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Oculus Rift VR headset puts Mac development on hold to focus on Windows

In a blog post published to the company’s website today, creators of the Oculus Rift VR headset said it is putting development of the platform for Mac OS X on hold in order to focus on Windows:

Our development for OS X and Linux has been paused in order to focus on delivering a high quality consumer-level VR experience at launch across hardware, software, and content on Windows.

The company also announced spec requirements for the device ahead of an official public release. The recommended specs, for Windows devices at least, include NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater, Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater, 8GB+ RAM, 2x USB 3.0 ports, and HDMI 1.3 video output supporting a 297MHz clock via a direct output architecture.

There’s no word from the company on when it might resume Mac development with the blog post only confirming that it does indeed “want to get back to development for OS X and Linux,” but that it doesn’t have a specific timeline to do so.

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Comments

  1. The Duke Nukem Forever VR headset must be what they’re working on. Pretty confident this is going to end up a big write-down for Facebook at the end of the day.

  2. nicolas.onstott@gmail.com - 9 years ago

    Well that’s just great

    Sent from my iPhone

    >

  3. why waste resources on mac when GAMERS! are on windows. Makes total sense

  4. standardpull - 9 years ago

    Cha-Ching! Microsoft still has its war chest that it can use to entice followers.

    • As do all businesses. Hence why there are a load of celebs currently wearing Apple Watch Edition. Must of come from Apple’s war chest eh?

      • standardpull - 9 years ago

        I come from a family in the retail fashion business.

        I can assure you that 99% of the things that celebrities wear and carry are done so under contract. Every piece of clothing, luggage, glasses, watches, and so forth.

        Celebs need not pay for anything they wear. In fact, they get paid tons of money to be walking billboards. The numbers are shocking, as are the contract details.

  5. bogger (@alphashot) - 9 years ago

    What would had been most interesting is what MacBook Pro/iMac would meet this specifications required? Running bootcamp is not a show stopper.

  6. They will be focusing on Windows because MS are launching their Hololens probably by the end of the year – which, whether your an MS lover or hater, looks awesome. Even though it’s AR and not VR,it could still take a substantial part of the market away from Oculus.

    • babywrinkels - 9 years ago

      Good call. I’m highly interested in both, but wouldn’t buy both because why? Hadn’t considered that they’re direct competitors.

  7. Jim Hassinger - 9 years ago

    I don’t see this as the big market anyway. The big market is the Hololens.

  8. Jacob Alford - 9 years ago

    Those specification requirements are absolutely crazy. There is hardly a Mac that is even close to being capable of meeting those requirements. The only two currently would be the Mac Pro with dual D700’s, or the Retina iMac 5k (preferably the upgraded R9 M295X.) With Mac out of the question as a result, why port it to Linux? It actually makes sense. I would like to see some Macs with some decent GPU’s. For the MacBook Pro: Storage: (PCIe SSD) Phenomenal. Processor: (Quad Core i7) Phenomenal. Graphics: (Geforce GT 750M) Totally Weak, outdated, and inadequate. Maybe we will get virtual reality, once we have the processing power to run them.

Author

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series.