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WWDC: Game On

Object-X said:
This I think is a testament to two things: Apple's OS X market share rising and the complete superiority of OS X over Windows.

The remark about EA employees using OS X is really the issue here. This is dramatic evidence that there is a seed change happening in favor of OS X. Apple's market share will rise dramatically over the next few years at the expense of Windows.

Vista sucks and Leopard is making it even more so. You have to be some kind of Microsoft fanboy to deny it.

My only issue with Apple is they need to offer better graphic card support for gaming.
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Raising market share? Probably.

Complete superiority? Whatever...

Will rise dramatically? Yeah right, not unless Apple focus on their computers and OS instead of gadgets I don't want.

Vista sucks? Whatever, again, Microsofts sales department are probably so so sad Windows doesn't sell as much as OS X does.. Poor Microsoft, soon they will be gone! ..

Leopard making it even more so? So far I'm not impressed, one could argue that I'm a Windows hater by heart but that is quite nonlogical today. I liked AmigaOS 3.0 way better than DOS 6.22 + Win 3.11 but those where those days and today is today... XP and probably Vista (after a service pack or two atleast) are more than usable today.

Better graphics cards? Hell yes. But so many macfanatics are in complete denial. "Oh, but mac people don't want to play games anyway!!", "Games are for losers!", "Sure my Macbook suck, but.. err.. err.. it's white!"

To use transgamings cider is quite lame aswell, but hopefully performance will be quite near what a real port would get anyway. I guess cider will support OpenGL 2.1 or whatever the other people where talking about later aswell.

http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=238143&cid=19469655

http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=238143&cid=19469797
I guess what he's saying is: Gaming will always suck on (non Windows) macs.

http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=238143&cid=19470903
 
KindredMAC said:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/06/11/eas_new_mac_games_will_demand_intel_based_systems.html

AppleInsider says that EA's games will only be playable on Intel-Based Macs...
:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

So much for my suped up LAST GEN POWER MAC G5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My G5 is only 16 months old and is now considered obsolete in terms of some applications out there. This royally pisses me off!

My Power Mac G5 can do circles around every Mac on the market now, except for the OctoCore Mac Pro (in some cases), and Apple is allowing these companies to leave me out in the cold dark night?

F&@# THEM!
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Sell it while you still can. Seriously, you should have seen the writing on the wall when apps started coming out Intel only.... the only group that cares about universal binary support for Gx macs is Apple.

Sell it and buy a Mac Pro.
 
archer75 said:
Lot of good it does developing games for the mac when I can't replace the frickin video card without throwing the whole damn computer away.
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You should really get a clue. Since the developer know what "frickin" video card you have they can optimize their code for it. Which makes developing for a Mac better, because you know what it's in them (unlike the flavor of the day Dells).
 
whatever said:
You should really get a clue. Since the developer know what "frickin" video card you have they can optimize their code for it. Which makes developing for a Mac better, because you know what it's in them (unlike the flavor of the day Dells).
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Get yourself a clue, noone optimize for a specific video card, in that case please tell me what video card you should optimize for for mac gaming? Is it the integrated Intel? Radeon 9200? X1600? Nvidia 8600? X1950 XTX? Oh, and is that why games run soooo fast on Macs? Sure beats those Windows games on the same hardware doesn't it? ...
Yeah, ****** Dells, I guess the Dell XPS systems are totally owned by the almighty mac pro when it comes to gaming...

The developers code for opengl or directx, and since most use directx I guess it's better, but in OS X there are only opengl and after seeing the comments on slashdot it seems like Apples OpenGL suck and is slow and outdated. So join s-hitty slow api with s-hitty slow graphics card hardware and you get? Yes, you guessed it, s-hitty slow gaming performance.
 
aliquis- said:
Get yourself a clue, noone optimize for a specific video card, in that case please tell me what video card you should optimize for for mac gaming? Is it the integrated Intel? Radeon 9200? X1600? Nvidia 8600? X1950 XTX? Oh, and is that why games run soooo fast on Macs? Sure beats those Windows games on the same hardware doesn't it? ...
Yeah, s-hitty Dells, I guess the Dell XPS systems are totally owned by the almighty mac pro when it comes to gaming...

