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Mac Spore crippled on older machines
THE INQUIRER can confirm that the latest God game from Electronic Arts, which was much praised for its simultaneous Mac and PC launch, has seemingly been deliberately crippled for owners of older, or lower-end Macs.
The minimum system requirements are quite clear in that, you'll have to have at least a dual-core Intel processor on board, and the box blurb also makes it quite clear that integrated graphics cards like the Intel GMA 950 and anything before are not supported.
So that's pretty much anyone with a Mac Mini, or anything older than the very latest Macbook or Imac then.
Unless, bizzarely, you are running Windows [at this point the author had to take a break and wash his own brain out with soap for even thinking about it]. Fire up Boot Camp and Spore runs at perfectly playable frame-rates under XP. Try running the game on the same box running the latest version of OSX and you'll be in for a bit of a dissapointment.
Frustratingly, the whole shebang works perfectly well until you get to the creature creation screens. Here you are presented with a tantalising glimpse of what you could be doing in the build-a-freak simulation engine, because all of the interface elements work. Unfortunately, the main editing window is stubbornly black. And stabbing about in the dark with a set of legs or eyeballs, although fun for minute or two, soon wears thin.
Far be it from us to suggest why Apple, or Electronic Arts, would be unwilling in one case, or unable in the other, to get this running on what is not exactly ancient architecture. But there are a number of web petitions out there demanding that the guilty parties fix the problem with haste.
And for once the game makers have been rumbled. We know it will work, so get out there and fix it now! µ
Tags: Apple
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Blah blah blah, mac's suck, blah blah blah, windows rule, etc, etc.

The point of this article is not to say whether one platform is better than the other, it's to point out that the mac version should run just as well as the PC version.

We know it's running on Cider and as such has some small level of emulation, but heck, look at the speed the majority of the older mac apps running under rosetta enjoyed, and that had to emulate a whole processor architecture! (yes, I know 3D games under rosetta were a little painful).

I don't really use my PC or my Mac for games, that's what the console is for, but, there are a few games that don't suit the consoles so well, spore being one of them.

There's no reason that the Mac version should underperform the PC version. And this isn't exactly a high performance 3D game so integrated graphics chips should be fine...

For a real example of cross platform gaming performance for Mac and PC's, you only have to look at WoW... I get near identical FPS in osX as I do in XP/Bootcamp with the same graphics settings...

(Sorry, I hate it when something that should be a sensible discussion degenerates into foaming mouthed fanboys)
Who the hell downloads music from iTunes? If you know anything about the internet its that everything can be gotten for free unless you are dumb. 
Macs cant play games, they have shitty hardware compared to pc. Super Overpriced, cant use a majority of software. LOL and people complain about Vista compatibility issues when OSX cant use 90 percent of software. 
Windows is the most flexible (excluding linux) the only people who catch viruses are retards who don't get pop up blockers and click yes to install spyware.
Picture Cartman from South Park laughing at someone in a predicament, that's what I am doing right now.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha..... Ha ha ha ha ha....ha ha ha ha.
Enough said.
Honestly, who cares about Mac gamers? They should be thankful that the game was ported, in some form, at all. Get a big boy's computer if you want to play games.
There's a reason why they went with the Cider port though, it enabled them to do a simultaneous release of the Windows and Mac version and package them in the same box. The only other developer that does this is Blizzard.

I have a Santa Rosa era Macbook Pro with a 256 MB GeForce 8600M GT in it. Spore runs beautifully in both Mac OS X and Windows XP. It is equally playable in both operating systems with roughly the same settings, which is the first I've seen for a Cider port (or even a native port for that matter).

As for a native port and potentially having PowerPC support, it would at best be problematic, with it only supporting the very top end PowerPC macs anyways. Most of Aspyr's most recently releases have lacked PowerPC support and few officially support Intel graphics chips.

While it might of "been out by Christmas", the mac port would be perpetually behind on patches, potentially unable to communicate and share data with the PC version of the game due to being behind on patches which would limit the amount of sharing that can be done on a game boasting large amounts of player generated content. Using Cider enabled them to develop the mac port alongside the PC version with minimal changes to the code--- and ship it *in the same box.* Which means that now when you see Spore on sale for $30 in three months, you can get it at that price for the Mac too, instead of being perpetually stuck at the $50 price point, even for 4-5 year old games that go for $20 or less on the PC.
'Coz Apple quicktime and itunes are absolute garbage on my Windows machine, yet seem to work just fine on my old dad's Mac Mini.

