By Alec Meer on October 30th, 2008 at 10:01 pm.
So, gaming on Apple machines. Clearly Paganism of the most heinous order, but as it’s nearly Halloween let’s deign to acknowledge it. Anyone do it? Happy stories/horror stories? Despite owning a (hilariously battered) Mac myself, it’s not something I’ve ever especially considered. I was fairly surprised to walk into a computing store in Canada last year and see ranks and ranks of slightly old or slightly silly Mac games there, so I know there is stuff available, but personally I’d stuck to oldies – I’ve got Mac copies of the first two Fallouts – and, er, casualies. Woo Peggle, etc. That, I’d surmised, was pretty much the outer limit of it, at least unless I had one of those hilariously costly high-end Mac desktops that people with tiny beards and expensive spectacles buy. Two Macish stories which suggested the more mainstream Apple systems are rather game-blessed of late caught my passive eye today, though.
The first is that best-game-of-the-year-that-isn’t-King’s-Bounty World of Goo is getting a Mac release later this week. Endearingly, anyone who bought the Winders version will be able to also freely grab that’un, and the eventual Linux port. Strikes me it could do really, really well on Macs, as the hardware requirements are so low (I’ve even managed to get it running just dandy-like on my first-gen Asus EEE, which is below the minimum spec) and it’s got enough slickness and artistry that the complicated-haircutted Apple fan-crowd might think it one of their own.
City of Heroes perhaps less so. But that’s also about to hit OSX, a mere ten thousand years after its release, in parallel with the forthcoming Issue 13 update. It does seem an weird move to make after all these years (even if it is a fairly tokenistic one, being essentially emulated rather than truly ported), but hell, I’m in favour. While my attention always wanes after a few days of power-jumping, troll-thumping and throwing the Crab Most Muscular, COH is the MMO I’ve always gotten the most out of. I know Champions Online puts it in some danger, but I kinda hope a move to the Mac wins it a new audience. Now to see if it runs on my shitbag first-gen Macbook or not…
What else could/should be played on one of the electronic Macintosh machines, readers? Or does their mere mention here fill you with hatred and fear?
The last game I played on a Mac was King’s Quest (insert number here – my memory isn’t that good) over a decade ago.
:|
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I saw the word ‘Paganism’ and thought you were talking about me. It didn’t take long to work out I was on the wrong track but the disappointment was crushing anyway.
Also, forgive how poor this comment might be, I’m stealing internet from a North Carolina airport and typing using my Archos’ on-screen keyboard.
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I wasted a year of my life playing bloody WoW on a MacBook Pro.
Don’t talk to me about it.
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I managed to get NOLF running ages ago on my good ladies pretty but useless Mac. It looked like it was a mod of Doom so I bought her a PSP so I could have my gaming PC back.
Its fine for her to stroke and for me to shout at as the mouse has one bloody button, but beyond that it sits quietly in the corner next to her equally unused sewing machine.
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Why hate and/or fear Mac games or gamers? I don’t see how they are a threat to PC games in the slightest. I’ve always been tempted to try out a Mac, but I’ve never really been interested enough to look up what advantages they have over PC.
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I’m at Uni, so the only computer I have is my MacBook, which HUGELY limits the gaming I can do. All I’ve got at the moment is Peggle.
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I regrettably bought an iBook G4 in 2005, shortly before Apple moved to Intel chips, so I’ll occasionally play ROMs, old games, and OSS stuff, usually while traveling. Never play any “real” games on it, though, especially since they cost more and frequently take months to be ported over. (The racks displaying new Mac games are like time machines, showing you what PC gaming was like 1-1.5 years ago.)
I’ve read that Steve Jobs doesn’t care much about PC gaming and therefore Apple doesn’t make it a priority.
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Oh, for the good old days of playing Marathon on System 7 and smirking at DOS gamers who thought Doom was cool…
Near as I can tell, the move to Intel CPUs basically killed off most of the incentive for publishers and game porting houses to release games that run natively under Mac OS X. It doesn’t matter that the hardware and drivers are significantly more stable than anything on Windows– the target market is much smaller, especially since the Mac games market has been so restricted that hardcore must-play-it-now gamers have ended up with Windows machines anyway, even if they have a Mac for doing actual work. At this point I suspect most people who use Mac hardware for gaming are running Windows or some kind of emulation anyway, making native Mac ports of hardcore games (that is, anything that isn’t a casual game, and I include The Sims in the “casual” category which will probably annoy people) a waste of time and money. That doesn’t mean they aren’t out there…
But, at this point, I honestly can’t think of anything that’s Mac-only or is better played on a Mac. I wish I could. Even indie games or anything. It’s all either cross-platform or just not out for the Mac at all… I dunno. A quick skim of the insidemacgames.com forums makes it look like people are mostly talking about stuff that’s newly supported by emulators and things that are cross-platform anyway.
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I hate Macs in the same way I hate Linux: it’s for posers and uber nerds respectively, and I don’t have much time for either.
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9 posts until blatant anti-Mac flamebait? That’s not bad. The bonus anti-Linux flamebait was a nice touch.
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Yep, no posers or uber nerds use PCs – only us decent folk ;)
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I played WoW on my MacBook Pro, enjoyed Darwinia and cursed Civ IV’s hardware hunger. I still fire up the odd game of Quake III every now and then, but most of the latest games I either don’t care about or get them for PC anyway.
@Butler
Oh well, I don’t have much time for stupid stereotypes.
