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Apple Finally Getting Its Game On?
Gamespot reports on the possibility that, in some way, Apple is making moves to develop games. From the article: "This week, GameSpot learned that there may be more to the Apple-game rumors than mere Mac-mad daydreams. A tech-sector recruiter contacted the GS NewsDesk with an interesting story of a prospective hire that got away. Recently, when said recruiter made an offer to a software engineer, the engineer turned the offer down--saying he was being 'heavily recruited by Apple.' According to the engineer, an Apple hiring manager named Mike Lampell is heading up a group inside Apple's storied iTunes division. The group is specifically hiring for 'C/C++ coders with a gaming background.'"
"The engineer says the project in question was described to him as "super secret," and Apple would not even tell him the exact nature of it until he had been hired and signed a non-disclosure agreement."
Anybody want to place bets on his chances of being hired now?
Easy here: apple develops a bunch of simple, casual games that run on ipod/with interface, and sells them for a couple bucks a pop at ITMS. Nothing fancy, and nothing that taxes resources (as so many phone games do).
With the money to be made, the market share to be exploited, and the minimal investment required, I'm surprised they haven't already done this.
What if they just want some 3D visualisations for iTunes? Something that requires experience with character animation, skinned models or complex shaders?
Apple portable music gaming device?
I've been called by an Apple recruiter as well, maybe 6 - 8 months ago. The person I spoke to said that they were looking for people with my skills. I've been in the games industry since I was 18, I've shipped around 3 dozen titles for consoles and handhelds, so my resume basically shows that I'm perfect for one thing: getting games out the door. For personal reasons I wasn't even slightly interested in the job, but the call itself was vastly intruiguing. I've been waiting eagerly ever since to hear what the heck Apple is up to.
No doubt Apple is tired of seeing Microsoft dominate the games market. Look out for the all-new iPippin. With an Intel chip inside, it's twice as fast as the PowerPC-based XBox 360!*
* May not actually be twice as fast outside the Reality Distortion Field. But who cares? You know you'll buy it anyway.
I'd actually argue that Mac's are ideal gaming platforms. There's only so many different configurations available, so it's more or less like programming for a game console (you know what you're programming for and optimise it for a specific hardware set), except everything is in x86 on a Linux platform. So really, no new hardware and api's need to be learned...it's pretty much all pre-existing. And with the number of game engines readily available, I bet Windows gamers would be pretty impressed with what you could do on a Core Duo Mac.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Has anyone thought that this may be more an in-house tie-in with Disney/Pixar? It would be quite the coup for them to have control of the kids-game market : If your kid wants to play the next Ice Age game, why not buy the system from that nice company who made their iPod?
I could see iPod games, maybe, or at least something more than Chess on the Mac when you buy it (chess is great, but Ma and Pa like Sollitaire, natch.) The real thing that gets me is, if it's for the iPod, why hasn't anyone else figured out how to get games on it? I've hunted and all I've found have been text games that read like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, but nothing like what currently resides there. It's a shame really, since I used to load my PDA down with distractions for long trips when it was my music player. If they are making games, maybe they'll take more advantage of the 1-100 read-out on the touch wheel, having a full range of directional control and not just a scroll wheel. The real kicker would be a licensing deal with a company to sell old console games emulated on the iPod, but that's not likely due to the button arangement. Still, I can hope, right?
Ballmer will be hurling an entire conference room of chairs off the roof when Apple can claim:
One billion games downloaded!
Pippin makes a comeback !
Try Firefox with NoScript. It makes surfing the web a clean, relatively ad-free experience, and minty fresh too.
Or how about Spider Solitaire! Mac games are good, I enjoyed playing CNC Generals on my mac. Though if your a die hard gamer and a die hard Mac fan you need a windows box for games. As the Macbook isnt a good games machine, I don't know about the Macbook Pro though.
Yes, the PS3 blows the mini out of the water in performance, but if the Wii takes off, then Apple might want a piece of the action. Plus, it has all the home media hub functions already, and a distribution network for music and video.
The return of the Apple Pippen? Ars technica had a journal article from 2005 about Apple and Sony integrating the iTMS with the PS3, could Apple just be deciding to do it themselves after they saw the price of the PS3? Remember the sales pitches of the 80's for the Commodores and Ataris? "It not only plays great games, but it is also a full blown computer!"
What, me worry?
