[roders]

I don't know about other Mac gamers but I think Apple should start there own games publisher or strike a deal with a established mac games publisher, & produce ORIGINAL games on/for the Mac.
I've got nothing against playing ports but I see a number of benefits to this-
1. If a game comes out exclusively (at least at first) on the Mac this will mean people will obviously have to purchase a Mac to play the game + this will raise the profile/reputation of the Mac in the gaming world (while not meaning to be to harsh on Apple I don't believe we've actually got one at the moment , at least not outside the mac community).
Imagine a Mac only Halo shipped free with each Mac, & also one other thing that makes a big difference to how successful a game is (apart from how good it is) the marketing nouse & muscle behind it, something I believe Apple do quite well!
2. Games will be optomized to run on the Mac, so we get better performance/integration from our games, this could be really great when OSX get's here (or will it? Will a OSX natively written game be that more impressive performance wise?).
There are so many things in fact that Apple could improve & needs to, most of these are fairly minor as whole, but together they could make a very positive contribution to the Mac platform, personally I believe that Audio & Midi should be much better supported on the Mac.
But I also think Apple should publish more of it's own software, it's good at making it's own programs & if you bundled certain software with certain computers such as servers with server software, Business computers with the Mac's own (NOT appleworks but pro packages) word processing/database apps your giving the consumer more which is what Apple need to do, however much it pains me to say it, the advantages of running the Mac OS are becoming fewer & fewer, OK the interface is easy to learn & us & we have less incompatibility probs than winblows, but in most other areas running a wintel can be less of a struggle, not due to an easy or necessarily better OS (but unfortunately maybe a little more technically advanced under the hood de/inspite of DOS) but rather to the amount of Hardware/Software available to PC users, yes I know the situations getting better, but in the long term Apple's has to do something more to stop it from remaining/becoming a niche product, because, I at least in the long term a niche platform will not survive, however cool the computers look.
Apple has to not just match everything that's done/available on the wintel side but better/surpass it, or why else will people switch permanently?
I know things could get a lot better when OSX is released & any bugs are ironed out (I wish I was gonna get paid for beta testing OSX when the preview becomes available!)
But I think Apple needs to widen it's vision if it want's to become/remain successful, to me Apples either gonna win big-time or lose out rather spectacularly in the future.
I've made these suggestions not just because I want better games for the Mac (obviously) but because II think it will help raise the profile of Apple in general, which can only be a good thing.
Apple needs to make people aware of what the Mac IS capable off, not what it cannot do.
Anyone else agree or disagree?

(I know I've gone completely off topic & me head here, but I 've just been thinking about this a lot lately as I'm gonna get a new computer in the near future and in the darkest recesses of my mind I've actualy considered getting a wintel box; I told you I'm of me head!)

P.S feel free to stick this in another forum if you don't think it's appropriate.

[blizzard]

I know what you're trying to say, as I have also pondered a PC instead of a Mac, but my realization is that the only reason I would buy a PC is strictly for games. When I hit university in two years, I fully expect to have little to no time for games, and then I will need the machine to just plain work, no messing around, no modifications, no long nights spent troubleshooting. For the same reasons, I have also recently considered an iMac, when before I would have settled for no less than a used BW G3. I suppose it all depends on where you're coming from, but rest assured you aren't alone in considering PCs. I actually like to hear that, because it means people are thinking rather than just blindly accepting macs as better...my two cents.

In terms of an Apple game division, I know where you're coming from, but look at the amount of money game publishers and developers must spend to get their games to market. That, plus the fact that they are catering to the PC market where games sell many times as many copies as in the Mac market, and it would be my supposition that Apple would rapidly lose money on such a proposition. Instead of developing and selling their own games, I suggest that their time and money would be better spent helping companies like Westlake Interactive port quality PC titles to our platform. Effectively, by doing this, Apple is completely avoiding advertising, development, and other costs, as the PC company has already advertised it for them. With a 6 percent market share, Apple's best position right now is to ride the coattails of bigger game developers, at least until our market increases to a point where to develop such a game would be profitable and smart.

