You know, I've often wondered how Jobs would feel about that. He's not big into controversy on those kinds of issues. For example, you can't find vPodcasts that are pornographic (at least they aren't advertised that way last I checked).

Anyway, I can't help but wonder if GTA San Andreas would be prevented from seeing the Mac because it gained that Ao rating? But I really liked the GTA3 games, so I think I'd like to see it too. Only time will tell.

I have heard Rumors that Apple is thinking about pushing into the game market, I'd really like to see it. I guess we'll know when 10.5 comes out, if it has an excellent rendition of OpenGL, we can hope for a good crop of games. What would be really nice is if they somehow could get DX10 on Mac...but...well...okay, chances of that happening or more than kind of slim. I just wish Mac would put a bunch of work into OpenGL and make it at least as good as DX10.

i reckon since more and more people are seeing how amazing osX is and are converting to macs, game developers will have no choice but to make more games. But if i get a ps3 i wont really need any games for mac and PC, i think that will cope for all my gaming needs

Zallister:

I just want to show you something interesting. I'm living in Thailand, and when I go to your blog I see it in Thai. It's not a glitch caused by faulty text encoding because the spelling and placement of words is correct. For example, the month in the sidebar is the correct Thai word for that month.

The body of your blog is in its original English form, so it's just the navigation from Google which is translated.

Ha ha, now I feel all international and stuff! I really ought to put another post on that blog at some point. I'll just have to harass BioWare and see what I can't get to fall out of the tree.

Yay, just installed BootCamp (painlessly) and now have Abe's Oddysee and Exoddus on my iMac.

Cool. Oddworld is one of the best games ever created. Hard to find that unique of a sense of humor anywhere else.

I guess I should mention here that I'm rather excited to hear what id has to announce at E3. Their demo of Tech 5 a WWDC was awesome, and I can't help but wonder just what they plan on doing with it on the Mac.

This is not necessarily true unless one builds their own box. I've spent a couple dozen hours these past couple weeks doing in depth price comparisons between iMacs, Dells, HPs, Gateways and Sony systems. I am trying to convince my parents to switch, but I'm 90-95% of my argument is based on hardware.

I've checked the prices for multiple models from Dell, Gateway, and HP, as well as one or two from Sony. All have been configured as closely as possible to an iMac 20 inch with 2 GB RAM. PCs are configured with Vista Ultimate 64 bit. All computers are configured with a three year extended warranty. A three year AV subscription is also configured into PC price.

The iMac is not always the cheapest, but it is not always the most expensive either. Most times when it is the more expensive between two models, the PC lacks equivalent hardware (not available as an option in a particular line) most commonly Gigabit ethernet, 801.11n(draft) wireless and/or Bluetooth 2. Often, current specials by Apple or others more than made up the price difference. There were some outlier models, but Apple wasn't one of them.

(IMO Gigabit ethernet and 802.11n wireless are essentials for any computer expected to be used more than 2-3 years, so these are big hardware shortcomings.)

The price differences for equivalent hardware are minimal right now. If you get all the cool goodies, you pay for all the cool goodies. And Apple likes to include cool goodies. They are trendsetters in that way. Who first offered USB as standard? Who first offered FireWire as standard?

Bear in mind that besides the operating systems, the only software considered in the comparisons was AV software for the PCs. iLife and other useful Mac software was not taken into consideration. Legacy equipment like 1.44 MB floppy disk drives or dial-up modems were not considered. The iMac is able to hold its own in terms of price.

A couple other things worth noting are that the PCs that appeared to be aimed at gamers were typically higher than the iMac when configured equivalently. The iMac, while certainly capable of gaming, is not ideal. (The MacBook, on the other hand, is really not well suited for gaming.) Apple's Pro Line, with which I compared nothing, are better choices.

My configurations were not necessarily what I would recommend, just a starting point for comparison purposes. I could save money with almost any of the platforms (including the iMac) by eliminating unnecessary features.

