OS X Absolutely Fed Up....

It comes down to marketshare, and since Windows is still the top dog (80 to 85 %) and Mac OS X or OS X still only the underdog (5 to 10 %), priorities have to be made, and those are favouring writing for the bigger OS first, and then manipulating the code to also run on that small OS.

PS: Rants are better read when breaks and paragraphs are used, orthography* is ignored nowadays anyway, thus it is only wishful thinking to find it intact.

To edit your post, use the button.


* not a slight at you, since your orthography is indeed intact, just a general observation

I'm not a gamer but...

There are various factors that lead up to what you expose. Some are :

• developpers feel safer developing on PCs?
• to easily distribute software to a Mac implies a 30% levy on sales by Apple (but $100 upfront costs for world-wide market)
• there definitely is a history of previous devs on PC, hence on Mac it requires a port of baseline core routines
• Mac APPs are sandboxed which could have limitations on some features
• maybe the solution of preference for games are iPad/iPhone not iMac
  

there are definitely other reasons, but for a non gamer my first reaction was why not buy a x-box or something of the sort ?

again a non-gamer so probably above is only nonsense !

Theres more games for mac now than ever before. Plus theres the option to use bootcamp. Theres really nothing to be fed up about.

Its not a game! Its one way to run windows on an iMac.

But i think you rant because you seek hames on mac/ osx.

So its sort of a non-solution

peteric said:

What is Bootcamp?

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Booting Windows on the Mac

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1461

peteric said:

What is Bootcamp?

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The way to run Windows natively on your Mac

Check out Steam for games.

More and more games are supporting OSX these days. Compare the current options to those of 10 years ago.

This is not an instantaneous process. As mentioned above, OSX still has a relatively low market share, but check out Steam for a nice selection of OSX games. Unless you're ranting about a specific game, in which case send your complaint to the studio.

Sometimes switching to a new OS requires switching your regular productivity applications too, but there are a lot of options for replacing much of the Windows only software out there.

peteric said:

I'm new here, and I apologise for my early rant, but I am just about pissed off. I realise that this has probably been brought up time and time again, but I'm gonna bring it up again. I keep being told by everyone that Apple has now overtaken Microsoft with sales etc. etc. and is supposed to be the more popular system. So why, why, why, why, why are there still no bloody games out there for the Mac? It seems absolutely bizarre in the extreme to me. Every time a new game comes out I scour the Internet trying to find a Mac version, but its like trying to get blood out of a stone. Not only that, but its not simply just confined to games. This can and usually does apply to many other new software programmes of any nature to come out. Why is this weird, inexplicable scenario existing at all? Please can somebody offer me up a good logical explanation as to why this should be? Mac is such a great system when compared to Windows, the only snag is you try finding anything that will run on it, unless we all have a spare windows machine hiding in the cupboard, we're all buggered.

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Wait, calm down, Hoss!

Can we help you, or have you completely lost your mind!?

I'm going to put some sensible questions to you, and hopefully, based on your answers, find something that makes you happy.

Cool?

Very Cool!

Alright, let's go first with some starter questions:

What Mac do you have?
What games are you looking for?
What non-game software apps are you looking for?
Do you have a Steam account?
Do you have a Mac App Store account?

To echo monilehaathi, compared to ten years ago, we are in a Mac gaming renaissance. It used to be the case there would just be a few Mac games per year, and they would be at least a year or two old. A AAA title (Bioshock infinite) was just announced for the Mac before the PC release date. That *never* happens. Things are getting better, albeit slowly.

Even if there were more Macs than PC's, I would rather gaming developers developed games more towards PCs than Macs just for hardware reasons. Macs aren't designed for hardcore gaming. I think if devs focused more on Macs than PC's, games would get uglier. You see these games that have incredible graphics, beautiful landscapes, and amazing detail on a spec'd out PC, chances are you are not going to get the same visual eye candy on a Mac.

Here are some general answers, they are mine not my employers but should give a bit of a general idea.

aicul said:

I'm not a gamer but...

There are various factors that lead up to what you expose. Some are :
developpers feel safer developing on PCs?

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They develop for console and making a PC version is pretty easy and the markjet is big enough to do so. The Mac is only a small part of that market so is sometimes not worth the development costs.

aicul said:

to easily distribute software to a Mac implies a 30% levy on sales by Apple (but $100 upfront costs for world-wide market)

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That's pretty good compared to boxed units in stores. When you buy a game in a store the store and the distributor get 70% and the publishers get perhaps 30% if they are lucky

aicul said:

[*]there definitely is a history of previous devs on PC, hence on Mac it requires a port of baseline core routines

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Well DirectX is designed for gaming and OpenGL is not which does mean you need to do some more work than a PC port of a console game.

aicul said:

Mac APPs are sandboxed which could have limitations on some features

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That's only true of Mac AppStore applications, if you sell outside of the AppStore you don't need to be sandboxed. GameRanger for example is not allowed due to sandboxing.

aicul said:

maybe the solution of preference for games are iPad/iPhone not iMac

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Mac users tend to want full games not mobile versions but perhaps casual games will have some effect.


To be honest (although I am biased) I think with Mac versions of games like F1 2012, BioShock Infinite and XCOM Elite Edition in recent months to name but a few Mac games are on the upswing.

Edwin

edddeduck said:

To be honest (although I am biased) I think with Mac versions of games like F1 2012, BioShock Infinite and XCOM Elite Edition in recent months to name but a few Mac games are on the upswing.

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Amen. We need more porting companies.

