As much as I live and breathe by my PowerBook, and as much as I play a metric assload of games on it (including WoW and UT 2k4), I have to admit that the GP post has a valid point. The Mac gaming situation has improved enormously in recent years, but there are still a large number of games that are Windows-only. Many of them are crap, but some are absolutely fantastic, and it's a damn shame that they're not cross-platform.
In general, if a game isn't available for my platform of choice then it's no skin off my nose to simply not play it, but I do keep a Windows box around for the gems. The day that the various Half-Life games (as you mentioned) and Tiberian Sun will run at full speed under OS X will be the last time I ever boot a Windows box at home.
Your friends sound a lot like my friends. I'm guessing you already know this, but they're making excuses, and poor ones at that. I've built most of my own PCs since the Win 3.11 days, and your friends are full of crap.
Since I've "switched", I still fiddle with hardware, and don't find it to be significantly different from doing so on PCs (with the exception of, admittedly, having a narrower range of video cards to choose from). On Mac towers I've upgraded video cards, memory, and hard drives, and upgraded memory and hard drives on both a PowerBook and an iMac (one of the original colorful ones). If you're familiar with doing these basic things on a PC you can do them on a Mac.
Oh, and the PowerBook that I upgraded the HD on? I subsequently had to have it repaired for something unrelated to the HD upgrade, and the folks at Apple didn't even blink. The drive was very obviously not stock equipment, yet they still covered the repair as warranty work.
But only one who shows up nude with her 20 twin sisters in the opening credits.:-) The rest of the show could be static and I'd still show up for the opening "tease".
Seriously though, if you want to talk about plot holes I think that Boomer is a plot hole you could pilot a battlestar through. No mere human could possibly be as drop-dead sexy as Sharon Valerii. It's a dead giveaway! For that matter, the fact that the rest of Galactica's crew hasn't all perished from dehydration due to over-salivation leads me to suspect that the whole lot of 'em are toasters (Helo and Chief Tyrol excepted, of course).
The rest of you can have your Six fantasies. Grace Park does it for me. Knowing that Boomer is actually a machine only makes her hotter.:-)
As a former OS/2 user, I think that the comparisons being drawn are completely valid. As a current Mac user, this frightens me.
The important factor to consider in the examples that you listed is that in each case the backwards compatibility was with an OS that was then discontinued. 95 didn't have to compete with 3.11 for developer attention because the developers all knew that the older version wasn't going to be around much longer and wouldn't be included in new computers. Likewise with all of the other examples you cited.
Competing with an active, supported OS in its home turf is a very different beast. After much effort IBM was able to do it with WIN16 apps due to having access to the source code, but as soon as Microsoft discontinued it in favor of WIN32 then IBM was left back at square one. That certainly wasn't the reason why MS switched APIs, but I'm sure that there were more than a few chuckles in Redmond over it.
Yes, Mac users are as a whole much less forgiving of UI inconsistencies, but that's not going to be enough incentive for developers to start (or continue) to port apps to OS X when a Windows version will work "good enough".
I urge you not to let Red Alert put you off from Tiberian Sun. As other posters have mentioned, the C&C/TS universe may as well be completely separate from RA.
Plot-wise, TS is a completely logical extension of C&C. Yes, it's more "out there" when compared to the real world, but not when compared with the world in the original C&C. That's pretty much a necessity in any divergent timeline plot. After all, C&C took place in what- 1995? TS takes place in 2030 (the manual is absolutely clear on this), so yes- things will be different. However, TS retains the grittiness and cyberpunk feel of the original, as Tiberium continues to spread across the planet (effectively terraforming it into an alien biosphere) and Tiberium-based technology continues to improve. Taking C&C as its starting point it all makes sense.
As far as game play goes, IMHO Tiberian Sun is the best RTS game ever made. It came out 7 years ago and I still play it regularly. I can't say that about any other game. In fact, I keep the TS and Firestorm discs in my laptop backpack all the time. (My only complaint about it is that it uses IPX for LAN play. Boo!)