With a Mac you have fewer configuration options, but you are not generally getting less hardware for your money when buying Apple compared to pre-built retail PCs.

J-

I was referring to sales, rebates, and mark downs. The PC market is way more competitive, since there are many PC manufacturers and you can build your own as you suggested. However, Apple has no competition with their platform, they are Apple and no one else sells Apple. Even though they are in direct competition with every other computer platform out there, they also at the same time have no competition within their platform. So, that is why you see massive rebates on Dells, I mean I priced out a dell using online rebates for a co-worker not too long ago and was able to knock $500 off the price tag from online coupons and rebates. This of course is an extreme example because you can't always get that type of price break.

As for gaming options, well I can maybe retract my previous statment because at the WWDC both EA and id announced they will be developing and releasing games now for both platforms at the same time. id already does this for Linux as well, they are an awesome company.

The fact of the matter is, now gaming on a Macintosh is looking better. When I originally posted that nothing was revealed and no company was trying to do anything about it, at least openly. I'd like to see a lot of gaming go over to the mac platform so I could totally ditch windows maybe, but only time will tell.

Also, hardware companies need to do the same, because PCs have such a huge variety of video cards to choose from, and lets face it, a video card directly effects video game performance.

As much as I'd like to get excited about EA and id. It should be noted that they constatute a very small percentage of gaming manufacturers. EA is huge, and it will be nice to have some real sports games, but we're still missing a lot of people...

But, EA is evidence of a possible trend. Apparently they are using a program that will nativize DirectX calls to "OSX speak" if you will. I'm sure the rest of hte industry will be watching that experiment closely. If it works (i.e., a low amount of technical issues or performance hits), then other companies will surely fallow suite. Apple has a mass of college students in it's clutches, and I'm pretty sure that all college students are intersted in are sex, drinking and video games...oh, and school.

What will have me excited is when Valve comes over, I want steam on my Mac. At that point I will be able to view OSX as a completely legitamate platform for gaming.

good luck with steam, they have enough problems supporting one platform....

aarrgghh steam is my gaming nightmare, its so annoying, but i do agree if Valve made halflife for mac that would be awesome!!

Well, after talking with some actual Apple employees, it seems that gaming is coming along for the Mac. There are several new factors involved that could make Mac gaming a reality.

1) Core Animation - as we all know is a set of APIs for developers to access Apples hardware for Open GL support. Comparable to MS's Direct X, in many ways. So game developers could use this to their advantage.

2) Cider - an application translator specific to video games which will translate windows video games into Mac compatible games. From what I am told Cider modifies very little of the coding so porting games over should not be that hard.

So the tools are in place for developers to make mac games, however, there is one major factor in play that still won't let Apple compete with the PC gaming market. Almost every gamer I have ever met who is serious about gaming builds their own PC. This is not possible with a Mac, and well the people who are really into gaming desire that ability. So, if Apple were to make a barebones desktop, say a C2D processor, motherboard, and a smaller version of the Mac Pro case. Then allow customers toss in whatever amount of RAM they wanted, their choice of HD and their choice of video card, then I could see them gaining in the Market. Too bad Steve Jobs thinks that consoles will ultimately win the video game market. I guess jobs has never tried to kill something on a control pad versus a keyboard + mouse.

Anyways, here is some more info on Cider.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransGaming_Technologies

http://www.transgaming.com/products/cider/

I'd thought of this, and it's good to hear Apple is thinking the same way :). I don't see why it shouldn't work.

If you've seen the complaints about Battlefield 2142, you might rethink this idea. It looks good on paper, but in practice it seems to be lacking. In the end having developers use Core Animation (or a similar tech) as their central API will be the thing that brings gaming to OSX. Translation is just too sloppy.

I disagree. I've met plenty of people who are into games who use Xbox 360's, Wii's and PS3's, none of which can be significantly modified. I think the inherent stability of locked hardware makes the Macintosh a better platform for games. Sure, you won't be absolutely cutting edge. But you will be more cutting edge than a console, and not so cutting edge that it's a big hassle (the money and time required to be cutting edge is ludicrous).

