Forums | MacLife

*sigh*

It's terrible when someone speaks the truth.

Still, Apple would need to do a lot and make a huge investment to make Macs better at gaming. And it would help game developers, but won't help Apple. They may sell more systems, but they're selling a lot now. They're flush with cash. They'd need to invest a lot in better drivers, better OpenGL or licensing DX from MS. I just don't see it happening any time soon. At least not as long as Steve is at the helm.

Honestly, I don't see MS ever licensing DX to any other OS makers. Better OpenGL is probably more likely. The whole standard could use work but Apple's implementation isn't the best. It's hardly the worst but it's not the best.

Beyond that I personally place a lot of the blame on AMD, Nvidia, and developers like iD & Activision.

Indeed and despite its differences, the iPhone essentially runs OS X so the programers don't quite have the same lack of familiarity with OS X excuse.

elpato84 wrote:

I am FLABBERGASTED! Absolutely FLABBERGASTED!

I knew you would be.

Earendil the Mariner wrote:

robco wrote:

Apple would need to do a lot and make a huge investment to make Macs better at gaming.

I don't really think they would.

Neither does Carmack.

There are people at Apple who want to support all this - and there's no roadblocks for us right now, we're going to support the Mac on Rage, we hope to get a version of Quake Live going up on the Mac there - but it's just that's not what the Mac platform's about, and I don't really expect that to change because it's a tough equation now that you've got everybody dual-booting their Macs and everything: why would you want to go to the extra trouble of [developing games for Mac]?

A big hit for a Mac game is 50,000 copies. Not enough for devs to make unique versions because some think it's deserved, right or kewl, or for Apple to spend much effort on games-optimized models. That's where Cider earns its keep- making it economically feasible to bring games over that otherwise wouldn't be.

Just stop sticking last year's midrange video card in new Macs, abandon integrated graphics completely, and keep a little more up-to-date with OpenGL, and it would be worlds better.
And better video cards and OGL support is going to help non-gaming applications, too, what with the push towards general-purpose computing on the GPU and the slew of Apple-made apps already out that utilize it for acceleration.

Better, yeah. Just some improvement'd go a long way, and hopefully GP-GPU will be kept in Steve's ear by the engineers.

ScifiterX wrote:

Honestly, I don't see MS ever licensing DX to any other OS makers. Better OpenGL is probably more likely. The whole standard could use work but Apple's implementation isn't the best. It's hardly the worst but it's not the best.

Better, more modern a la keeping up with new extensions... there's a lot to be said for an integrated API suite like DX that brings together graphics, sound/music, input, networking etc., but DX is both tailored to & for Windows, and I doubt'd it'd ever be licensed even if it could be ported over whole.

Beyond that I personally place a lot of the blame on AMD, Nvidia, and developers like iD & Activision.

Money again. Marketshare, effort, sales figures... if MS has to put on a push to revitalize PC gaming, what chance hath the Mac? Can't see a "Games For OSX" initiative.

Others are of Carmack's opinion; it's nothing new with Steve...

Joseph Olin, the president of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, a major stirrer in the gaming industry commented, "In terms of the accelerometer, nice screen, decent computer power... yeah, you could make games on it if Steve Jobs wanted to encourage more games to be made. It will be interesting to see how that evolves."

But when Mr. Olin was asked if Apple CEO Steve Jobs was working with developers to make the iPhone a gaming haven he replied smartly, "Not in the least."

He then went into an old story, almost as classic and iconic as Mr. Jobs' encounters with Microsoft CEO Bill Gates in their younger days -- the story of Mr. Jobs and Trip Hawkins.  The year was 1982 and Apple had just become a household name with the Apple II.  Mr. Hawkins was Apple's Director of Strategy and Marketing -- and he loved games.

Mr. Jobs did not share his love, according to stories.  He constantly shot down Mr. Hawkins efforts to cultivate a game ecosystem on Apple computers.  In the end, a frustrated Mr. Hawkins left to found his own company, a modest venture a few people might have heard of... Electronic Arts (EA).  The rest was history as they say, and Apple's sentiments birthed what would become the largest gaming company in the world.  Says Mr. Olin, "If it wasn't for Steve Jobs basically saying 'don't waste my time with games' we would not have Electronic Arts."

And he's convinced that Mr. Jobs is back to his old ways. [..]

http://www.dailytech.com/Industry+Pros+ … e12579.htm

OSX has issues with prioritizing, thread handling et al that can make a game fall off the fast paths. Even Aspyr had to ask help from Apple when porting Doom 3. After optimizing it still ran slower than on Windows, and that was twice as fast as before. Issues like that make mo' ron's account believable and likely typical. Playable, sure; better/best... not likely. <shrug>

Last edited by Bat (2008-08-05 7:13 pm)

Game devs do need to take a wider range of options into account, but I'm sure they look at their audience. Most gamers have gaming hardware. An example would be Spore, which tends to attract a broader range of users, hence the developers took the time to make sure it runs well on machines that don't have the latest and greatest video cards. But are these same people also going to want to fire up a FPS? In that case it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to tone everything down to run on lesser GPUs. Carmack tends to be on the bleeding edge though and iD is more of a gaming technology developer than purely a game developer. It's kinda their job to make the bleeding edge stuff. It's the other developers who make the decisions about which gaming tech to use (Havok, Q4 Engine v. Unreal Engine, etc.) that have the most sway.

