Questions from a potential XP convert

[ChrisH3677]

Don't buy before...

Two bits of advice...

1) Check MacRumors buyer's guide before doing anything https://buyersguide.macrumors.com//
2) DO NOT buy before MacWorld San Francisco! (January 5th) And if there's no significant hardware announcements, wait until February as Jan is the 20th anniversary of the Mac so there could still be some new models.

And you'll never regret changing. But don't expect it to be all roses - Mac apps crash too. Difference is, they don't kill or lock anything else and you just start em up again (unlike windows where you often need to reboot)

merry xmas to ya

 

[Element 92]

Thanks a lot, guys (girls).

Price is not really a factor for me, just because. I will definatly take your suggestion to wait till after january. It will probably be later, as I still have some life left with this comp

I am looking at the G5 duel 2.0 Ghz, looks like a beast

 

[i_wolf]

Hi there,
Just some advice. As already stated here do not buy a mac just for games. They do run games and a lot of them run fine however unfortunately the mac game scene suffers (IMHO) from bad sloppy and quick x86 ports, little to no optimization for the different architecture the games are running on and a release delay of a month or two after the pc release at the earliest. Also a lot of PC games are written in Direct X and then ported to OpenGl on mac.... hence another reason for bad ports in some circumstances.
The optimization prob will change sooner than later though, since apple bundles a development suite to rival visual studio.net with panther for free with every mac. This provides a lot of optimization and tuning tools which are real useful. You will prob find a lot more games carrying the G4 altivec optimized moniker now in the near future IMO.
As for the release dates well i would reckon this will also change but at a slower rate... i notice that the game website for the UK is now showing that they are stocking mac games as well as pc games! Also apple are opening a lot more retail stores as a new drive at pushing the mac platform at ground level.
For all and every other reason get that mac. Much faster, more efficient, and more fun to develop with since OS X is really based around open standards. There is a wealth of quality open source apps out there as well if you want. GIMP, Emacs etc... as well as the real good commercial apps like MAYA, Photoshop, Macromedia Studio etc.... all of which run great on Panther.
If i were you i would get a laptop first, but i would wait until after Macworld in January and then get a new powerbook. The portability and connectivity of these things is great. When you have the powerbook then i would consider saving and long term and get a mac desktop powermac as well.
As for the powerbook, IMO there is ample power present for a portable developement machine. We use one in work with XCode and its great.
Kind Regards,
i_wolf

 

[OutThere]

The individual Mac apps will crash occasionally (I haven't had any games, Safari, Mail, or iTunes crash since I got this iBook though) but since OS X has protected memory, which is individual "cells" or "cages" of memory for each app, when an app crashes the computer and OS won't go into an infinite loop and start bugging out, the app simply goes away and a little message pops up. It's bliss not to fall into the:

Internet Explorer has a Illegal Operation --> Windows Explorer bugs out --> Explorer Comes Back --> System Hang -->Illegal Operation --> Buttons don't do anything --> Power Button.

 

[Westside guy]

Re: Questions from a potential XP convert

Originally posted by Element 92
<snip> Also, from seeing your "mac web development" forum, I suppose you can also install PHP/MySQL/Apache on a Mac?

Oh, and, being a gamer (though my focus is shifting), about how many games are out on Mac?

Apache and MySQL are long-time Unix/Linux applications, so they run well on a Mac. Actually the Windows port of Apache is really good as of version 2, so given the track record of IIS I think it makes sense to run Apache even if you choose Windows for the server OS.

As far as games go... the newest Macs have decent video cards, and really the video hardware is usually the real limitation (for most games CPU speed is more or less irrelevant). But as was already pointed out, 1) there aren't nearly as many Mac games; and 2) Some of those have been quick-and-dirty ports rather than the true rewrite that'd let the game actually run well. If possible it might make sense to trial a game on the Mac platform before investing in it. Another warning flag might be if the Windows version mentions "optimized for DirectX", since they may just rip out all the optimizations for the Mac port, without re-optimizing for OpenGL or similar.

 

[OutThere]

You can really feel the crappy ports, the games will really drop frames a lot on good hardware. Don't get a mac if all you can think about is gaming.

 

[patrick0brien]

Originally posted by Element 92
I am looking at the G5 duel 2.0 Ghz, looks like a beast

-Uranium

That is one hell of a lot of machine. It'll be a challenge to use it all.

 

[OutThere]

You're gonna have to put a seatbelt on your chair to handle a dual 2. Or you could just donate it to me. That works too.

 

[Sailfish]

I have a Dual 2 ghz G5 with 2.5 GB RAM, 23" Cinema and a ATI 9600 video card.

Finished UT2003 and HALO on pretty high resolutions and this Mac is a gamers machine.

Of course Quake III ARENA runs extremely fast on just about any Mac, with excellent resolution.

Blame the software companies and programmers for writing bloated code and not making their programs run on lesser powered platforms.

Especially HALO, it's a excellent game, just half movie, shouldn't be running slow on any recent machine.

Software driving hardware sales.

Seems a game is being run on us...

 

[Mav451]

wow, u got 2.5GB of ram? That doesn't come too cheap--and yet you only have an ATI 9600? Shame on you Someone should get you a 9800 Pro for Xmas to give the G5 more room to stretch its legs.

 

[jefhatfield]

Re: Re: Questions from a potential XP convert

Originally posted by Wes
Well before somebody else has go at you, it's Mac not MAC. About your questions, I hook up my Mac to friend's pcs share the internet and play some games with them. A lot of games are out for mac: http://www.insidemacgames.com

and to add to the confusion, Macworld uses the term MAC on it's cover as in last month's issue which proclaimed MAC vs PC