Not only does OS X have a way smaller market share than Windows, among those Macs most of them come with integrated graphics. Apple doesn't offer an affordable machine that runs new games for 2+ years. So the target audience for Mac games becomes even smaller.

chaosbunny said:

Not only does OS X have a way smaller market share than Windows, among those Macs most of them come with integrated graphics. Apple doesn't offer an affordable machine that runs new games for 2+ years. So the target audience for Mac games becomes even smaller.

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The HD4000 can run modern games but only at lower settings and they will age (for gaming) quicker than Mac's with dedicated graphics.

The following Mac's only come with integrated HD4000 cards. These are not the best choice if you want to be doing a lot of gaming.

MacBookAir (All Models)
MacBookPro 13" (All versions)
Mac mini (All Versions)

All the other Mac models come with various dedicated graphics cards culminating in the pretty powerful Nvidia 680 in the top end 27" iMac.

Edwin

edddeduck said:

The following Mac's only come with integrated HD4000 cards. These are not the best choice if you want to be doing a lot of gaming.

MacBookAir (All Models)
MacBookPro 13" (All versions)
Mac mini (All Versions)

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And these are the affordable ones (+ the low end iMacs, which have dedicated gpus but rather weak ones) and as far as I know the most common/widespread/sold ones - which was what I meant in my post. Sorry for being unclear.

I have been playing various games on my Macs for the past 12 years. In 2010 I was finally able to afford a Mac Pro (not only for gaming but also graphic design, video editing and Cinema 4D). Since then I am a happier Mac gamer than ever. I guess I could even get by without my Windows hd, but bootcamp certainly is a great convenience.

chaosbunny said:

And these are the affordable ones (+ the low end iMacs, which have dedicated gpus but rather weak ones) and as far as I know the most common/widespread/sold ones - which was what I meant in my post. Sorry for being unclear.

I have been playing various games on my Macs for the past 12 years. In 2010 I was finally able to afford a Mac Pro (not only for gaming but also graphic design, video editing and Cinema 4D). Since then I am a happier Mac gamer than ever. I guess I could even get by without my Windows hd, but bootcamp certainly is a great convenience.

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I wish I had a Mac Pro too, you must be a happy user. I'm waiting for the new Mac Pro hopefully this year to be released (amen).

To get back on the subject, though, I don't think it's just a matter of powerful GPUs since the majority of PCs are not upgraded that regularly - most of the PC users do not run modern games in ultra settings - they do not afford to.

The biggest issue with Mac gaming is definitely the API. Game makers are used to write games for DirectX, they have developer teams trained for that, so a switch (or a port) to OpenGL is really a big issue. They need people with the specific expertise and time (aka money) to invest to the new platform.

Blizzard is doing this for years, but not everyone has blizzard's resources for such a task.

chaosbunny said:

In 2010 I was finally able to afford a Mac Pro (not only for gaming but also graphic design, video editing and Cinema 4D). Since then I am a happier Mac gamer than ever. I guess I could even get by without my Windows hd, but bootcamp certainly is a great convenience.

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I find the MacPro personally to be amazing value I wish I bought one. The 8 core under my desk from 2008 still out performs the latest i7 iMac in most cases and it's 5 years old!

Edwin

I've gamed on the Mac since the late 90s and I gave up a few years back. My advice, bearing in mind the screen resolution and GPUs of iMacs and MacBooks, is to stick to Windows. You'll find the performance is better and there is a much larger, often cheaper selection of games to choose from (Steam, GoG, etc). Either build your own PC or use Boot Camp.

However, that said, in the last few years some of my favourite games have come to the platform: BioShock, Half-Life 2 Episode 2, Kentucky Route Zero, Dear Esther, etc. Still no original Deus Ex (I still have the Mac version on CD that was developed by Aspyr), Fallout 3 or Mass Effect, though. If you're happy to wait for games to be developed, don't care about high quality settings and don't mind a smaller selection of titles you'll be happy on the Mac.

antonis said:

I wish I had a Mac Pro too, you must be a happy user. I'm waiting for the new Mac Pro hopefully this year to be released (amen).

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I certainly am very happy with my machine - and grateful that I was able to afford it. For me it was totally worth the money and I plan on keeping it until it falls apart, but I hope you get an amazing new Mac Pro this year that will make mine a little bit jealous!

antonis said:

To get back on the subject, though, I don't think it's just a matter of powerful GPUs since the majority of PCs are not upgraded that regularly - most of the PC users do not run modern games in ultra settings - they do not afford to.

The biggest issue with Mac gaming is definitely the API. Game makers are used to write games for DirectX, they have developer teams trained for that, so a switch (or a port) to OpenGL is really a big issue. They need people with the specific expertise and time (aka money) to invest to the new platform.

Blizzard is doing this for years, but not everyone has blizzard's resources for such a task.

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I think it may be both - even Blizzard games run better under Windows. For companies it must be hard to justify porting games to Mac OS X when just the Macs released in the past 2 years are even able to run them. And even then there often is feedback like "but it runs like crap, I'll rather play it under Windows". The rather weak gpus in the low end Macs certainly don't help.

Yes PCs are not upgraded that regularly, but $ 1000 will get me a PC laptop with a dedicated gpu, therefore allowing me to play new released games for a much longer time than on a $ 1000 MacBook. I don't want to get into the old price comparisons, I know the MacBook has other things to offer that make it a great machine, but if the prime/main useage is gaming it sadly boils down to the gpu.

chaosbunny said:

And these are the affordable ones (+ the low end iMacs, which have dedicated gpus but rather weak ones) and as far as I know the most common/widespread/sold ones - which was what I meant in my post. Sorry for being unclear.

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Have you played any current games on one of those "low end iMacs"?

there are alternative ways to play games on macs. Bootcamp bro!