John Siracusa's take on Boot Camp

News Type: Opinion — Seeded on Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:10 PM EDT

Article Source: Ars Technica

technology, apple, games, osx, boot-camp

Seeded by vistago

John Siracusa explains why Boot Camp will not draw developers away from writing software for OS X.

Published to:

vistago's Column, All of Newsvine
Groups: none
Regions: none

Public Discussion (1)

What's this?

Who's leading the conversation?

This visualization below allows you to see the impact that each user has on the current conversation. The top row contains the group of users who have had the most impact, the 2nd row the group of users who have had the 2nd most impact (et cetera). Users with similar impact are grouped together, and the average score of the group is shown to the left of the group. The author of the article is also shown on the left, in their corresponding group. Each user's score is based on the number of comments the user has made plus the number of votes their comments have received. The scores are calculated relative one another, so while their absolute value is not particularly important, their relative difference does indicate a larger difference in impact on the conversation.

0.5

{"commentId":91736,"authorDomain":"vistago"}

vistago

I disagree with what he claims about the strength of mac game development post-bootcamp. The user interfaces in Windows and OSX are very different. It would horrible to simply take a Windows program and port it to OSX without consulting the user interface guidelines. That said, games are different. The interface of a game does not generally change when it is moved from one platform to the other.

I'm not a mac gamer (I'm not a PC gamer either...) but porting complex games to a small group of individuals is prohibitively expensive. Only a few games make it through today.

Something like NetNewsWire is a program written for mac users. It's great on interface guidelines and it's a pleasure to use. Some games that are written for the mac may take interface guidelines into consideration. But for the vast majority if these complex Windows games there would be no reason to port it to the mac until the number of mac users increases. Any serious gamer is going to have a copy of windows.

I think mac software development is great. Good software development is one of the reasons that OSX is such a strong platform. But games are being written for Windows, and porting games to OSX does not change the content of the game. Once you go fullscreen, it's the same experience on Windows that it is on the Mac.

I love the Mac. I would never by another Windows computer. I think bootcamp will help in getting people to switch. Some of those people will be gamers and they will be comforted knowing that they can run a beautiful OS with all of the remarkable software that is out there for the Mac. But when they want to play games, all they have to do is switch OS's. I would rather a world without Windows but the reality is that 3D game development is expensive, and there is little reason for developers to port to mac when a user can play on Windows.

I don't think software ported from Windows to the mac is that good in the first place. But developers have a carrot for doing a port because most software isn't "consuming". You want to open it, you want to close it, and you want it to look pretty in the meantime. Games are different. There's no carrot.

{"commentId":91736,"threadId":"32957","contentId":"162283","authorDomain":"vistago"}

#1 - Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:28 PM EDT

{"canLink":false,"threadId":"32957","isPrivate":false}

Moot camp -- Manila Standard Today	manilastandardtoday.com	Tue Apr 11	9
Daring Fireball: Several Asinine and/or Risky Ideas Regarding Apple's Strategy That Boot Camp Does Not Portend	Daring Fireball	Mon Apr 10	0
Why Microsoft Employees Should Own a Mac	msdn.com	Sun Apr 9	16
Any Reason to buy a PC?	Derek Bushman	Sun Apr 9	2
Maybe Leopard will have Virtualization After All	decaffeinated.org	Sat Apr 8	0

VISTAGO

Backyard

John Siracusa's take on Boot Camp

Published to:

FUN STUFF:

COMPANY STUFF:

LEGAL STUFF: