“I’m not your typical Apple Fanboy; despite the fact that I have recommended a Mac to almost 70% of the people who ask me what PC to buy (a true Fanboy would recommend a Mac to 100% of the people he meets, defying logic when asked why). To understand my logic behind recommending the Mac to 70% of the people and not the rest, you’ve got to understand Apple’s logic behind the Mac, as it stands right now,” Varun Singh writes for Techtree.
“Now, first, the Mac isn’t so much the hardware that is cobbled together to make the machine as it is the OS that runs on top of that machine; it is the OS and the apps on it that is center to the Mac strategy, has always been! The reason why I concur with Apple when they say OS X is the most advanced operating system on the planet, is because it is the only desktop OS that has been written ‘grounds-up’ to integrate the most cutting edge technologies in the last decade and isn’t a rehash of existing systems. (Windows XP is still very much Windows NT at the core and so is Linux, which still retains the basic structure of the first kernel and the communications between programs [APIs]),” Singh writes.
“If you look at Mac OS X and the intricate web of applications that makes it the most user friendly desktop computer ever, you’d notice a clear pattern of ‘focus’ on specific computing areas; those being creativity, multimedia and day-to-day home computing tasks,” Singh writes. “It isn’t meant to be a do-it-all machine, at least not yet. The area Apple is weakest at when compared to the PC platform is gaming.”
“Creativity on the fringes is something [Apple has] already handled pretty well with great products like iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, Garage Band on the lower-end and Final Cut Pro, Adobe Photoshop for Mac OS X etc. on the higher end,” Singh writes. “And then, they’re going after what most of us call Office Productivity (Apple calls it iWork). If you’ve seen what Pages, their new ‘Word Processor’ can do, you’d never want to use Word again. Keynote 2, the presentation tool, is ages ahead of anything PowerPoint can imagine. Apple’s going to do a lot in the next three years to make your life easier… Sony and Microsoft can go kill each other on Electronic Gaming!”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: 30% of the people Singh recommends a computer to are mainly interested in games? Why not tell them to get a Mac and a Playstation and give them the best of both worlds? Even Windows-maker Microsoft seems to realize that the PC isn’t the best place for games or why would they be bothering with their Xbox console effort?
Gaming is a huge deficiency for the mac, and it leads to aproblem that pisses me off, a lack of retail graphics cards for the mac. Oh sure, they’re there, but they don’t have what you want (ADC anyone?).
Also, macs are waaaaaaaaaayyyyyy behind in another 3D area, CAD/CAE/CAM. There are older UNIX programs out there for sure and they might run in X11, but as a Mechanical and Aerospace Engineer, and a faithful Mac user (for 1-2 yrs now), this is a big disappointment. I know it’s not really Apple’s fault, but if 3rd parties won’t come out with a industry leading mac CAD package, well, then Apple needs to buy someone with that 6.5 Billion in cash that they have. I mean, holy crap buy out whoever makes some windows only thing, and make another “Pro App” category with engineering in mind. And if you say that there’s Maya for 3D, well, yeah, if I was making a movie and only cared about looks, not solid parametric modelling.
Alright, enough mac-engineer-nerd venting for me.
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In the consumer space PC games are still a big deal. Another reason to love the Mac Mini! Just get the mini and a KVM switch and you have the best of both worlds!
You are right to the point Stev M. Let’s see what Steve J answers..
I still like playing games more on my computer than on a console though. Not being a major gamer it is not that important though. However, I have heard comments from some hard core gamers that if you want to reach the very difficult upper levels you pretty much have to do it on a Computer and not a console.
Anyway, “get a console”, while it may be the answer for some, is definitely not the answer for all. I hope that as Apple market share gains with the mini, more games will come sooner to the Mac. What Apple should really do if they want to capture some of the hardcore gamer market is come up with a killer game that can only be played on the Mac. It only takes one. Hard as it may be to believe, a lot of people would end up buying a whole new computer just to play a game if you make it good enough. And if anybody can make it good enough, Apple can.