Apple should be in handheld gaming. They should be shooting for the inevitable, a true convergence of the handheld market. That uber-Phone/PDA/Ipod/Gameboy - all in one - that geeks have dreamed about since the Star Trek communicator.
Apple sells the most expensive device in our pockets right now. It has mass storage, a color screen, significant processing power and it's own OS. Of all the pocket based systems, the Ipod requires the least additional work to accomodate the features of all the others. What you have then is the OS of the pocket.
Still, the path to obscurity or to becoming the overpriced but efficient 'niche' product, like Apple computers have always been to the PC, could be Apple going it alone in all aspects. Taking a leap into handheld gaming would mean directly competing with Sony and Nintendo in a cut throat & solidified market. They would have two options really, as I see it. Build the gaming OS/API's themselves (a tough route) or license it from Sony (the PSP) or Nintendo. How open Sony or Nintendo would be to digital distribution of its games or handing off much of the reins to Apple is questionable, but there is definitely some synergy for a collaboration like this.
Apple should move quick on this. The talk about Microsoft's new IPod/XBOX-handheld product is already in the 'when' not 'if' stage. Microft could care less about builiding the different handheld products individually or as a whole -- they want to own the OS it all runs on. They want to be there at the point of convergence. If Apple doesn't secure their position here it could be a situation of deja vu all over again.
Suited Guy (PC): "Woah... out of the way... bang, gotcha! Hahah! Oh no. Oh no! Dudududududu! Ha! Who's your paternal-figure? Hey? Hey? Who's your paternal figure?"
Hip Young Guy (Mac): "Hey dude, whatcha doing?"
PC: "I'm playing a really awesome game. You play a secret agent, and you have to shoot the henchmen, and... hold on... woah! Ok, you want a turn?"
Mac: "Oh, come on! Surely you could be doing something productive, like, erm, burning DVDs? I can burn DVDs. Yeah! Make your own movies, it's cool"
PC: "Yeah, I did that once. Hold on... woah! Gotcha! Haha! Gotcha, what's behind the wall? Oh... hey, it's multiplayer if you want to join in."
Mac: "Oh, games. Aren't those what games consoles are for?"
PC: "Depends on the game. This is an mod someone did for Doom 5, so you'd never see it on a console. You just don't get that kind of innovation on closed platforms like consoles. Hold on, I got it! I got the papers! Now, how do I get out? Er..."
Mac: "You know, you ought to be sorting through the pictures on your digital camera which I can do really easily with iPh..."
PC: "Yeah, that'd be a real fun time. Real. Fun. Time. Yeah. Sure you don't want a game? Hold on... blam! Gotcha! Where the hell did he come from anyway? Ok, through this wall..."
Mac: "Oh no, games are such a waste of time. I'd rather do something productive like, erm, manage my iTunes collection. That's something I'm good at..."
PC: "Me too, you do know I run iTunes right? Aw come on, let your hair down a little. I thought I was supposed to be the stiff."
Mac: "No."
PC: "Wait... I think there's a hidden passage here... read it in a forum somewhere... oh yeah, next to the pot plant, got it, extra health, excellent. Anyway, why not? Why don't you want a go?"
Mac: "I don't want to talk about it."
PC: "What?"
Mac: "I said I just don't want to talk about it, ok? Ok?"
PC puts the joystick down for a moment: "You can't play games. That's what it is, right?"
Mac: "Right. Ok. So I can't play games. What's the big deal? Nobody plays games anyway."
PC: "Sure. Nobody does. Right. Yeah, just me. Just boring, suited, me. Not like I play more games than all the games consoles put together. Right."
PC falls on floor, rolling with laughter.
Mac: "Ok. OKAY! Now let me turn this photo slideshow and jingle I put together in Garageband into a DVD. Not a waste of time like playing games is."
Mac walks off in huff. PC picks up joystick and continues playing.
Fade to black:
"Apple Macintosh"
"The Computer That Can't Play Games"
"But That's Ok Because Nobody Plays Games Anyway"
I don't get it why people are complaining about ads so much. These web sites cost money to run, you know? These people do this for a living. I find Internet ads to be a lot less intrusive than a couple of years ago. Ok so sometimes you get those crappy flash ads with sound or some that gets bigger when you roll over, but those are the minority, not the norm. I think that websites like IGN and Gamespot or some "real world" news site to actually have a pretty good way of displaying ads. Once in a while you click on a link and there's a full page ad which you can simply skip by pressing a text link over of the ad. And it's like this on most websites I visit. I took an extra click and an extra second to get there. It's like people who strip ads from thei messaging client. Just don't look at them. Anyway, MSN is minimized 99% of the time, so I couldn't care less about the ad that is there 1% of the time.
