f13.net

I'm just seeking a little advice.

I used to play a lot of games back when.  I had a lot of free time when I was schooling.  Strangely enough, now that I am employed and could probably buy every console out there and a killer gaming rig, I just don't want to anymore.  My lifestyle has completely changed.  I used to want to be a hardcore gamer, but I don't have time anymore.  My focus is on other things besides gaming nowadays, I suppose.

I don't want to abandon games though.  Which is why I have been thinking about how to get set up as more of a casual gamer, from a hardware standpoint.

1) Mac.  I think I should by a Mac.  Mac seems to put the focus away from gaming.  Instead, they focus on how their products fit into or change your lifestyle, being more of an all-purpose computer.  So I was thinking of getting a Mac (and an LCD screen if need be) so I can stop having giant, noisy, beige gaming PC's in my room, and have the computer retain a very small profile.  Desk space is precious to me, as is overall room space.  This would effectively prevent me from playing the majority of games out there, as well as my old games.  So that's why I was also thinking of...

2) Revolution.  Nintendo is trying to appeal to non-gamers, but at the same time their philosophy also feels right to me as a casual gamer.  I got my DS for this reason, actually.  I wanted games that I could play for 5-30 minutes at a time, and no longer than that.  I think the Revolution may be a step towards this direction.  Also, the Revolution is all "revolutionary" and stuff, and I am getting a bit jaded from the current genres of games.  Since I can't play games on a PC anymore, this could be my "casual gamer" replacement.

Currently I have an AMD system for PC games, and a PS2.  The games nowadays are so geared towards giving you the most hours of gameplay and requiring you to sit down for an extended period of time.  PS2 is especially demanding for me because many of the games that I like also have loading times (Contra: Shattered Soldier, Gradius V, etc.).

Anyway, I guess I just wanted to know if anyone knows of any casual gamers out there and what their hardware setup was.  In the end, I just don't want to spend money anymore on something that I'll rarely use.

Mac - yes. They fucking upgrade themselves, and you don't hafta be a genius to run one. Not necessarily the best tool for gaming though from my experience.

Consoles - I'm gonna hold out on the next gen stuff and keep playing the GC and PS2. Consoles seem the best for the casual gamer, especially since you can't rent a PC game anywhere that I know of.

I was mainly a Mac user for years.....It never worked out. You'll feel envy sooner or later. Whether you have a console or not.

Me too, and I was completely content with the GC as my sole gaming outlet. But you all know how I am.

I couldn't just have one platform like that. Even if every single Game Cube game was great, I still couldn't. There's always going to be those type of games that never make it to consoles, and I'm going to want to play them.

Does that make me hardcore? I'm not sure. It's not like I spend hours and hours playing "a lot of games" per se. I just play a lot of types of games.

If all I had was a console, then I'd never having the option of playing the vast majority of strategy games, simulators, non japanese rpgs, or adventure games that release on the PC.

If all I had was a PC, then I'd be shit out of luck with good platformers, jap rpgs, fighting games, sports games, racing games, puzzle games, and the like.

I see your point.  For me, it was always that I would see a game I wanted, and then because I never had any money, I didn't end up buying the game until the next big title showed up.  Then I would just forget about that older game.  At some point, I realized that I never really missed all these games that I never got to try out.

In fact, I think it would be good if I had less titles in my life.  I would never have to think "Gee, I haven't even played this game since I bought it, so I'd better put in some hours into it in order to justify the purchase."  I used to think like that at one time.

My true dream is to find those few titles that I can play over and over again and not get bored of.  Maybe then I would buy less games.  I don't know if that logic is flawed, though.

Those titles you can play over and over again don't exist as you get older. There are maybe 7 from the last generation that I could name off the top of my head. But even then, you'll eventually run out of content.

I was a Mac "user" until my second year of college. Meh. If you don't want a noisy beige PC, build your own with a kickass case. Hell, you could build the most powerful PC out there with a case that puts a Gwhatever to shame and it would still cost less than a not even top of the line Mac. My other big problem - limits. There are limits to what will run on a Mac. Simply because there isn't enough Mac software. Every now and then Apple puts out a piece of software that I, personally, think is really cool. I even sometimes entertain the notion of buying a Mac. But if there's so much as a SINGLE PC game that doesn't come out on the Mac that you really want to play, you'll be pissed.

As for consoles - picking and choosing doesn't work. Even if you're being reasonable with this generation you'd still have to own a Gamecube and PS2. Even if the PS2 was just for God of War and Soul Calibur 3. They're just that good. As for the revolution, I'll buy one. Super Smash Bros online is enough for me to buy one. But really, I'm simply not naieve enough anymore to believe in an actual console war. I knock Nintendo a lot because their outside the box thinking doesn't impress me. Hell, Sony impresses me more than Nintendo. But that's neither here nor there, each console has first party titles or exclusives that puts almost every cross-platform title to shame. Ninja Gaiden/Jade Empire/Fable, God of War/REZ/Soul Calibur 3, Eternal Darkness/Animal Crossing/Smash Bros, The Movies/Civ 4/Age of Empires 3/F.E.A.R - pick your poison. You still end up buying every console.

