fileplanet.com — Fileplanet Editor-in-Chief bemoans Apple's hands-off policy to securing great Mac game content, which he feels is costing the company. "For nearly a decade I've been a Mac fan who hasn't bought a Mac, solely because of the game situation." He makes some suggestions on what Apple should do, including - gasp - copying Microsoft. Just a little.
Apr 23, 2007 View in Crawl 4
shadgenkiApr 24, 2007
Dear macfag, It's not going to change. Get over yourself.
ghoppeApr 24, 2007
@ffejreyWhile it's true I wouldn't pay Apple's premium for RAM and I'm confident and knowledgeable enough to buy and install my own, methinks you exaggerate a bit. Since the RAM upgrade price you mentioned is $299, I presume you're talking about upgrading memory on the Mac Pro. Perhaps you're not aware that the Mac Pro *requires* fully buffered ECC ram. The best price I could find for that is about $100/GB. The prices I found varied widely depending on brand, ranging from $100-$200 for a 1GB stick.I don't think Apple charging $299 for a 2GB upgrade is so unbelievable nor evidence of price-gouging.
ilgazApr 24, 2007
MS doesn't have to go game companies and point a gun to developers face. It is the "exclusive agreements", a huge developer base who doesn't know single bit of OpenGL (direct3d coders), pro developers getting next day support from a giant, a company having exclusive support from big 2 GPU makers.
tyrioneApr 25, 2007
It's called Core Animation and OpenGL 2.1 fully exposed APIs for Cocoa in OS X Leopard.
squidlyApr 25, 2007
@ebfoxbat - You say: "To have a rig built for gaming, you must build it yourself."Do do it affordably, no doubt. Alienware and Falcon NW options will run you as much or more than a Mac Pro.You say: " However, it's not fair to say that you can't game on a Mac. A $3000 Mac Pro will game orgasmically."I'll vouch for that. I have a Mac Pro 2.66ghz machine with an ATI x1900, 2 gig of memory, and a Terabyte of disk. It games quite well both in OSX (World of Warcraft, Quake 4, etc) and in Bootcamp Vista (Supreme Commander, All the Half Life permutations via Steam, Oblivion, Stalker, etc.) Anything that I can throw at it. My frame rates are rocking. 2560x1600, all settings maxed, 60+fps in WoW as one example.You say: "However you could build the equivalent performance for 1/3 the price if you want it yourself."Thanks to the graphics card bottleneck, perhaps. You can get by with a non-cutting edge processor and memory pipeline. The caveat is, and always is, that such a machine has to run some flavor of Windows. Yeah yeah, MAC-FAN-BOI!"Yeah. I'm going to sound like a pundit when I say that the Mac has some important native strengths that should be considered in the balance to PC's native gaming skills. There's some stuff that we Mac user's enjoy that kind of offset that difference in price. Security, non-gaming apps, and an intangible way of doing things/"feel" that is hard to quantify until you dive in and experience the difference first hand.But anyway, there's room for everyone. Console Gamers, Windows gamers, Dual Boot Mac users. Rock on.
squidlyApr 25, 2007
@kurisuku: You say "It is not gaming hardware. Period."I know what you're trying to get at, but lets clarify.My Quad Core Mac Pro with a ton of memory, disk, and high end ATI card is perfectly acceptable "gaming hardware". So you need to remove the word "Period" from that sentence at the very least.A better statement would be "An iMac is not an flexible, dirt-cheap and expandable gaming platform."or"A Mac Pro is an expensive gaming solution".or"A Mac-Mini SUCKS for gaming!!!!1111oneoneone"
leatherscotApr 25, 2007
Leave Games to the Consoles. Macs are good at what Macs are good at. The new ways of interaction that is beginning with the Wii, The future developments in HCI for Gamers can be more rapidly developed and rolled out on a console platform.But - If it happens - great. I just hope that if they do something like DirectX - I hope it doesnt kill OS X like the original versions killed windows. Oops - forgot - this is OS X - much more resilient to bad code ;-)