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@Gray_Ghost
It’s just rather humorous to think of people playing games on a Mac. It’s not scaring anyone. It’s kind of like picturing John Walker in a tutu.
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I got a Mac Pro and there is not much to play in OS X, WoW is there and some other games but not much else so I just relog into Vista when in mood for games.
But so far everything has worked smoothly there when it comes to games. The machine is powerful and competent to run modern games without any problems and when done I can reboot back to OS X which is much more enjoyable to use than any windows version so far.
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I play games on my Mac all the time … it’s just that I have to restart it into Windows every time I want to play anything except Civ 3.
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Played through world of goo on my macbook with 0 glitches, using crossover.
Was sorely disappointed that Spore would not run on it, though :(
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I’m quite aware it’s a sweeping generalisation, but I’m not talking about everyone who uses a Mac or everyone who uses Linux, obv.
I’m talking about the people who think it’s cool to be anti-MS (M$!1one) and make a point out of using an inferior OS for the task at hand.
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I have a MacBook Pro that I use for gaming. But I keep Windows XP on it as a second OS for that purpose. It works quite alright, but it’s annoying to have to boot into Windows every time I want to play a game. It would also be annoying to have to buy a second OS for it, but I fortunately got my XP free through the University.
In Windows, the machine is not bad at all for gaming, considering it is a laptop. Or, I couldn’t really tell, as the most demanding games I’ve played on it are probably Oblivion, Company of Heroes and Vampire: Bloodlines. I haven’t been playing very new games lately. Anyway, it has a proper Nvidia 8600 mobile video card, none of that integrated nonsense.
For those who don’t care about buying a second OS to game in, it’s possible to buy CodeWeavers’ CrossOver Games for Mac, which is more or less a fancy and improved Wine. Wine is a free and open reimplementation of a lot of Windows-only libraries, meaning that Windows-only software can be run on other OSes with Wine as a compatibility layer. I haven’t tried it myself, although CodeWeavers advertise as supporting fancy-pants games like Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2.
I have tried using plain Wine in Linux, and finished Planescape: Torment and Fallout in it without any problems, but I can’t recommend it in general. New games don’t work as a rule, and older games tend to not work as well as they should. I hear Wine has been improving quite a bit lately, but I’ve got a Mac with Windows for gaming these days, so I’ve escaped trying to make games work in Linux when they clearly don’t want to.
Some major games are actually published for Mac OS X, but usually several months late and way overpriced. Their most annoying trait is that they tend to be OS X only, which means that you can’t install them on Windows, ever, even though it’s originally a Windows game. This sucks, I want full OS independence for my PC games. What if I got a new Windows PC, and wanted to install it there? Then I’d have to buy a new copy.
It’s not as if it would be technically difficult to put versions for different OSes on the game DVD. The only difference is the executable and the libraries that it links to; the resources are the same for all OSes, and that’s the real space hog for games.
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I have mostly played PC games exclusively on a Mac.
Back in the day, it was an old LCIII and I’d usually play freeware games that I’d take from dad’s Mac World cover disc. Most of those were really fun, though short experiences, and I distinctly remember this one game where you played as a tiny red devil and had to consume souls in order to survive. It was a simple platforming game but one I loved.
Also played ALOT of this flight sim called Hellcats, which I still have a copy of but can’t get running on my new MacBook Pro. I only ever played using the keyboard, in fact, playing on a Mac I never even knew there was such thing as WASD controls.
Then, I ended up playing through Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat, which was a slight upgrade, featuring more planes and a full campaign mode. Sortie after sortie I flew. It was tough, though. Die once and that was the end of your campaign. Think I made it through 50 sorties before biting flak in an F22 somewhere over Kuwait.
Eventually, I graduated to FA-18E Hornet, which I convinced dad to buy me after having played a demo from one of his cover discs. It ran like ass but I didn’t care, it was great fun flying for up to twenty minutes to an objective, bombing the shit out of it then hook-landing on a carrier in the middle of the ocean.
Then of course, there was Marathon and it’s many sequels, also Syndicate. Oooo, ooo. Can’t forget all the old Lucas Arts point and click adventure titles — yes, that means Monkey Island’s, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, The Dig, etc.
When we finally upgraded to a G4, I made my way through Oni, Diablo II (countless times), StarCraft and BroodWars and Fallout 1 & 2. I was also addicted to playing Unreal Tournament and would spend many a school night pretending to open the door as though I’d left the computing room, then shutting it quietly and continuing to rank 1 & 2 in multiplayer games until 4am. Every morning mum would ask the same question, “why are you tired?”
This year, I replaced my old ASUS G1 laptop (7700M and 2.4ghz CPU + 2gb RAM) with a March release MacBook Pro (512mb 8600M + 2.6ghz CPU + 2gb RAM) setup running OSX with Windows XP on duel boot. It runs Steam games fine, including STALKER and Half-Life 2 at maximum resolution, and handled Crysis fine at the Average (?) or Medium graphical setting at a decent resolution. Fallout 3, not so well, but then again I’m playing that on console predominantly.
The MBP is, in my experience, far more reliable running XP than the old G1 was and the only issues I’ve encountered were trying to play COD4 multiplayer — can’t sort that one out. However, Team Fortress 2 is fine as are many other games.
If there’s any real issue, it’s trying to remember which key does what (Apple command is Windows key) and handling the placement of the function key and F keys.