If you want to be a gamer that's casual but wants to play the best of the best, from now til the end of time you'll end up buying every console and own a Windows based PC. That's simply the reality of the situation. It's unfortunate that there's more than just Sega and Nintendo now (even if my completely delusional mind says that Flashback, AvP and Cannon Fodder were worth playing on the Jaguar back in the dark ages). A third platform instantly adds an unnecessary $100 minimum. For better or worse, in the next six years I think we'll be down to two major competitors again.

I bought a Mac this year in April. Later this year the Motherboard of my Win Box broke down and I didn't bother to repair it until one and a half months later. Although I had the money all of the time, the sole reason I lifted my lazy ass to do it was some new games I wanted to play.

So yes, I think if you get your gaming needs satisfied by Consoles, the Combo Mac+Console could work. Personally I am into Roleplaying Games, and for them you can't maneuver round a Win Box.

So I guess what you guys are trying to tell me is that I would have to give up a lot to go to Mac + console.  I think my purpose in all this is to have my life dictated less by gaming, which may indeed result in giving up a lot of good games.

I was also considering buying a small form factor PC instead of a Mac.  That way, you have the best of both worlds, something that can game decently without taking up lots of space.

Oh, and thanks to everyone for the advice.

I just switched to a Mac this weekend.  I have my Athlon 64 Laptop for old Windows thingies, and my iMac for general purpose computing.

Its doable, and with PC Gaming being in the sorry shape it is, its not an unreasonable thing to do any more.
Unless you are an Schild type with EVERY system there will always be a few games you miss out on though, no matter what you do.
It just happens.

Dumped Windows in 2003 for good and converted the entire household to macs (+ a Linux box) last year.

With the exception of games and some rare specialized software needs, anything you can do on a PC can be done on a Mac. And since OS X is *nix (BSD to be more precise) underneath, you can run all the F/OSS offerings too. Also, most of the really good games are multi-platform or are ported to Mac. Blizzard is a sterling example, WoW/WCIII/Diablo were all cross-platform. There's enough games for a Mac user, and if there isn't a Mac version, the game is most likely to be a poor game, as any serious developer will offer a Mac version. Again, see Blizzard for a successful company that gets this and has helped catapault them into the royal seat of the game sales realm.

MMO on Mac
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WoW
ATitD
WWII Online
Shadowbane

Strategy Games on Mac
---------------------------
Civ3 (Civ4 coming out early 2006 for OS X)
FreeCiv
RoN
WCIII
C&C
Dominions II (and to be released Dominions III)
EU/HoI

My life doesn't revolve around games, and I barely have enough disposable time as it is to devote to video gaming.

I never touched a Mac until 2003 as it was OS X that lured me to the platform. But I will say Macs brought the joy of computing back into my life.

Nearly everyone in my family uses a Mac.  Righ has used them for ages.  He has a laptop with Windoze on it for games, although he rarely uses it and I have a Windoze PC for games.  He's convinced everyone in my family to buy Macs.  They've been especially useful for my sister, the professional artist and her son, the musical protegy. 

I used to be a big time Mac hater. I worked in the printing industry for 13 years or so and from '91/'92 or so, the Macs made increasing inroads into the industry to the point that in 2000 or so, most of the high-end Scitex systems that we had used for years were put out to pasture because the Macs could do everything and then some. Now I hated Macs at that point because no matter how good they were for printing/design, they sucked at everything else. The OS was the problem. Very unstable, and if one program crashed, you could be pretty sure that everything else was going down with it. Now in 2005, I'm quickly becoming a Mac convert. The school where I work has started an Apple laptop initiative and I'm the tech for it. I got a 14" G4 iBook with an 80 GB HD, 1 GB of ram and a 1.48 GHz processor. It's faster than the PCs I have at home, seems more reliaable, picks up a WI-FI signal faster than Homer J. can pick up a donut, and plays WoW with little or no hiccups. And my hope is that in January, (if rumors are true) if/when Apple releases Intel based Macs, I'll be able to either load Windows + games or play games through WINE or Cedega. In any case, unless my dreams are shattered, my next comp will be a Mac of some sort. I'm frankly quite sick of Windows and it's bloat and problems. And hopefully developers won't have to spend as much to convert to OS X. As for consoles, I just can't get excited about anything  there right now with the possible exception of the DS and the online Animal Crossing game. Right now, I'm all about portability and online play. My two dreams are that 1.) The Elder Scrolls comes out with a MMOG, and 2.) Sega releasees PSO on either the DS or the PSP. I want to be able to multi-play on the go. Yeah, I know that there's a Sony online game for the PSP, but frankkly I don't wan't to pay that much for the unit. I'm po' white trash.