My ole dad is getting ready to get a Vista Laptop (I'm trying to trick him into getting a Linux Netbook instead).

Who needs Spore when you can play Burning Monkey Solitaire??
This is getting old. 

Quote "Unless, bizzarely, you are running Windows [at this point the author had to take a break and wash his own brain out with soap for even thinking about it]. "

Strangely, the verification code is jekwkod, but my brain saw jerkwad. I enjoy reading INQ, but you remind of the liberal press here in the states. Why don't you just print the news and keep your opinions to your self. We're all big boys here and can decide for ourselves what we want to run.
If you want to play games, you need to dump your MAC and buy yourself a decent PC.

This problem is not exactly affecting the mainstream game players, I am suprised EA even bothered to release it for the MAC in the first place.
I know Apple sold allot of intel dual iMacs with the Tiger OS X (10.4) Iwas one of them. 
Spore says you need 10.5 aka Leopard. That is done on purpose of that I am sure. Sham on there backdoor deals and screw the DRM highly infected game anyway. EA can kiss my arse.
Lets be honest, no one buys a mac to game. They buy a mac to make movies, download music from itunes, and create scrapbook collages from their camera pictures. That is if you follow the Apple vs. PC ad. Then again if you follow that ad, then you wouldn't buy a PC for gaming either because it's never been mentioned once.
They ported it for Mac (probably a waste of money quite frankly), and now you're complaining that they don't have adequate Mac drivers to run 3d using ONBOARD GRAPHICS? I did not think I could care less about a whiner "gamer" on a Mac complaining about not being able to play a game until I read about a whiner "gamer" on a Mac with integrated graphics.
"The minimum system requirements are quite clear in that, you'll have to have at least a dual-core Intel processor on board, and the box blurb also makes it quite clear that integrated graphics cards like the Intel GMA 950 and anything before are not supported.

So that's pretty much anyone with a Mac Mini, or anything older than the very latest Macbook or Imac then."

Yeah, it's unfortunate that (cr)apple uses "proprietary" hardware. Even in their slightly less than (to quote you) "very latest Macbook or Imac".

But at least they arn't apart of the EVIL and SCARY microsoft crowd.

LOL.
It doesn't work simply because XP is a less demanding OS, and the drivers out there for the IGPs are probably a lot better. I bet any machine running XP gets better frames than one with the same hardware running OSX.

I fail to see why this is a problem for anyone using a desktop system. Quit complaining and go spend 30 bucks on an 8400GS or an HD4850 on N**egg.com.
What possible reason would the developers have for deliberately crippling it in this manner? Isn't it infinitely more likely to be a mundane bug (either in the game or in the OSX graphics driver)? Grow up gosh darn you.
The lack of GMA 950 support is what you get when you do a Cider port. I don't believe Cider has ever supported the GMA 950 and sadly I'm impressed the GMA X3100 is supported in Spore, since I believe this is the first Cider port to do so.

Really given that SIm City 4, The SIms, and The Sims 2 were all natively ported to Mac by Aspyr, EA should have just let them to a native port. I bet Spore will make enough money to make a native port profitable and the low system requirements meant that you can support PowerPC Macs too in addition to Macs with the GMA 950 for a wider target market. If it was planned early enough in the development cycle, Aspyr could have probably gotten a native port done in time for Christmas.

EA really needs to start allowing some of their games to be natively ported again like Activision does with CoD4. It may still be slower than Windows, but it's better than Cider.
"And for once the game makers have been rumbled. We know it will work, so get out there and fix it now"

lol - typical noob article. Driver issue. Speak to intel. A little intelligence would have made this obvious.
Game developers write to standards. They can't help it if something isn't compliant.
The intel graphics drivers on OSX are always far behind compared to Windows.. I don't know exactly what kind of deal Intel and Apple have on who maintains the drivers for OSX but I reckon it's some kind of partnership..

EA *does* support the latest macbooks though (4th gen), since they have a GMA X3100 IGP.
Interesting stuff. I gave up on PC gaming a couple of years ago, my PC was top of the range when I got it and has 6800 Ultra graphics etc.. I just couldn't keep up with the demanding requirements for PC games and so I play Xbox and PS3 now. I now mainly use a Mac Mini for everything else and was looking forward to trying Spore on it. Guess they don't want my money then?
iMacs have dedicated video, currently the lowest iMac has a HD2400XT.