"All PC Games Run On Macs." What?

[RhombusHatesYou]

and if you are going for hardcore AND mac, then you have way too much disposeable income.

The kind of income that let's you say things like "All my hardware is taking up too much horizontal space... time to switch to a 12 rack server cabinet... Oooo, that'll be handy for home LAN parties."

Which is exactly the sort of thing I'd do if I had the income.

 

[Dectomax]

Entirely off-topic, but I think this thread has actually broken a record - No pony avatars for the first two pages...

Also OT: Don't bother with Macs...Go windows, unless your stoopid!

 

[harvz]

yeah, no.

doesn't work like that, i do however remember, in my brief time as a computer technician at a mac/pc store last year (boss used a mac and believed everything i said was a lie, i was out of there), installing a program that would boot windows as a virtual machine on mac and this program supposedly ran games fairly well, i cant for the life of me remember the name of that program though (parallel or something along those lines).

dual booting it is a far better option.

 

[Gasaraki]

Your friend is an idiot, dont listen to him.

As for what computer to get, a mac will always be incredibly more expensive for significantly less power, but they'll generally be relatively user friendly. But if you know how to use windows and are comfortable with it then dont get a mac as theres 0 reason to.

As to the things your friend said specifically
- the games being instantlly installed is rubbish.
- most, if not all games are NOT designed FOR macs (whether or not they're designed ON macs is irrelevant).
- not all games run on macs, although all macs can install windows so u can do it by that but its a hassle.
- $1,200 for a pc (windows) will buy you a perfectly suitable mid-high end gaming machine that can run all new games on high settings, for which you'd be paying ~$2,500 or more for equivalent specs on a Mac.

Hardly a hassle. Apple makes it very easy to dual boot, unlike microsoft, desperate to keep their monopoly.

Really? Creating a partition and booting drom your disk drive is difficult?

 

[ThisIsSnake]

So what if he has a magical mac that has every game past present and future already installed, I have a 16 core with a 10 meg pipe and I'm close to getting the high score on every massively multiplayer online game.

 

[Fishyash]

Unless you are a video or music producer or something similar to those two you should not get a mac. Gaming is probably the worst thing you could use a mac for lol.

 

[matt87_50]

wow what?? there seems to be a fair bit of noobness here:

- PCs are cheaper and more powerful than macs, for the most part. they are closing the gap in the laptop market, but for desktop, PCs are still way better value than macs (performance:cost) the trade-off being that they are usually bigger and noisier. (who cares...)
- Macs CAN NOT run all PC games, not by a long shot, not unless you install windows on it, in which case you obviously get EXACTLY the same user experience as you would on a PC. only (as mentioned above) slower, and more expensive...


a *PC* can do everything you need to do. in specialized industries, you might need a mac, but I know professional video and audio producers that use PCs, so needing a mac for that stuff might be BS too...

in fact the *only* thing I know you need a mac for, is making iOS apps.


just buy a PC, but not one off a shelf, hopefully you have a friend who is tech savvy, who can help you out. if not, I'm sure any specialist computer store (maybe online) can help you out.

 

[dancinginfernal]

That conversation reminds me of a conversation I overheard on the bus. Basically, this mac fan was trying to convinse his friend to buy one too. So he said something like "Well, you know how computers work with 0 and 1, right? Macs works with 0, 1, 2, 3, all the way up to 9. Which means they can get stuff done faster."

Mac users will pull facts right out of their ass to defend their platform.

That is the biggest load of crock I have seen in the past month.

My god.

 

[kouriichi]

Better Option.
Keep you Mac as a work computer, pickup every gaming console, use the remaining 2100$-2300$ on food, bills and some games for your systems.

I personally am primarily a computer gamer. But half the games that come out these games are slightly out of my main computer's reach.

Thats where consoles come in. You can get a refurbished 360 for 100$ flat. Its not only a FAR cheaper alternative, but it requires no upkeep, lasts a few years, and is COMPLETELY disposable. You can get 15 360's for the price of a single gaming comp.

And of course, you can get all 3 systems too, and play games that will never come to PC. Heavy Rain, Gears of War, God of War, Dynasty Warriors, Killzone.....

Sure, you dont get to mod or adjust graphics or anything, but look at how much your saving!