After all that rambling, Mac + consoles could work for casual, but I'd wait 6 months to see how things shake out.

You're not talking about this WWII Online, are you?
http://www.brokentoys.org/ww2o-irc.html

But yes, I think I see your point quite clearly.

I disagree that only the good PC games get ported to Mac. C'mon now...

Besides, it takes awhile to see ports of these few "good" games anyways. Sometimes it takes 6 months up to a year. I can only think of a handful of popular titles that were released simultaneously on the Mac and PC.

Secondly, the days of good exclusive games on the Mac are gone (Marathon). The great ones ended up moving to PC (Myth and Fallout for example), and ever since then, nothing of that quality is released as Mac only anymore. I wouldn't call a platform solely dependent on ports to be much of gaming platform at all. It offers nothing unique itself.

As a gaming platform, it has no selling points: A limited selection that's only been slightly improved over the years, long waits for ports, and nothing exclusive of it's own.

* Note: I know the original poster doesn't care to have a Mac as a gaming platform. I'm just addressing some of naum's comments above.

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I'd make a similar case for Macs as a "designer's platform" as well. I still have a Mac set up with old ProTools hardware myself, but when/if I ever decide to set up another machine like this, it'll be on a PC.

There used to be good reasons to choose a Mac over PC in this case, but not anymore. There was a time when audio software and hardware, ProTools specifically, were Mac exclusive. Nowadays, if someone was currently using Macs for audio design, Midi, and/or multitracking, then they WILL envy PC owners more than even a gamer would. It's just no contest anymore. There's so many more hardware, application, and plug-in options for Windows. More things to experiment with. More fun.

Many 3D, video, and DP apps that used to be Mac only are PC now. Same deal as audio.

------------

Apple's OS and integration is better, sure, but in the end, not by that much: They're not going to dramatically improve anybody's productivity. Windows might be shitty, but it isn't THAT shitty.

After a month of use, some bright eyed Mac adopter will spot the quirks, the flaws, and the frustrations just like they would with a PC. And then.....They'll realize just how much they're lacking in options compared to a PC. Hardware-wise and software-wise.

Lastly, equivalent software and hardware peripherals and upgrades are usually more expensive on a Mac than they would be a PC. Memory, video cards, year old games, even mice and joysticks: They're all usually more expensive.

Prices have improved a little in recent years, I'll admit (it used to be really bad), but it's still not on equal footing with third party hardware and software prices for the PC.

I'm not going to get in the way of anyone's personal preferences though. That's an entirely different thing. I think Macs are better designed computers as well. I just don't think they're better as far as third party options go.....Which makes a world of a difference.

[edit] Typos galore.

I'm primarily a Mac user, the only reason my PC gets any use, other than to fuck around with security settings, is to play MMOs.

If you want to go casual, yeah. You can do it. When I burn out on the MMOs (which happens a lot more frequently lately) I'll just stick to work on the powerbook and the occasional X-Box game.

To be fair, I don't think the tanks fly anymore. That's all I can say for it.

I bought a Powerbook earlier this year so I could use Shake (only made for Mac) because I needed it for portfolio work, etc.

I did the Powerbook because I also needed a laptop so I killed two birds with one stone.

I set up my laptop at work every day and the majority of my daily work now gets done on it. In addition, I do tons of portfolio work on it. As a matter of fact, my work PC is now relegated to a couple programs that are not made for OSX, although I often just Remote Desktop to my work PC and use them from my Mac.

I am not a blithering, drooling Apple convert by any means. XSI still only runs on Windows and Linux and I use that heavily (on my home PC) and several other apps in the same category run better on my home PC than the Powerbook. But in defense of Apple, my home PC has better specs than the laptop.

In order to avoid rambling, I'll get to the point. I have actually grown away from gaming as much as I used to. Was the Mac the reason for it? No. But it did help a bit. Because I got so into the OS and some of the things I am now able to do on it, I have become more productive in other aspects of my life and that has taken away from the leisure time I used to use for gaming. I have had my share of frustrations with the Mac and they can be just as dodgy as a PC at times. OSX likes to lock up if you challenge it too much. Yada yada. Computers are what they are no matter what you are running. Throw a wrench in the works of any and you're bound to encounter an error or two. Nature of the beast and logical fixes always at hand.

In short, I'd say that if you know the Mac would easily fit into your routine and would accomplish what you use your PC for, then go for it. There are still games available on it. As for the console portion, I also have a GameCube and to be quite honest, because of the aforementioned increase in computing activities outside the realm of gaming, it has had scant use as well. If you know you'll still have some leisure time for gaming, go for the console, otherwise leave it. Easy for me to say though as I always have the powerful PC at hand for a gaming fix if I so desire.

As to the noise issue, PowerMac G5s get massively fucking loud when they are working on something processor intensive. They are pretty quiet when not doing so, but just a forewarning, they sound like a jet engine when the fans get revved up. The new iMacs look pretty nice and fairly powerful as well. If you're looking for something that is easy to upgrade (on your own), stick to the PowerMacs.

