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All Work and No Play (3/18/99)
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Tired of using your Mac just to get work done? Then warm up your thumbs and prime those reflexes, because it's not just lip service anymore; when Apple said they wanted to make the Macintosh the best gaming platform on the planet, they apparently weren't kidding. How else would you explain their large booth at this week's Game Developers Conference? In the past, Apple has been conspicuously absent at the bigger entertainment-oriented electronics shows, and their presence at a game developers conference shows that they really are serious about bringing more games to the Mac. And those developers are sitting up and taking notice, according to a ZDNN article.
Apple's booth was a sea of translucence, with iMacs and "icebox" G3's running hit games like Myth 2 and the as-yet-unreleased-for-the-Mac Quake 2 (which developer John Carmack once said would never be ported to the Macintosh). We're guessing that Apple was trying to impress upon the programmers that every Mac Apple sells now includes 3D acceleration hardware, ranging from the ATI Rage Pro in the iMac to the heart-stopping Rage 128 in the new G3's-- and we've heard that the next iMacs will graduate to the Rage 128, making it an incredible game computer at a low cost. Besides showing off their cool new computers, Apple also gave away development tools that would aid programmers who wanted to start writing games for the Mac.
Developer response to Apple's presence was reportedly very positive, especially since the iMac is such a big consumer-level seller and all iMacs are (pretty much) the same; it's a lot easier to write a game when you know exactly what hardware on which it'll be played. Programmers can tweak their product to optimize it for the iMac and know that the millions of iMac owners will get a solid gaming experience. The future for Mac gaming looks bright, indeed-- which isn't to say that the present isn't pretty darn shiny, too. There are a ton of games available for the Mac right now; many more than you could ever play. The next step is just to give Mac users a wider variety from which to choose by bringing the number of titles more in line with the scads of games available for the PC. And it wouldn't hurt if more Mac-first and/or Mac-only games started showing up. We can hardly wait...
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 3/18/99 episode: March 18, 1999: Games developers are seeing that Apple is finally getting things right. Meanwhile, the current flavored iMacs may be on their way out, and Apple's making progress in retaining its traditionally strong hold on the education market...
Other scenes from that episode: 1408: Slippy, Like The Wind (3/18/99) Speaking of the iMac, something very interesting is going on within Apple's walls. We've been hearing whispers from all over starting as early as a month ago that Apple was ceasing production of various iMac flavors, but over time, those whispers have coalesced into a rumor that Apple Insider addresses directly... 1409: School Daze (3/18/99) Historically, even though its overall market share has never been higher than perhaps 10%, Apple has dominated two important markets: graphics creation and education. During Apple's "bad patch" a few years back, both of those markets started to shift towards Windows; some graphics professionals wanted the "stability" of Windows NT, and many schools simply couldn't afford Macs...
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