Why does this sound so familiar…
→ Kikizo | Gabe Newell Interview - Valve on The Orange Box - September 2007
Gabe Newell said:
This is where us Unity folks come in… 
what I’d love to know is what are these three things holding back big studios coming to the Mac?
Is it related to Steam? Or more general game tech issues…?
Don’t get me wrong I’d love to see HL2 on the mac… but then again I just boot up in Vista and run my windows copy of orange box! 
Cheers.
Isn’t it like, 1) no high-end graphics cards available, 2) no Direct3D, whoops, make that into Apple does not have lots of support (people and tools) allocated for helping the developers, and 3) Apple generally cares much more about “lifestyle computing” and does not really care about games (can you find a link to Apple’s games page from their website?).
That’s my impression at least. And, oh, the market share of the Macs is not that big either
I would alter your first point to “no midrange cards available”…
It comes directly from the top. Steve Jobs despises games, has since the beginning, considers his computers “above” something to play games on, and has absolutely no personal interest in games whatsoever. And what he wants, he gets. If Steve was best buddies with the head of EA, we’d be playing FIFA on our Macs.
I hate Jobs as a person, but at least he has forced the cessation of direct-to-“video” Disney releases. He’s not 100% :twisted:.
The irony is that apps like Unity fit perfectly into Apple’s aesthetic for “lifestyle computing” where gamers are concerned. If I love music, I can listen in iTunes and use GarageBand to record my own. If I love movies, I can watch on AppleTV or use iMovie to make my own. If I love games, I can make my own in Unity, but I have to sacrifice some quality to play them on my Mac.
-BC
Apple has had a long horrible history with games on the Mac (not on the Apple II which was the pre-eminent games machine of its day). First of all, when the Mac came out, Apple steadfastly refused to provide a joystick or even define a standardized joystick (the original Mac didn’t even have ADB). So for a long time most games were kind of non-starters.
Then, for another long time, Apple refused to ALLOW programs to use a low-res mode. Most of the great games of the late 80s early 90s relied on a 320x200 graphics mode of some kind (on the Amiga or PC) because CPUs back then simply couldn’t handle more pixels than that. Apple’s low-end machines used video hardware that supported 320x200 graphics but – despite the BEGGING of game developers – would not allow anyone to use it. This stopped games like Wolfenstein and DOOM (which was written on NeXT machines!) from being ported to the Mac until processors had gotten a lot faster.
When Jobs came back one of the early casualties was Game Sprockets (a bunch of libraries provided to game developers in a half-assed attempt to recover from fifteen years of outright hostility). When OS X was first announced there was some discussion as to whether full screen applications would be ALLOWED let alone supported (graceful full-screen support in Mac Classic was a Game Sprocket function which many non-game apps, such as presentation programs, ended up using).
I’m a huge fan of Apple, but their handling of games on the Mac has ranged from obliviousness to malevolence over the years, and it just doesn’t make sense.
Heck – if the iPhone were opened up it could probably support PSP-level gaming … but that would entail Apple giving a damn.
PSP? Have you ever PLAYED a PSP game? That machine is amazing. The iPhone is a continuation of “good for everything BUT games”, as I see it.
The PSP is an utter POS imho. The lack of dual analog sticks, the poor quality of same, not to mention the utter lack of games for it.
The games suck for the PSP IMO. It is a powerful portable device though.
If only it was more open like the gp2x… :roll:
Oh, it sucks as a controller, but every PS controller has been garbage. And it doesn’t have any games yet that interest me (check my link for the only one that does), but neither does the Nintendo DS (which I owned for a little while before I decided it would never have any good games either).
I’m talking about the PSP vs. the iPhone. The PSP is in a completely different world. And however bad the controls are, they’re certainly superior to the iPhone’s. Another argument could be made against the disc system, but that’s easily gotten around through piracy. Running everything off of a flash card really improves battery life and load times.
Yes I own a PSP, solely for lemmings and loco roco… and chrome when it get’s released. But the one thing that I loved about the iPhone was the completely painless ability to watch YouTube on it! Plus some of the 3rd party hack apps were amazing. Pity Apple is trying to shutdown that whole scene… Now if the PSP had Sony supported YouTube viewer then I’d be a happy chappy.
Cheers.
Youtube is certainly a boon to gamers everywhere. Stupid time-wasting side-quests will no longer need to be undertaken just to see the meager results! (I figured I’d try to help out with this one, considering nobody else had uploaded it previously):
There are also a TON of great instructional videos for musicians on there.
I think almost no one is interested in better gfx cards on a mac, the market is just too small. What we really need instead is this.
→ http://www.computer-choppers.com/
If it would be a pure gold case you at least yould overclock it… .:O)
Gold and diamond can actually be used for decent purposes. What a travesty. :evil:
…actually, I’m surprised Apple isn’t doing this themselves. It’s not that far off from the Blackbook.
Maybe they would prefer onyx instead…
I’m not saying the PSP doesn’t have nice capabilities, I’m saying the iPhone does have nice capabilities – they’re just not available for game dev.
Yeah…let’s see. The iPhone is a consumer product. Consumers buy games to play on their phones. No games can be played on the iPhone, despite it having the nicest screen of any phone out there.
I hope Steve Jobs pulls a Bill Gates soon. He got Apple back on track, but they seem to be veering off to the side of the road.