Steam Prompts OS X Graphics Update 313
Stoobalou writes "Mac gamers got a massive boost when online gaming hub Steam started supporting the platform a few months ago. The arrival of the online service, which allowed Mac-toting gamers to play some of the same games as their PC brethren, in some cases cross-platform, created a great deal of debate between the two camps, with the PC crowd pillorying Mac fans for the relatively poor performance of their expensive hardware. Now it seems that Apple has gotten the message, as they have provided a graphics update for OS X Snow Leopard which will make progress toward closing the gap between the two platforms."
Call me crazy. (Score:5, Funny)
But I think this is clearly AT&T's fault.
This won't be overcome (Score:2)
Until there is the following:
More high-end hardware choices (specifically video cards) for Macs
and
Mac Drivers written in a way that enable better gaming performance.
One or the other will improve things...but the problem won't truly be fixed until both happen.
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to be fair the Mac Pro has Xeons and not consumer level CPU's. It's priced in line with other workstations from Dell/HP.
it's the imac's. Apple wants you to pay for an expensive LCD screen and gimped the graphics. my theory is that it's psychology. when i did help desk all the lusers thought the computer was their monitor. so apple did just that except they sell you a very expensive monitor that looks nice so you feel good about spending $1500 on a computer when most people think $500 is too much
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Why has nobody ever complained that Microsoft gimped the computing experience for whole generations of customers
In addition to various iterations of Linux, I've been using Microsoft operating systems for years...no complaints here (besides the obvious Windows ME, etc)
producing one gimped operating system after the other
Gimped operating systems that 1. Are the most widely used in the world, 2. Dominate the corporate environment, and 3. have the most software available.
the laughable gimped brown Zune that nobody wanted
The Zune is actually a decent MP3 player. I'm a Creative Zen guy myself, but a Zune would still get the job done quite well. Much like iPhone haters, the majority of Zune haters are people that have like
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I have never, ever, ever heard the word "gimped" until quite recently it apparently become fashionable to use the word in connection with Apple products.
The major difference is that Windows has problems, and people work around them. When Apple has a problem, it's usually by design.
Valve... (Score:5, Insightful)
Valve, if you're listening...
Please, please, please do steam and your games on linux. You've already made them POSIX and OpenGL, you're 85% of the way there.
I will buy every damn game you release on linux. I never want to run windows again, and if I can get portal and TF2 on linux, I won't.
Re:Valve... (Score:5, Insightful)
You've already made them POSIX and OpenGL, you're 85% of the way there.
More like 10%.
This is the problem with Linux: What company in their right mind would port to the platform that is both hardest to develop for and has the smallest user base? xorg, driver issues, distro inconsistencies all make porting games to linux an absolute nightmare. A lot of fundamental changes need to be made to desktop linux before it will really be taken seriously by anyone but Id. John Carmack even came out and said that Rage wouldn't be commercially supported on Linux, and that they'd provide an executable and let people fend for themselves as far as actually getting it to run.
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That's solved fairly easily: supported distros. Even roll your own distro - the valve gaming distro. Every other piece of software on linux has supported distros, or at least dependency requirements that have to be met. That's why the package management tools exist.
Hell Valve - hire me. I'll do it for you.
Re:Valve... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, adding another distro is a great idea ... if you want to run games from Value you have to use their distro. If you want to run EA games you have to use their distro.
Contrary to the common but ignorant belief that more Linux distro's is a good thing, they aren't. Linux's main problem to commercial adaptation is the number of distros and the problems dealing with inconsistancies between them (did you even read the post you're responding too?) ... adding more distros doesn't help the problem when the problem is already 'too many distros'.
And for what? A few thousand sales at the very most? When instead they can dedicate that same person to Windows and get 100,000 sales from their work?
Don't expect Value to start asking for your resume, you've already show you have absolutely no idea why they haven't done it already.
DLL Hell on Linux is actually far worse than DLL hell on Windows, package management tools or not, its not a problem they can solve, again, contrary to popular belief. If you think package management tools can solve the problem then you clearly don't understand the problem.