Okay, I'm done. I hope that helps more than it confuses. I wrote this post from my home PC because I was too lazy to get out the Powerbook this evening. ;)

If by upgrade you mean gets obsolete and can be asily replaced with just one big swipe of a creditcard, than yes, you are correct.


Interesting bit of useless comparisson, since we have no clue, what PC's you have at home.
The G4 with 1 GB ram I used at work was also faster than the old 0,8 GHZ Windows ME 256 MB laptop I used on travels.... and so what?

As to the original poster.

I'd like my parents to own a Max, since that would cut down on the support I need to give them.
If you like the type of games you get on consoles, then your solution works - if you like strategy and FPS, then you're shit out of luck (lor get to play a few choice old titles).
If you're going for small form factor and low (to no) noise, then your looking at the Mac Mini - great machine, but expensive, even less upgradeable and absolutely useless for gaming (WoW was stuttering on the high-end version I borrowed for review) and slower than ANY pc in the same pricerange.

If you're not sick and tired of Windows or in dear need of something very easy to use, I'd suggest a Shuttle BTX system or any f the similar small form factor pc's. Faster than the Mac for the same money, low noise, looks nice, takes up little space and can be easily upgraded.

As for consoles - I have no clue, allthough the Revolution wouldn't be my first... or second choice. But that's purely based on oppinion.

You have the perfect attitude to be a hardcore mac zealot: blind. Really, did you post this from 1995? The only reason you'd have a big noisy beige box is if you bought one that way, despite the hundreds of alternatives. I don't even know if you can buy one like that any more. Sorry to be such a dick, but that's crazy talk. I've got computers mounted to the undersides of desks, the only footprint is the LCD monitor and input devices. My own pc is big (my choice), but it's nice brushed aluminum and fits right in with my a/v gear.
C'mon, naum. I love OSX in a big way, but that's delusional.

The bottom line for the OP is that if you're willing to give up the pc-specific genres, like MMO, RTS, TBS, Sims (meaning flight sims, management sims, not The Sims), etc, and if you can stomach using a controller for FPS games, then mac with a console is a great way to go.

Until I get tired of gaming, I won't get rid of my pc. It's also hard for me to pay 3x as much and have less control over what goes into my pc hardware-wise. I use OSX at work, I prefer it over XP in almost every other way. If you're not going to game on the mac, the G4s do a great job with OSX (w/ lotsa RAM), do not consider a G3 at all. G5s are hot and loud and expensive. See: mac on intel. It'd be worth waiting out the next year and see how that shakes out.

I'm very torn about my next computer. Either I can upgrade my gaming rig or get a PentiumM Powerbook....but my gaming days would wane, and I'm just not ready for that. Court some fucking game devs, Apple! It's the only way I can see getting a mac, I just can't afford to have both platforms. Now...intel silicon that can dual boot both OSs, even if it's in a mac box....hmm...

Let's see, the best MMO on the market (WoW), the alltime best RTS series (WCIII/SC, AoE/AoM, C&C) all have Mac versions and the best or at least most popular strategy game (Civ3) all have Mac versions or were developed multiplatform. Of games made for just PC, I would venture to wager that the % that they are good games is a hell of lot lower than those that are multiplatform or eventually ported to Mac. I haven't done FPS since Wolfenstein 3D, but all of the best FPS games are available on the Mac side too.

Yes, there's a lot of games (like DAoC or SWG in the MMO category) that are entirely PC-centric. But again, look at the market leader now, Blizzard, that develops their game multi-platform. They get it, and their sales behoove the superiority of their game over competitors (for that type of game, including RTS of WCIII).

Again, point is, most all the **good** and/or **popular** games all have Mac versions available — I realize there are gems that do not, but there's enough games to keep a Mac user engaged gaming wise.

On Mac vs PC: Windows has > 95% marketshare on the desktop market.  Regardless of whether you like MS or not, it is usually not a good business decision to spend the time to port games over to the Mac, therefore most aren't.  It's equivalent to buygin a BETA VCR.  You can argue the quality is better to your heart's content, but you can actually buy stuff you want for the PC.  Only reason to buy a Mac is if you get jollies by hating Gates.

If you don't want to play many games (as in more than 3), sure a Mac will do fine. And with the Revolution, you'll probably get that many playable games over the lifecycle of the console.

No, I mean you don't hafta be a rocket scientist and perform surgery on it because you will always know someone who always has the newest shiny and will let you use the new OS CD to upgrade. I haven't had to pay for new OS EVAR.

I've been debating picking up a Mac Mini to futz around with OSX and because, from what I can tell, it would be my best bet for a machine that I can use to edit video footage.  We're expecting a kid very very soon and I'd really like to get a nice digital video camera so that I can inundate my parents with the footage of their grandkid that they'll miss since they don't make it into the city very much.