The interface is clean and intuitive, the AI is reasonably intelligent, the graphics are good, and the game is just damn fun. There are a couple of minor game balance issues, but Firestorm pretty effectively addresses them. One nice point is that after installing FS you can select which version you want to play when you launch the game, so if you're not in the mood for cyborg reavers or walking artillery you're not stuck with them.:-)
Seriously, if you're a fan of C&C then you're doing yourself a grave disservice by not playing TS. It's that good.
I wonder how much memory those minis have. I know both first hand and from anecdotal evidence that the amount of system memory is a huge factor in WoW performance- much more so than CPU speed. At anything less than 1 GB WoW becomes a dog in densely populated areas. This is regardless of platform.
As a former OS/2 fan I had the same concern initially, but after thinking about it I'm not worried.
OS/2's problem was that it ran DOS and Windows apps seamlessly, and in some cases better than they ran on their native platforms. Boot Camp is simply providing a dual-boot environment. Sure, Intel Mac users can now run Windows apps, but only by shutting down their system and booting into their "non-native" OS. That's effective as a bridge, but any app vendor would be a fool to think that that in any way diminishes the desirability of running the app natively. If I'm an Intel Mac user then every time I have to shut down all of my other apps to run my one or two Windows apps I'm going to be silently cursing the Win apps' vendors for not providing me with an OS X version.
Here's an interesting side note. For a time, IBM was selling dual-boot desktop systems with Windows 3.1 and OS/2. They provided an icon on each desktop which allowed you to easily reboot into the other OS. On the Windows system they also provided a quick and easy way to delete OS/2 entirely, but not the other way around. Boot Camp also provides a quick and easy way to remove the Windows partition, but no functionality for removing OS X. Smart folks.:-)
I'll admit that I've never seen World of Warcraft on a mini, but my wife has been playing it on her G4 iBook for over a year and has no complaints. I finally caved in and started playing on my 12" G4 PowerBook a few months ago, and it's both smooth and beautiful, as are UT 2004, TRON 2.0, MAME, and every other game I've played on it.
Sure, I'm not playing cutting edge games, but I am playing the games I like. Also, bear in mind that I'm not running an Intel Mac- I'm not even running a G5. Just a "lowly" G4 with 64 MB of VRAM, and yet my only complaint is the lack of available games- not their performance. Even that seems to be gradually becoming less of an issue.
Agreed. It doesn't have to be a product offered to a customer. "Project", "task", and "assignment" all work perfectly well, and are in fact more precise.
I'm not saying that this is universally true, but where I work it seems that corp-speak is used to compensate for poor vocabulary skills. Most of the management types here simply aren't articulate enough to communicate effectively, even using plain language.
Their written communication skills are even worse than their oral communication skills. I've received e-mail messages from upper-level managers that had such bad grammar that I genuinely couldn't tell what they were trying to convey.
This is not to say that my IT cohorts are significantly better.
Typing of the Dead!!! I'd totally forgotten about that gem! It was a hell of a lot of fun and actually, honest-to-Buddha improved my typing speed and accuracy.:-)
I had high hopes for Virtual On, but the controls just seemed too damn awkward to play it well. The game itself was spot-on, and with better sticks would've been a classic.
Likewise with Silent Scope. The controls were less of a problem there, but still somewhat hampered an otherwise fantastic arcade port.
Thanks! The GP is absolutely right. Chu Chu Rocket is an amazing game- fast, frantic, and fun! I totally fell in love with it.:-) It's also one of only two games I've ever gotten my wife to play, which is really saying something!
What's actually the case is that fads, and popularity of things are generally determined by what other people are doing.
Wow. The last time I heard someone seriously imply that video games are a fad was in 1982. My grandmother told me that video games and Michael Jackson were just fads.
26 years and counting. Hell of a "fad". I guess Grandma was right about Jackson at least.;-)
Actually I get the point of your post, but I think that the popularity peak/decline to stable level of which you speak happened two decades ago. Video games have become an entrenched part of our culture, much like television only with a smaller impact. That doesn't mean that they'll be around forever (in their current form, anyway), nor will TV. But I think they passed the status of "fad" around the time that much of Slashdot was entering school.
