OS X El Capitan - Mac Client Status

[Random0]

Just gonna chime in with my experience with the december update of mac client so far.

iMac 27-inch, late 2013, 3.5 GHz i7, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 780M (4GB), OS X 10.11.3, NVIDIA Web Driver 346.03.05f01

Usually running the game at 2048x1152 because game is pretty, have had youtube or iTunes playing movies on the side while doing content with no issue. Get a slight framerate drop in areas with high numbers of players such as crowded city areas, but that's usually only as I'm passing through. If I stay still for a moment after porting in, things sort out so it feels like the client just loading up everyone's individual appearances.

No issue doing content such as dungeons/raids. Even Void Ark and Seal Rock runs pretty smoothly. Odin fate in the shroud though... yeah. No like. But I understand that happens even to a lot of people on the windows side too.

As for details, between the Nvidia/Transgaming/Cider Mac client and running the game natively in boot camp/win10, graphics are slightly more jagged and pixelated on the Mac OS side, but not so much that it's distracting from my experience.

There are some 'quirks' which are minor annoyances but manageable. I have to unplug and re-plug the receiver for my Logitech F710 controller before launching the client or else it won't see it. Sometimes Command-Tabbing the game forward will bring the window forward but not make it the 'active' application, so a further click in the XIV window is needed to make it active.

Overall I'm surprised at how much better the client is running now vs when they first released it. I haven't run Boot Camp in over a month, and really I have zero reason to at this point now that I can have XIV running while I'm doing actual work. Honestly the next step forward from this point is to ditch the Cider wrapper and code it natively but that's SE's call as to if they're willing to invest into that.

I might start running in the 'recommended' 1600x900 resolution to reclaim more screenspace for other things while playing.

Also, being able to switch audio outputs without third party software or closing game is nice.