While it’s rare for me to concede that buying a Windows PC is a better idea than buying a Mac, the realm of gaming has long been an open and shut case. The fact of the matter is, if you enjoy playing the latest, top of the line games, you’re going to need to go out and buy a PC. Game developers just don’t release their top offerings for Mac, at least not right away. Gaming has always been the one area where my “You should get a Mac” mantra just doesn’t ring true.
At least, until now. According to a report from our dear parent Macworld, all is not well in Vista-game-land. Many are finding that despite Vista’s new DirectX 10 graphics technology, games are buggier after making the switch, and graphics corruption is becoming a reall issue. The chip manufacturers are releasing new drivers in attempts to alleviate problems, and a representative from Microsoft dismissed the problems almost altogether, citing the fact that Microsoft tried over a 1000 games and most worked.
Since I’ve only been using Macs since Tiger came out, I really can’t speak from experience. Does OS X entail this kind of upgrade turmoil?
Its funny because when I upgraded to Tiger, my PowerBook G4 runs FASTER than on 10.3... With NO hardware upgrades what-so-ever! Ponder that one M$...
I wouldn't think so. I mean, Mac controls both hardware and software, so I think it makes for a smoother transition. It doesn't have to worry about the headaches of supporting thousands of different devices.
The transition between different versions of OS X really haven't been as drastic as the change from Windows XP to Windows Vista. Yes, Apple has done drastic things (transition to Intel) which may have caused issues, but between versions of its operating system...not particularly.
Does OS X entail this kind of upgrade turmoil?
Occasionally, yeah. there have been at least a few points where Apple has made major shifts in OpenGL that have broken gaming or required game developers to make signficant changes to keep their games working. I'm not sure that anything's happened that's on the order of DirectX 9 to DirectX 10, but there certainly have been big changes developers have had to deal with.
From my experience the upgrade (on an old 1GHz PowerBook Ti) from 10.2 to 10.3 was marvellous while the upgrade from 10.3 to 10.4 wasn't so great. Tiger, when it was first released, seemed to slow down my PowerBook and I did encounter a number of kernel panics until about 10.4.2. Based on this I do think that Apple OS updates can be a bit iffy but since Leopard is being developed by the same team that produced the stunning Panther edition I have high hopes for the next release.
I've never come across problems with games on a Mac for the simple reason that until recently I didn't play them. No issues at the moment but I do wish that Aspyr would hurry up and push out a Universal Binary version of Call of Duty...
I've been using Macs since the first one's came out in 1984. Long story short, Apple has balls that Microsoft has never dreamed of. Probably three times since 1984 Apple has made such drastic changes that nothing worked until upgraded to the new processor.
Legacy problems? What legacy. When it is advantageous to throw out all the old and get on with the new Apple is willing to just do it. And still, it just works.
Microsoft is still trudging along supporting DOS apps and maintaining a crippled system loaded with security holes because of it.
Just to show that there is always an exception to the rule Blizzard has been very good about getting its games out to both the Mac & PC at the same time. ^^