It might also be a good machine for the kid to learn on (much later on, obviously).  My first computer was an Apple ][e, so maybe that's a bit of nostalgia bias, I dunno.

Does anyone know if the video editing software is truly superior for Macs?  I've heard great stuff about GarageBand (music software, but whatever), so I'm wondering if all of the hype I see about the Mac's video editing powers are true. 

Plus, with a kid on the way, a Mac Mini may be cheaper than a new PC rig with a DVD burner....that's a good thing, IMO.

The Ghost of Steve Jobs would like to tell you that you are a dirty filthy pirate.

This has been true from my second-person experience. The only two people I have known to delve into film editing have been Mac users. That was in the Final Cut Pro days though (2003 ish?). If you don't wanna plunk down $900 for Final Cut Pro there's Final Cut Express for $200. I have no idea what the PC can do for the independent film editor.

I seem to remember the reasoning behind a Mac's superior video editing capabilities stemming from the cpu's architecture. Something about pipelines and different instruction sets.

Sorry 'bout that. My desktop is an AMD Athlon 1800+, 1 GB, and an ATI 8500. The laptop is an HP with a Celeron 2.4 GHz and 512 MB with an ATI IGP 340m. Granted the problem with my PCs are the graphics cards. Way old. But even Photoshop performance and general logging in and out is much faster on the Mac. 'Course I haven't had enough time to foul it like I have my PCs. ;)
 
The only thing that I really use my PC stuff for anymore is music production. I got an external Sound Blaster for the HP laptop and can pretty much emulate a full music studio with real-time vocal processing using Cakewalk Project 5 and N-Track along with a USB keyboard. Now if only I could get my mitts on Logic Pro for the Mac....then we'd see how the two stack up.

Nah, that's the beauty of making your money on your hardware. OSX is also a very portable OS, I'm feeling very anti-XP right now given my experiences with imaging to an external HD. With Mac OSX, I just ran my imaging app, then held down Opt while booting. It just works. I'm still dicking around with this XP installation, I'm actually going to have to do research now. Which I actually don't mind...but when I can do it with a couple mouse clicks with OSX...it's just a better user experience, and that's been a consistent factor with the macs here.
Why not Pro Tools with the mac? It's what tons of studios are using now. I've been eyeing the Digi002 control surface for years, I don't like using the mouse as my interface, holdover from ye auld days.

Sounds like BS to me.  Much like the "AI on this console system will be crap because teh processor is optimized for floating point calculations and not for branches" or whatever we were hearing a while ago about one of the next gen consoles.  If Macs had superior video editing capabilities it'd be because the software is better.

Not BS. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltiVec) Well, arguably not BS, but Adobe optimizes for AltiVec.

Is there any actual performance difference?  If not, it's BS.

When I was taking a course in compiler design, we had a guy from Intel come to our class and talk about how they spent a lot of time working on this fancy hardware optimization to make branches faster - the chip would simultaneously begin execution of both branch possibilities while it worked on figuring out which one was the correct one, and then go back and discard the one that had turned out to be irrelevant.  Very clever and it'd look very nice in a marketing blurb once they gave it a fancy name.  Unfortunately, after about a year of working on this thing, including prototyping the hardware and writing special compilers optimized to take advantage of this new gizmo, it turned out that it only produced a 0.5% increase in performance when it came to real-world applications.  That's the way the cookie crumbles, unfortunately.

Stories like this make me very skeptical of "optimized for blah blah blah" claims that aren't backed up by real world benchmarks.   :wink:

So I just got back from an EB where the PC section is now a loosely organized pile of old boxes, along with one shelf of "New Releases" - in toto, CoV, AoE3, and the Movies.

Admittely I buy ALL my PC games mail order now, but there's less of em as time passes. I've seen this pattern before, with the Atari ST and the Commodore 64. It ain't gonna get better. MMOs will carry the PC market for a while, but once people crack the code for how to make a successful console MMO? That'll be it, save for "boutique" games (which admittedly is most of what I buy - strategy games mostly).

So, a casual gamer today I'd think would more than happy with a console and a Mac. Remember, casual gamers won't be drooling over web sites of Next Month's Pretty Shooter.

Personally (and admittedly I am far from "casual") I own a Windows PC and 2 consoles for gaming, and a Mac for "work" (Internet, writing, dabbling in some development). It works out pretty well.

Final Cut Pro is a nice piece of professional software, but may be a bit more than you need and will not run nicely on a Mac Mini. I'd suggest getting an iMac G5 if you plan on doing video editing and a PowerMac G5 is out of the price range. Mac Mini's are nice for the size and whatnot, but considering that they don't come with a monitor, keyboard or mouse, if you add those on, you're almost at the price of an iMac. And the new revisions of the iMac have the iSight camera built right into the monitor, which is neat for video chat and not much else, but still. ;)

iMovie and iDVD should suit your purposes fine and should come loaded with any new Mac so I'd say spring for an iMac if you can afford it. A Mini should run those both alright, but the video performance still suffers from the video card that comes in them. If you decide to buy Final Cut Pro and load it up, plan on at least an iMac.