[roders]

Thanx for the reply, it's good to know that people on this forum can look objectively on Mac issues, I thought I was gonna get flamed for the post!
As far as getting a second hand B&W G3 I was gonna do the same thing, as it seemed the cheapest way to get a well speced and expandable modern Mac, although I've been saving up for so long know I've got just about enough for a G4 Cube (if it ever gets out the cupertino gates, thanx to cobaloxt) or if that fails a G4 tower.
I agree with you on the game's publishing front, the market is probably to small for this kind of venture & would cost Apple a lot of money, money that they probably need to spend in other areas other than gaming.
(Although it would still be nice if they would!)
As far as the PC/Games thing goes if I bought a computer just for games I'd probably never have bought my iMac, there's no way I'd spend thousands of £/$ on a PC just for gaming (I'd just buy a console).
I've been ever so slightly considering getting a PC because, well for all the usual reasons, cost, performance (hardware), software availability, but also for compatibility (Uni), but thinking about it, all the work I do (Digital Audio/Video/Graphics) & more importantly stuff I will be doing in the very near future, I can get away with doing on a Mac, maybe I just wanna go with the flow, & not put up with some of the minor dicomforts of Mac ownership, but I suppose the grass is always greener (or is that stronger?) on the other side, & I guess I'm just used to & maybe even take for granted, the ease of use of the Mac OS.

[$$$]

see, it is a good idea, but I doubt apple will do it. Why?

Well, here are some other good ideas that apple ignores....:

1. Multibutton mice, or AT LEAST one with a scroll wheel...

2. Slighltly (to PCI slotted) expandable iMacs.... like the orignal, so you can add more VRam

3. Shipping macs with a GOOD game, not some piece of crap like Nanosaur or bugdom. Something liek Descent, Podracer, Q3, UT, something someone besides middle aged people want to play....

4. an AFFORDABLE gaming mac...

Feel free to add more...

5.) Multichannel/3d Sound support

You can get a 50 dollar sound card for PCs which supports 4 channel surround sound and 3d environmental audio, but you can't get one for mac at any price. (Note: Yes, I know creative labs could be releasing one in as little as a month. About time. Let's see it BTO.)

6.) Decent 3d hardware

I laughed out loud when I read an Apple spec on G4 saying it had "cutting edge" 3d hardware. The ATI Rage 128 Pro is two generations old. (Note: Yes, I know 3dfx, ATI and possibly nVidia are all going to be releasing genuinely cutting-edge 3d hardware for the mac in the next 1-3 months. Again, it's about time, and lets see it BTO.)

7.) Reasonable price/performance ratio.

Sure apple has a distinctly minority marketshare in the computing industry, but they hold a monopoly on the hardware for the platform. This means they are free to jack their customers for as much as they like, and there's nothing we can say about it. For the same price that I got a Dual G4/500 with 64MB of RAM, an ATI Rage 128 Pro and a 20GB 5400rpm HD from Apple, I could've gotten an 800mhz Athlon with 512MB RAM, a GeForce256, and a 40GB 7200rpm HD. And that's not even talking about what apple charges to have more RAM and HD space. $150 for 64MB of RAM or an extra 10GB on your HD? Give me a break. You can get a whole extra 128MB DIMM for $125, and an entire 40GB 7200RPM drive is only about $225.

And please, don't start telling me my G4 is going to outperform the athlon. It's not. It gets hammered into the ground by the athlon. This is a gaming forum, so I'm talking about games, not a specific heavily optimized photoshop filter. The G4 can't break 80fps in a q3 timedemo even with every option shut off, while you can regularly see big mean athlons at the same price over 120fps. I've experienced this difference first hand. Even Diablo 2 runs worse on my Dual G4/500 with 320MB RAM than my friend's PIII 550 with 256MB RAM, and that machine is over a year old.

Sure, I like the sleek look of apple machines, but at what price? I dream of the day apple spins off it's hardware and brings back cloning.

Phew... I got a little excited on that last one. You'll just have to excuse me.

Maybe OS X will change everything. Graeme Devine said that the OS X version of Q3 runs about 20% faster than the OS 9 version, even on single processor machines. It's nice to dream, isn't it?