The developers code for opengl or directx, and since most use directx I guess it's better, but in OS X there are only opengl and after seeing the comments on slashdot it seems like Apples OpenGL suck and is slow and outdated. So join s-hitty slow api with s-hitty slow graphics card hardware and you get? Yes, you guessed it, s-hitty slow gaming performance.
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Yeah well, most of us use our Macs to make cool stuff. Like the concept art and story lines for your games. ;)
 
~Shard~ said:
I think the news on games for OS X is great - it's about time! Especially with the move to Intel now, I think it's necessary for Apple to step up in the gaming world in order to stay competitive, so again, this is great news. The only thing is, will Apple address its hardware accordingly for these intense new games? I can hear the complaints now, "The iMac is too underpowered to run these games yet the Mac Pro is too expensive! Macs still aren't gaming machines" ;) Focusing more on games is great, but Apple has to cover all the bases as well for things to be a true success.
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EXACTLY!!! I thought it was interesting that this was the subject that led the WWDC keynote. It really se the tone for the whole keynote... but left my hopes underserved. If they are going to devote more resources to gamiing then they need to ensure that the hardware can/will keep up. Does this mean that a midtower is on its way? Probably not. But maybe the iMac will have a beefier graphics card or maybe it will be upgradeable. It kind of would sicu in a big way if we get all these cool games but we have to pay $2500+ in order to play them. Yeah, that's going to garner a whole lot of gamer switchers. :rolleyes:
 
KindredMAC said:
My Power Mac G5 can do circles around every Mac on the market now, except for the OctoCore Mac Pro (in some cases), and Apple is allowing these companies to leave me out in the cold dark night?
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Nah, I reckon my 12" iBook goes faster than your Power Mac ;)

But seriously, is it because you are running apps which would require Rosetta on an Intel that means your PM G5 is faster than all of the new ones? Because when it comes to universal binaries, I can't see how it would outperform any of the current Mac Pro line.
 
LoganT said:
Why don't you just sell your Powermac G5? I really don't have any sympathy for you because it's only 16 months old. If it's 16 months old then that means you bought it around May 2006. Wouldn't the logical thing to do is to wait until WWDC to see if they updated the Mac Pros (which they did)?
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Can you count? Because I don't have any sympathy for you....

I bought it in January 2006 about 2 weeks after MacWorld, it finally shipped and got to me in mid February after the BTO options I upgraded.

So yes I waited to see what was introduced.... at MACWORLD 06. And at that time the Intel transition was road mapping the Mac Pro for a Sept/Oct release. I couldn't wait 8-9 more months.
 
PCMacUser said:
Nah, I reckon my 12" iBook goes faster than your Power Mac ;)

But seriously, is it because you are running apps which would require Rosetta on an Intel that means your PM G5 is faster than all of the new ones? Because when it comes to universal binaries, I can't see how it would outperform any of the current Mac Pro line.
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You look at the benchmarks of CS3 on a Dual Core PPC Power Mac G5 Late 2005 vs a new Quad Core Mac Pro. Depending on RAM configurations, the PPC keeps up quite nicely against the new Mac Pros.

People put too much stock in the Mac Pros Quad system. Most apps aren't even made to take advantage of the 4 cores, let alone the 8 in the highest end Mac Pro.

Sorry for the double post BTW...
 
So where's the hardware?

Like the very first reply to this thread said: where the heck is the hardware for running these games? Apple has nothing for gaming.

Mini: obsolete notebook parts in a box
iMac: notebook parts with a desktop HD and mediocre, non-upgradeable video
MacBook: Intel graphics (boo hiss)
MacBook Pro: a $2000 notebook for games? in which parallel universe?
Mac Pro: way too expensive thanks to server components plus lame video card choices because no company in its right mind makes products that can only sell to a 5% sliver of a 3% piece of pie.

While more than half of all desktop PCs sold in retail stores cost less than US$500, gamers spend more than twice as much. That puts them firmly in Apple territory. Give them a mini tower based on a standard motherboard, with a desktop CPU and decent video card (plus a truly high end video card option) and this highly influential group of PC users might just consider a Mac.

To attract serious PC users Apple would have to make one big change to their store. PC users expect two things Apple has historically never done: offer incrementally upgraded parts and drop prices on older parts. When the GTX card comes out, the price of the GT card should drop and both should be available. In the current Apple universe they stick with only the GT card and never drop the price. Eventually, 6 to 9 months down the road, a replacement comes out. PC users, gamers especially, won't stand for that kind of treatment.
 
KindredMAC said:
Can you count? Because I don't have any sympathy for you....

I bought it in January 2006 about 2 weeks after MacWorld, it finally shipped and got to me in mid February after the BTO options I upgraded.

