I see more half assed comments about mac hardware than just about anything else.
First, let me say that mac graphics cards are NOT underpowered by ANY means. They offer the highest end STABLE card avaliable, and update pretty quickly, save their laptop line (as the same with any other company). "But there no 8800 GTS 5gig overclocked etcetcetc" no ****, and judging by the shoddy drivers and issues with multiples of games already, I doubt it will be ready for "primetime" anytime too soon. Yeah, you beta test hardware and drivers in windows. I would not call a ati x1900 or a 7600gts underpowered. I am pulling better fps on my mac in WoW than MOST the feedback I see on their forums, and a full 20fps faster than in bootcamp on the same system. other games like CoD2 I get 30fps faster than the same in bootcamp, using latest drivers. Hell, I am pulling better fps than most 8800 users in WoW. Stop saying Mac has "shitt" cards becuase it doesn't have the zero day latest. I have yet to find a game I cannot get better than 30fps with my current 7600gts in my iMac 24". I agree that you should be able to upgrade you system to faster cards as they come out however. Even if that means shipping it to Apple and they do it for free or something. There is no reason a iMac 20" that had a x1600 cannot change that to a x1900 later down the road, and with the glarring emptiness that should be a mid-powered stand alone system, not just the expensive mac pro, I think Apple should look into that. Apples retain their value with age quite a bit better than a pc, so with little value loss, why are you using a 2-3 year old mac? I thought it was common knowledge that you have to upgrade every 1-2 years. Also, who the hell buys a laptop FOR gaming? I keep hearing this OVER AND OVER. Laptops are underpowered, slower HDs, slower video cards, etcetc. I do not see anyone buying Dell laptops exclusivly for gaming, how is apple different?
Don't say Apple is fully to blame for the lack of games on OS X either. I am sure porting would have been quite a bit better had Microsoft not used leverage, customer base, and $$ to get game makers to switch from opengl to directx (see HL1 for instance). Microsoft does NOT release the dx engine to anyone, and they will not, of course, release source. They have locked game makers into using DX7+ and game makers cannot redo all of their code to port to other systems, it would be an entirely new game. Microsoft is not releasing any way to port DX APIs to any other system, be is opengl or whatever. So just what is Apple supposed to do at this point? They are stuck with OpenGL as their only gaming platform, they could make their own which would probably rock, but no company is going to pick it up, uprooting all their development on new games just to re-release older games for macs. They would have to make the switch for their new games.... and again the problem comes in. Most games use a gaming engine, then the game is developed around it, and we are back to the problem of totally rewriting the engine for them = not going to happen.
Apple is not the only one in this boat. I do not see linux versions of these game at my standard EB. Don't go after the next "big" player in the field and not point to the other guys that are in the same boat. Where is my DirectX for linux? No, you are stuck with wine and the like, just like mac.
Congrats to the companys that are trying to make a port system to port the calls for directx directly into opengl, but that is a bandaide. Any emulation or realtime conversion will cut performance drastically.
So, you're a hardcore gamer. Ok, then mac is NOT right for you. Apple wanted to create a system that WORKS, always. No bluescreens, no crashes, no irq conflicts, no driver updates every day, none of that **** you go thru as a windows gamer. The system "Just Works" and it works well. Its FAST, and I have had ONE crash since I started using mine, which was due to a 3rd party program accessing fan speeds. Part of the stability macs give you is becuase they do NOT allow you, the moron that THINKS he knows pcs but really doesn't know dick, out of the hardware and drivers to keep you from dicking it up to hell and back. They do NOT have the latest flimsyware graphics cards that are greatly unstable with shoddy drivers just to give you 5-10fps. They sacrifice zero day hardware, for slightly slower greatly more stable and reliable hardware and drivers. They get nvidia and ati to load special firmware on the cards to allow their hardware/software leech everybit of performance WITHOUT overclocking and lessesning the life of the product. I hear ALL THE TIME, "Well I blew my MB overclocking this or installing that, etcetc" and I have YET to hear that with macs. Yeah, I cannot FORCE it to produce 3x the heat to gain 1fps... somehow I will not lose sleep over that. So, all that said, yeah, its NOT a hardcore gamers box. That hardly means its NOT a gaming machine though. You get microsoft to release or even license (they will not do ANY of it!) their proprietary dx engine, and I GARUNTEE you 50x games will be released for mac within a month. Microsoft knows that games are holding the macs back, and they intend to keep it that way, even if they have to PAY companies like valve to continue using ONLY windows.
