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Gamers Itching To Switch To Macs?
An anonymous reader writes "CNET.com.au is forecasting Windows gamers will be flocking to Intel-based Apples, saying many 'have been looking for an excuse to switch to Macs.' The article says: 'Of course, games enthusiasts who like to customise their systems and upgrade their hardware (such as graphics cards) at the drop of a hat may still prefer the tinkering freedom a PC allows. But then there are the legions of more casual gamers who only upgrade every several years or so -- as long as they can play what's available at their local games shop, I'm sure they won't be fussed that they're not running off the latest gear from ATI or NVIDIA.'"
Its weird how game compatibility goes. We can run almost everything made on things like Commodores and such (various emulators for everything), and with the latest release of dosbox, we can run almost all the DOS and a lot of the Win3.1 (not that there were that many) games. Its the stuff between that and Win2k that's iffy.
It almost seems like there's this hole that's a lack of support, and its shrinking from the tail end while eating up a bigger and bigger time period. Not sure if its expanding faster than its shrinking, but its rather interesting. I think with Vista's release, a lot of older but still-playable games (late 98 era) will become unplayable, and at the same time Wine will keep getting better and will be able to play the oldest games unplayable now (95-era and such).
On a different note, software like dosbox and the like seems to go partway toward nullifying the argument for open-sourcing games. I mean, games that were open sourced (Gladiator, Rise of the Triad, the Dooms and Quakes, etc) do live on today on modern systems, but the games that weren't are still very much alive and playable. In facts, Dosbox's enhancements like modem and IPX emulation make those games better and better! Of course, no matter how good Dosbox gets, it still won't be able to make, for example, the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe be anywhere near as good as OpenTTD, but its still cool how they improve well after their support life-cycle is over.
I kinda lost my point in all that, or maybe disproved it or never had one to begin with, but its still interesting. Maybe a bit off-topic, too....
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
People are accustomed to not buying their OS, since nearly every computer ships with one today. Microsoft's demand that OEMs install Windows before shipping the computer has this side-effect: You expect the OS to be part of the deal. You don't see that you've paid money for a copy of Windows, so in your mind, you've never had to pay for it before. Do you think that will somehow change? That people will suddenly start paying for something they never had to in the past?
If someone does a study on this a year from now and finds that more than half of the copies of Windows installed on dual-boot Macs are legal, I'd seriously question the study's methodology.
Meanwhile, because Apple is not a Windows OEM, that means that Microsoft (or other OEMs) must deal with the support calls made when things go awry. This increases Microsoft's costs, and the costs of Apple's competitors.
It gets worse for Microsoft: They are in no position to strong-arm Apple into an OEM contract of any kind. Apple doesn't want the contract, and the claim that they're shipping computers without an OS is leading people to pirate the OS falls flat. Apple is shipping an os, they can claim that what people do with the dual-boot is not Apple's responsibility, and they're right.
Microsoft can claim that Boot Camp is leading to more piracy, and they'd be right about that; however, the claim that Apple is somehow deliberately enabling this loss of sales -- although very likely -- is a subtle point. You can also see how Microsoft themselves, by strong-arming OEMs, have created a trap for themselves to where a company that Does Not Need Microsoft -- such as Apple -- can exploit that gap.
The more I look at it, the more impressed I am with the evil brilliance behind Apple's move. And yes, I meant it when I said "evil." This was truly devious. It benefits all of us in the short run, but in the long run it benefits Apple the most.