Honestly, I love my Mac and I love gaming on my Mac. Sure, they’re rather expensive and they might not offer graphical superiority but they’re damn reliable, have a beautiful finish and be damned if I don’t prefer designing and word processing under OSX.
Also, I think I just wrote a blog post.
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I installed Spore on my Macbook Pro as I wanted to play it when when I happened to be going away for a week. Other than that, it’s mainly for work.
I don’t think that the Mac is an ideal gaming platform. Its OS is quite nice compared to Vista, but the relatively expensive and mostly unupgradable hardware is to its detriment. If I wanted a closed-hardware gaming platform, I’d buy a console. In fact, it’s only because it was heavily subsidised for work that I got a Mac at all. It’s a shame, because I do like the OS, but the machines themselves need to be cheaper to be competitive with PCs.
Maybe Linux should be the gaming platform of choice, although it’d be unlikely unless bigger companies play ball, and Microsoft won’t like that. Then again, Microsoft are trying to undermine themselves in promoting both PC and Xbox, and PC usually ends up suffering.
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@Erlend M:
The reason you usually only get a Mac-only version of A-list games when you buy the Mac version (as opposed to hybrid DVD or CD) is that they’re usually published by different people. There are a bunch of porting houses and publishers who buy the Mac rights to games, license the source code, and build and publish the ports themselves. Aspyr Media (www.aspyr.com) is one of the biggest of these publishers, and has branched out into other sorts of ports and publishing. It’s a complicated business, and companies publishing hybrid discs to start with (Spore is the most recent example I can think of) are rare and are usually VERY large publishers– smaller groups just don’t have the resources to develop cross-platform to start with. That’s also why the Mac versions show up months or years after the PC or console versions.
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I wouldn’t consider Mac prices a major issue for running OS X as I’ve been running it perfectly on my own built hackintosh (bought the OS, no pirating here) for almost a year now – completely dropped Windows half a year ago too!
It’s a moderately powered machine – Core 2 Quad, 8800GT, 4GB and all that – and whatever new games come out on the Mac, like Spore, I play on the Mac. For any other game I’m interested in, I have my 360.
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HAHA, more like ‘They are actively putting a gun to their head.’ Ever heard of Vista, now that’s a Gaming platform!
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I plan to build a PC next summer; I figure I will need Windows at some point but then what’s the point of getting Vista then when I could wait for 7, if the rumours are to be believed? Ubuntu all the way until then, I think.
As far as Macs go, there is something of an area of effect around me that causes all Macintoshes that enter to break, horribly. As I get closer to the keyboard more things go wrong until the point where I am about to type something; then it’s sad Mac face time.
Oh, I have an iPod, use iTunes on my home PC, and it is shit. Apple write such horrible software. Media players should not be 70 MB (though that is neither here nor there really).
I remember playing a few very old games on my aunt’s iMac, on the rare occasion when my AoE was… I dunno, what’s the WoW term? Recharging? :S It was ok, but I’m not sure that I like how Macs work. I prefer to fiddle with my machine more than that, you know, S&M fun.
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The flamebait was awesome.
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I’m in a similar boat to Kris.
I’ve got a decently specced iMac running OS X and XP (through bootcamp). At the moment, I’m using it to play WAR, Crysis and some older PC titles I missed out on (Max Payne 2 [!]), but the modern state of Mac gaming is an even sadder state of affairs than it used to be –
Especially when compared to previously playing classics like Myst, Wolfenstein and all of the fantastic Lucas Arts adventure games that were around during the 90s. Even during the earlier 2000 period were some decent titles available in moderate numbers. The Quake and UT series, various Tom Clancy FPS titles and lots of cool left of centre games that had been covered on RPS recently (Sacrifice, Giants). But, I was always dissapointed that there was never a port of HL, or its sequel.
Though strangely.. I’ve had a Mac as my main computer for 20 odd years, and never really bought into the fanboyisms or brand affinity that seems to afflict a lot of PC and Mac users, not to mention console owners.
Just let me continue to read your glorious PC GAMINGS blog.
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Escape Velocity! Okay, these days I’m PC-only (for reasons of finance) and EV: Nova swings both ways, but back in the day it was the subject of much lunchroom gloating that we mac-faithful had Escape Velocity and EV: Override and the PC kids didn’t.
@ Solipsistnation
Well, it’s not either-or. Realistically it’s hard to make a business case for not making a windows version. Once you’re making a windows version, you have to decide if you’re going to make a Mac-native version too. Since most “real gamers” who own macs can and will dual-boot, it’s not gonna kill your sales if you don’t. (For casual games, it’s very different).
So you can…
1. Make Mac and Windows-native versions.
2. Make a windows version only, and spend the half of the money you saved on hardware testing to make sure it’s smooth as butter on all common Apple hardware (when booted into windows) and the other half on advertising, bribes to magazine editors, or (gasp) making the game better.
Even though mac hardware compatibility under OS X may be easier to achieve than under windows due to better driver stability, the added expense of porting the game itself probably kills the value proposition if you believe that 75% of the maccies who bought your game would have bought a windows version anyway.
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As the above commenter said, the Marathon series were probably the only games that really stood out on the Mac. And before EV Nova, there was this great game from Ambrosia which only run as screen saver where you had to shoot asteroids (too lazy to Google). We played it for weeks.
I played a lot of WoW on my iMac, and before that Homeworld, another port by Aspyr. Nowadays I’d rather invest in PS3 games though. If you only own Macs and are serious about gaming, you’ll install Windows anyway, so I think “Mac gaming” nowadays is for casual gamers only.