Re:Valve... (Score:4, Interesting)
One more quick thought: Canonical would probably jump on the dev team for this port in a heartbeat. I'm sure they would see the benefit of Steam games on their OS.
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Then Valve should jump in with a major distro and only guarantee support for that one. Any distro would be insane to turn them away. I imagine Ubuntu would be a good fit.
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I'm not sure, but Sony has managed to convince companies to do it in the console market.
Then again, Sony was first during the previous generation...
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No, the problem with Linux is that as soon as you start to talk about it the Lemming Trolls
come out of the woodwork to try and scare granny and Joe. Meanwhile, the Indie gamers are
quite happy to reap the rewards of porting to Linux and are willing to share their positive
experiences with everyone.
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,i>Explain to me how micro-companies and nerds in their basements can write shit like Nexuiz, Penumbra, Tremulous, Urban Terror, Warsow, Flightgear, TORCS, Sauerbraten, etc. while the big guys can't seem to pull it off?
The big boys can pull it off. UT 2004 had a Linux version. But it's usually not worth their time. Given the relative market share, I'm actually amazed Valve took the time to make Steam work on the Mac.
It's all about cost/benefit. If it takes 10% more effort to get a game to run on Lin
Well a couple of things (Score:2)
1) Are they POSIX? I think it is more likely they are Cocoa since that is how Apple prefers apps to be.
2) Can enough copies of Linux handle the GL calls needed? iD has talked about this that more or less only the nVidia closed drivers provide a full, complete, "just like on Windows" OpenGL implementation that modern games need, and it seems OSS types hate those. So if they ported their games, would they work properly, or would they require a bunch of modification to work?
3) Would Linux people buy them? The
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1) Are they POSIX? I think it is more likely they are Cocoa since that is how Apple prefers apps to be.
just getting away from direct x and compiling on a different platform is a big step.
2) Can enough copies of Linux handle the GL calls needed? iD has talked about this that more or less only the nVidia closed drivers provide a full, complete, "just like on Windows" OpenGL implementation that modern games need, and it seems OSS types hate those. So if they ported their games, would they work properly, or would they require a bunch of modification to work?
most people who game are by needs pragmatists and not OSS purists. all (almost all?) games on steam are closed source.
3) Would Linux people buy them? The Linux crowd is notoriously of the opinion that software should be free both as in open code but also as in not having to pay. Are there enough paying customers to justify the man hours needed to port and support it?
as to whether there's a market, that's harder to say. would be that there's a fair number of windows installs (several million) that would not be booted into if linux handled gamers needs.
TF2 runs under WINE (Score:2)
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Spare a talent for an OSX Leopard? (Score:5, Funny)
BRIAN: Did you say -- OSX Leopard? ... sixteen years behind the bell, and proud of it, thank you sir.
OSX LEOPARD: That's right, sir. (he salutes)
BRIAN: What happened?
OSX LEOPARD: I was cured, sir.
BRIAN: Cured?
OSX LEOPARD: Yes sir, a bloody miracle, sir. Bless you.
BRIAN: Who cured you?
OSX LEOPARD: Jobs did. I was hopping along, when suddenly he comes and cures me. One minute I'm a Leopard with no games, next moment me productivity's gone. Not so much as a by your leave.
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Re:Spare a talent for an OSX Leopard? (Score:4, Funny)
OSX LEOPARD: Ah yeah, I could do that, sir yes, I suppose I could. What I was going to do was ask him if he could ... you know, just give me minesweeper during the week, you know, something playable, but not Steam, which is a pain in the arse to be quite blunt, sir, excuse my French but ...
Worked for me! (Now with technical details.) (Score:5, Informative)
It's linked to from TFA but Valve's technical article Game Performance Improvements in Latest Mac OS X Update [steampowered.com] gives a lot of insight into the OS X driver situation.