I own a PS3 and a 360, and i used to own a Wii ((gave it to my little cousin)). I also own a good gaming comp. But anything that comes out that my comp can barely handle ((crysis, skyrim soon too)) i will get it on a console. Because of how much im saving.

You can bite the bullet and give into buying an expensive PC, or bite the bullet, and spend a 1/8th on a console. Also, yes, hes talking out of his ass. Hes either a troll, and a bad one at that, or an idiot. Possibly both.

 

[Woodsey]

"THEN spend at least $3,000 bucks on a new, up-to-date gaming rig."

A great gaming rig wouldn't cost anywhere near that much. As for Macs, you'd need to dual boot with Windows, and it can be somewhat of a pain.

It takes a whole 2 minutes of idiot proof instructions to do, courtesy of apple. So much misinformation going on up in this *****.

Yeah, I meant it can be a pain when running, not that installing it is hard, clever clogs.

 

[YawningAngel]

"THEN spend at least $3,000 bucks on a new, up-to-date gaming rig."

A great gaming rig wouldn't cost anywhere near that much. As for Macs, you'd need to dual boot with Windows, and it can be somewhat of a pain.

It takes a whole 2 minutes of idiot proof instructions to do, courtesy of apple. So much misinformation going on up in this *****.

They're not that idiot proof, I can cope with the Gentoo install and I still managed to screw them up.

 

[Griffolion]

PPS - Seriously, if you're looking into getting a new machine for the purpose of gaming among other things, do yourself (and your wallet) a massive favour and stay away from Apple. Windows PC's will do gaming better, any sort of design equally well and any other mundane task equally well. For cheaper, too.

*Sigh*... And breathe...

I'll easily admit that the guy he quoted in the OP is a massive liar, but it doesn't help your case to be just as bad.

PC's will not do "any kind of design" better. At all. Macs are the industry standard in video editing/ production, sound engineering/ production, publishing and print for a very good reason. The very best software in the world for these things are Mac-exclusive.

And even for just plain old image editing, Mac has a huge advantage because of TrueColor, something Windows PC's can't achieve (what you see on the screen is identical to what you print out)

So advising him to "stay away from Apple" just isn't an option if he's in any of these lines of work.

And yes, Macs can run any Windows game in Windows on the Mac. Though as with PC's, the hardware must be up for the job. Which is why an iMac is a poor choice for any gaming. I wouldn't ever buy a Mac that isn't a Mac Pro (tower).

Unlike most other Apple machines, a Mac Pro can be upgraded, and you can configure it exactly how you please from purchase day.

I know quote a few individuals in "the industry" that use Windows instead of Mac and often garner equal if not better results. Mac is the industry standard because of it's history, not necessarily based on any merit it currently holds over anything else. A friend of mine in sound engineering says the only reason he hasn't bought Windows to do his work is the fact that if he doesn't stick with Mac he'll get laughed out of work (for no other reason than him not using a Mac). Because of the increased modularity of Tower based machines that are typically used for high end design and rendering, you can very easily fit more powerful hardware into the same budget if using Windows. Considering a great deal of excellent software available is cross-platform (I.E, everything from Adobe), the niche programs like FCPX (ironically an Apple product itself) suddenly have found an equal on another platform. It may just be me, but from what I hear from people in the biz, the industry sticking with Mac based on any semblance of merit is out of the window (forgive the pun). It's all down to a case of "well it's what we're used to" nowadays.

Also, it doesn't help your case that you haven't done your research about Windows 7, or you wouldn't be making that TrueColor comment. Hence why I never mentioned TrueColor, because anyone who knows their stuff knows both Windows 7 and Lion are on equal ground about that.

And Mac Towers are upgradeable in CPU, RAM and Storage. Good luck trying to switch to a 6 series graphics card (which is what you're really needing for gaming these days) without proper driver support in there...

 

[thahat]

Oh my, I haven't had a good laugh for while. Thank you for curing that.

Ok, right.

Firstly:

Games really don't work on a Mac. Only a selection of games do, and that's because they've been made to, or your using onlive.

And it's possible to have an odd amount of Ram, it's just you have to make it out off 1gb and 2gb stick. And it's not because no one has bothered to it's because of the most basic rules of computing.