Contrary to popular belief, not all PC gamers are cutting edge. I love PC games, but I'm just fine with my MBP 15". Does it play all the latests games at 100fps? No. But there are so many good games from the last three years that I could really care less. I'm yet to play Oblivion for goodness sake!

Anyway, Mac gaming would have to be just like most Mac users. Not overly complex, simple to do and it just works. And I think Apple can easily do that with it's current line up of computers.

Well, cutting edge gaming is a huge market and people spend money in it. Console gaming is a different animal all together. You don't really want to play a FPS on a console, it is not as smooth as it is on a PC. Do you know how many gamers out there buy new video cards every 6 months? A lot. The video card business is a booming one. Now add in the fact that DX 10 cards are out now and that everyone wants one to run the newest games on maximum settings. Trust me, if you could build your own Mac it would attract more gamers, and it is a barrier that will keep gamers from buying a Mac. I know I have a PC built specifically for gaming and my mac gets used for other things.

Cider is in its infancy, it will get better as it goes I can only assume.

something else which ive realised, is that if people are going to play games on macs (including on bootcamp) the entire mac range will need a major graphics card bump, the imac should have a min of 256mb and have an option for 512+mb cards. Only the mac pro can really play games like bioshock and future games like crysis.

Tlarkin- I don't really disagree, I'm just saying that custom built boxes is not part of Apple's strategy, so why bother asking for it? I personally like the inherent stability of a limited choice in hardware.

Also, don't make the mistake of believing that Mac gaming has to be like Windows gaming. My point with the consoles was to say that many many people play games on closed systems, why not the Mac?

The real point I'm trying to make is this: the system is secondary. The reason people by PS3's or Xbox360's is because of the titles on them. Ask Nintendo how it's GameCube went, there were almost no tripleA title on that system. And if they don't hurry it up, the Wii, for all of it's innovation, will die as well.

No, in reality, Apple needs to bring more games to the system. And that means an accessible API and a stable platform. Hopefully Mac and Core Animation can do that.

I think most developers will be overjoyed to see Apple's closed system. They don't have to rewrite your good 50 billion times as a result. It's one reason why many of the PC's greatest titles were stolen by consoles (see Halo, for example). It's easier to make a game for a closed system.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on it. I don't like the idea of building Mac's, I feel like it's counterintuitive to the simplicity Apple, and most of their users, are after.

EDIT: Sorry, but it's still bugging me, I was going to leave it out. FPS's on Consoles suck because of the controller. I'm yet to see an FPS on a console that doesn't run at 30fps at least 90% of the time. Try saying that about a comparably priced PC.

FPS on a console have so many problems with them, I mean for one the aiming is skewed to match that of a dual analog control stick. My PC runs moderate FPS at 80fps and high end ones at 40 to 45 fps. I don't max out the settings on all the games but they still look very good.

I am just saying that the video card market is what gamers look at. Some of them are into things like over clocking and I think that is just dumb, but that is me.

And I think you have an excellent point with the comment on Video cards. While I could never see Apple picking up every single Gaming card out there. It would be nice if every six months they would grab a top shelf card and put it in. They did that recently, actually, with the 8600 in the MBP 15"...

But even that now isnt top range is middle range, I wait for the day that all macs can have exchangeable graphics cards, or something as powerfull as the 8800 in imacs and mac pro(and a proper graphics card in the mac mini) .

Out of interest is the nvidea quardro, which is like £1000 is that 4x512mb? or just 512mb? and if it isnt is 4x 256 cards better ?

The whole point of EFI is that it just works. No drivers needed, and any PCI-E card would work in a Mac. Therefore you could just go grab the latest ATI or Nvidia card and be done with it

Quadros are work station cards designed for rendering and number crunching not for gaming. Video gaming cards are over clocked and designed to pump out the most FPS at the highest frame rate.