Forums | MacLife

Let me understand this:

You believe that since the development costs for a niche market are there, the people in said market should pay more? MOst of the code is the same. An opengl call is an opengl call. It's a standard for a reason.

But the interface isn't the same.  You're going to have to trust me here, writing openGL calls to /dev/agpgart in linux is a *lot* different than writing openGL calls to the GDI in windows.  What you're talking about is definitely not the same, although the language may be the same.  What you're talking about is more on the application end, and if more companies wrote to standards like OGL, their client games/whathaveyou would be more portable, but that doesn't in the least bit apply to drivers.

While I gree that writing drivers, testing, debugging and so on can add to the cost of a product for another market, I do not agree that because of that we get the pleasure of paying a lot more a relatively small amount of work.

If the main interest is competing in the windows market, then the others will suffer, because they'll be left to amortize their own development costs, because the margins in the windows world are a lot thinner.

As a programmer, I can write programs for the mac or pc and it's really no big thing to do so. I charge the same rate regardless of what platform my client is on. I feel that is the way it should be. Writing code is just that: writing code.

The only thing a charge an arm and a leg for is COBOL and that's only if they took me out to dinner, bought me fat sack some beer and a "pro", then I might consider the offer.

But I digress, I think an increase in product price IS warranted, however not to the degree that it currently is. They know they can charge more, because we have paid it. Period.

As a programmer, I can write programs for whatever platform I want.  I can use WxPython (even though it makes me feel dirty), and distribute the same .py files to wherever the hell I want, and so long as I build the interpreter into the install package, most people will be able to run it, regardless of platform. 

There's a difference between doing that and writing a driver, though.  Nearly every OS has a different driver model, and if someone were to abstract all of them to write a single driver, not only would performance suck universally, the cost for developing the abstraction layer would be enormous.

Again, it's a problem of "It's the software".  There's no magic button that converts a windows driver to a macOS driver (and yes, they're of significant size, having to implement OpenGL, Direct3D, quickdraw, rave3d, and whatever else MS and Apple require).

Let me understand this:

You believe that since the development costs for a niche market are there, the people in said market should pay more? MOst of the code is the same. An opengl call is an opengl call. It's a standard for a reason.

It is standard on the application side. There's hardly anything standard about it on the driver side.

As a programmer, I can write programs for the mac or pc and it's really no big thing to do so. I charge the same rate regardless of what platform my client is on. I feel that is the way it should be. Writing code is just that: writing code.

Yeah, and proting applications is relatively easy. Writing platform-specific code, partly in assembly, isn't. It sure as hell isn't a trivial matter.

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anyone who can write in assemble is a god not The god but a god it is ver frustrating experience and i gave up

ok people wtf are you talking about I did newegg search up and down and wow

ATI 9800 PRO 256mb ram 
mac 309.99
PC    290.50

wow what a price diffrence
??????

Look at how it kills the 5900XT!

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc. … mp;amp;p=4

Ah. I'm used to the locking of topics that are over 3 weeks old by overzealous mods. 

Nonetheless, the video cards available for the Mac platform haven't changed a lot, eh?

There's no $183 6600GT, right?

That's what stinks. Not so many have the cash for the high-end card. And, that 6600GT performs admirably.

It stinks that the iMac is stuck with a 5200 "Ultra". Apple should have made the graphics card upgradable.

Nope. I think they're >$400 for every platform.

Not the 6600GT. I found it on NewEgg for $183.

Nope. I think they're >$400 for every platform.

Not the 6600GT. I found it on NewEgg for $183.

Oh, my bad.  I thought you meant 6800GT.

Does the 6600GT even work in a Mac?  That is the better question.  As far as I know all we have is the 6800GT and 6800 Ultra.  The GT seems to be the better buy.  Both have to be bought by Apple.

Although that PCI Sonnet card that works in PCI-X slots might be cool just to get usable desktop on another monitor.

-mark

I couldn't figure out why the 9800 prices were sooo high... look at the date. 

Yeah the 6600 is about the best price/performance out now.