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I play all my games on a MacBook Pro. Tf2, portal, Crysis, Far Cry (2), pure etc. Tf2 I play with WINE, the rest in XP. It’s not ideal, but hardware-wise it’s more than capable. I think you’ll find a lot of of gamers use macs. Perhaps not the hardcore gamers who want the cutting edge. Judging on the replies here anyway…
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@Devin:
I think you said more succinctly what I was trying to get across. I am a wordy bastard at times. 8)
And how could I forget Escape Velocity? Dang.
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There have been a lot of good Mac games over the years, although they tended to lag behind their PC originals by several months or – more normally – years, and so weren’t exactly the platform of choice. And although there weren’t that many Mac exclusives, some of them were memorable. Aside from the aforementioned Marathon games and Escape Velocity (and other Ambrosia software classics), there was Spectre which I played to death whenever I visited my folks. It was also the platform of choice for Myst, back when it was thought of as “cutting edge” instead of “a barely-interactive slide show”.
But let’s face it, of all the people I know who own Macs these days, not a single solitary one of them would be remotely interested in playing a game. Perhaps that’s the circle of friends I keep, but it strikes me that if you’re the kind of person to buy a Mac you’re probably putting gaming a bit further down your list of priorities about why you want one.
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solipsistnation – Stable drivers on Mac is a bad thing. The graphics card companies work with game developers to optimise the graphics engines for the drivers and the drivers for the engines. If Macs went the full console route and only had one hardware configuration too it might be worth building around that stable driver version specifically (e.g. dealing with all the driver bugs in the engine instead of getting nvidia to fix them), but since devs pretty much have to adapt the scalable Windows version of the engine to cope with the hardware and that will be tied to more advanced drivers than the Mac version it just becomes another barrier to Mac gaming.
p.s. Played Doom and Marathon back in the day and think Doom is a lot better. Much more visceral.
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You can play Dominions 3, the Ur-Quan Masters, and tons of older stuff (i.e. the X-COM series) through DOSBox on a Mac. What else do you need? :)
Seriously, though, now that the newer Macbooks have a decent graphics chipset I hope we start seeing more games for that platform.
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Lots of open source games also have Mac versions. Battle For Wesnoth is generally my game of choice on the Mac. My MacBook is more of a work machine (Final Cut Pro for video editing) but still I sometimes want to game. I also DOSBox some older games. I think the biggest hurdle to gaming on a mac is what Devin and Solipstnation said above – most Mac users have just resigned themselves to not playing games natively on a mac, and so the market isn’t there for a business to sink lots of money into a native Mac version.
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Always been a Mac gamer. Ever since the days of pre-MS Bungie, Fantasoft, Ambrosia Software, etc. Oh, and other titles like Spaceward Ho! and a number of clever indie titles. The number of great Mac releases has gone down over time, but luckily the new intel Macs have arrived. So now I can game with the PC side (mostly just because PC versions of games are cheaper than Mac ports), and still have Mac OSX with which to do my work (which I can count on to stay steady and keep my data intact, unlike Windows).
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A-10 attack, Civilization II, and Spaceward Ho!. Great titles. But I don’t think anything worthwhile has come out for mac ever sine.
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Just the other day i saw sacrifice in the mac section of pc gamer. Looked to have been a recent by the any art.
Thats why macs are better than pc’s. They realise that games don’t get better than that.
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*box art
I’m on a mobile, no page preview.
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Marathon series. None of this Halo crap, bring back Marathon. Also, does no one remember Oni? Both these games I first played on a friends mac and I recall they were rather good.
I wasn’t aware games were still being made for the Mac past obligatory titles from Bungie not forgetting their roots.
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It’s a pity you didn’t post this a few days ago, as Crossover were giving away full versions of Crossover Mac, Linux and Games for one day only, to celebrate gas prices going down (one of their 5 targets they challenged Bush to achieve as a lame duck).
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I successfully played a few games on Linux a while back – mainly FPSs like ET:QW and UT2004. I always kept my Windows partition, though.
Really, if you bought a home computer in the knowledge that you’d want to play a lot of 3D games and it doesn’t have Windows in it, you’re doing it wrong.
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I used to do D2 Mephisto runs on my girlfriend’s iBook. Other than that it was mostly used for spidweb.com’s excellent Exile series.
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TRS-80 said:
Have you got your serial yet? I downloaded both the Mac and Linux versions, but haven’t received a serial number in my mail yet. I’m very interested in trying the CrossOver Mac I downloaded and seing how well it works. To be honest, I’m not extremely optimistic, as my experiences with Wine on Linux usually leave something to be desired.
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My grilfiend insists that we have a mac as she’s a designer and apparently it is actually physically impossible to draw things on any other operating system, even now adobe products run just as merrily on a PC. who would have guessed? Anyway, that means that my Blizzarding has been Mac based since WCIII, and all have run shiny lovely. haven’t played much else boxed on it. EV:Nova, Avernum (anyone remember that?) and Defcon were all good, but then they’re hardly system hogs. Darwinia was plagued by extremely weird graphics bugs where sporadically the landscape would turn inside out and embed a load of inverted polys in my head. Never got to the bottom of that…
Am waiting for a mac version of EVE so i can experience the joy/horror.
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Honestly, the Apple marketting campaigns and stories of overzealous Mac zealotry, combined with the fact that Macs aren’t really considered as being a viable development platform mean I’ve never seriously considered getting one.
