You see, the more I see macs and the more time I spend with macs, since I did when I did research, the more I want one. I’ve been wanting a mac laptop for a while. They’re very sexy. My Dell is also quite nice, don’t get me wrong. It could probably use a little extra ram , but I’m so fucking busy with school, by the time I have time to actually use this extra ram I need, I’ll need a new computer anyway, if only to run the new shit.
Well anyway, I was curious. A few months ago, we heard Mac was going to release a new chip set and that scares a few people. I look at their new Macbook pros or whatever they’re going to be called and they look like powerful motherfuckers. I want to know what kind of impact that the new intel chips and all the associated ATI Radeon 256 mb vid cards will do for us in the future. I mean, one reason to stick to a pc laptop for gaming vs a mac with the same equipment would be accessibility on the gaming level. What is it that made it so much harder for developers to produce a mac compatible product and will there be change in the future because of this transition?
It wasn’t really that much harder in the first place. The problem was that Macs use a different chip architecture than Windows does (PPC vs Intel). A developer could easily make a game for a Mac, if they were motivated enough and felt there was enough demand (see WoW/Unreal). With the new Intel chipset, that hurdle has been removed (though i’m sure there are still differences between a macintel chipset and a windows one). Also, most windows games use the API set DirectX, which doesn’t exist on Mac.
I kind of want to get a MacBook too, but for 2500USD+ i could make a highend desktop rig, so i’m kind of torn.
6% of the market share is still 6% of the market share. They’d have to make some strides before I’d even jokingly consider it. I remember the days when Mac used to obstinately refuse to use anyone else’s technology, which is why they’re where they are, and I’m not ready to go back on board yet. We’re slowly moving to an era where everything is going to be compatible with everything, but it’s a ways off. Macs are still largely regulated to a niche market of graphics and video producers and people who don’t want their machines to crash (:P) so…
I’ve got a Mac Mini. I’ve got a 5-button mouse for it, though. Of course, I’ve also got my desktop, my Linux box, and my laptop. I like Mac OS, and I have to play with it to know how to do my job, so I keep it. I primarily use Windows, though.
There’s really no reason more games can’t be made cross-platform. But there’s bad cases of vendor lock-in going around, so you have developers using DirectX instead of the nearly-ubiquitous OpenGL.
Look at the console wars. The capabilities of the machines aren’t even that different. A well coded game could be compiled on any hardware. Problems arise because the different consoles have their different APIs/libraries – at least I would imagine so, I don’t know much about programming for modern-era consoles.
And don’t get me started on the marketing crap.
I’m not sure if an Intel Mac is something that I’d buy, but if gaming companies start producing more games for it, I’d consider it. They might be a little more compatible when I run them through WINE.
There’s no technical reason to not produce videogames that are compatible with Macintosh or Linux or Unix. It’s all to do with economy and it won’t change because Macintosh has switched to Intel. It might, and from an economic viewpoint, it should change as soon as less people start to use Windows and more people start to use MacOSX or Unix or Linux.
Macintoshes are nice but they’re really not much more stable than Windows. Mine most certainly wasn’t.
They’ve stopped with that rubbish and switched to shipping a two buttoned mouse, and you’ve always been able to use any random usb or bluetooth mouse.
They don’t get as warm and they consume less watts than the G5 so they’ll be able to use them in macBooks and the macMini. They also have more gHz. It’s also fairly likely that they’re cheaper than the G5.
Macintoshes are nice but they’re really not much more stable than Windows. Mine most certainly wasn’t.
First of all… what is stability? Second of all… was it OSX? Hehe besides, what system is more stable than the users software sharing habits (not accusing you of anything) I would just like to hear WHY you think that, the statement in itself doesn’t mean much. I’ve always been a big fan of Mac (as far as commercial os’s go), and im pretty open minded so id like to hear why you think its not more stable.
and a ONE button mouse? arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
This is getting really old everyone knows you don’t have to use a one button mouse by now I should hope… seems like an excuse to defend a meaningless bias most of the time.
Oh and when I can find games that are ported to linux im all over them… I tend to see performance increases in most cases these days… mainly because I just run the x window system with an xterm open and launch the game with very few processes running…
My Mom has a mac. They just seem so idiot proof that you can’t do anything other then the set path the OS and other programs want you to take. There are a lot of cool programs like Garage Band, and some other neat media programs.
Macs nice, but if you grew up using windows, you’re used to it, and understand it, I don’t see a reason to switch. Just build your own with the parts you want.
Stability is when a machine doesn’t freeze when you try to wake it from sleep mode or when you try to switch it off or when the screen doesn’t wake up from standby mode, and yes, it was Mac OS X Panther.
(not accusing you of anything) I would just like to hear WHY you think that, the statement in itself doesn’t mean much. I’ve always been a big fan of Mac (as far as commercial os’s go), and im pretty open minded so id like to hear why you think its not more stable.