The only places where you can find ads to be real annoying is on torrent sites and such. Considering people go there to mostly download stuff they don't already own, I have little pity for those who complain. Why should I care that someone is bugging you with those ads? You are already in the process of ripping someone else off. And the saddest part is that those website owners make money off the stuff from other people.
I know a lot of people, including me, are skeptical about convergence. But let's face it, convergence is going to happen, the question is when, and who the winners will be. Will it be the Cell phone people (Nokia, Motorola)? Will it be the Palm people (Palm, iPaq), will it be the Laptop people? (Dell, HP, etc), will it be the OS people (Microsoft, Windows CE, their new tablet PC), will it be the games people (Sony, Nintendo) or will it be the MP3 people (principly Apple). Somebody is going to invade the turf of one of the other players, and somebody is going to be badly damaged. Maybe it won't be this year, or maybe it will. Sometime it's going to happen, and probably Apple is worried as they should be.
(Mac guy takes off his "Think Different" shirt and has [Apple Logo] + [Direct X] on it)
Mac: Hey now, pass that joystick over here, buddy, I'll show you!
(Fires up latest Quake 8 Mod, which is supported on Vista, OS X, and Linux)
PC: Wait? What? You're both? Oh geez... I bet you went to that army thing, Basic Training or something, right?
Mac: R... right... Well, I figured I could just run the standard Id games on my Mac side (including that new Doom 5 mod, now as the standard UB), but this is so much more fun to watch die-hard mac addicts cinge at me doing it in Windows! Wait, let me switch back and fire up iGamer and get the latest content segment...
(torrented game network launches, updates, closes, 10.5 sure beats 10.4's improvements)
Mac: There we go, now where was that health pack again?
(Fade to black MacBook)
The new platf...
(Whoops, integrated graphics, fade over to the much better MacBook Pro, there we go)
The new platform for work, games... Life.
(Pop up Apple logo with a controller trailing from it)
... This is making more and more sense. Win32/DirectX should be supported environments within XCode, even if the compile target is only Intel, and even if you have to rebuild the GUI in NIBs.
At the very least, DirectX makes sense given games typically run in fullscreen and don't really care about UI widgets anyway..
There is a precedent for what Apple may be doing here. Anyone remember the Atari 800? I bought one just so I could play Star Raiders. I bought it at a store outside Boston (IIRC at a Bit Bucket in Newton, MA) which had this set up on a 5-foot projection TV for video and a 100 Watt stereo driving the audio. The salesperson told me: THAT ONE GAME was responsible for something like half of their sales of the Atari 800. At the time (1980 or so), the Atari 800 cost me about $800... and I happily paid it so that I could play a ~$50 game. AND, once I got the computer, I bought many more applications and peripherals. Star Raiders was the "killer app" of its day.
Apple might be looking to do the same. Sell some subsidized games on iTunes for little money so as to encourage additional iPod sales. Once he consumer has the iPod, and has overcome paying its (non-negotiable) price, the barrier to buying more things for it is overcome. Increased iTunes sales. Even MORE profit for Apple. A larger market. Synergistic growth.
Someone else here mentioned about Disney. Kid sees friend playing Disney game on iPod. Kid Wants Game. Kid pesters parents incessantly. Parents buy an iPod for junior to play these nice kid-friendly Disney games. Kids become experienced users of an increasingly dominant platform. [Apocryphally, IBM gave (?) Selectric typewriters to schools to use in Touch Typing Classes. Said students go off into the business world and are faced with klunky manual typewriters. Secretaries all-so-often are the ones who Get. Things. Done. Not too hard to start persuading the PHBs to buy a Selectric typewriter. Lather, rinse, repeat.] Apple has done similarly with schools by offering a significant educational discount for their computers. Microsoft has a student discount for their Office suite. Hook 'em while they're young.
Here, Apple could hook 'em before they even GET to school! Like I said, Brilliant. Absolutely Brilliant!
... which is awesome.
