All your Rambus are belong to us - David Icke's Lizard Wizard
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Nvidia throws Mac gamers a bone
MAC GAMERS have been second class citizens for so long now that even achieving parity with their PC-toting brethren seems like a good deal.
Since the dawn of gaming time, Macolytes have wearily accepted that the tiny percentage of Windows games which eventually crawled gasping onto the Apple platform would arrive to the party incredibly late (several years in some cases) and would have a huge premium added to the price (much like the hardware, I hear INQ Macophobe Nick Farrell screaming from his cupboard under the stairs).
There have been exceptions. World of Warcraft was simultaneously released on both platforms, and continues to offer patches, upgrades and expansions in syncronisity. Spore was also released in Mac and Windows flavours in the same box on the same day.
And now there is more good news for Mac users not willing to sully their sacred computers by running the dreaded Vista.
Nvidia notebook GPUmeister Rene Haas has told Bit Tech that the graphics card gurus will be paying a bit more attention to the poor benighted Mac, now that NV has climbed into bed with Apple.
Since the announcement that the newly-born Macbook range would include Nvidia graphics power, the company has been encouraging game developing partners to ease modern Macs into its The Way It's Meant to be Played program.
So can we expect more major titles to appear on the shelves for both platforms at the same time? Well... with Apple gaining ground every month, particularly in the high-end laptop market, we wouldn't be surprised (but forgive us if we don't hold our breath). µ
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Noticed the other day, while looking at a copy of Warcraft 3 Battlechest Edition, that it is also dual platform.
I have to take a guess and say Apple will soon either upgrade the MiniMac or dump it. If they update it with the new NVidia setup it's mine.
If I could get all the same games for Mac, that I play on a Windows box, bye bye Microsoft!
The problem with Mac gaming is that its not worth the ROI. (Return on investment) Their better off just using boot camp with windows. The 8600 series gpu in generally isn't great.
Anything that decentralizes the Microsoft gaming hegemony can only be good.
Apple doesn't have a mid-tower Mac around the $1000 mark that would be good for gaming (mainly video card upgrades) because they realized they don't have a market for it, mainly because there aren't enough games ported over to the MAC.

Game makers don't won't to waste time porting games over because there isn't a real market for it.

Gamers won't buy MACs that can run the games at the same level a PC can because they'll have to shell out at least twice as much for a MAC that would have comparable hardware to a PC. So Apple doesn't have a market for a MAC aimed at a gaming crowd.

Mac's are goood, I like mac's, but Apple has pigeon holed themselves, but in there defense they are doing a damn fine job in their hole.
Mac people in my online shooters in the near future? Oh, yes, let them come. The slaughter will be glorious.
Ya mean "The Way It's Meant To Be Preyed", dontcha? After all when the purveyor of fruity, reassuringly expensive entertainment hardware and the purveyor of thermally defective graphics hardware get together, the customer is definitely the target of nastiness.
They'll release a 2 button gamer mouse soon.
put whatever gpu you want in a macbook lol its stil a laptop and it aint getting none of that direct X 10. Mac is not for gamers MAC is for losers
May I have some of what you're smoking, please? I assume the unflattering tinfoil hat is optional?
Now to wait for LotRO to become Mac compliant and possibly Guild Wars 2...that'll make me switch :D
Nigel,

I feel that you may be a little misinformed due to the fact that the new 15in MacBook Pros come with DUAL graphics cards. You can tell the system which card you want to be running based on your environment and need for extended battery life. So .... they are not using the 8600M except in the old style 17in MacBook Pro. The twin cards listed below seem like a great system for the price. How much is a Windows based laptop that has this kind of graphics power?

NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics processor with dual-link DVI support; 256MB of GDDR3 memory on 2.4GHz configuration; 512MB of GDDR3 memory on 2.53GHz and 2.8GHz configurations

AND

NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory
The reason for the not-available phenomena of games on macs is obviously that DX is closed source, so to make things run on macs you must use OpenGl, and ironically I think the 'way it is meant to be played' programme is probably geared towards pushing the latest DX, if alone because OpenGL still doesn't support all the hardware features thanks to the khronos group's lacklustre efforts.
I would like nvidia to push OpenGL for games though, that will also make linux versions possible and busts MS's monopoly and keeps them on their toes.