I don’t really see that changing either, since there are issues with getting support when something does go wrong and macs are as far as I can tell, generally more expensive than PC boxes.
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I have a macbook pro with an ATI x1600 in it, on which I’ve played bioshock, halflife 2 (up to ep3), portal, TF2, call of duty 4, and more. All ran very well. Because I of course run windows. I took mac OS off the thing when I bought it (second hand off my boss), and I only run XP and Ubuntu now.
Seems like apple are constantly putting bigger and faster graphics chips in to macs, then patting themselves on the back and saying “there! NOW there’ll be games on mac!”
They seem to forget that big barrier of a proprietary operating system with no games for it. Sure, hardware is the first step, but if they want games on mac they have to start handing out wads of cash to developers.
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My mac-lovin’ flatmate enjoys his C&C games, and I think he’s just bought Spore, but mainly him and his girlfriend just play a million little flash games like balloon tower defense.
The main drawback I’d say is that anything involving 3D will work, but the bottom of a MacBook can actually reach a higher temperature than the sun if your try. FACT*
Mind you, Macs are pretty powerful theses days, put a proper OS on there and they make ok gaming machines, plus I’m pretty sure Minerva:Metastasis was all mapped on a MacBook Pro
*Lie, but they do get bloody hot.
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Just as I don’t understand man-horse love, I don’t understand man-Mac love. I’m with Charlie Brooker (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/feb/05/comment.media). I mean, just one criticism: the difference in pricing between Mac and PC laptops is horrendous, bordering on obsene. This MacBook costs €2,500:
http://store.apple.com/ie_smb_65421/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_pro
I bought an equivalent Dell XPS laptop recently for €700.
On top of that, you can’t play (that many) games on it, and you can’t upgrade it. Yes, I’m sure the interface is nice and shiny, but not at the expense of being nearly 4 times the price.
P.
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Well, you can’t upgrade a Dell XPS much either. But the criticism for an iMac is fair. Then again, it feels like Macs are marketed partly to people who would never want to open up their case anyway…
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Why do PC users insist on slagging off Apple at ever possible opportunity (see Paul above). I’m sure your Dell is great but some people choose to buy a MacBook. It’s the same reason why some people buy a BMW 6 series and others will be happy with Ford Mondeo.
I played World of Goo on my MacBook Pro through CrossOver and it ran flawlessly. I could have played it through Bootcamp if I really had the need. Hell, I could have played it on my PC if I felt like it.
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Gap Gen, I’m pretty sure you can upgrade the processor, memory and hard drive. But yeah, true, being able to upgrade isn’t why people buy laptops anyway. Just for me, the price difference fair boggles the mind. I mean, imagine the PC laptop you could get for 2.5 grand. {Withnail voice} Imagine the size of his balls. Imagine getting into a fight with the fucker!{/Withnail voice}
A co-worker is starting a Masters in a design course, and she _has_ to buy a Mac laptop for the course; they won’t accept her using a PC laptop even though the exact same software is available. Of course, when she tried to buy one off the Apple store in the US, they saw through her ruse; you can only buy one from there if you ship it to a US address.
Jamie; I’m sorry, I don’t mean to slag off Macs. But, really, I can’t help it.
P.
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@Paul Maloney
Frankly, if I was told that for a Masters Degree, and their going to be like that, I’d tell them they aren’t getting any money for my attendence – Because I wouldn’t be attending. What a waste of money.
@Jamie
Sorry, we just can’t help it. I think its the ‘us’ vs ‘them’ thing working on a subconcious level.
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I was bemused by Ross Atherton’s devil’s advocate article in the latest PC Gamer suggesting that the Mac would save gaming. After all, already people complain about the high cost of PC gaming….
P.
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Ah, I didn’t realise you can upgrade laptop processors now. Good stuff.
Jamie: Paul does have a point, in that Macs are overpriced. I get your point about personal preference in terms of looks (even if I don’t see it myself, but then I wouldn’t buy a BMW) but the price differential is huge, given that the extra perks you get with the hardware are limited.
You can buy stuff from the US using a service that gives you a US postcode, but I’m not sure if it’s worth it, given import duty, etc.
Personally, I use both Mac and PCs. I much prefer the design of Mac OS to Windows, having used it for about a year now, but the price differential and the inability to build your own Mac is a big hang-up for me (although the concept of a hackintosh looks appealing…)
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You can’t upgrade the Macbook processors, as they’re soldered to the boards. Annoying, as I have a spare, beefier C2D I’d wanted to pop into mine.
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@Jamie
Because:
1. Apple pick fights with us in those mac / pc ads by basically saying we’re all buttoned down suits who suck at everything.
2. Mac users annoy us by going on and on about their macs, talking in that smarmy mac owner way, trying to make out like a mac is not a personal computer but some entirely better invention
3. iPod people (see 2, but substitute ‘ipod’ for ‘mac’, and ‘mp3 player’ for ‘personal computer’)
4. As you pointed out, the mac owners often fall into the same category as people who can afford to go out and buy BMWs, and then look down their noses at the rest of us.
5. Steve Jobs is a big fat jerk.
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As a mac user, I’m faintly amused yet slightly annoyed by the condescending remarks from the windows crowd. I do feel macs are better.. but hey, that’s why I use them. That’s simply preference.
If only more game companies would not appear to feel the same and be a bit more like Blizzard and the old Bungie in this respect.
