As part of its ongoing mission to improve the way iPad and iPhone applications run on M1 Macs, Apple has added game controller emulation to the current macOS Big Sur 11.3 beta. Basically, Apple is trying to make its M1 Macs more like gaming PCs.
According MacRumors, running an iPad or iPhone app on a Mac M1 adds a new game control option when you open Preferences from within the app. When enabled, the new option maps the controller buttons to the keyboard and mouse, so you can play with these peripherals instead of the controller.
The left thumbstick of the controller is mapped to the WASD keys, and the right thumbstick to the mouse. (Of course.) Button A becomes the space bar, Button X becomes the Q key, Button Y becomes the E key and Button B becomes the F key. Finally, L1 is linked to Tab, L2 to Shift, R1 to R and R2 to the mouse.
But instead of having dedicated keyboard shortcuts for specific game actions, it looks likewhatever the A or L2 buttons do, will be mapped to specific keys on a Mac keyboard without a way to turn them back on. This can change from game to game, depending on how the developers mapped the game’s actions to the controller buttons. From the point of view of PC games, this can make running certain games via the keyboard and mouse on the Mac uncomfortable and uncomfortable – and confusing from one game to the next.
Let’s say the Tab key makes your character crouch in one game, but it opens your inventory in another game. And maybe the A button will allow you to skip some games, but you use it to pick up items in other games. There are certain key combinations that have become a tradition in various genres in PC games (such as spatience bar to jump and ctrl to squat) that Apple is not counting here. Stardew Valley, for example, has its own keyboard controls for macOS, so why not let someone use them instead of mapping the controller buttons of the iOS version of the game to different keys?
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It also looks like things can get a little confusing if you map a PlayStation controller to the keyboard and mouse instead of an Xbox controller. Would the Q key be the PlayStation X button or the PlayStation Square button, since it is in the same position on the controller as the Xbox X button? It seems a bit boring (and confusing) to have to remember which keys on the keyboard are for each button on the game controller and which keys do what in each game. It would be better for Apple to let users link their own keys to the games they play, rather than forcing them to use a specific layout for each game.
The M1 Macs support PS and Xbox controllers, not to mention that Big Sur beta adds support for PS5 and Xbox One X controllers. So why is Apple choosing to control PC games in this way, rather than allowing developers to applications to map the best key combinations for their games, it is unclear. Right now it isAlso, getting a controller to play iPad or iPhone games on the M1 is the best way to go here.