Please please please fix the Magic Word Pop Up Problem.
MDN-“why would they be bothering with their Xbox console effort?”
To make money, stupid.
Steve is still clueless on some of this stuff.
One game justifies getting a high end PC:
Half Life 2
Good luck trying to get the same experience on the incredibly slow PS2 or even the faster XBox. Just can’t handle it.
Mac is great for the majority of things, but we’re not gonna win fans by saying it’s for everything.
My prediction: specialized gaming systems like playstation and xbox will, in the near future, either exceed game performance of PC’s or be very close equivalents.
Unfortunately, I still like M$ for one thing… the XBOX.
I think that as far as gaming goes, it’s the best platform available right now. Combined with LIVE it gives me everything I want in a game console. I know it’s not the most popular platform development wise, but I’ve been extremely pleased with its offerings. A gaming PC is just too costly for me to consider keeping up with.
And when I don’t want to game, my G5 keeps me quite occupied!!
Magic word=”live”!!! Funny? or Scary?
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Playing games is so lame. Talk about wasting your life away. The difference betweem the average windblows user and a Mac user?
Mac user: Creative and productive
Windows user: Couch potato
There – I said it
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Steve M… maybe I am missing something but there are quite a few CAD apps out there. One that I have been using for nearly ten years now is VectorWorks. There are also a ton of 3D apps, may favorite being Cinema 4D XL. Maybe this helps or perhaps I am misunderstanding the specialization that is required in the Aerospace Engineer field as I am in the architectural/engineering field.
HDL = bullsh*t
“…come up with a killer game that can only be played on the Mac.”
If memory serves me correctly, Halo would have been just that, until Microsoft bought Bungie to develop games for the XBox (in the process also taking out continued ‘Marathon’ development and a host of other great OS9 games from Bungie as collateral damage).
I’m sticking with PS2 because of that crap move by M$…
If you take a good look, most of the big gaming systems are built on PPC (or a variant of). The GameCube essentially uses a 500MHz-ish G3. The Playstation 2 uses a PPC variant of some kind. XBox is on x86, but remember all the talk of XBox 2 using G5s?
Plus with all the graphics and 3D stuff thats done on the Mac, I don’t think there’s any deficiency in the hardware. In fact, I’d bet the Mac would make a better gaming platform than the PC from a strictly hardware perspective.
The problem we run into is twofold. Firstly, most game developers write for PC only. The game market is lower for Mac as much as I hate to say it. The second part is, seldom are games written specifically for Mac. Most of them are ports of the PC version. Which means that the code isn’t optimised for Mac OS and therefore doesn’t run quite as good as it could.
All things being equal, the Mac would make a better gaming platform than PC. Unfortunately nobody listens to me… :-b~
MDN you just don´t get the games thing.
Games are much better on the computer. All gaming on the computer is interenational, people playing people all over the world via the internet.
You have to have a computer to do that—unless you want to pay some subscription fee like Xbox has ($50 a year just for XBox Live, plus the cost of your internet service).
Apple fails in the games dept. And this is why Apple will never get any large migration from the consumer market to the Mac.
Games are extremely important. The vast majority of computer users out there need or even want a grand selection of games. However their absense is signifigant because they are important to the programmers and tech geeks that these consumers talk to when they purchase.
The only thing that hurts the mac is the fact that software that people need is more likely to be available on the PC. Sure 90+% of the consumers would not even notice they were missing, but the word of that 10% get around.
In the case of programmers (I am a developer, so I know many). Most of them spend most of their life on the computer (sad but true). Most sing praises of the Mac and OS X but wont buy because it won’t play their current favorite game. I have convinced a few to get mac’s in addition to a PC, but most say thay can’t afford it (a strange concept since they pay twice the price for the ultimate gaming PC – one friend paid the price of an iBook for a graphics card alone).
The reason Apple needs to address games is to entice the programmers. If you get the programmers then the few really important programs that are missing will make their way to the Mac so there will be no objection.