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iMac 2001 vintage here. Yeah. Screen is almost darkened out by now, but I just cannot let go of old machines. That’s a bad habit.
Hmm. Gaming. On Macs. Unfortunately Windows/Microsoft beat Apple on this. I’d love to switch to Macs if it weren’t for games. Well, and the price thingy. For example: A mac mini is still too expensive judging by the value of its components.
So what did I got for my trusty iMac? It’s running 10.3.9 PowerPC by the way, and System 9 is also still there.
I got me here: Diablo II of course! And Diablo also. While D2 is carbonized, D1 still needs Classic to run.
Then there is Starcraft. Plus Brood War.
Aaaand.. I have Total Annihilation! With CC & BT.
By the way, I’m playing these RTSes only single player. If at all.
Then, oh yes, almost forgot: Myst III Exile. With some lovely performances by Brad Dourif.
Several games for PC I own are also working on my Mac: Like Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness/Beyond the Dark Portal. Also, Warcraft III. Although that one is unplayable on this underpowered machine. Sounds like I’m a Blizzard fanboy, eh?
I wish I could play WoW on my Mac. I installed it once, but it would be torture to play it. For both: my iMac and me.
Well, The Last Express and Riven: Sequel to Myst should be working too, but I dare not install them, because the optical drive is acting up lately.
Oh well.
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I used to play the occasional PC game but have switched to 360 / Mac. I still get Valve’s stuff, albeit late, and my Mac is shockingly good for all the non-gaming stuff I use it for. I am strongly tempted to buy Spore, and maybe a copy of XP to dualboot so I can run Max Payne and AudioSURF, but other than that I’m happy.
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I might want to add: Steve Jobs is a genius! I admire him greatly. Hope he pulls some more tricks out of his sleeve in the time to come.
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“As a mac user, I’m faintly amused yet slightly annoyed by the condescending remarks from the windows crowd.”
I didn’t intend to be condecending, as I know some very smart techy people who prefer Macs, so know they’re not just for the technologically-illiterate with money to burn. As I said, I honestly don’t understand the love. As for condescension, I would have thought even Mac lovers would admit that this is more likely to come from their side than the PC side; see the aforementioned Apple adverts. For me, the PC is the Spectrum of our times; a little bit geeky and crap, but more lovable because of it. I like the fact I built my PC, know it from the inside out, and occasionally have to open the side and blow some dust out when it starts to wheeze. (Just like the way I had a Spectrum which wouldn’t work until – seriously – I had to give it a sharp knock in a certain spot.)
P.
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The thing about Mac gaming is, we most likely wouldn’t have Halo or Syndicate if it wasn’t for them. I know for a fact that Halo came about after the chaps released Marathon and Durandal on Mac, not to mention the iffy Damage Inc, but I’m fairly sure Syndicate came out on Mac slightly before PC.
I’m not normally one to ram my opinion down peoples throats, but Syndicate really was far better on Mac than any other version. It was smoother, had far crisper, shinier graphics, and played like a game would now as opposed to the variations on PC at the time.
All of that aside, I wouldn’t use a Mac for gaming now unless all my gaming pals used them.
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(I forget exactly how I usually spell this nick *ahem*)
Paul: True enough, there’s zealots on both sides, but maybe understandably, the underdog side may have relatively more.
It’s saddening though, knowing that more games could be played on macs but aren’t because few people think of macs as gaming-worthy computers and therefore people tend to go for a pc to play games on.
It’s a vicious, vicious cycle, I say. ;o)
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Addendum: the cycle should obviously end by more people playing games on windows machines, less people playing games on macs and consequently the game industry having a look at the numbers and focusing on the pc. Which means less games for the mac, more for the pc.
(Of course, in a better world it would be more games for both.)
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I have a Mac (eight years and some old, increasingly creaky) and a PC. Except for the crippling and essentially irremediable age of the hardware, I much prefer my Mac for day to day use. OS X is without a doubt the best OS I’ve used, and that includes nearly every variety of Windows (running Vista ATM) and a few stripes of Linux as well. Admittedly, I started out on Mac, with highlights like Marathon and Escape Velocity among my early experiences, like many people have mentioned, and when I started using PCs I had to deal with DOS and Windows 3.1, not exactly comparable user experiences. Still it seems like every time Microsoft releases a new Windows they delight in finding new ways to break established power-user habits and add new layers of obfuscation to the user experience, while OS X has become increasingly robust, powerful, functional, and above all user-friendly. Or, to coin a phrase “user-helpful” instead of constantly getting in my way like Windows does. And while Windows’ stability is improving considerably, OS X just *is* stable – I’ve had maybe one full system crash in the last seven years. My PC seemed to go down every other week until Vista came along, and practically commit suicide anytime I do anything with hardware. It’s still a little creaky – I regularly have Windows Explorer “stop working”, which is alarming if apparently now harmless, that sort of thing. Any time my PC goes down for a significant period of time, my Mac is my savior computer, plugging right along and granting me sweet sweet internet access for troubleshooting and my lifeline to the world.
However. I don’t have the financial wherewithal to buy a new Mac, I can’t wholesale upgrade it the way I can my PC, and it never did run enough games to feed my gaming habit. (I gather that one common approach is to have a Mac as computer and a 360 for gaming. I can’t settle just for console games, I’m afraid.) So I maintain my Windows box, and my Mac is fading into obsolescence. It’s sad, really. One of these days I hope to be able to snag a cheap Intel iMac or somesuch, just to keep something viable for modern utility usage, but I haven’t gamed on Mac since I picked up a PC, and I doubt I ever will again.
