Is Gaming On An Apple Computer Viable… ?
Yes !
. Even the very well informed computer savvy magazine editors or technology correspondents will poke fun at “Mac Gaming”. The assumption that gaming on an Apple computer is folly is made by pc users and technology gurus alike. It is a false assumption. However, I want to make it clear that you are not alone if you think that Mac gaming is silly or inferior. Many Mac users themselves share this opinion. There is a common belief that Mac’s are for schools or professionals. It is a widely held and uninformed belief and I’ll tell you why.
. First I want to give an example of the aforementioned ignorance of PC users, gamers and commentators.
http://gizmodo.com/385324/razer-death-adder-gaming-mouse-for-mac-wha-mac-gamers
. This is a good example of what I’m getting at. PC users etc.. are ignorant of what you can do on a Mac and they have strange ideas about what games you can play on a Mac.
. Let me tell you what games you can play on a mac. On a Mac you can play any game you can play on a PC as well as any exclusively Mac games.
. Now let me tell you why and how this is the case. Macs for quite some time now have had intel chipsets; this means that Macs essentially are PC’s. You can easily install Windows on any Mac you buy now. In fact, the drivers that let your Mac keyboard and mouse run under Windows are on your install disk that you get when you buy your computer! Furthermore, the program to install Windows or any other operating system is installed on your Mac already before you even turn it on! This software is called BootCamp.
. BootCamp isn’t virtualization software. Using BootCamp and any Windows OS installation disk you can install Windows the same way you would do it on any other PC. You just choose how much of your hardrive or which Hardrives you want Windows to be used on and there you go.
. I have a 1000gig hardrive and I installed Windows on 150gig’s of it. For me this is more than enough even though I have alot of games because any other software I use can be purchased for Mac. In fact Mac software is VERY good; any functionality on a PC can be had on a Mac and many Mac applications are sleeker and easier to use than PC counterparts.
. There’s just one more misconception I’d like to clear up, and it won’t take long. OS X, Apple’s pre-installed operating system can have MANY games run on it natively. Right now I have Call of Duty 4, Halo, Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, Starcraft, Doom 3, Quake 4, The Orange Box, Spore, World of Goo, Unreal Tournament (Pick a Year), Tomb Raider Anniversary, Age of Empires 3, Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars… the list goes on and on… So, that was for all the people who think that Oregon Trail is all that Mac’s can run in terms of games.
. On that note, I would like to talk briefly about the technical prowess of some Apple computers. Imac’s currently come with either 20″ or 24″ HD displays and can be purchased with Nvidia 8800 cards which is quite popular with gamers. It can also be packaged with even faster graphics cards and up to 4gigs of memory. My imac has a 3.06GHz processor (dual core). However, this is not the best Mac to get for gaming! If you want a gaming beast the Mac Pro is your destiny!
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro?mco=MTE2NjQ
. The Mac Pro is the easiest gaming machine to use and upgrade! The side opens very easily exposing the entire inerds of the computer. Hard drives and memory slide into place! You can slide hard drives into four different bays! So right now you can have 4 terrabytes of disk space! You can also load up to 16gigs of memory into the beast! Oh, did I forget to mention that the thing can have up to two quad-core Intel Xeon processors! No game in existence right now could possibly utilize all that muscle; most high-end games won’t use more than 2-3 cores.
. Well I hoped you liked my article on why Mac Gaming is a GO and not a NO ! Remember, this does not mean that your PC is serving you worse than a Mac for your needs; but next time your friend tells you he uses a Mac for gaming think twice before laughing or you might get fragged.
-CallsignHUSKER
Everything you say is true, there just one thing. You can put together an equivalent PC for half the price of that Mac your using. Not to mention dual booting works both ways. I introduce you to Hackintosh (http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/) Yes it is kind of a bitch to get it working, but its doesnt take a genius. Just patience, and diligence. Once you’re set you can use whatever mac programs you like. Although I really have no idea what you would use that cant be run on windows or some distro of linux. The only reason I bothered with Hackintosh was as a fun side project and to play Everquest Mac edition, which is pretty much classic EQ time locked forever.
for a big clunky desktop… yes, but mac and especially their laptops… what you’re paying for is design, the macbook pros have high specs and still have unbelievable battery life and disperse heat very well
i would def. say that macs are ‘luxury’ computers
and i essentially agree with you
Ya, the thing is, YOU STILL NEED WINDOWS! When I think “Mac gamer,” I think of someone playing games on OSX, not freaking windows. I use Linux, but I don’t consider myself a Linux gamer at all! I’m a PC gamer. Most of the games I play is made for Win. Unless most of your games is made for OSX, don’t call yourself a Mac gamer.
yeah, you got a point there… but the real problem isn’t os x, it’s that fact that most things are developed on windoze
maybe that will change eventually or virtualization will reach a higher level, right now though with crossover you actually don’t need to startup in windoze to play alot of games and use steam