FFXIV for macOS?

[reiichi]

Well, you have to take into consideration that the way Macs are built, in terms of their OS, for games is incredibly limited. So, it's a bit silly to think that just because something works on the Windows OS, it should work on the Mac OS flawlessly in the same manner. That's not the case. The Windows OS system was designed with a lot more leeway regarding people using their PC's for work and high end tier entertainment value at the same time while Macs have been and were always made strictly for work and low end tier entertainment value. That's not to mention that a Windows OS system costs less than a Mac OS system.

When a PC gamer wanted to play computer games, they didn't go out searching for an Apple, they went for the Windows OS system because a lot of companies would have rather developed their games to play on something largely used by the majority and coding their games to run and work on Mac's, in most cases, was more time consuming with less of a chance of breaking even on sales.

It takes more time to develop games for Macs, not that those games simply don't exist, but because of Apple it just takes additional time that a lot of game companies simply don't want to put in. In regards towards the software, the two OS systems are radically coded differently in terms of their installers for files and just in general. You're not going to find an .EXE file on a Mac, ever. Those files do not exist and will not work period.

I own both a PC and a Mac just in case you were wondering how I know these things. I mostly use my Mac for design work because they were designed to run Adobe programs much more flawlessly than how they were coded to run on the Windows OS.

Since about 2006, Macs have been built with Intel CPUs are hardware-wise, are basically just PCs in custom cases. Macs also support a number of common graphics libraries among their own proprietary ones, but Microsoft DirectX support is not one of them. It's not the hardware. A user using Bootcamp would have no issue installing FFXIV. They'd have the exact same experience as a regular PC with similar hardware. (As in, a dedicated GPU would do much better with the game and the ones with Intel graphics would be a pretty lackluster experience.)

FFXIV for Windows relies on DirectX. That's where the holdup is. The "port" for macOS is also literally the Windows version. It even has exe files. With crossover or wine, users can even double click them to run, depending on file handlers.

I'd argue it doesn't take any more time to develop for iOS/macOS than it does for another platform, but the common tools and libraries that a company like Square-Enix is using weren't built to make use of OpenGL (cross-platform Linux/macOS/Windows) or Metal (more akin to Vulkan APIs and Apple-only).