I think Apple should hire a few really great game programers to come up with a Mac only game that is so good that every programmer and tech guy in america will be begging to buy a Mac to play it – then they will fall in love with OS X and start convincing their bosses to go cross platform.
I have watched my friends and co workers go buy a specific console for one game. So Apple – “If you build it they will come!”
yeah I agree with Gamxr. I have rec’d a Mac (and they bought one happily) to about 6 friends, but one friend I had to rec a PC. He’s really into it for games, and playing poker on the Net. His favorite poker site is PC only, so that was a no brainer. I do believe that for some very few people a PC is better. At least until Apple has every game available for them.
Oops – i meant to say the vast majority DON’T need the games.
Why would they be bothering with there Xbox effort?
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It’s certainly not making money. They have been losing money on every Xbox that they have ever sold.
its a domino effect – if the Mac mini is a big hit and Apple gains marketshare, more games will become available, and more people will switch. Here’s hoping the mini is the device that gets this ball rolling…
(and yeah, I totally agree that it would be awesome if Apple came out with a “Halo” type game only available for the Mac)
b, seems you haven’t heard, MS has pumped 10s if not 100s of million into Xbox, no profit in sight. Its a money loser. When you look at Xbox, and all the other money losers that MS has (well documented here in other MDN articles) its a wonder that the the 3 profit centers (MBU, Windows, Office) can sustain such huge money leaks and still be profitable. Oh wait, its cause they OVERCHARGE by an order of magnitude for the 3 profitable things.
I am not suggesting that Apple should make a game console. I am just suggesting a game to run on the Mac. And yes I would be thrilled if it broke even. The market is relativly small for games and they are not worth the effort. However that small market is heavily weighted with the people that drive the over all market and produce the business applications that regular people use. I do not know any game programmers – but every programmer I know plays games. Every network guru I know plays games. These are the people that get asked which computer do I buy? Right now most say you need a PC because more programs are available, or that is what I know and can help you with.
If you get them comfortable and Happy with the Mac then they will start to recommend it. Games are not important as a profit center. These same people are always complaining about Windows, but they keep recommending Windows because they think “Half Life 2” is critical and anything that can’t run it is useless.
We are not talking about normal people making the decisions here. Most normal people ask a geek what to buy, because they think they are better informed – since they live and breath computers. For every one of them you win you may pick up 10 new “regualar” customers a year.
Not to mention if they discover how powerful OS X is they will be screaming to management that every one needs OS X. These are the people who do not want Mac’s in the company because they have to support them. Get them using OS X and they will not be afraid of supporting them – they may even push for them since it will make their lives easier.
Think of it as a loss-leader. You know it is going to lose money, but it gets the masses in the store where they can buy the profit making items.
This is the one area MS excels in – losing money on one think to get you trapped into another. The differance is Apple offers something that does not have to trap them.
“Apple Game Studio” anyone? Didn’t the founder and lead programer of Bungie retire or something?
Even though we might like to think it will happen, we will never have the HARDCORE gamer market. Why? Many of them like to tear apart their systems and rebuild them with the newest parts. We want the average and occassional gamer market, Which means we need games released for the Mac either simultaniously or in a REASONABLE time frame (3 months) from when the PC version is released.
My sons play games via the internet with their PeeCees.
They play for hours.
They have LAN gaming parties at peoples houses (all have peecees).
They play games and talk to each other via the internet.
It is an entire other world out there for those that play games over the internet.
One time I asked my sone how many people are currently on line playing the game he was on. My son checked – over 30,000(!!!). Usually more, he says. Each in little teams, clans, challenging each other from all over the world.
It is a amazingly large world community that is only open to those using peecees.
Why? No Mac versions of the games available.
Call of Duty, Half Life, Warcraft, on and on.
Sure the Apple version soemtimes eventually comes out (except Half Life – never will), but by then everyone is burned out on the game and the next new one is out.
Apple can forget any person playing computer games to switch to a Mac.
$125 Million dollars on Day One of Halo 2 is nothing to sneeze at.