Personally, I have a MacBook Pro with a NVIDIA 9600 chip. I was kind of disappointed when I got StarCraft II. I had to run on one of the lowest resolutions with medium defaults. Increasing any setting made the game close to unplayable when complex graphics were being displayed (such as the lava level). Then I updated the graphics drivers. I was able to bump to the highest supported resolution and bumped the graphic settings to high defaults without noticeable slowdowns. I had to go to the ultra defaults before I started getting slowdowns and warnings.
I haven't had a chance to really sit down with it and play for an extended time (damn real life...) but there certainly is a huge improvement. The urge to upgrade is fading...
Now works when looking into sun. Big deal. (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple fixed occlusion query in OpenGL, which matters when you're looking into a light source. Useful when sun near horizon in game. [steampowered.com] Nice, but no big deal.
This secretly fixed a showstopping bug (Score:3, Interesting)
This latest update for graphics has fixed that bug.
I notice that Apple never seems to have acknowledged the bug, despite people screaming in the support forums, and that the System Update doesn't mention that it's obtw fixing a total showstopper that has plagued many users for the last 6 weeks on all platforms - nothing to do with the games cited.
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No this is not true... AMD and Nvidia write the hardware facing aspects of their respective graphics drivers and work with Apple on various other aspects. Apple writes the common OpenGL core, etc. AMD+Apple teams and Nvidia+Apple teams are really what exist... this is a good thing and close to what MS has with these vendors
Apple does however qualify and release these drivers via their update channels (not that Nvidia and others haven't release updates of their own at various points).
Re:Vendors (Score:5, Informative)
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Apple knows best
I don't know if they write the drivers (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be rather complex, but their certainly control the drivers. They dictate what they do, what can be released, and so on. Net effect is the same.
However it is a larger problem than that, OS-X also doesn't have a very fast 3D layer. Despite what you might think, DirectX is fast and able when it comes to getting things to graphics cards. Also Windows provides a good way to plug in an OpenGL (or any other) API that can get at the hardware fast and low overhead. OS-X is not so good in that regard. Apple has never really had a gaming focus.
Perhaps this is going to change, we'll see. Apple has in the past talked up the games thing and hasn't delivered anything, but maybe they are more serious this time around.
[Citation Needed] Re:I don't know if they... (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you have evidence or example behavior/feature that shows that OSX doesn't have a very fast 3D layer? Otherwise the most damning thing about OSX graphics engine is that it isn't DirectX. That isn't better or worse but simply different.
Yes, that games run like shit on it (Score:4, Informative)
That you take StarCraft 2 or Portal and run them on OS-X, then reboot that same system in to Windows 7 and the games run better.
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The simple fact of the matter is that OpenGL is not the same interface paradigm as modern DirectX. In the early days of Direct3D they were quite similar, but eventually Direct3D evolved to have two different rendering paradigms.. one called Immediate Mode (like OpenGL) and one called Retained Mode.
Now, Immediate M
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Last I checked, which admittedly was 3 or 4 years ago, apple had restrictions on what could go into the firmware on NVIDIA and ATI cards's in their machines. it's why you couldn't pull one of those graphics cards out and have it work on a windows box, or, somewhat more seriously, you couldn't replace your mac graphics card with a regular one and have it work properly under OSX (but it would work under windows).
I haven't tried lately however, not being a mac guy. I only knew of any of that (in somewhat mor
Re:Vendors (Score:5, Informative)
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Just for reference, the EFI thing is only true of the primary card now. You can happily stick a PC graphics card in the second PCI-e slot, and OS X will detect and use it fine.
Hopefully as intel pushes to move all PCs over to EFI, the problem will disappear as more cards become EFI based or dual firmware, but that'll take a while.
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And Netkas is God.
Re:Vendors (Score:5, Interesting)
That was due to the difference between Open Firmware on PPC Macs and BIOS on Windows boxes
And the OpenFirmware stuff wasn't Mac specific. You could pull a graphics card from a PowerPC Mac and drop it into a Sun SPARC and have it work nicely. More importantly, you could buy an OpenFirmware card from Apple for about a third of what Sun would charge for exactly the same hardware.
