An all things Apple thread

[JTK]

*shrugs* Why not? They're a BDA member and frankly, I don't know what else to call this thread.


I'm going to hit a few birds with one stone here with these interesting tidbits. We'll kickstart this thread with some controversial remarks.

Courtesy of the February 2007 issue of Game Informer Magazine. Page 42, interview with Gabe Newell.

Gabe Newell's Background:

Founder and Managing Director of Valve Software, where the Half Life games have come from along with the Steam download service. Newell started out as an MS employee who worked on the first three editions of Windows. He worked with John Carmack of ID software to bring Doom to the Windows platform. After this success, Carmack encouraged Newell to leave MS and start is own game development studio, which he did with fellow MS employee at the time Mike Harrington.

Half Life comes out, the rest is history.



This is rather fascinating interview that folks should take the time to track down and read the entire thing. I'm going to take a few of the comments, in context, because there's some issues that he brings up, as an ex MS employee, that I find too tantalizing to resist.

http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Sto...1324.31632.htm

^^ That's some of it. I'm going to fill this out from the actual magazine.

Game Informer: What about the PS3?

Gabe Newell: The PS3 is a total disaster on so many levels. I think it’s really clear that Sony lost track of what customers wanted and what developers wanted. I’d say, even at this late date, they should cancel it and do a “do over.” Just say, “This was a horrible disaster and we’re sorry and we’re going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it.”

Wow. I think this is excessively harsh, but hey, he IS an ex MS employee.

I wish he would have expanded and elaborated as to how and WHY he feels this way.

Gabe: The happy story is the Wii. I’m betting that by Christmas of next year, the Wii has a larger installed base than the 360. Other people think I’m crazy. I really like everything that Nintendo is doing.”

I'd laugh if this happens. Heck, I hope it does.

GI: What’s your opinion of the Xbox 360?

Newell: Microsoft has so many problems with Vista;

I wish they were focusing more on the thing that runs on hundreds of millions of PCs rather than six million proprietary clients.

So do I.

Gabe: Vista really shows a lack of focus on making a better consumer platform. I came out of the Windows group, and right now, I’d go with a Macintosh as being a better solution for most consumers than a Vista-based PC. It’s shocking to me.

If you’re an XP user, you’re going to be more comfortable upgrading to an Apple than Vista.

Apple: I speak for a lot of people when I say: I'd love nothing more than to do exactly this, but I'm a PC gamer and you NEED to start meeting us halfway, at least, WITHOUT kneeling at the altar of Microsoft and Windows.

Your OS is better. Your next one will probably be jaw dropping.

Your platform is better. Everything you've got, pretty much, is better.

The dual boot thingie for Windows was a nice gesture, but it also showed you all kneeling to MS as a concession. There's no reason or excuse for a PC gamer to not be able to kick ass on Apples all the way without any MS. That's the bottom line.

Gabe: Vista is going to drive you crazy in terms of some of the user interface decisions.

Other than gaming, which is Apple's Achilles heel, almost everything else works better on a Mac. As somebody who used to live and die to make Windows successful, that's super sad to me.

I agree with him on Vista totally.

Here's where I continue to be incredibly frustrated. This question goes out to Apple and pretty much everyone else: Why do you all continue to ALLOW Microsoft to STEAL YOUR ideas and take full credit for them? Mac OS has been doing stuff for YEARS that Vista is boasting about.

The successor to Mac OS is probably going to be downright amazing. Stability. Security. Apple blows it out of the water.

The only thing Macs don't do is gaming. As a PC gamer, I'm forced to kneel at the altar of MS and Windows and I think that stinks and is unfair.

If I thought Apple would ever get a clue and get serious about finally bridging the gap to gamers WITHOUT kissing MS's ass...I'd buy a Mac today, right now. Dead serious.

Even the latest issue of PC Gamer magazine put out this shootout between a DX10 ready rig they made up vs. a nicely loaded Mac and even THEY couldn't believe how awesome the Mac was and how much better it was, except for a few things: Hardware and you HAVE to have Windows to play PC games.

Apple: Get rid of that Achilles heel WITHOUT Microsoft and WITHOUT Windows and you've got customers for life in people like me. Believe it!

I'll bet Apple's OS's don't cost $200-$400+ either, do they?


http://www.pcgamer.com/archives/2007...-_mac_pro.html

^^ Hopefully they'll actually post this story pretty soon, but this is the PC Gamer article I was talking about where they were like "Gosh, this Mac really is a joy to use but too bad we can't play games on it."