Binary decimal values. 1,2,4,8,16 etc. It's why you won't get a 3gb memory stick.

Or it is because you are dual booting windows, or running it as a VM. Which is piss easy to do.

But there is no good reason to do that.

Building my own PC is also piss-easy, then I can dual boot the Mac OSX or VM it, for one third of the cost.

It is not piss easy to build a pc. Most people can't do it. Most people also can't figure out how to hackintosh. As I have said to other people, find me an all in one that can compete with my iMac at all, then we will start talking about price.

Yes it is. ALL THE PARTS COME WITH EASY-READ MANUALS. USE THEEEEEEMMMMMMMMM!

Also, I don`t want your all-in-one. I don`t buy a computer with a touchscreen, full utility software, email programs, photo viewer, photoshop, music program, specialized internet browser, and sleek design when all I want to do is game and code. I`ll just uninstall all the stuff I mentioned. ALL of it. Why the hell would I pay an extra $2000 for that, especially when you consider that it`s an exorbitant price for all that anyways.

if he still doesnt get the computers are easy to make, you might need to explain to him that the manuals have prety pictures too. with DO's and DONTS and 'dont smash this tiny pieace with a hammer' stickers. mac users like pictures.

 

[Pakkie]

Ima just say this (to sum up all your questions fast), even if its already been said a thousand times in this thread:
-You can have odd ram

-Currently in the market no game requires more than 4 gig of ram, GPU is MUCH MUCH MUCH more important when it comes to games

-Ram is cheap as chips anyways, you can get high speed 1600mhz ram in a 4 gig kit for around 50-60 bucks

-Macs cannot run all games on PC and the games DO REQUIRE INSTALLING

-Macs are way, way, way, WAY OVERPRICED. If you buy a mac desktop that costs you $1200-1500, you could get that same PC for windows for about $400-$600 custom built, this isnt even an exaggeration. (If ya don't believe me I can give you proof, I have done ma research) (This excludes prebuilts from tech shops)

-Macs (and rebuilt pcs) have a tenancy to use crappy gpus which means its rubbish for gaming anyway, your better spending $600-800 on an all rounder PC which would get you an i7 Quad and 6950/6870 gpu with 4 or 8 gigs of ram

For the most part these are all facts and not just my opinion.

Extra notes:
I really recommend looking into a custom built PC as you will save tons and get great performance, prebuilts and current Macs just really don't cut it for the current gaming market...unless you spend a fortune.

If you don't know how to get a custom built you can always look up a hardware store in your area and ask them to build one for you, usually they will choose decent parts and charge a flat rate of like $50 for actually building it (or nothing)

I'm not tryin to say macs are complete shit, they are great for other media and have a nice user-friendly interface, but if you wanna play games, your better off with a Win PC.

Also last word, if you were to spent 3K on a gaming PC you'd get a fucking beast...i7-990x (Extreme intel 6 core), water cooling, 12gig ram and 2 x GTX 580s or a GTX 590 which will max anything for years apon years to come.

 

[devotedsniper]

Lol macs can't just run a pc game, well i guess in theory they could read the code but the games aren't made to run on them, modern (even very old games) rely on things like directx which are esentially drivers without them the programmers would need to code for each individual model of processor/graphics card/etc. Also it's a sterotype that designers (arts, coding, etc) all use mac, it is not true at all programming taught at my university is in windows using visual studio (which is usually what the pro's use for things like c++, guess why because the application is usually for a windows machine) and netbeans (theres also the fact that all the big software such as photoshop come on both formats).

You are right though you can't get 5gb modules because ram uses the binary number system (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, etc.) but you can have something along the lines of a 4gb module and a 1gb module or something like 2 2gb and 1gb.

One last thing my original gaming rig back in 07 cost £400 to make and it could run basically everything on high @ 1440*900 and that was with a gt 9500. my current one if you minus the watercooling and just used aircooling would be around £800 and that maxs outs everything on 1680*1050 (and the full 1080p when the parents are on holiday and there big tv becomes availble). Point is you don't need to spend mega money to run the lastest and greatest at decent speeds and graphics, the £800 is also my workhorse/powerhouse for compiling programs, and just general work for university.

