Why does Apple not give a crap about gaming?
Posted on : 24-02-2008 | By : Andy | In : tech
Tags: apple, gaming
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When you buy (or build) a PC, you can slap any CPU, motherboard, or graphics card (assuming some basic level of hardware compatibility) and Windows will work with it. This is one of Windows’ greatest benefits, and biggest weaknesses. The OS has to support every Tom, Dick, and Harry, so it gets pretty bloated.
When you buy a Mac, you can swap out the RAM of your choice, or the HD, but if you want to upgrade your other components you gotta be careful. Steve Jobs likes this, because Mac users don’t upgrade, they replace.
Back to gaming: gamers love to overclock, frequently love to upgrade components, and don’t want to overpay for their components. (They’ll pay a ton of money for the latest graphics cards, but paying an Apple premium for the same stuff would never fly.) They know enough about computers to understand that “Apple” RAM is a ripoff.
So why should Apple care about supporting games? They wouldn’t stand to profit greatly at it, with much lower profit margins to that demographic. Apple makes their money by creating great things you can’t get elsewhere and selling at a hefty profit margin, and jumping in alongside the PC price wars wouldn’t benefit them at all. Furthermore, if you want to game on a Mac these days, you can install Boot Camp and run windows. Then, when you need to upgrade, you can dish out the extra dough for a whole new computer. Happy Apple.
Mac users don’t replace machines, they add to their collection. See the thing is it’s really nice to have multiple Macs in one place because they network so well and generally don’t degrade the way that many PC’s seem to.
Apple RAM, is definitely more expensive but they’re very smart about it. Think about it – what is the one thing that everybody seems to think they need more of? RAM right – well, combine that with the fact that many of those same people that think they need more RAM also don’t have a clue how to install it and you have a very lucrative situation.
Gamers are a different breed – and as a mac guy I hope they stick with the windows boxes. So many gamers want to have a machine that looks like Darth Vader’s mask and has a liquid-cooled, neon-glowing underbelly to play World of Warcraft on – Macs are too refined for that kind on nonsense.
I’d never tell a gamer to get a mac and run Boot Camp, Parallels or VMWare. Sure, just the fact that you could do that increases the nerdery level to a +5 (something that would be great to add on to the bottom of all of their WoW forum posts) but it would really be a sad waste of a Mac.
Macbook Pro: $2500
Windows Vista License (DX10): $200
World of Warcraft: $15/month (?)
Playing WoW on your MacBook Pro to gain +5 to your nerdery level: Priceless
I feel the only way to appropriately follow that up would be with a YouTube parody ad done exactly to that script. But I have a feeling that someone with a +5 nerdery level would probably use XP. Then again… I’m a mac guy, what do I know.
Nah, you can’t have DirectX10 support without Vista. And when your machine has that much power, it can handle Vista.