"Video games are not a fad."
-Tom Hirschfeld
"How to Master the Video Games"
1982 (First sentence of the book)
As I'm typing this, I'm looking at the keyboards on a PowerBook, an iBook, and a G3 iMac (compact keyboard). All have |, ~, and \ labeled.
Hang on. Let me go check the Apple Pro keyboard in the other room... Yup. They're labeled there too. While I was up I checked the old Performa 400 in the archive, and they're labeled there as well (though the tilde key is in an odd location). I'm curious to know what keyboard you're referring to.
Total side note- while it's true that Mac laptops don't have a designated "forward delete" key, the UNIX fans here may be interested to know that Ctrl-D performs the same delete function on OS X as it does on any "standard" UNIX system. Likewise Ctrl-H.
In general I find that Ctrl-click works just fine for situations where I can't or don't want to use an external mouse on my PowerBook. It actually becomes fairly natural, and I don't need to think about it.
However, I have to agree with you with regard to games. Ctrl-click just doesn't cut it in Unreal Tournament or WoW. There are some third party utilities out there that allow you to redefine parts of the track pad for alternate functions. Sidetrack comes to mind. It's extremely customizable and allows you to define corners and ranges of the pad for scrolling, right-click, or anything else you care to assign. Just a thought.
Really? That's very odd. I use PC keyboards on my PowerBook on a regular basis (almost daily), and have always found that the Windows key maps as Cmd, Alt maps as Alt, and Ctrl maps as Ctrl. Maybe there are some freaky brand differences? Typically I'm using HP/Compaq keyboards of varying flavors.
I'm sure that the government would just Love to Craft one of these machinations for you to assist in your exploration of those eldritch Mountains, but I think it's Madness! Ia! Ia!
As other posters have pointed out - you need third party products to do that easily.
As others have pointed out, no you don't. Check "Enable disk use" in your iTunes preferences. Sync iPod. Plug into friends' computers and copy their music to your iPod as you would any other hard drive. Copy it to your iTunes and sync.
Either I'm completely misunderstanding what you're saying or you don't own an iPod and are guessing.
If the user interface and audio quality are, somehow, irrelevant to you, then your first point is correct- the only difference between the iPod and other players is that the iPod can play music purchased from the iTunes Music Store (which is not the same thing as the iTunes application).
Your next statement is where I'm baffled. Are you implying that you don't think that you can rip CDs to an iPod just as easily (if not more so) as with other players, or download.MP3s from other sources and play them on an iPod? The DRM that the iTunes Music Store uses applies only to music that you purchase from iTMS. Most of the music on my iPod is either stuff I downloaded from Kazaa way back when or from CDs that I've ripped. You can set iTunes to automatically launch and rip a CD when you insert it, and load it onto your iPod when you plug it in. That's about as easy as you can get:-)
I will grant that the iPod can't play.WMA files, but I have yet to find content that I wanted that was only available as a.WMA.
Anyway, my apologies if I'm misunderstanding you, but there does seem to be a persistent misconception that iPods can only play music purchased from iTMS.
If you have access to an OS X install disc than you have access to this information. The optional developer tools contain a wealth of information, as well as tutorials, and come free with the os (and by extension, with every Mac sold since Apple switched to OS X).
Actually, Tron: Killer App was the X-Box version of Tron 2.0. It was the same as the other (excellent) versions of the game, but with a few additional features, such as the ability to use the rod to res up a light cycle at any time. I almost bought an X-Box just for this game.
Slashdot Mirror
They're actually referring to the flagship of the Irken Empire in Invader Zim!
As much as I live and breathe by my PowerBook, and as much as I play a metric assload of games on it (including WoW and UT 2k4), I have to admit that the GP post has a valid point. The Mac gaming situation has improved enormously in recent years, but there are still a large number of games that are Windows-only. Many of them are crap, but some are absolutely fantastic, and it's a damn shame that they're not cross-platform.