Intel is supposedly stepping up to the plate and the newer integrated GPUs will be much better. The problem is that the chips are out there, Apple simply won't offer them. There's no non-AIO desktop with dedicated graphics and no option for dedicated graphics on the MB. This leaves a relatively expensive AIO and expensive workstation and high-end laptops as the only gaming options. This also limits the market growth of potential Mac gamers as many consumer machines are underpowered wrt to gaming which makes developing dedicated Mac versions unattractive and makes technology like Cider more appealing.

Seriously, the Mac Pro is technically a non-AIO desktop albeit one priced and configured like a workstation and it does have dedicated graphics.

I also mentioned earlier that even the dedicated mobile graphics are a relative joke for gaming. I mention this again because a lot of people using both Mac and PC are going the laptop route. I know if I were into FPSes and  had a laptop, I certainly prefer being able to play them on the go. Even if you could get some certain installed there they'd be miserable to play considering some of those engines requirements. What would really impress me is if they could get acceptable quality on any hardware being sold at the games release and be all the better on the superior systems.

mo' ron wrote:

WRT OS X, the main issues seem to be OpenGL vs. DirectX. Writing a game for both is literally like writing 2 different games, and developers have to take on that challenge. Not to mention that Apple has some peculiarities in their implementation that take an extra step vs. OpenGL for Windows to get right. And even if this weren't the case, considering DirectX's specifically geared for games, OpenGL would always be second class.

If done intelligently, it isn't nearly as much work as writing 2 games. You can create a higher level interface that handles your basic graphical needs, and implement that interface over both D3D and OpenGL. With a common interface for the lower level abilities, you can have a relatively small amount of re-implemented code. The problem comes when developers don't plan for using multiple graphics APIs in the beginning and just try to get things running as quickly as possible, resulting in Direct X code sprinkled everywhere. At that point, in order to change APIs, it takes an incredible amount of work.

That said, it was pretty much obvious that Apple doesn't really care too much about games. They don't mind the extra business, but they don't really put much special to encourage it. I wouldn't mind a little more effort, though, even if it's just getting better cards available so that we can run games under boot camp.

Bat wrote:

There are fairly powerful mobile chips out, but Apple seldom uses them. And last summer's midrange desktop cards basically used mobile chips. ATi's and NV's were both pretty anemic... NV's were slightly less so, but are now failing left, right and center.

Were you the one telling me the 8800 wasn't that great? The best I saw in a laptop is an 8700M and from all I've read it takes two of its equivalent in SLI to run Crysis at a playable rate (at least until you hit snow).

I don't think the problem is really all that complicated.  All Apple needs to do to fix Mac gaming is simply "undo" the decisions that lead to the present situation.  Then everything else will fall back into place.  They really only need to fix a few problems:

1) Most desktop Macs lack graphics slots. This is really the biggest problem.  Apple's phasing out of the graphics slot has almost obliterated the Mac GPU market, vastly reducing the GPU selection.  And the lack of competition has also contributed to lower quality drivers (the driver issue has had even more far-reaching consequences, including HD playback and GUI artifacts).  The combination of the two has effectively castrated percentage of "game-ready" Macs, despite a major improvement in market share, which has ultimately translated to far fewer games.  By reintroducing the graphics slot, these problems will mostly go away on their own.

2) Weak OpenGL.  It's hard to tell how much of the performance problem is Apple's OpenGL implementation, and how much belongs to the drivers -- but it's probably a combination of both.  Apple needs to do its part.

3) Enable BIOS cards to work on EFI Macs.  There is absolutely no technical reason why BIOS cards cannot be made to work on EFI Macs.  In fact, BIOS cards are actually supported by the EFI spec.  This means that Apple took specific measures to prevent interoperability, which is absolutely mind-boggling.

Anyway, these few simple steps should at least restore the Mac's gaming status to pre-Jobs levels.  The Mac's stronger market presence would probably make the Mac an even more compelling target for game developers.

I think it's just a matter of Apple doing well enough without gaming. Steve Jobs doesn't need gamers to make a ton of cash, so he'll care just enough to placate those who don't mainly focus (cue Spore, PuzzleQuest, Sims, etc.)

Pfft, thats too easy Bat. PC would win every benchmark hands down. MPs just can't compete with mere CPUs alone. Max out a MP with everything over 4k then build a gaming rig for sub 2k...PC will win easily. Heck i'll be generous, run the MP in Bootcamp and Windows...for the $$$, gaming PC still is the better deal.

Heck i'll even be even more generous, run the PC in Vista and the MP in XP!!