Re:Vendors (Score:4, Interesting)
Donno if its true, but it would seem like it ... and its a great trade off. Apple's nVidia drivers are about 3 billion times more reliable than anything nVidia itself has ever produced.
I'm happy with my 'slow' graphic drivers as I've never noticed them being slow. Until Steam learns how to deal with case sensitive file systems I doubt Steam will ever be a problem for me.
I play all sorts of stuff on my Mac and can't tell the difference between it and the Windows versions. I can say that the graphics update did seem to make my Mac run cooler while playing EVE Online but it doesn't seem to be any 'faster'.
I can play EVE in Win7 with the latest WHLQ drivers and get random crashes. I can play EVE under OSX and it works flawlessly ... considering its using Cedaga to run under OSX I'm fairly confident that I'm happier in OSX than I am in Windows thanks to Apple.
I don't know who, nor do I really care who makes my video card drivers, I do know that in MY experience, games in OSX are more reliable than they are in Windows.
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I'm glad you're having a great time playing EVE, but I don't think a seven year old game is really relevant to a discussion of the state of the art of graphics cards for gaming. Even a year or two is a long time in the world of graphics cards -- seven years is an eternity.
Re:Vendors (Score:5, Interesting)
That's fine, but then no bitching if performance sucks. A high performance graphics layer is required if you want high performance games. The CPU has to be able to get data to the GPU quickly and efficiently with minimal overhead to make good use of said GPU. If the implementation remains poor, then the performance will likewise.
Also realize two additional things:
1) With proper OS architecture, the graphics driver isn't a big problem. Windows 7 runs it all in user mode (you don't have to reboot when you install a driver) so a crash isn't a big deal. The system just restarts the driver. The GPU still can halt the system of course, and piece of hardware can because they have DMA and if they go nuts can corrupt things, but the driver can't protect against that.
2) nVidia in particular but ATi as well are real good at writing drivers. They don't crash much, if ever. They are not going to be our source of instability.
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2) nVidia in particular but ATi as well are real good at writing drivers. They don't crash much, if ever. They are not going to be our source of instability.
Wait, what changed in the last couple years? Last I heard, graphics drivers were a very substantial cause of Windows crashes. This article [engadget.com] says nVidia + ATI together was over 1/3 of reported crashes, and nVidia was responsible for 1.5 times the number of crashes that MS was.
Was that just a temporary situation caused by Vista's release? Or maybe things w
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The debacle with Vista was a unique situation. It's not representative of the general trend.
Uh, no.
The "debacle" with Vista was thus:
Vendors didn't write drivers.
When vendors DID write drivers, they sucked.
Video card drivers are shitttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttty. This is a fucking trend you can count on.
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I was just affirming his last paragraph. GPU drivers for Vista were unusually bad for a while after it was released. The article's statistics aren't really applicable anymore.
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My first and only Ubuntu issue also was ATI related.
X crashes on startup with the default catalyst drivers on the 5770.
It's solvable, but annoying.
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Vista had an all-new driver architecture, and (so I'm told) the vendors didn't have enough time between getting driver SDKs and Vista's release to write good stable drivers.
It's been almost four years since then, so drivers have had plenty of time to mature.
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Vista had an all-new driver architecture, and (so I'm told) the vendors didn't have enough time between getting driver SDKs and Vista's release to write good stable drivers.
They had plenty of time, they just didn't make use of it.
Re:Vendors (Score:5, Informative)
2) nVidia in particular but ATi as well are real good at writing drivers. They don't crash much, if ever. They are not going to be our source of instability.
I seem to recall a report from Microsoft not too long ago - drawn from the automated error reporting in Windows - showing that video card drivers are, by far, the single biggest cause of system instability.
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Ya, and that was based on early results from Win7, where *all* video card drivers were beta, and nasty to play with.
Any more, when you update ATI drivers, it just blinks the screen as it restarts the driver, and you go on. No reboot needed. No lockups or issues either.
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No.
It was based upon data gathered via error reports and sent to MS automatically and was in reference to the OEM and Retail release of Windows Vista.
