Mac OS X: Game Developer's Playground
Mauro Notarianni writes: "In the Stepwise article, 'Mac OS X: Game Developer's Playground,' Troy Stephens writes, "Mac OS X has the potential to be a superb launching pad for doing game development.'
The author describes how 'Cocoa's developer productivity benefits, when combined with Mac OS X's strong support for technologies such as OpenGL and QuickTime, can empower game developers to create the custom production tools they often need in a fraction of the programmer hours it takes on other platforms.'"
Because, as has been pointed out numerous times we're talking about development *tools* not the actual program. SDL is *not* an option here because it is useless in the development project but very useful as part of the final product (excuse the misuse of terms, the meaning should be clear).
...that Apple can't be bothered to put decent video cards in most of their machines. They've just barely dumped the Rage 128 on the desktop - like 3 years after it was obsolete - and if you want anything more than a non-upgradeable Geeforce 2 MX, you will be forced to pay well over 2 grand.
But they don't mind making DVD burning accessable and shipping it as standard on some models. They're so intent on the user using the iApps they've lost sight of the fact that some people don't want their computing uses to be pre-determined by someone in Cupertino.
If they offered a choice between a Superdrive and a Geeforce 3 on the high end iMac the Mac gaming market would be a hell of a lot better off. Right now, it has to deal with getting cards one full generation behind the rest of the computing world and having to deal with them for ages - if you had less than 2 grand, a Rage 128 was your only option between 1999 and 2002 - now that they have the slow Geeforce 2 MX, many upcoming games are demanding Geeforce 3s.
I mean, the Mac would be so much better off if Apple could let their users forgo the DVD burning, Gigabit ethernet and other things they will most likely never use, and simply let them play games for once.