So yes I waited to see what was introduced.... at MACWORLD 06. And at that time the Intel transition was road mapping the Mac Pro for a Sept/Oct release. I couldn't wait 8-9 more months.
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Okay you said 16 months. So you bought it in Feburary, about 1 month after MacWorld. Why wouldn't you wait until June to see if they would update the Powermacs to Intel?
 
Sonofhaig said:
Other than solitaire, is gaming on computers such big business?
With all the game consoles available what is the draw for playing games on a computer? Please tell me if I'm missing something. I really just don't get it.
Why is this considered big news?
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In 2006, the only gaming markets that expanded were PC games and handhelds.

There's quite a few game types that just don't work well on consoles -- FPS games are a very different experience, RTS games are pretty uniformly awful on consoles, etc.
 
Good thing I waited and decided not to pick up C&C3 for Windows/Bootcamp. Will get the OS X version for sure. :) Battlefield looked nice as well... might give it a try.
 
aliquis- said:
Leopard making it even more so? So far I'm not impressed, one could argue that I'm a Windows hater by heart but that is quite nonlogical today. I liked AmigaOS 3.0 way better than DOS 6.22 + Win 3.11 but those where those days and today is today... XP and probably Vista (after a service pack or two atleast) are more than usable today.
Click to expand...

Ahh, AmigaOS! Those were the days! I still have my A500 and A1200...

Better graphics cards? Hell yes. But so many macfanatics are in complete denial. "Oh, but mac people don't want to play games anyway!!", "Games are for losers!", "Sure my Macbook suck, but.. err.. err.. it's white!"
Click to expand...

Don't forget "buy a console!" and "GMA950 is perfectly good!" despite it being worse than my 7yr old GeForce2MX card (really! OpenGL benchmarks show the GF2MX is about 25% faster!)

To use transgamings cider is quite lame aswell, but hopefully performance will be quite near what a real port would get anyway. I guess cider will support OpenGL 2.1 or whatever the other people where talking about later aswell.
Click to expand...

Actually, I don't see it as lame. It's just another form of middleware really... the performance hit should be tiny,

I doubt the Mac would get ports if it weren't for software like Cider making them close to recompile-and-test operation. The market's not big enough for a full port, converting all DX to the various Mac-native APIs.

This will also likely spur Apple to fix any bottlenecks in their OpenGL stack, because it will be very obvious where the deficiency lies when Need For Speed: Just Like Last Years Game Black Edition is significantly slower under Mac OS X than on the same hardware using BootCamp and XP or Vista.

So, it's pretty much Win-win. As I see it, the worst thing about is that it's EA, and not someone who makes *good* games ;)
 
LoganT said:
Okay you said 16 months. So you bought it in Feburary, about 1 month after MacWorld. Why wouldn't you wait until June to see if they would update the Powermacs to Intel?
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Read the last paragraph in my post that you quoted.......
 
KindredMAC said:
You look at the benchmarks of CS3 on a Dual Core PPC Power Mac G5 Late 2005 vs a new Quad Core Mac Pro. Depending on RAM configurations, the PPC keeps up quite nicely against the new Mac Pros.

People put too much stock in the Mac Pros Quad system. Most apps aren't even made to take advantage of the 4 cores, let alone the 8 in the highest end Mac Pro.

Sorry for the double post BTW...
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What is the speed difference between the PowerMac G5's CPU and the Xbox 360 CPU? I figure they are close relatives.

I wouldn't say Apple is trying to capture the gamer market. I think they are trying to expant the market that the have currently (with respect to gaming). PC gamers tend to like upgrading their own hardware. The major issue with most Mac Fanatics is the inability to see things from more than one perspecitve. Being able to have the latest and greatest isn't a bad thing. What makes the point all the more obvious: as soon as the 8800 is available to Mac's you guys will be talking about how it is the best thing since sliced bread, but as long as it isn't available you claim that it isn't really all that great. Case in point read any thread on this site about the 8800GTX.

Apple really needs to fix their OGL. It seems like they don't want to use any of the available hardware extentions. Maybe they want everything to be on a level playing field, I dunno. But from my experience OGL is just as fast as D3D, you just have to have the hardware support (or it falls back to software).
 
This is a good start...

I for one am happy to see quality games coming back to the Mac. Can't tell you how tired I get of going over to Apple store and finding the same game titles every single visit. So it'll be nice to see the game shelf including current titles. However, it doesn't mean I'll be ditching my XBox 360 nor the Wii anytime soon.
 
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