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Does Steve Jobs dislike the idea of gaming?

B

boonlar

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Has Steve Jobs ever come out and said anything about gaming on a mac or gaming in general? Does he feel it isn't worth supporting game developers?

Also how do you feel about gaming on computers?
 
I think the burden falls more on the game developers willingness to support OS X.

Steve... really has nothing to do with it...
 
Tallest Skil said:
I think the burden falls more on the game developers willingness to support OS X.

Steve... really has nothing to do with it...
Click to expand...

Not according to John Carmack. He claims he's tried to work with Apple many times, and that Apple always says they are interested until it comes time to follow through.
 
I think creating a gaming mac is not high on his list of priorities but the MB/MBP and iMac can run new games relatively well so that's good.

ChrisN
 
Steve Jobs doesn't hate gaming, as far as I know anyway. John Carmack's interview doesn't really say what Apple wouldn't do for them, but even that doesn't mean Steve Jobs was the problem. Apple tries to make the best products available hoping that when they gain more of the market share, which they are slowly doing, gaming companies will want to start making more games for OS X. The biggest problem is that with a market share still under 10% it isn't worth the time and money for a gaming company to make a game that only 10% of computer users have the option to buy. :apple:
 
From what I've heard and seen from within the industry, it's a combination of market share and disklike for Macs or even PC gaming as a whole. To the one where I worked for a while, supporting the PC at all was an afterthought. As for Macs, it was the market share, profits argument.
 
interesting thought, but i look at this from a different angle:

he loves the idea of gaming. look at the app store and millions of game dloads (yes, not all dloads are for games, but I bet a larger % are).

I think they see beyond the gaming console and are using the iphone/ipod touch to head in that direction. Of course, we all know those hand helds don't wield the same power and capabilities of a console, but for what they are, the graphics are amazing.

I think the rumours of a device/setting/whatever to connect the iphone/itouch's to a TV is coming. Just a gut feeling.

Think of how amazingly mobile it would be to connect your gaming right to your buddy's tv or at a party?

That's why I think they haven't developed a gaming console.
I think they support developers through their app store. Look at how some of those developers (ie. ifart and itouch) are doing - making thousands and thousands.

the future of gaming looks great from the mac side imho 🙂

Good thread.

Cheers,
keebler
 
apple does not make it easy for them. They refused to put any real graphic power in anything but their very high end computers. The user has no way to upgrade to something other than a entry level card at best.

Microsoft made a point of helping out gaming companies and provided a bases to do it in. Like it or not Direct X is something Microsoft has to help out gaming companies. Apple does not provide anything like that.

Apple just acts like they care until like they say it requires following through.
 
Unfortunately, its not one of Apple's priorities. Games are probably a BIG reason they introduced BootCamp.
 
Rodimus Prime said:
Like it or not Direct X is something Microsoft has to help out gaming companies. Apple does not provide anything like that.

Apple just acts like they care until like they say it requires following through.
Click to expand...

If there was only a massive open-standard graphics project that Apple could contribute to.

Oh wait, there is. It's known as OpenGL and Apple is working group member along with Intel, AMD, ATI, NVIDIA, Sony, id Software, Blizzard, Texas Instruments, Creative and Sun among others.

This compared to DirectX, which is a proprietary Microsoft-only standard.

You know why gaming companies started using DirectX? Because Microsoft offered them "marketing incentives" to do so.

The last Mac OS game Apple put considerable effort into helping develop was Halo, and we all know where that ended up.
 
I think that apple knows that there's no way that osx will ever be able to seriously compete with windows as a gaming platform in terms of marketshare. That's why bootcamp is there: so people can game on their macs without apple having to put a lot of r & d into making osx more friendly to game developers.
 
It's a shame. Core Image, Core Animation, Grand Central, OpenCL... These all have big potential for games. It's not really an issue of hardware capability, it's an issue of market share and Apple not having the penetration into the right sectors of the market, i.e. gamers.

Gamers want powerful machines that are readily and easily upgradeable, i.e. PCs. Apple don't want end users tinkering with their systems beyond RAM and occasionally HDDs because it complicates the issue of honouring warranties and goes against the Apple mantra. I think we will be suffering Cider ports as the only games we get for a long while yet and the occasional native game, such as WoW, for a while yet.
 
Jobs famously hates TV as a waste of time and it is likely he sees gaming likewise. However, now that it seems profitable...

Some day we will see if it has been Job's personal philosophy that has kept Apple out of gaming, or if it has just been a profits thing.
 
Valve has said the same thing they act like they are interested and then no follow through. This is something that has held Apple back for years. How many have bought other systems just because of no interest.. Sad indeed you have to boot a Mac into windblows because Apple doesnt get it. Yet they are advertising games for pods and phones. Come on Apple pull your head out of your.....and get behind COMPUTER MAC GAMING!😛
 
I've seen Steve on stage mention the fact that the previous management (this was when Steve had just come back, and boasted about the original iMac -Rev A- had such a gr8 processor: the G3) "somehow" didn't like games. And he followd up with "We love games!!!"
Titles as Unreal, Tomb Raider, etc. came out for the Mac back then. Very cool... too bad the iMac had such bad grfx onboard though, these games weren't playable even at low settings... even the B&W G3 had that crappy ATi Rage 128 (16 MB VRAM).... we had to wait for the über gr8 3Dfx Voodoo 5 5500 PCI for Mac! 😎

With the demo of OpenGL on Mac OS X, Mr. P. Schiller was allowed to demo Quake 3 Arena!... too bad it crashed though...