By the way, there are still developers that primarily target Mac. Spiderweb Software, for example. Sure, they have Windows versions of most (possibly all, currently) of their games, but they develop for Mac first and then several months later release a Windows port.
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Butler` said:
I’m talking about the people who think it’s cool to be anti-MS (M$!1one) and make a point out of using an inferior OS for the task at hand.
OS inferiority is a point of view.
I play True Combat: Elite, a tactical fps playable on Windows, Linux, et Macs.
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Hell, Mac OS is just a very good Unix build. If games ran on Mac OS with reliability, I’d be very tempted to hack Mac OS onto a PC as my next machine (somewhere in the next 2-3 years, mind, given that the PC I have at the moment is pretty good for now).
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the new Macbook Pro is a total joke, it’s not that far off from the standard Macbook specs-wise.
Either way, without a 9800GTXm gfx chiop these laptops ar euseless for next-gen gaming, you’re better off with the entry level Macbook if you want something pretty.
I think the fact that you have to restart just to play the latest game on a super expensive Mac Pro has convinced most Mac gamers to get a nice console and a big screen tv.
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Mac. PC. Windows. OSX.
These terms get thrown around with little understanding most of the time.
What it comes down to is this: Right now, there is little different hardware-wise between PCs and Macs, especially since the switch Apple made to Intel x86 IA (even after making fun of the platform for the longest time). While the PC is more customizable (use any brand or type of parts you want) you can to a degree customize your Mac’s gear.
OS is another matter. John Carmack in recent comments has made it clear that Apple (moreso Steve Jobs) does not have real interest in gaming. Boot Camp has effectively removed any chance that this will improve. Those that want to do serious gaming on a Mac will install Windows.
Microsoft has done alot to support gaming efforts on the Windows platform. DirectX gives devs the best mix of tools to build their software. For devs that want cross-platform capability, OpenGL is still there, too.
Gaming on the Mac might not be dead, but it is on life support. Porting makes little sense for most software devs because of Boot Camp + Windows, and PC gamers generally have Windows already, making Windows development the way to go.
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BTW (I forgot to memtion), check out the pricing for Mac games, on the Apple store or otherwise, and tell me that isn’t hostile to gamers =P
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@Razor: The pricing on ports of Mac games is, again, an artifact of the porting and publishing process… The publishers pay a lot for the rights to license the source code, and they need to make back that money. It doesn’t matter that the PC version is hitting bargain bins for 19.99– the Mac version is brand new, so it gets priced like new software.
Note that I don’t think this is GOOD, but at least there are reasons besides sheer money-grubbing greed.
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Also, it’s likely to be at RRP (since bargain and Apple Store are not two things you often find in the same sentence).
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mashakos: This is true – for the price of a ‘gaming’ Mac (or even an expensive PC) you could get an Xbox and a rather nice TV. Of course there’s the issue of the (for the UK) TV license and the relative cost of games.
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the whole orange box runs pretty well on an mbp with crossover games for mac.
oddly enough, macs are fantastic to develop on, yet not much is developed for macs :(
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Back in the day, it was all about Ambrosia (Maelstrom, Barrack, Chiral, EV series of course), Bungie (Marathon series, Myth series), and Pangea (Nanosaur, Power Pete FTW!). But the Mac still received love from iD, Blizzard, 3DRealms, EPICMEGAGAMES (lol), Parallax etc. And the occasional porting house like Aspyr.
Notable obscurities – Asterax/Maelstrom(really good Asteroid clones), Escape Velocity (especially EV:Nova), Mars/Deimos Rising (vshmups), Wolfiregames’ Black Shades (cool concept), Queasy Games’ Gate88 (another cool concept).
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daokaioshin: that said, I don’t like Xcode much, given that it pops up a million windows if, like me, you don’t obsessively prune your open code files. Actually, on that point, I think that Visual Studio is the superior IDE, even though it’s a commercial product and Xcode isn’t.
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@daokaioshin/Gap Gen:
You know, I go back and forth. I’m a HUGE fan of Visual Studio 6.0, where you could do everything you wanted without ever touching the mouse. VS 2005/2008 aren’t quite as nice in this regard. They’ve almost been polished to the point where veteran developers are less productive using them.
Xcode I used to hate, but then I developed an iPhone game and kinda learned to love it. Now I’m back working on a Windows game using VS 2005 and I’m missing some of the subtle features in Xcode.
Overall though, VS is better for sure.
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@Larington: Lots of research groups have specific software requirements. I was told the other day by somebody requesting software in labs I help run that various groups within bioinformatics will only accept submissions from researchers who use specific statistics packages, and some publications won’t accept research done using other packages, and so on. There are also the problems of having to support various pieces of software on different operating systems– colleges have limited budgets for helpdesk personnel and training, and it’s a lot easier to just say “We only support Macs” than to have to worry about making sure you have a large enough crew to support Macs (which are at least pretty standard) AND whatever random assortments of hardware and software PC users have slapped together. As an example of this, I worked at the Berklee College of Music a few years ago– we supported 2000 Mac users with a staff of 6 and weren’t particularly overworked. The one guy who supported the 8 PCs in Human Resources and a couple of other PCs (less than 15, I think), on the other hand, WAS pretty busy all the time. So, being required to use specific hardware and software isn’t too surprising.