And yes, the GPU companies had PLENTY of time to write new drivers and test them, they just didnt make very wise use of it.
This is also why the problems have slowed down considerably since the release of Windows 7.
It uses the same driver architecture as Vista for the most part making the creation of Drivers for Win 7 a much less painful process resulting in mo
Your recollection is muddled (Score:2)
While you are recalling somewhat correctly, it was more than a little while ago. It was when Vista first launched. Crashes were rampant, people blamed Vista, of course. MS showed that in fact it was 3rd party drivers, not just video drivers, that were the cause. However video drivers were up there. Now there were two reasons for this:
1) Their XP legacy. Vista (and I think 7) actually allows for a more "XP" way of doing things with drivers in the kernel. It isn't recommended but can be done for compatibilit
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Stepping around the mess of who writes drivers, there is another item here, and that is best interests:
Video card makers want to just get drivers good enough to sell the card, hope that not too many people have crashes. Otherwise, drivers have absolutely no ROI and are a cost center to the PHBs. So, it is in the video card maker's best interest to do just enough to get the card working, and then move software development to the next card about to go on the store shelves. Any cash spent writing fixes for
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this would be true if they weren't writing unified drivers....
except both are.
Re:Vendors (Score:5, Informative)
Uhm, live kernel driver updates is something windows has done since Windows 2000. 99.9% of the time in Windows XP can have its graphics drivers update on the fly and work fine if you just ignore the 'you must reboot' button.
The drivers are kernel mode, they always have been, they always will be, unless you want them to be slow as molasses due to the userland/kerneland context switching thats required.
Rebooting is not required to modify kernel drivers. Its as simple as issuing 'net stop' and 'net start' commands (or using the API for the same purpose) with the NT kernel. I know, I do it, I've written Windows kernel drivers.
What world do you live on?
ATI has some of the shittiest most unreliable drivers on the freaking planet.
nVidia gives you a 50/50 chance of getting a good version that works reliably without a bunch of bugs. Half the time you score, the other half the time you're falling back to an older version of some sort so your games don't crash or your machine bluescreen anymore.
I'm not really sure where you get your information from, but you probably should not use that source anymore.
Re:Vendors (Score:4, Informative)
The drivers are kernel mode, they always have been
Not true. They weren't with Windows NT 3.x, for stability reasons. They were moved into the kernel with NT 4 because people complained about the performance. They've been complaining about the stability ever since. I ran NT4 and NT5 (Win2K, from back when it was NT5 beta 2 until several service packs after the release) and the only time either of them blue screened was in drivers written by Creative, ATi, or nVidia.
Re:Vendors (Score:4, Insightful)
Couple that with the fact that the end-user can't really upgrade their video hardware without throwing away the whole computer (excluding the prohibitively expensive Mac Pro)
That's generally true of all laptops. Very few of them allow you to update the video. Most of the time the video chip is soldered on the MB.
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"That's generally true of all laptops."
Not even close. MXM has been in multiple laptop models. It's what's labeled/advertised as 'discrete' graphics.
Re:Vendors (Score:4, Insightful)
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In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.
Rare trumps DOES NOT EXIST AT ALL AND NO ONE ELSE CAN HELP YOU by a wide margin.
That's the whole point of this "free market" and "competition" thing.
If Dell doesn't want to take care of me than ZaReason might.
Re:Slow graphics on Macs? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, 2008 sure does want that 5750 bad, but does she want it badly enough to wait until late 2009?
Re:Slow graphics on Macs? (Score:4, Informative)
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I thought the whole point of the iMac is that you're buying a small form factor, which will inherently always be behind a tower in terms of power:cost.
It's essentially a unportable laptop.
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Trouble is, though, that Apple's habit of shipping seriously tepid graphics hardware extends even to their iMacs(which may be thin; but are pretty big. The thermal engineers can suck it up.) and Mac Pros(workstation class towers bristling with fans in a blow-through configuration, this should be cake).