I believe that Microsoft has released Windows Movie Maker software for free via the Windows Update site and I think that there is a similar program that's free from Adobe as well. So if the Apple price points don't fit the budget, you do have options on a Windows PC. All of them are fairly easy to use, but I will give Apple the nod for having the best templates and transitions.

If you want to do professional video or sound editing, then both platforms will do fine (allthough you'll still get more bang for the buck if you go pc).
If you want ease of use, a bunch of programs that play nice together and are easy to learn, because the interface is the same then nothing on the pc beats iLife which all the Mac Minis are bundled with.

But it's a myth that professional editing is done on Macs or that they're somehow better.
Most graphic work is done on Macs (I work in publishing), but that's changing, the Adobe suite which is winning over Quark has no Mac preference. Most photographers use Macs, but that's because professional photographers have more money than sense and like stuff that looks good...
The video and sound editing companies I know, have left the Mac behind.

If that's the big $1000 dollar music package, then yeah, that's probably what I meant. As i said, if I could get my mitts on it....just don't have the moolah for that right now. As for using the mouse as the interface, I've found that I come up with some pretty cool stuff when I compose completely with mouse and computer keyboard. I don't get locked into set patterns like I do when I have a keyboard/guitar/drum controller. I tend to experiment and analyze more. I usually try to do a bit of both though. I'll start with doing the keyboard/mouse method and then add more humanly inspired stuff over it with a typical MIDI controller. What I really want to do eventually is play with one of the Smart Boards at our school. They're sort've like big iinteractive white boards attached to a computer and LCD projector. Think vertical digitizer or REALLY HUGE touch screen. I keep thinkg that would be really cool for doing realtime collaborative stuff. One person playing the notes, while another plays with the shape and sound of the note, while another does real time effects processing on the note. 'Course, now that I've put my dream on the net, someone will do it before me. Or already has. Such is my life.

Ever use Ableton Live?

Yes, you are right.  I guess I forgot to mention a few things.

I have looked into such things as small form factor cases.  Getting such a system is probably cheaper, or at least a better value for the performance.  However, there's just something that's more interesting about a Mac.  I don't know, it's like there's something conceptually appealing about the way Mac products are that has nothing to do with performance.  It's clearly part of the way they advertise themselves.  They are very good at showing that a Mac will actually change your life, that it will add a significant value to it beyond the confines of mundane computing.  I guess this makes me a sucker, but this decision was actually inspired by a desire for lifestyle change.  Since Wintel isn't offering that kind of novelty, Macs are looking more appealing now.

But also, I have been looking at the software package that comes with a Mac.  There seems to be a lot of software that comes with it.  You also get developer tools, which is a big plus for me.  I also tire of having to fuss with drivers and downloading patches for stuff and other maintainance in general.  Having a computer that actually can't game (at least not to any great extent) will probably cut out a good portion of these chores.

But, as you say, I am going into this blind.  That's why I am glad to have heard all of these opinions.  In the end, I'm really trying to stop having the computer rule my life in general (and to think that a week before this post, I bought both Baldur's Gate 2 and Vampire: Bloodlines :( ).  I think that buying a low-performance, no-gaming shiny box may a step in that direction, with consoles providing the occasional gaming kick if need be.

Wow.

Isn't it uncomfortable having Steve Jobs's hand that far up your ass?

I guess what it comes down to is:

(http://sys.us.shuttle.com/Images/Buy/Full/Zoom_M1000.jpg)

>

(http://images.apple.com/powermac/images/designfrontback20051019.jpg)

If you're going to spend a Mac amount of money and forgo playing games, you may as well get something that looks about 500x better than any mac. And hell, the thing above has a Geforce 6600 256MB card in it. It'll play any strategy game you want, maybe not all the FPS games. But it'll play a million games more than the mac when you finally do get PC gaming envy.

I thought the point was the fucking OS and its better usability and durability? Was I mistaken in this?

You are comparing a media center PC to a Power Mac Schild?

Why not compare it to an iMac which does the same thing and is consumer level priced and
looks pretty as all get out?

Then again, you shouldn't be allowed to give purchasing advice anyhow Mr PSP and X Box 360 on opening day that still don't have jack shit worth the cash expenditure on.
(Shit, I have more games for my not even a week old Mac that are good games than those 2 systems have of must play titles combined.)

You don't buy a Mac for gaming.  You buy it because its not fucking Windows, and unlike Linux it has actual developers working on it.  According to Apple a million Windows users switched to Macs this year.   All the virii, adware, and spyware that help Windows' natural bloated Harkonen carcass blow ass aren't there.  Yeah there are more apps on a Windows machine.  Its because it (undeservedly) is the most popular computer platform since 1990 or so.  (Because Commodore apparently couldn't market water in the fucking desert, but there ya go.)