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@Daniel Purvis: That little Demon platformer you mention is BILL THE DEMON and you can now play it right in your browser thanks to flash:
http://www.somegames.net/flashgames/BillTheDemon.html
The Mac used to be a paradise of creative and free spirited indie gaming. I spent most of my teenage years with a Mac, and I don’t regret it. Unfortunately, around the time OS X was introduced, it took a dive. Now the PC is the indie paradise, and the Mac is a gaming wasteland. Most of the indie development houses have either retired long ago, or haven’t put out anything exciting for a long time. It still gets the big PC games, but I doubt that will continue with these Intel machines. Why bother?
It’s a shame, it really used to be an excellent gaming machine if you didn’t require CUTTING EDGE GRAPHICS or what not.
I posted old Mac game screens here:
http://www.gamersquarter.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1988&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
And here:
http://www.gamersquarter.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1988&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=50
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@Cycle: Oh man, flashbacks. And thanks for the Bill The Demon link! I spent loads of time playing that…
What the heck is that game with the fish and the… swabs? I don’t know if I ever saw that. I also really love how they used monochrome graphics to their advantage– there’s such detail in there– it really looks better than most color games on the PC did back then. Better to have 2 colors you can use really well than 4 useless clashing colors or 16 colors and pixels the size of your fist. Glad you got the Fool’s Errand in there, too. And Suffering. (“Little bastards! ZAP!”) And a few World Builder games…
Did you ever run into Randall Cook’s Tetris?
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Special hate is deserved for MacSoft, who have ported many a game in the past.
Buy Unreal Tournament for the “PC”, and you get a license (and disk) that allows you to play it either under Windows or Linux. But the Mac version? That’s special, that is. You have to buy it again if you want that.
This is a common theme with third-party ports, IME, along with generally sub-part support (keeping up with patches, etc.). Why Epic did Linux porting in-house, and outsourced Mac, I don’t know—especially as many of the technologies they used for Linux (e.g. OpenGL; OpenAL; SDL) are cross-platform to Macs.
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solipsistnation:
SimCity 4 Deluxe is old software, Windows or otherwise, and it’s selling for almost $75 when the Windows version is in the bargain bin for less than $20. Sure it costs to port but that price differential is ridiculous for an old game.
Boot Camp + Windows > OSX for gaming. Apple’s poor support of gaming development has guaranteed this will remain the case.
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Where the F*** is the edit function? I was going to add that I was not implying greed had anything to do with the price differential, but was merely pointing out it was there. There is no added value to the gamer beyond not having to install Windows, but you can easily afford the added cost of second OS after just buying a few Windows games vs OSX versions.
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Couldn’t agree more mate.
That iPod thing really pisses me off… Creative are so much better and slightly cheaper.
Don’t even get me started on the iPhoney…
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This should make you happy, then, Brendon: because of the iPhone you can call Apple the world’s 3rd biggest cell phone company now.
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I know… Stupid Motorola had it coming though.
Three things Apple do have:
1: Lots of very zealous internet men.
2: Lots of completely bull…poo advertising.
3: Lots of magpies for customers (SHINY! MUST HAVE IT!)
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Seriously brings back memories. I don’t think I realized anyone else had fond memories of Suffering. Or Factory (Deluxe). Or Ingemaar’s Skiing Game. Or Bill the Demon, for that matter. A lot of the others that I recognized were staples, of course. Scarab of RA (so awesome!), Desert Trek, World Builder games, Escape Velocity, Spectre VR, Dark Castle, Pathways Into Darkness, Marathon, etc. And I never actually got to play Minotaur, but it looked cool. Only time Bungie’s ever taken a stab at RPGs.
I was young and had no money, so I played a lot of freeware and the unregistered parts of shareware games. When I got to play commercial games like Marathon it was because my parents had given them to me for my birthday.
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@Cycle Oh. My. God. Thanks so much for that link. I absolutely loved that game when I was younger.
@solipsistnation Now that you mention the old indie games, it’s true. I used to play dozens of new, small and quirky games every month and then, all the fun just seemed to stop when we upgraded to a G4 and I began playing major release titles instead of the cheaper stuff.
Oh, the memories.
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I miss PC gaming oh so much since I bought my Macbook.
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i have a macbook: i just use bootcamp, easiliy enough hd space for both os (i run xp on the other half).
Had WoW, stalker etc running on it ok.
The intel gma gfx builtin chip is getting a bbit out of date now tho. Fine for al the indie stuff tho.
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I have a seething hate for Macs just based on the way they’re pretty much trying to popularize everything in opposition to actual PCs, closed hardware sets, accessibility over customization, et cetera.
If OSX didn’t have the stupid artificial restriction on where it could be installed I wouldn’t have a problem with it but alas. I just hate the way it’s all closed and locked down.
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@solipsistnation: The fish/swab game is COSMIC OSMO, one of the Miller’s “explortainment” games released before they hit it big with Myst. It was recently ported to PC via GameTap, complete with beautiful black and white graphics.
I agree they did fantastic things with the black and white display on the Mac, making the most out of the higher resolution that DOS computers lacked. Some games look stunning!
I didn’t ever run into Cook’s Tetris, as far as I know. Should I have?
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I got a new aluminum macbook with a nvidia 9400m “motherboard processor” (good integrated graphics chip) and i can play alot of games well if i boot up windows XP pro if that counts. I can play bioshock and tf2 with everything on high. Works for me.
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I have a Mac and a PC – best of both worlds. PC for games, Mac for the OS.
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