Roblox needs to figure this out quickly. ARM adoption in a few years won’t only be applicable to Apple’s Macs, as Windows hardware makers will begin trying to catch up to the higher speed and efficiencies of Apple’s M-series chips. A fully native and optimized version of Roblox Studio (eventually the player, too) is essential for developers like myself. I am stunned by the performance of the M1 chip, but I cannot fathom how terribly Roblox Studio runs on it because of how un-optimized the program is. I don’t think this is an emulation issue either since Rosetta 2 emulates other programs incredibly fast and smooth; Roblox Studio has always been buggy and a frustration to use on the Mac, even with Intel x86 chips prior to Apple switching to their own chips.
I’m really hoping Roblox gets their act together and starts working on supporting arm architecture for the client and studio. If I was in charge, this would be top priority.
Optimizing for arm is inevitable, it really is the architecture of the future. Now that MacOS has been on Apple Silicon for years and Windows is following, it really should be a priority to convert studio to work with Apple Silicon now, rather then later. This also opens up the opportunity to also port studio to devices such as ipad or maybe even arm based Chromebooks.
Overall I find the lack of communication/ a roadmap extremely disappointing.
I wouldn’t really say that arm processors are the future considering that arm processors in general are low powered and weak compared to 64 bit processors but only time will tell.
Edit: Got my response mixed with the title and thought Apple Silicon had arm processors.
Not sure what you mean as Apple Silicon is 64 bit.
Apple Silicon is extremely powerful while also being power efficient. My M2 Macbook Air can run unity, Roblox studio, Roblox client (with max graphics), chrome, all at once with each preforming extremely well. It consistently beats the high end intel laptops I’ve used both in terms of performance and battery life. Of course there are high end PC x86 chips that can beat Apple Silicon, but at the result of extremely higher power usage.
I use an M2 MacBook Air (Base Model), upgraded from the 2020 Intel MacBook Air, and studio works completely fine. I have never experienced any crashes, glitches or bugs (well I experienced one where it deleted 2+ hours of work for a game I’m working on). Studio runs very smoothly at 40-60fps even when Future Lighting is enabled or on the biggest experiences (no I mean, games) ever! I still think there should be a native version for M-Series chips because when M3 comes out in 2023-2025 and Roblox Studio is still not properly optimized for Apple Silicon, it could be a problem and lead to various bugs, glitches and crashes.
Apple Silicon processors are very powerful CPU’s, with their own powerful GPU built-in, and I think Roblox Client and Studio should be natively optimized for M-Series processors, which should have happened, like right after M1 was released in late 2020.
Last year I upgraded my setup to a M1 Max Mac Studio and it just feels like Roblox Studio is the odd one out of all other apps that support M1 natively.
Native support would really increase my productivity.
Posting this update here for those still watching this post, Roblox is planning to start rolling out Apple Silicon build on the next release (582). It will be a gradual rollout to a certain % at initial launch with the plan for a full rollout with a DevForum post mid July.
This would be an amazing addition to Roblox Studio and a huge quality of life update for M1 Mac users.