1) If I'm paying for something, I don't want to see ads. Like those once-in-a-while full page ads, I find those extremely annoying, even though I'm at least semi-intelligent and have adblock and such installed so it's just an extra mostly blank page to load. But then there's even banner ads ALL OVER the regular pages, even if you have a membership. You have to read the printer friendly version to keep your eyes from bleeding.
2) Torrent sites only have ads to pay for the cost of hosting the torrents and running a tracker and such, any extra income is (usually) put towards the next month's expenses. I've not seen one tracker making actual money from ads. They're usually run by people that themselves hate ads, but need some way to keep their hobby alive.
There's nothing sadder than a Mac fanboy who needs to prove his lacking sense of humour.
Now, if the big screen video iPod rumours turn out to be true, all bets are off, and Sony better watch the PSP's sorry little UMD-using ass, 'cause it'll go the way of the Lynx in a friggin' eyeblink.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
You've heard of the GBA, right? Costs very little, has a fantastic game selection (Disney tie-ins up to heavy-duty gamer games like Metal Slug, Doom and Fire Emblem), kid friendly hardware (i.e chewable, you can't break the things if you throw 'em at a wall, colorful, few buttons sized for kids). You have to do something pretty fucking special to be better than that*. Give away a dozen good games and you'd get gamers interested (plenty have ipods already but it'd be another plus), but parents won't ever be buying something as expensive and fragile as a ipod for the kids. If the shuffle could play, maybe.
*The PSP and DS both managed it, but many other devices have tried and failed. Mobiles, PDAs, other handheld consoles.
If this were any other company, I would think about it being an intentional leak. That doesn't seem to be Apple's way of doing things (under Steve Jobs). Apple seems to prefer to present finished projects out of the blue when they're ready for us to buy them.
David
Not only is the mac base relatively small, but it is split between two different chipsets (powerpc/intel). Meaning you can market you game for 90% of the market, or 1% of the market.
And nothing stops a mac guy from putting a radeon x1900 in his mac.
If it's an intentional leak, it is to spread confusion. This rumor won't increase any sales.
Think of it this way: It's impossible to keep rumors of new and important products from happening. Too many people are involved. But if you can drench out the true rumors with tons of false ones, it's gonna be very hard for the public to sort out which ones to believe in. And your product announcements will still be newsworthy and surprising.
Somtimes I think 90% of the crackpot "Art Bell" theories slushing around on the net and other places are planted by the US government in order to cover up the 10% that are actually true.
You can play a number of titles that are right now some of the hotest in the PC market on the Mac.
Unreal Tournament 2004
Battlefield 2
World of Warcraft (You can't get any bigger tban tbat)
and many more.
Goto the Mac section of your local CompUSA story if you are in the US and you'll see them.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
Only reason Microsoft has been successful is because they have an ass-load of money to buy up great game studios (Bungie, Rare, the creator of Final Fantasy, and a variety of others). Although Apple is doing well, I have my doubts they are over-confident enough to try buying some big-name companies......
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
When I first read the headline, I didn't realize that it was referring to games. Rather, I thought it meant that Apple was getting ready to gear up for hitting the personal computer market. As time passes, they move themselves further and further in that direction; the popularity of the iPod/iTunes, the cheap Mac mini, moving to a different architecture, development and release of OS X. Never has Apple been more attractive to the consumer than they are today.
And what do consumers love? Games. If Apple can roll out some high quality hits, people will love the game first, then notice the publisher. They'll learn to associate Apple with good things, and next thing you know, they'll be buying one.
Sure, this is looking at it optimistically; whatever games they are going to produce are really going to have to take off in a big way for this to have more than a marginal impact, but to me it seems like a small step in the right direction.
Square Enix is not bought by Microsoft
Looking back on every generation of consoles, the most popular and successful systems had fantastic games, many of them exclusive to the system.
Apple probably won't be able to woo some significant game developers away from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo into anything exclusive, but they can certainly leverage their large installed base of iPods, and create some good first party games that take advantage of the clickwheel and audio/photo features and other unique aspects of the ipod.