Unlike the Wintel guys, Apple does h
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Re:True. (Score:5, Insightful)
And yes, you can get a cheaper Dell. You can always get a cheaper Dell. I can go down the local korean computer shop and get something cheaper then that. There will always be cheap solutions that have the same 4 or 5 basic metrics people use to compare systems when they are lazy.
I have been building custom game rigs since the 80s and am still running one when my MacBook is not sufficient. I agree, you can get the best $/Perf out of role your own, but it also eats time. I spend more time maintaining my windows gaming rig then all my OSX machines put together, which when I only have a few hours for gaming per week can really add up. Next non-trivial part that fails (last one was just the CMOS battery) I will probably be simply replacing the machine.
One of the 'places' where macs excel is for people who just want (or only have the time) to use the computer, not treat the computer as part of the experience.
I will agree though, having some mac offerings in the midrange (Mac Pros are serious overkill for gaming) that you can swap out the video and sound systems would be nice.
Re:True. (Score:5, Interesting)
*sigh* I am constantly frustrated by the 'if someone likes a mac, they must have been manipulated into it' meme. Most of the students (undergrad, masters, and PhD) student I know with macs use them because they are low maintenance and good for getting work done. They are good solutions for their situations and tasks... esp among the PhD students who really just do need a computer that works, lets them do their research, and does not burn time with fiddling or maintenance. Mac can be very good for that group.
Re:True. (Score:5, Informative)
Using Windows would be almost impossible for any serious computing when all high performance clusters I've come in contact with at various universities use Linux or Solaris and I need to test the code locally before launching a job. Desktop Linux, up until recently, was an unstable option.
(Note: I do now own a netbook with Ubuntu 10.04 UNR on it and it is a pleasure to use for writing in a coffee shop or somewhere I'm not guaranteed a power outlet).
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Na. I've seen intrend away from that type od student.
OSX is a good choice for engineering. There is a lot of power there.
Why do I doubt you know all those student well enough to make the determination? or right, your post is chalk full of Ad Hom fallacy.
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"thats' really an indication of your skill, not the platform"
I'd have to side with @jythie on this one.
I came from a video post production house heavy with Mac workstations and now work at a major network channel that's very Windosey. My god - I truly can't understand the world's sad devotion to Windows. I hardly ever heard from the 60 Mac users at my last job and now I spend most of my day keeping a few dozen HP 360 and 380 shitboxes connected, booted and trying to finish the work you ask them to do. There
Re:True. (Score:4, Informative)
Are you suggesting that one must be a technophobe to "not want viruses and malware"? :)
The stuff you've listed isn't about "technophobia," it's about "not wanting to spend several hours a week dicking with settings &/or virus scans on your computer." One need not be a technophobe to have things other than building their own computer rigs that they'd rather be doing.
I am waiting for the iMac II (Score:3, Funny)
It comes with slots and will be available in platinum!
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So your upset that the bottom end Macs dont' include high end graphics cards?
Are you retarded? When did low end machines start coming with modern high end graphics cards from Dell or HP?
My Laptop from last year runs Crysis versions currently available just fine. Of course, its not the bottom end model, but its certainly not the high end model either. I can't say it runs Crysis 2 great, but neither can you say it runs it bad since neither one of us can actually run it ... So your slideshow comment was j
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Sorry, but you're a delusional fanboy and a liar. The only Mac to approach high end graphics is the Mac Pro. If your laptop is a Mac, it doesn't run Crysis well, period.
Re:Slow graphics on Macs? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Slow graphics on Macs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wake me up when Crysis is worth playing. Crysis is the game every single PC gamer cites when mocking the Mac, but it's not even a good game. The days of graphics demos disguised as games died in the late 90s. Visuals are a solved problem. More people play 2D FarmVille than all the copies of Crysis ever sold because most people don't care anymore about high-end graphics. Gamers like you are now a smaller niche than the Mac userbase itself.