Computer gaming is dying out in its current form.  Game stores shove the PC game section into a smaller and smaller corner every year.
Who cares about a computer for gaming?  To play what?  More FPS titles that don't run smoothly without 300+ dollar videocards?  RTS games?
Whoop dee shit.  Consoles have more variety and tend to run better on their native hardware that doesn't go gamer obsolete in a year or two.

Yes Macs cost way too much.  Maybe the Mactels will be cheaper, who knows?
But I looked at it this way.  Windows machines are like 80/20 fat ground beef.  Its kinda greasy, but it gets the job done.  Its cheap, but you gotta drain the fat which can be irritating.
Macs are 97/3.  Costs a good 25% more than than the 80/20, but its a lot tastier, and you probably won't have to drain the grease at all.

I used to hate Macs too.  But I came to the realization my hate came from using Mac SEs in 1990 and computers have evolved.  PCs aren't anything like they were then, and neither are Macs.
And I am much happier for it.  Ive got a sexy bitch of an iMac for everyday computing, and my Windows laptop for all my legacy apps from 13 years of PC usage (except for those disk programs since laptops don't have disk drives any more.  Which really only prevents me from playing a good 5-10 games from the pre CDROM era I like anyhow.).

Will I have some system/game envy crap?
No, because I am not a dipshit.  You can't have everything you want anyhow.  If you have every system and top of the line hardware you probably don't have enough money for the software anyhow, unless you are some warezing douchebag who give fucksticks like Valve the excuse to DRM our virtual asses till they bleed.  
I have more games than I honestly know what to do with any how.  So I might miss out on a few PC only games.  Most of them are FPS and RTS and I have already mentioned how I don't give a damn about either genre.  And the few FPSes that are really good come out for consoles anyhow.  I can deal with dual stick FPSing just fine.  Its almost as intuitive as mouse keyboard now.

What's funny is since getting my Mac a number of forums have had discussions about the Mac and some guys always have to come out of the woodwork screaming about how lame Macs are.
Its about as retarded as your average Gamefaqs system boosting thread.  

if you like the hardware you have, good!  But why bash other systems just because its not your preference?
The pros and cons are one thing, pointless wankery is another.

Hi, angry mob. Welcome to the beginning of the thread.


How does the computer I posted not fit the quiet, small profile/footprint, not beige but striking, all-purpose computer requirement that he had? In addition to letting him play his old games, let alone play new ones.

I hate it when Schild is right. But Schild is right.

Im neither angry nor a mob. But point taken, I think I still had Voodoolily and her Autoupgradewonderpost in mind.

I agree, if its only the size and the noise thats bothering, by all means buy a bare bone system which is visually appealing to you. You may not be able to play all games, but still more than on the Mac, and it should be cheaper.

Edit: My post got eaten.

Just to point out, the computer I posted a picture of isn't remotely barebones. And it's the best use of a Pentium M I've seen in desktops. Shuttle puts all their stuff in a kickass case. There's a reason I own one (not the one above though  :-()

Anyway, Linkity link link (http://sys.us.shuttle.com/BuildXPC.aspx?id=1153). The most you'll need to do is upgrade the ram, which I'm fairly sure is easily done. That computer would make a dandy desktop replacement with a gig stick.

Edit again: Also, some of Shuttle's new computers come with a silent external power supply. Which is just fucking awesome.

I for one have that kind of setup that you describe. I own a Powerbook G4 15'' with a 1,25 GHZ Processor as a computer and a PS2 and a gamecube as consoles.

Why? At first it was a choice made because of my personal usage profile. I was a comp sci student and all of the computers in our labs were running some kind of unix dialect (Solaris, HP-UX, Linux or FreeBSD), I also used FreeBSD on my PC at home for all development work and web surfing. I had a Windows partition on that PC to dual boot into but I pretty much only used Windows to play games. Everything else was done on FreeBSD, including Text processing via TeX, Framemaker or Open Office.

At that time I was pretty much sick of all the installing new drivers, reinstalling windows and the constant patches required to play the latest games. I also kept buying less and less games for my pc because I was sick of EGO_SHOOTER_351 and REAL_TIME_STRATEGY_OFFERING_452 so I used the pc less and less for gaming. I think in 2004 I only have bought about 2 or 3 games for my PC. I don't play 1st person shooters or RTS because they bore me.

I loved and still love the flexibility of the command line interface but to this day despise the UI offerings for Unix. KDE, and Gnome are bloated pieces of UI crap that try and fail to emulate the Windows look-and-feel in their standard configuration, while every odd KDE and Gnome app has its own interpretation of usability and UI layout. Everything else is just Window Managers with either a few or a lot graphical gimmicks with every odd app using different widget sets and its own way of laying out the UI.

