinks I’m cheating on multi-player because of some subtle detecting the game is doing that doesn’t work with Wine.
From a somewhat uneducated perspective though, I can see why Proton might be pretty different. They’re both *nix environments, but macOS and Linux are pretty different and I’m not sure how similar the wrappers would really be?
Agree, there’s likely subtle differences between the interaction. Let along adding in the other layer of Apple silicon (aka ARM). I’m actually intrigued on the overall performance of this.
Most of the anti-cheat could be fixed by the game developers to allow Wine. I know there are numerous posts about it to Epic games and the overall consensus is they are purposefully detecting Wine. Having Apple back this direction might help the community overall push the AAA game studios to finally allow it? One can dream…
Yeah hopefully. I would imagine Valve has as much industry pressure as anyone though.
Not being able to play many games on the Mac is definitely holding it back.