Also for the money a mac costs you can have a pc which has considerably better specs (and this is using decent makes, if you were to go for cheap £10 = 1gb ram along with other cheaper brands you could build an even faster machine but it might not be that reliable), and has better software compatability (macs are slowly catching up in this i would guess but windows still has the advantage).

Please don't post here unless you have some semblance of experience in the matter. Macs come with bootcamp, which helps you partition your hard drive and install windows in about 2 minutes.

Yeah that allows you to run windows genius, that doesn't mean a mac can just run a pc game it has to run it through windows.

 

[brainslurper]

I've spent the last 2 days trying to get Wine to work on my Macbook, and the strong impression I'm getting is that no, Macs cannot run Windows software.

Go to applications folder, go to utilities, and click boot camp assistant. Assuming you have a windows disk (You can burn one) you can get windows installing in a couple minutes.

I uninstalled boot camp a year ago because it took up disk space and was awkward to switch to.

Restarting your computer is hardly awkward, and it is the only way to use 100% of your computer's potential on windows applications. Of course it is going to take up disk space, if you want to install something on your computer, it is going to take up disk space.

 

[brainslurper]

Macs are good for artwork and creativity

This statement baffles me. I see it being made all the time with no qualification and I'm genuinely curious as to why people think this is, can you enlighten me at all?

I'm not sure the person who posted this actually knows jack shit, but coming from someone who has tried to use windows for adobe creative suite coming off a mac, I can try to explain why. Adobe creative suite is pretty much identical between the two operating systems (With the exception of cs4, which for some reason lacked a 64 bit mac version) so it essentially comes down to how the operating system interacts with the program. I can certainly tell you that finder works better then windows explorer (For everything, but it shows more when using photoshop) when transferring large files quickly in and out of a workspace. It is also true that it is more efficient to never worry about viruses (DURR), but this is true with pretty much any professional use of a computer. Another thing is the lack of Final Cut on windows, which is definitely a deal breaker for me.

Macs get viruses too... -_-

Oh really? Show me one recorded case that a mac, running the latest version of OS X, has gotten a virus.

http://www.macworld.com/article/159595/2011/05/macdefender_trojan_horse.html

Google, man.

Anyways, a virus is a program that replicates itself and spreads itself from computer to computer, by definition. There is absolutely NO reason why one can`t be written for a Mac, for the same reason that there`s no reason someone can`t write, say, a parsing script or an AI for Battleships. The reason that they`re rare is that A. They`re slightly harder to make on Macs (emphasis on slightly) and B. Macs have a pretty small slice of the PCs Sold pie. No reason to focus on the tiny audience when you can screw up more people at once, and more easily.

Now, as Macs become more mainstream, more malware and viruses will be made for it. See: The above link.

The link you sent me has the word "Trojan" in it. That is a trojan, not a virus. And in the past 10 years, Macs have actually LOST market share.

Fine, I`ll define EVERYTHING for you (and let my opinion of hardcore Mac fans fall even further).

When people say `Virus`, they mean `Malware`, or software that does damage to your computer. A virus is, by definition, a program that remakes itself and finds frighteningly innovative ways to go from one computer to another. A trojan is a piece of malware that hides connections to unsecured networks or intruders, allowing your computer to become zombified, your computers information to be stolen, or worse - destroyed. (Or, in this case, just scammed.) NEARLY ALL TROJANS HAVE VIRAL TENDENCIES. But if you insist on being pedantic...

http://www.switched.com/2009/09/01/apple-quietly-admits-macs-get-viruses/

Ouch.

Here, have a more anecdotal (but still existent) screenshot.

http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/9799/screenshot20110508at825.png

Oh, and by the way, Wikipedia takes offense at your `Mac market share has fallen` claim. It says that it has grown from 2% in 2003 to 11% in 2010. Maybe you should check your claims.

I understand the differences between viruses and trojans, the fact that I use a mac doesn't universally mean I belong in a nursery home. Yes, it is much more efficient for a virus to initially take hold as a trojan, but that is something mac defender and the other mac "viruses" never did. They were simply building botnets. The last time there was a credible virus for mac was way back in the days of OS 9, it was something that would disguise itself as a simple image file, and then would attempt to spread to other macs through iChat. The fact that we are arguing about the 2 or 3 "viruses" for mac just shows how secure OS X is at this point.