OS X came out and I liked the basic concept behind it very much (standard GUI with sensiible UI guidelines and the flexible BSD userland with bash or tcsh) so that in 2004 II bought a mac in order to try it. Shortly before that I had bought a gamecube for Zelda WW and Mario Sunshine and a used PS2 for GTA San Andreas and Final Fantasy.

Half a year later I sold my pc because I hadn't used it ever since.

I have bought more console games this year than I had bought PC games in the two years previous and I had more fun with them than I had with the last pc game I bought. With Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, Final fantasy X, Zelda the Wind Waker and GTA San Andreas I had months of fun while Far cry lasted only for 5 hours (until it was played to the end).

I have that setup for two years now and have not yet suffered from gamer envy. Most games I care about nowadays will be released for one of the 3 console offerings eventually or are even platform exclusives and for the price of a decent gamer PC (Eur 1000)  I can buy all three of the new consoles and a few games and still have money left for my DVD addiction.

I used this thread as an opportunity to look up the current top 20 pc games here in germany.

1 Age of Empires 3 (RTS, PC only)
2 Call of Duty 2 (1st person shooter, released for all major consoles)
3 Sid Meiers Civilization 4 (MAC port planned for early 2006)
4 Need for Speed - Most Wanted (released for all major consoles)
5 Star Wars Battlefront 2 (released for all major consoles)
6 World of WarCraft (MAC version available)
7 Football Manager 2006 (PC only)
8 X3 - Reunion (PC only)
9 F.E.A.R. (1st person shooter, PC only)
10 The Movies (PC only)
11 Dawn of War (RTS, PC only)
12 Battlefield 2 Special Forces (1st person shooter, PC only, planned releases for XBOX and PS2)
13 Age of Empires 3 (RTS, pc only)
14 Fifa 2006 (released for all major consoles)
15 Die Sims 2 (released for all major consoles)
16 Harry Potter und the goblet of fire (released for all major consoles)
17 Die Sims 2 - Nightlife (released for all major consoles)
18 Battlefield 2 (released for PS2 and X-BOX)
19 Guild Wars (PC only)
20 Finding Nemo (released for all major consoles)

Out of those 20 games there is only one I care about (X3) that is not released for either MAC or one of the major console platforms so for me gamer envy is not much of a problem. YMMV however.

I like the console way of life:

1. put cd in tray and press close
2. play
3. ???
4. profit!

No mucking about with drivers or patches and a broader variety of game types and I don't waste so much time to "maintain" the sanity and stability of my windows box which means more free time to do other things and I can play games while sitting on my couch.

Embrace

the

Niche,

Bitches. (http://www.f13.net/commentary.php?subaction=showfull&id=1114116951&archive=&start_from=&ucat=1&)

Feh, you only think Schild is right because Steve Jobs apparently touched you in a bad place once...

Schild's argument, while somewhat valid is still based on a false premise. As has been pointed out a few posts back, if he had compared that media center PC to an iMac or a mini, the argument would have been fine. Instead, he compared a pro-level G5 to a 'doze box I would only give to my most techno-retarded relatives.

If you're going to compare the G5 case to something, you might want to look at:

(http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/11-112-055-08.JPG)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811112055

There's better application software for Windows for almost everything. Macs have solid bases of very good productivity applications, but there are still more choices for Windows. However, the PowerPC 970MP processor, the only Unix system to have a worthwhile graphical environment, some of the Apple software technologies and the relative lack of support overhead are good reasons for considering a Mac.

As far as music production is concerned, Macs are still better choices, despite all the ear candy available on PCs. Using a Windows box to run a few Windows-only synths is okay, but Apple's Core Audio is more scalable and has lower latency than anything you can do with Windows applications.

If you want to play games, get a PC. If you want to only get one computer, you should almost certainly get a PC too. If you want to spend less time dicking around fixing Windows boxes, cleaning up spyware, dealing with application interoperability issues, or you're a Unix maven like myself, or you want to run a lot of virtual instruments and effects in one box, or you just want a lightweight platform to do basic Internet crap, you'll enjoy using Macs. But you'll probably still want to maintain a PC, because you're an F13 reader, and hence a gamer.

Now that grabbed my attention.  I've been debating a replacement for my ReplayTVs.  Will these things do auto commercial skip?  Talk to each other/share movies?

Main problem is the price point.  Those are not appliance prices.

Windows Media Center (what those are packaged with) won't, and are saddled with the usual MS DRM stuff.

You can get Beyond TV (http://www.snapstream.com/) tho, replace Media Center with it, and you'll have all the things you mentioned (auto-commercial skip, shared video libraries, etc). The latest version supports recompressing to DivX natively, which is nice.

The media center PC looks better. And out of the box can inherently play more games and has more "software" available than a pro-level G5. I don't think our friend here is a professional music producer so my point is completely valid. And to think, at first I was really only comparing the look and design specifications put forth in the first post.

As for Beyond TV - Yes.