In general, if a game isn't available for my platform of choice then it's no skin off my nose to simply not play it, but I do keep a Windows box around for the gems. The day that the various Half-Life games (as you mentioned) and Tiberian Sun will run at full speed under OS X will be the last time I ever boot a Windows box at home.
What's Valve's problem, anyway?
Your friends sound a lot like my friends. I'm guessing you already know this, but they're making excuses, and poor ones at that. I've built most of my own PCs since the Win 3.11 days, and your friends are full of crap.
:-)
Since I've "switched", I still fiddle with hardware, and don't find it to be significantly different from doing so on PCs (with the exception of, admittedly, having a narrower range of video cards to choose from). On Mac towers I've upgraded video cards, memory, and hard drives, and upgraded memory and hard drives on both a PowerBook and an iMac (one of the original colorful ones). If you're familiar with doing these basic things on a PC you can do them on a Mac.
Oh, and the PowerBook that I upgraded the HD on? I subsequently had to have it repaired for something unrelated to the HD upgrade, and the folks at Apple didn't even blink. The drive was very obviously not stock equipment, yet they still covered the repair as warranty work.
Just so 'ya know.
But only one who shows up nude with her 20 twin sisters in the opening credits. :-) The rest of the show could be static and I'd still show up for the opening "tease".
:-)
Seriously though, if you want to talk about plot holes I think that Boomer is a plot hole you could pilot a battlestar through. No mere human could possibly be as drop-dead sexy as Sharon Valerii. It's a dead giveaway! For that matter, the fact that the rest of Galactica's crew hasn't all perished from dehydration due to over-salivation leads me to suspect that the whole lot of 'em are toasters (Helo and Chief Tyrol excepted, of course).
The rest of you can have your Six fantasies. Grace Park does it for me. Knowing that Boomer is actually a machine only makes her hotter.
As a former OS/2 user, I think that the comparisons being drawn are completely valid. As a current Mac user, this frightens me.
The important factor to consider in the examples that you listed is that in each case the backwards compatibility was with an OS that was then discontinued. 95 didn't have to compete with 3.11 for developer attention because the developers all knew that the older version wasn't going to be around much longer and wouldn't be included in new computers. Likewise with all of the other examples you cited.
Competing with an active, supported OS in its home turf is a very different beast. After much effort IBM was able to do it with WIN16 apps due to having access to the source code, but as soon as Microsoft discontinued it in favor of WIN32 then IBM was left back at square one. That certainly wasn't the reason why MS switched APIs, but I'm sure that there were more than a few chuckles in Redmond over it.
Yes, Mac users are as a whole much less forgiving of UI inconsistencies, but that's not going to be enough incentive for developers to start (or continue) to port apps to OS X when a Windows version will work "good enough".
I urge you not to let Red Alert put you off from Tiberian Sun. As other posters have mentioned, the C&C/TS universe may as well be completely separate from RA.
:-)
Plot-wise, TS is a completely logical extension of C&C. Yes, it's more "out there" when compared to the real world, but not when compared with the world in the original C&C. That's pretty much a necessity in any divergent timeline plot. After all, C&C took place in what- 1995? TS takes place in 2030 (the manual is absolutely clear on this), so yes- things will be different. However, TS retains the grittiness and cyberpunk feel of the original, as Tiberium continues to spread across the planet (effectively terraforming it into an alien biosphere) and Tiberium-based technology continues to improve. Taking C&C as its starting point it all makes sense.
As far as game play goes, IMHO Tiberian Sun is the best RTS game ever made. It came out 7 years ago and I still play it regularly. I can't say that about any other game. In fact, I keep the TS and Firestorm discs in my laptop backpack all the time. (My only complaint about it is that it uses IPX for LAN play. Boo!)
