Every now and then I look at the range of Macs you can buy. I weigh up the pros and cons of owning a laptop on a stand iMac. I look at the laptops, usually reasonably priced, but I don’t need their portability. I look over the the Mini, the cheapest Mac, but gasp at the paltry and expensive specifications. As always, I decide on the Mac Pro. It’s the only Mac that can be expanded beyond memory and hard drive. It’s the obvious choice for gaming, but the barrier is cost. Your ticket to upgradeability? £1899.
I’ve been interested in games for years, both for entertainment and as a medium for discovery, art and education. Over the years games have become more widely accepted and diverse, reflecting a growing and mixed group of users.
Here’s my predicament: what do I gain by gaming on a Mac?
Every time I look at the range of Macs I have a crisis of faith. Apple’s range of hardware is limited and can be viewed as expensive. As I mentioned before, for users interested in a range of games, the choice of a Mac can be difficult. Anything other than a Mac Pro just won’t last, especially when you’re playing graphically intensive games. Granted, an iMac will run anything you throw at it – but in six months?
Perhaps I’m being unfair. Not all games require £300 graphics cards. Take Multiwinia, Zatikon or Windosill, great games without immense graphical requirements. But if games are destined for realism or you want to experience the bells, whistles and details of more mainstream games, you’re going to need something with more punch. Imagine playing BioShock without the pretty water effects or being unable to see the underwater arcades illuminated by shafts of murky surface light. To some it’s not essential, to me it’s like removing adjectives from a passage.
There are other problems too, namely to do with performance. Most games come from the Windows world, designed for DirectX not OpenGL. Combine these architectural differences with Mac OS X graphics drivers that under-perform (compared to their Windows counterpart) and you have your poor performance. Why pay up to nearly three times the cost for a Mac OS X graphics card when it performs substantially slower and is released at a later date than a PC equivalent?
It surprised me how many of you use Boot Camp for games. If most of us are gaming in Windows, why not just switch to Windows? You could get a Mac Mini for day-to-day stuff and a PC that’d play any game out there for under the price of a mid-range iMac.
In my experience, Apple doesn’t show much interest in games for Mac OS X. The iPod, the iPhone – yes, but not the Mac. I’ve been told internally there are evangelists dedicated to Mac games. I can’t talk to them, and when I’ve tried, I’m pushed back toward Apple PR who give typical responses.
After all this, I love my Mac. I cannot think of using Windows for everyday work. Honestly, the idea of checking mail, browsing the web, dealing with photographs, coding websites, poking around in programming on Windows is like marmite to me. I feel at home on my Mac. It’s stable, it’s familiar. In a way it’s also an asset (I know this statement seems odd, but just look at the price of Macs on somewhere like eBay, they retain their value because they’re seen as a thing rather than a collection of components).
So what am I gaining by gaming on a Mac? My thoughts at the moment: not a lot. Without Apple taking an interest in gamers and games, I can’t see the situation changing. If we’re just playing Windows games ported to Mac, why not skip the wait and poor performance? For a long time users have requested a mid-range Mac that can be upgraded, somewhere between an iMac and a Mac Pro, but Apple haven’t provided.
Maybe as Mac users we trade the typical benefits of owing a PC for stability, peace of mind and pleasure. As Public Enemy said, don’t believe the hype. Most of us Mac users game on Windows. It’s stable enough and has the greatest selection of games. Granted, Windows is not Mac OS X. But since you’ll be experiencing the UI of a game and Windows is stable enough, does it really matter?
Talking to Russell, he made an insightful comment:
Games for the Mac do not break any barriers or open any doors; they are echoes of the PC world, similar in message but with mottled details.
I love my Mac and greatly sympathize with what you’re saying about “feeling at home”. But I love gaming as well, and Boot Camp is just a massively superior option. I actually do own a DS for portable gaming, but there’s just an immense world of gaming out for the PC, so I have to Boot Camp to use Steam and play the majority of new games out there.
Sure, I could buy a second PC (well, actually I can’t right now) but that would mean having a second monitor and computer just gaming — I’d be better off just buying a console and hooking it up to the living room TV, far more convenient.
Also, I did spend almost $2K on this iMac, I should damn well be able to play some games on it, shouldn’t I? Stupid pride, I know… I do try to support Mac versions of games when they are available, but it’s tough when they’re usually old ports or significantly overpriced. For example, the new Prince of Persia can easily be found for $5-10 for the PC version, and triple that price or more for the Mac one. There are too many examples of this (also see Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Sid Meier’s Pirates, etc.).
I approve of this.
I have a mac pro which ive bough in 2006 and to this day it still is the best computer ive seen amongst my friends. Now to be fair ive scrounged quite a bit and shred sweat and tears for it to get to its current position.
Im somewhat of a hybrid. Im a proffesional gamer (yes i make my lviing off of playing games, neat huh?) and a programmer. Also I take photography and sculpt as hobbies. Now that in perspective i still recommend the mac over the pc. why? because it just works.
Dont get me wrong im not a mac-fan boy. I used to be, until my x1900 after 1.5 years has gotten me into soooo many hate-screams. It fails you see, it fails on an epic proportion, its weakness: overheat and poor conductors. I agree with you that the upgrades apple provides are WAYYYYYY over the top for consumers. But there is an alternative.
I currently have a Sapphire Ati 4890 1 Gig flashed working in my mac. It has been chosen as one of the best G.C. of 2009-2010 with its speed + heat dissapation. I concur with this as it has revived my dying mac. Now im gaming at everything full with direct-x 10 on my vista partition. (yeah i got vista…weird right?) but see, with Snow Leopard the mac has pushed the industry to the 64-bit age, and wanting to use dX10 leaves you with only 1 option. Vista. Sure theres Win 7 but as ive learned from many PC software/hardware companies its better to buy a product after its first price-cut.
Thats when the forums are full of answers rather than unanswered ones.
I even got a new BENQ monitor for 200$ (2nd hand) and am going to enjoy doing my daily routines and hobbies and (a little)games on the mac side where-as when im going for tournaments & sponsorships; windows side.
The mac doesnt slow down as rapidly as a pc would. Thats the main buy point for me. my old pc’s are now useless thanks to hardware + software incompatabilities and other such things. A common pc is good for, what? 4…maybe 5 years tops?
the macbook i bought my mom still works as it was since day 1. And thanks to its user friendliness no mom-nag.
In conclusion there are other alternatives to using a mac. You can go ALL-APPLE which will cost you much but will give you 0 trouble or you can go hybrid which will give you trouble at first. but after a while itll all be OK.
Like i said; it just works. You just got to bend it to your will thats all.
It was nice when I had something to brag about to my PC buddies… that’s right… I’m playing a Mac-only first person shooter that is 2.5D, had directional sound and an actual story line. If only Bungie would come back and give us a reason to tout Mac gaming.