And later @ MacWorld Tokyo where nVidia launched the GeForce 3, Steve let dear John Carmack on stage to show off a very early sneak preview of Doom 3!

However.... the iMac is to me evidence that Apple simply don't take games seriously, even if they do an occasional show-off.
The iMac has NEVER had even a decent 3D grfx card, except the current highest end one.
Not many Mac users who like to game will like to pay the price of getting a Mac Pro with a good gfrx card, or get a second computer - a gaming PC - just for having the occasional laugh during racing in GRiD or shooting up baddies in Far Cry 2.

However this time highest-end iMac does get you the option we have been waiting for since 1998: and iMac with good 3d grfx!
So, maybe it is shifting a bit...
 
Well since Bungie, a big mac proponent, sold out to MS I think SJ became really cautious.

Halo was scheduled to be Mac first...
 
Tallest Skil said:
I think the burden falls more on the game developers willingness to support OS X.

Steve... really has nothing to do with it...
Click to expand...

The burden falls on the developers only after Apple makes an environment friendly to game development, which they havent done. Developers cant magically fix all the roadblocks they have when developing for OS X.

Well since Bungie, a big mac proponent, sold out to MS I think SJ became really cautious.

Halo was scheduled to be Mac first...
Click to expand...
Thats doesnt make sense since Microsoft is one of the few publishers that actually supports OS X.
 
stainlessliquid said:
Thats doesnt make sense since Microsoft is one of the few publishers that actually supports OS X.
Click to expand...

But that's what happened, I thought as a Mac community we were well aware of what happened with Bungie and the ol' Halo story 😀

Was going to be a Mac game. MS bought Bungie. Halo became a launch title for the Xbox.
 
I've only recently gotten seriously into the idea of gaming on my Mac even though I've been Warcraft 3 on the Macs I've had for a couple years now. I hate the idea of having to go out of my way to get ahold of a copy of XP just to play games. With the money I'd spend buying XP, upgrading to 10.5, and buying SF4, I could just buy a 360. 😡

The emulators I have run pretty well though, so I suppose there's always that.
 
I honestly think if there were any Mac games worth a damn most Mac owners would buy them since the current selection is quite dismal. Just check out the games section on Apple's site, it has the most generic crap I've ever seen in my life. I don't think graphic intensive games are where it's at on this platform. We need creative, fun and simple games. Possibly something like Lumines, the official version.

Lumines-roundabout-screenshot.png


I know there is a clone game on the Mac that is "similar", but we need production value. The clone just doesn't compare to the original. 🙂

-Stell
 
I pretty much gave up on Mac gaming.. It's sad, but beyond BootCamp, or Blizzard's titles... There's not many options.


Really glad I invested some cash in my rig, a powerful machine for the same price as an iMac.
 
boonlar said:
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2008/08/05/john-carmack-steve-jobs-hates-games/1

Lol I read that too.
Click to expand...

Valve Software's Gabe Newell said exactly the same thing about Apple. And you can read in the book "Revolution in the valley - The insanely great story of how the Mac was made" that Steve Jobs never liked the idea of "people playing with his wonderful computers" (or however it was phrased).

And since we have BootCamp, you will see even less game ports for the Mac in the future, because there simply is zero reason to make one. Unless, of course, Snow Leopard will be made available for regular PCs and will gain a significant market share.
 
jaw04005 said:
Oh wait, there is. It's known as OpenGL and Apple is working group member along with Intel, AMD, ATI, NVIDIA, Sony, id Software, Blizzard, Texas Instruments, Creative and Sun among others.

This compared to DirectX, which is a proprietary Microsoft-only standard.
Click to expand...


No, it does NOT compare to DirectX. Not at all. OpenGL is a multi-platform graphics library ONLY, while DirectX is a complete framework for everything game-related, including audio, controllers, networking and what-not-else. You can, at best, compare OpenGL with Direct3D, and even here it probably falls short.

XNA is built on top of DirectX, and it actually is multi-platform: Windows, Zune, Xbox 360.

Game developers use DirectX because it is versatile, powerful and fast, not because Microsoft pays them money to use it.

You know, just because something is from Microsoft that doesn't mean that it has to bad, poorly designed or evil. Unlike Apple, Microsoft respects the demands of gamers and delivers the products gamers WANT.
 
Stellarola said:
I honestly think if there were any Mac games worth a damn most Mac owners would buy them since the current selection is quite dismal. Just check out the games section on Apple's site, it has the most generic crap I've ever seen in my life.
Click to expand...

As a fairly recent Mac gamer who finds himself spoiled for choice - I mean, it usually takes months just to play through stuff (or as you put it "crap") like the "AoE" franchise, "Civilization", "Command & Conquer" games, etc. - I think yours is probably the best tongue-in-cheek comment on the thread so far. 🙄 Great stuff!
 
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