The interface is clean and intuitive, the AI is reasonably intelligent, the graphics are good, and the game is just damn fun. There are a couple of minor game balance issues, but Firestorm pretty effectively addresses them. One nice point is that after installing FS you can select which version you want to play when you launch the game, so if you're not in the mood for cyborg reavers or walking artillery you're not stuck with them.
Seriously, if you're a fan of C&C then you're doing yourself a grave disservice by not playing TS. It's that good.
I wonder how much memory those minis have. I know both first hand and from anecdotal evidence that the amount of system memory is a huge factor in WoW performance- much more so than CPU speed. At anything less than 1 GB WoW becomes a dog in densely populated areas. This is regardless of platform.
As a former OS/2 fan I had the same concern initially, but after thinking about it I'm not worried.
:-)
OS/2's problem was that it ran DOS and Windows apps seamlessly, and in some cases better than they ran on their native platforms. Boot Camp is simply providing a dual-boot environment. Sure, Intel Mac users can now run Windows apps, but only by shutting down their system and booting into their "non-native" OS. That's effective as a bridge, but any app vendor would be a fool to think that that in any way diminishes the desirability of running the app natively. If I'm an Intel Mac user then every time I have to shut down all of my other apps to run my one or two Windows apps I'm going to be silently cursing the Win apps' vendors for not providing me with an OS X version.
Here's an interesting side note. For a time, IBM was selling dual-boot desktop systems with Windows 3.1 and OS/2. They provided an icon on each desktop which allowed you to easily reboot into the other OS. On the Windows system they also provided a quick and easy way to delete OS/2 entirely, but not the other way around. Boot Camp also provides a quick and easy way to remove the Windows partition, but no functionality for removing OS X. Smart folks.
I'll admit that I've never seen World of Warcraft on a mini, but my wife has been playing it on her G4 iBook for over a year and has no complaints. I finally caved in and started playing on my 12" G4 PowerBook a few months ago, and it's both smooth and beautiful, as are UT 2004, TRON 2.0, MAME, and every other game I've played on it.
Sure, I'm not playing cutting edge games, but I am playing the games I like. Also, bear in mind that I'm not running an Intel Mac- I'm not even running a G5. Just a "lowly" G4 with 64 MB of VRAM, and yet my only complaint is the lack of available games- not their performance. Even that seems to be gradually becoming less of an issue.
Agreed. It doesn't have to be a product offered to a customer. "Project", "task", and "assignment" all work perfectly well, and are in fact more precise.
I'm not saying that this is universally true, but where I work it seems that corp-speak is used to compensate for poor vocabulary skills. Most of the management types here simply aren't articulate enough to communicate effectively, even using plain language.
Their written communication skills are even worse than their oral communication skills. I've received e-mail messages from upper-level managers that had such bad grammar that I genuinely couldn't tell what they were trying to convey.
This is not to say that my IT cohorts are significantly better.
Typing of the Dead!!! I'd totally forgotten about that gem! It was a hell of a lot of fun and actually, honest-to-Buddha improved my typing speed and accuracy. :-)
I had high hopes for Virtual On, but the controls just seemed too damn awkward to play it well. The game itself was spot-on, and with better sticks would've been a classic.
Likewise with Silent Scope. The controls were less of a problem there, but still somewhat hampered an otherwise fantastic arcade port.
Thanks! The GP is absolutely right. Chu Chu Rocket is an amazing game- fast, frantic, and fun! I totally fell in love with it. :-) It's also one of only two games I've ever gotten my wife to play, which is really saying something!
What's actually the case is that fads, and popularity of things are generally determined by what other people are doing.
;-)
Wow. The last time I heard someone seriously imply that video games are a fad was in 1982. My grandmother told me that video games and Michael Jackson were just fads.
26 years and counting. Hell of a "fad". I guess Grandma was right about Jackson at least.
Actually I get the point of your post, but I think that the popularity peak/decline to stable level of which you speak happened two decades ago. Video games have become an entrenched part of our culture, much like television only with a smaller impact. That doesn't mean that they'll be around forever (in their current form, anyway), nor will TV. But I think they passed the status of "fad" around the time that much of Slashdot was entering school.