I'm curious to see what comes of this.
it didn't in the computer/game console market. Remember those William Shatner adds where he asked 'why buy just a video game'? Really, why would you. Well for one thing, it's always going to be cheaper to make a device that does one thing well instead of 2, 3 or more things well. Even in the savings are marginal, when you're selling a million of something it adds up. For another thing, it's hard to design a user interface for a pocket size device that's good for playing games, quickly accessing music, managing contacts and notes and playing games. Nokia tried, and failed badly. The more features you have the more complex the interface, if only in terms of options. People are stupid and lazy, they won't work that hard just to save a little pocket room (especially woman with purses).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
--
My consoles for the next generation: Wii and PS2
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Way back when, they bought Softimage so that they would be seen as a player in the 3D and effects market. As soon as the market was established, they sold it off again.
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
He was talking about Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of Final Fantasy who started a new company called Mistwalker. Mistwalker is not owned by Microsoft, but they are developing RPGs exclusivly for the XBox 360.
...but the skillset for programming iPod games is a lot closer to the skillset for programming the iPod than it is to the skillset for programming computer games. IMO, an unlikely hire if that's what they're looking to do.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
"I don't get it why people are complaining about ads so much. These web sites cost money to run, you know?"
... yeesh ... 4 different songs playing at once. I can tolerate ads, but audible noise is the line they should not cross.
Though I agree with the general gist of your post, the sound in the ads is the complaint here. Those of us that use multi-tabbed browsing to a ridiculous extreme would much rather NOT have a bunch of idiotic sound sources flying around. MySpace.com has a feature where you can have your favorite song played right from the page. I opened a few friends pages and heard a strange noise from my headphones. I put them on and
Slashdot's lucky I haven't heard this ad yet.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry I was thought he was talkin about Square.
Wish I had some mod points.
Woohoo! Apple Freecell!
they're hiring someone to port minesweeper to the mac!
no... not really.
Osx, is sadly not a "linux platform."
OSX has benched quite a bit for games than windows on the same hardware... I'm not sure what the slowdown is, but it probably just has to do with mac ports usually being done as quickly and shoddily as possible. I've also heard some people saying that the kernel just isn't that fast, although I'm not sure that would have much of an effect on games.
I love OSX, but it is definitely not the ideal gaming platform. The fact is that what makes a gaming platform is game industry support, and support from the platform maker, and there's only limited support from both on osx compared to windows or ps2 etc. The truth is there's just more money behind windows game development, and there's no particular reason for that to change.
...they need all the support they can get.
This time I needed a new laptop, I needed commercial software. Next time, I think I'll build it myself and go the Ubuntu route!
You have got to be kidding!
You don't strip ads from messenger? I find that incredible.
Apps that waste screen space with ads are complete eyesores and must be eliminated, either through using other software or by stripping out the ads.
Why wouldn't you invest a little time in removing annoying ads that do you no good, do you enjoy being taken advantage of or something?
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
I think that websites like IGN... actually have a pretty good way of displaying ads
I don't know if you've been to IGN lately, but the last time I was on there reading articles, they had placed "IntelliTXT" ads on all their pages. Basically, IntelliTXT seeds links over random words in the body. It tries to entice you to mouse over them. If your mouse comes anywhere near the links, BAM - a big yellow ad pops up in some position on the page. Sometimes it vanishes again when you move your mouse, only to appear again randomly. Extremely annoying, especially if you have your pointer sitting idle in the browser window, and you're scrolling with the keyboard... That alone can cause the cursor to trigger these stupid ads, right over the body text you're trying to read.
However, there is good news for my fellow Firefoxians. If you're using Adblock (and why wouldn't you be?), just add *.intellitxt.com/* to your block list. IntelliTXT loads through tags, which are easily filtered by Adblock. :)
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
Clarification: IntelliTXT loads through SCRIPT tags, which are easily filtered. (Curse that preview button...)
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
You're right. I forgot about those. Well, I've learned to ignore them, just like any other form of publicity on the web. I simply move my cursor to the right on the screen when browsing by keyboard.
Well you know mac puzzle needs a redo!!!!!
Meh, whatever, I personally don't care which OS I use, Win/Lin boxes outnumber Mac ones in my apt (4:2, just about, though the MBP probably throws a wrench into the statistics a bit), but I just think it's silly for people to keep pushing the 'macs can't game' angle now that they can boot any major OS, it's almost as bad as a mac fanboy without a sense of humor. Almost. Well, no, it's just about as bad... In any case, my experience shows that XP still tops OS X in game preformance, hence why I'm quite happy to reboot and game on, not to mention enjoying the full preformance of my Adobe apps (and Flash 8, which always ran better in Windows, anyways.)