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the screens Apple uses are IPS LED backlit panels that are better and more expensive than what dell uses. they aren't the same monitors. Dell had a 27" IPS monitor that was supposed to be made by the same company that supplies Apple and it was something like $800 which after you add up all the other components in a 27" iMac a Dell computer would cost more.
with apple you pay for crappy graphics and a nice monitor
with Wintel you can buy nice graphics but the monitor won't be as good
and OS X sucks for gaming c
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The screens Apple uses are IPS LED backlit panels that are better and more expensive than what dell uses.
No they're not, the U2711 is the exact same monitor as is in the iMac... However, that makes the 27" iMac not too badly priced, given that Dell sells that monitor for $1099, and the iMac is $1699... Hell, you can even get a refurb for $1269... so that's $170 for a damn fast Core2Duo system.
Re:How about more hardware choice? and a mid tower (Score:4, Insightful)
In case you didn't notice, the Mac Pro is NOT a friggin' commodity box. It's a Xeon-based workstation. It's not supposed to be a gaming machine. It's supposed to be a production machine.
And honestly, I don't think Apple will ever seriously care about gamers. They're happy to pick up fence-sitters who would come over with more gaming possibilities, but the hardcore gamers are a small market and one with which there is almost no crossover with Apple's current market. Casual gamers won't care a great deal if they can't max out all of the details. Apple will make some improvements to help pick up that crowd, but serious gamers wouldn't consider a Mac in the first place and Apple knows it.
I would love to see an Apple midtower, but I don't see it happening.
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That being said, they do service the 'less then hardcore but more then casual' market pretty well. I have been playing StarCraft2 on my 6 year old MacBook Pro pretty comfortably.
Re:Mobile chips (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing you're a complete and utter moron. And my guess is correct.
Those complaining are complaining about the games performing better ON THE SAME Mac running Windows.
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Mobile chips don't suck these days. They are not the equal of desktop chips, but they carry their own, at least if you buy the right ones. My laptop has a 5850M in it. Now that isn't equal to a real 5850, it is more like a 5750. However it still plays games just fine. It isn't the same class as the 5870 in my desktop, but for sure the same league. For example Street Fighter 4 on my desktop runs all settings high at 1920x1200, and I can crank up the FSAA. Street Fighter 4 on my laptop hooked to a 1920x1080 T
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not true anymore. if you look at Intel's CPU chart all iMacs are running desktop versions of the CPU. they even have desktop hard drives
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You know, FWIW, the vast majority of computer users don't need to upgrade their video card, and don't upgrade their video card. I play a decent number of games on my media system PC and so far everything I have runs just fine on my Geforce 8800gt that must be about 3 years old by now. The reality--the people that REALLY care about the tiniest framerate differences, the hardcore gamers, etc--would never buy a mac in the first place. Back in highschool it was really fun to whip out the framerates and optimize
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for years all the isuckers said how OS X is better and faster than bloated Windows and now they are complaining
Yes, because games are the only way to measure the performance of an operating system.
and Flash still sucks on Mac's even though it runs just fine with hardware acceleration on a $299 toshiba laptop i bought as a gift
Except that 10.1 was a huge improvement and many Macs now support hardware accelerated Flash.
Also, if you think that gamers account for 90% of the market then you're an even bigger fucking idiot than the rest of your post would suggest. Here's a hint, kiddo: Serious gamers are a small percentage of the overall consumer market. Casual gamers are a much larger component, and casuals don't usually put gaming as their first
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> Yes, because games are the only way to measure the performance of an operating system.
Actually, a game is going to be a pretty good way to measure the performance of an
operating system. Games tend to be under severe competition pressure to do better
than their predecessors both in technical and artistic terms. Game developers are
always trying to push the limits of the current hardware while improving the
underlying algorithms.
Using the same bit of code as the benchmark also better enables an Apples to Ap
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Castlevania was never on any Apple platform. You may be thinking of Castlevania on the Amiga. Or you may be thinking of Dark Castle on the Macintosh.
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He's got to be talking about Dark Castle. That was THE Macintosh game to have back in the day.
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"..."nverted my HDD to case-sensitive
what the hell, man?