"Video games are not a fad."
-Tom Hirschfeld
"How to Master the Video Games"
1982 (First sentence of the book)
As I'm typing this, I'm looking at the keyboards on a PowerBook, an iBook, and a G3 iMac (compact keyboard). All have |, ~, and \ labeled.
Hang on. Let me go check the Apple Pro keyboard in the other room... Yup. They're labeled there too. While I was up I checked the old Performa 400 in the archive, and they're labeled there as well (though the tilde key is in an odd location). I'm curious to know what keyboard you're referring to.
Total side note- while it's true that Mac laptops don't have a designated "forward delete" key, the UNIX fans here may be interested to know that Ctrl-D performs the same delete function on OS X as it does on any "standard" UNIX system. Likewise Ctrl-H.
In general I find that Ctrl-click works just fine for situations where I can't or don't want to use an external mouse on my PowerBook. It actually becomes fairly natural, and I don't need to think about it.
However, I have to agree with you with regard to games. Ctrl-click just doesn't cut it in Unreal Tournament or WoW. There are some third party utilities out there that allow you to redefine parts of the track pad for alternate functions. Sidetrack comes to mind. It's extremely customizable and allows you to define corners and ranges of the pad for scrolling, right-click, or anything else you care to assign. Just a thought.
Really? That's very odd. I use PC keyboards on my PowerBook on a regular basis (almost daily), and have always found that the Windows key maps as Cmd, Alt maps as Alt, and Ctrl maps as Ctrl. Maybe there are some freaky brand differences? Typically I'm using HP/Compaq keyboards of varying flavors.
I'm sure that the government would just Love to Craft one of these machinations for you to assist in your exploration of those eldritch Mountains, but I think it's Madness! Ia! Ia!
Imagine switching to sepia tone whenever you want that "wild west" feel.
Mmmmm... "Hardwired"...
Valid point. Hell, Firefox downloaded and installed flawlessly on my PowerBook without me even needing to install Windows on it! ;-)
As other posters have pointed out - you need third party products to do that easily.
As others have pointed out, no you don't. Check "Enable disk use" in your iTunes preferences. Sync iPod. Plug into friends' computers and copy their music to your iPod as you would any other hard drive. Copy it to your iTunes and sync.
Either I'm completely misunderstanding what you're saying or you don't own an iPod and are guessing.
.MP3s from other sources and play them on an iPod? The DRM that the iTunes Music Store uses applies only to music that you purchase from iTMS. Most of the music on my iPod is either stuff I downloaded from Kazaa way back when or from CDs that I've ripped. You can set iTunes to automatically launch and rip a CD when you insert it, and load it onto your iPod when you plug it in. That's about as easy as you can get :-)
.WMA files, but I have yet to find content that I wanted that was only available as a .WMA.
If the user interface and audio quality are, somehow, irrelevant to you, then your first point is correct- the only difference between the iPod and other players is that the iPod can play music purchased from the iTunes Music Store (which is not the same thing as the iTunes application).
Your next statement is where I'm baffled. Are you implying that you don't think that you can rip CDs to an iPod just as easily (if not more so) as with other players, or download
I will grant that the iPod can't play
Anyway, my apologies if I'm misunderstanding you, but there does seem to be a persistent misconception that iPods can only play music purchased from iTMS.
If you have access to an OS X install disc than you have access to this information. The optional developer tools contain a wealth of information, as well as tutorials, and come free with the os (and by extension, with every Mac sold since Apple switched to OS X).
"Got the chips and enhancements
Got the attitude right
Got the metal 'neath my skin
Moving faster than light"
-Johnny Silverhand
It came out a couple of years ago. It's probably one of the most under-rated games of all time.
m l
http://buenavistagames.go.com/product/tronXBOX.ht
Actually, Tron: Killer App was the X-Box version of Tron 2.0. It was the same as the other (excellent) versions of the game, but with a few additional features, such as the ability to use the rod to res up a light cycle at any time. I almost bought an X-Box just for this game.