A gaming platform for the Intel Mac already exists. It's called Windows XP. Dual boot capability is in the beta stage now but will be a standard component of OS X Leopard.
I always wonder if this is a good thing or one of Apples decisions gone awry. You know they tend to do that a lot.
Macs can't game.
Sure. Look at all the people who bought X-Boxes so they could play Halo.
True, but who expects a laptop under $1500 to be a serious gaming machine? I mean I would have bought the Acer 8200 if I was going for a pure Windows mobile solution that could game (and I'd still be well over the $1500 mark), I fail to see where this fact makes any difference. My last laptop was a Compaq and under 1.5k, it sure as hell wasn't a gaming machine when I bought it. (and it had an Ati Mobility, which quite possibly is even worse than most intel integrated solutions)
Considering the speed of the low-end macbooks it's not suprising the video is poor (gotta cut costs and create a preformance gap between you low and high-end somewhere), you have the same type of thing happening with low-end Dells and ThinkPads, too. Both those manufacturers make fine low-end laptops, but they also use the same crappy integrated graphics (with lots of shared memory, oddly just like my old Compaq...) Also, the 'macs can't game' thing doesn't really mater, it's the same hardware these days (intel chipsets), basically you should say 'Fact: things with integrated graphics can't game', which is just common-knowledge then and would sound equally as ill-considered and quick-typed.
Apple sells one such computer. Not only that, but none of the computers that are left can be upgraded to have decent enough graphics. Your $500 Dell just needs a $100-200 card slipped in. Your $800 Mac mini can't even have that.
Well, more or less true, but those cheap Dells often skimp on decent upgrade slots. Now it's been a while since I dug around, but if they're like the last one I fixed there's probably no AGP/PCIe slot, but only two PCI/PCI-X slots.
The mac Mini is really just an issue of form factor, most PCs of that size couldn't take an upgrade either. On the upside, the $800 mac mini still has rather decent specs for it's size. I only mentioned the laptop since that's the majority of models mention in the previous post (both are computers, I think you meant desktop), and I personally feel that the Mini is roughly a laptop sans the screen/keyboard (and roughly piced appropriately.)
Of course they don't market it as a gamer's machine, though, so this is kind of a moot point. Not marketing it as a media center machine directly isn't helping it much, as I feel that's where it belongs. I think we should wait and see what Apple offers in a tower-format, the pricing of the low-end PowerMacs (or Mac Pros) would be better suited for this discussion.
As an aside, I would really prefer to build my desktops for just this matter, neither Apple's nor Dell's desktops appeal to me price-to-preformance-wise. (hence why I haven't bought a tower since '97, and that was IBM no less) The upside is Windows is licensed for most any machine, unlike having to use the awkward OS X86 process to use Apple's OS on a self-constructed setup.
And nothing stops a mac guy from putting a radeon x1900 in his mac.
Purchasing an iBook, iMac, Mini, MacBook, MacBookPro certainly does.
Well, my guess is that you're all thinging in the wrong dirtection.
... iTunes.
My guess is that Apple wants to bring out iTunes for other platforms, such as the PSP. Apple is entering the gaming industry with
This has to be a total friggin' joke.
Look, they can't even get Open GL to run at reasonable speeds on OS X. Actually, it's so bad that 1-year old laptops such as mine (12" powerbook) don't even reach minimum specs to play friggin' Civilization IV , for chrissake.
Actually, their latest move of not including a decent GPU on the Macbook is a pretty strong indicator that they don't give a fuck about games, gamers, the gaming market, or game publishers. What, do they really expect even casual gamers to shell out 2000 bucks for a system (iMac Core Duo or Macbook pro) with decent (not even top-of-the-line) graphics?
But oh, wait, of COURSE: the article is about shipping games to the goddamn iPod. What a bunch of total friggin' idiots. They should get out of their happy iPod bubble and take care of their computer division sometimes. Now that they have a decent processor, they'll still manage to ruin the show by using crappy integrated graphics like they're some cheapass Walmart assembler.
(note to Apple: this is not just my rant, everybody remotely interested in playing games on mac just went berserk on the Macbook graphics fiasco. Just put an X1300 or better on the black-expensive Macbook and all the complaints will go away).
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
Geez, the one guy bashes Apple and he gets "Funny", I make a light-hearted counter-parody and I get "Troll", and I'm primarily a Windows user, no less! (this, this is humor, just to clarify.)