This is an interesting piece by a Mac fan opining why Apple avoids turning the Mac into a first class gaming platform. I’ve always suspected it was because Jobs himself doesn’t play games. But the premise here goes way beyond that. Jobs and his cronies simply dislike the gaming culture and want no part of it.
Recently, I read a story about Apple that questioned why Apple hasn’t been more active in the gaming world. Let’s just start with the general premise that many people who are enthusiastic about Apple and its products and are enthusiastic gamers often express disappointment that Macintoshes aren’t stronger gaming platforms and that Apple doesn’t seem to ever take steps to make it one. The idea, of course, is that if Macs were supreme game computers, sales would go up. What could be better?
I want to close with a comment on why Apple’s culture is so mixed on the subject of games. I think it’s a recognition by Apple’s management that this is a fact of life for most of its younger employees. But amongst many more senior managers, including Steve himself, I suspect there is some lingering concern about the essence of the game market. Computer games, as we’ve come to know them, are mostly (not always) about aggressive behavior, conflict, battle, wars of power, domination, and sometimes, in the worst cases, some very unwelcome social behavior. To put it bluntly, death and destruction.
Apple’s public culture appears to celebrate, on the other hand, creation and life.
Games are an easy tool to benchmark processor power, and in the power PC processor days Apple was way behind both AMD and Intel. If they had tried to make a power gaming rig it would have showed the real weakness in the hardware. And save your fanboy flame attacks I AM a Mac fan. I just love them for the OS and style, not the hardware inside.
I have a better theory:
Support both DirectX and iGameSDK (fictional API name) would double the development cost of a game, and since Apples only have 5% m. share most (read: all) wouldn’t even bother to do it.
A bunch of BS. The Mac is supposedly a good graphic arts platform, a good video platform, etc… which is exactly what a good gaming platform needs.
The Mac is not considered a premier gaming platform because of one thing, and one thing only, the fact that game developers do not believe they can make a reasonable profit on Mac versions (for whatever reason, whether it is overall market share, or Mac owners).
Doesn’t gamers drool over a new graphic card and other hardware updates every few months? Apple products aren’t designed to swap parts every few months. The only Apple computers that are designed for that are the towers, and they’re specifically marketed toward commercial customers. The small market share guarantees that the latest video chips will not be OS X compatible. It’s difficult to stay on the cutting edge and offer a very stable platform also.
I would love to see one of those new Mac adds w/ the nerdy Pc guy having a kickass time playing some game, while the “hip” Mac kid is yawning a checking his email. “Oh yeah, Mac don’t do games.”
Did Steve help or hinder games while he was running Next?
There are also a couple of Apple history lessons to remember.
1. When the Mac came out – as the computer for “the rest of us” – there was a lot of interest in games, and Apple released the then-amazing “Alice in Wonderland” 3D chess game.
The F-16 Falcon flight simulator/game used the entire 1-Meg RAM my MacPlus had, while PCs wre still trying to work-around the 640k barrier.
Then, Apple decided they would only get more corporate sales – vs. the IBM PC – if the Mac was considered a “serious” computer…
Apple’s official policy became one of encouraging business software on the Mac, and if you wanted to play games – “buy an Apple IIe”.
2. Steve got on the game bandwagon for Halo, showcasing how it was developed by Bungie – a longtime Mac game developer – and would be played first “on a Mac”…
Then Microsoft bought Bungie, and Halo was converted into an Xbox-only title – until a year or so later when PC and Mac versions were licensed…
#2 and since Apples only have 5% m. share most (read: all) wouldn’t even bother to do it.
Like the infamous [within Mac-gamer circles] decision of Valve to stop development of the Mac-port of the original Half-life…
What is really irritating – from my Mac-centric perspective – is that Valve didn’t have to develop the game for the Mac. There are a couple of companies who specialize in waiting to see which games are hits with PC gamers, and then bidding for the license to port those games to the Mac…
…even letting someone else port the code & interface wasn’t worth it, in Valve’s opinion.
I would not buy another mac again. I have 2 Macs, and both don’t work. I had to disable the graphic card on the eMac, because the eMacs mostly all have bad graphic cards (bad caps on the card) and the iBook I have I can not even get to boot fully, when I log in, it freezes 100% of the time (I will be puttingh linux on it soon to see if that helps, is it a OS or a Hardware problem)
2 macs, both fail about 1 and a half year after I got them, not a good track record.
After decades of M$oft, most of the geeks in my family switched [happily] over to Macs and OS X [and Yellow Dog Linux], last year. Right now, my wife and I have 2 Minis [1 is MacIntel], an iBook and a PowerBook.
And none of Mike’s experiences.
I wouldn’t pretend to be able to diagnose someone’s problems online — even via a CageMatch. 🙂 But, Mike, instead of just Googling for answers, have you tracked down your local Mac Users Group? I guess there’s one in most metro areas.
Jobs blew it!
When M$ was bending over backwards to support the Mac, investing in the company and promising Office for years to come, Jobs should have asked for DirectX porting. With the DirectX API in OSX porting a game would have been extremely simple.
Now M$ no longer cares and while DirectX is the prime directive of most graphics cards, Apple is set to drift in its own plastic world.
You get really good at pushing the buttons and become a real whiz bang gamer; while real life glides by with only an occasional intrusion, things like eating, working and maybe even the rare interpersonal contact.
I’ve never even touched a Mac, but I agree that there are more important things that worrying about whether or not the basket people can play mind wasting games on your platform.
Computer games, as we’ve come to know them, are mostly (not always) about aggressive behavior, conflict, battle, wars of power, domination, and sometimes, in the worst cases, some very unwelcome social behavior.
Hmmm. Replace games above with companies and you can see that Steve and the gamers have more in common than he might think…
Intel Mac hardware + BootCamp /w Windows XP = any PC game you want. If you are willing to pay for the luxury and if it that important to you, then go for it.
I like that the games ported over to Apple are generally the better tier of games. It doesn’t bother me in the least that I can’t play the latest version of “Spot Licks His Nuts” or the several hundred PC games that end up in the “Get it before we throw it away bin” within a month of their release at the local EB. Do I wish there was more, well not really. If there is something I want that bad, I can usually find it for the PS2.
Doom3, in Windows via BootCamp, runs crazy fast on my MacBook Pro. It’s way cool.
But someone else made the most logical point, that there’s just no market for games on the Mac significant enough to make a profit. It has nothing to do with Apple or supporting this or that. It just simply doesn’t have the business case.
One word: Pippin.