The Ultimate I am Switching to a Mac Thread!

jsedlak

ha! Got you!

Where can I go to read up on Mac news and future possibilities? In this next year I will probably be buying a MacPro (without OSX if that is possible... lol) because I am giving up on Dell. My biggest concern is the current lack of support for DirectX10 cards, which is a HUGE deal to me, being that I am a Windows game programmer and all.

Also how good is tech support? I have tried to get warranty replacement for a broken iPod once and was basically turned down instantly and called a fool. :cry

So Andy, what you got for me?

dragon300zx

Skip buying prefab systems all together. Buy the parts and do it your self, or have a system builder build it for you. Easier to get replacement parts, upgrade, and you get exactly what you want, and nothing you don't.

andymillson

jsedlak wrote:

ha! Got you!

Where can I go to read up on Mac news and future possibilities? In this next year I will probably be buying a MacPro (without OSX if that is possible... lol) because I am giving up on Dell. My biggest concern is the current lack of support for DirectX10 cards, which is a HUGE deal to me, being that I am a Windows game programmer and all.

Also how good is tech support? I have tried to get warranty replacement for a broken iPod once and was basically turned down instantly and called a fool. :cry

So Andy, what you got for me?

OK I may be missing something here, but you are planning on wiritng PC games on a Mac right?

The only way I can see to do this would be to use the BootCamp utility that would allow you to Dual boot either Mac OS X or Windows (XP SP 2 Only at this time is offcially supported, tho there are groups out there with solutions for Vista). When you boot into XP you are running the native OS, so anything that is supported on that OS (Including DirectX) should work as expected. I do not know for sure if the driver disk created with Botcamp will support DX10, but f it doesnt I would bet it will do in the near future.

The main reason I dual boot is so I can play games on my Mac. Parallels and other virtualization software work great for applications, but as soon as you need to do anything with 3D graphics or gaming, they cannot support DirectX etc.

Send me a demo of te game you are writing and I will gladly boot into XP and let you know how it works

Edit: OK I just rebooted into Bootcamp and I am runnig DX9.0c in the current version of XP/Bootcamp

(A Different) Andy

wxwax

I have a bunch of Mac bookmarks.

Give me a couple of hours and I'll post them for you.

jsedlak

andymillson wrote:

OK I may be missing something here, but you are planning on wiritng PC games on a Mac right?

The only way I can see to do this would be to use the BootCamp utility that would allow you to Dual boot either Mac OS X or Windows (XP SP 2 Only at this time is offcially supported, tho there are groups out there with solutions for Vista). When you boot into XP you are running the native OS, so anything that is supported on that OS (Including DirectX) should work as expected. I do not know for sure if the driver disk created with Botcamp will support DX10, but f it doesnt I would bet it will do in the near future.
(A Different) Andy

Woah, wait... are you saying that the only way to load Windows onto a Mac is through this BootCamp software? That kind of leads me to think that Macs still use proprietary hardware... :cry

Is there something stopping me from just installing Windows XP straight off the CD like you would with a PC?

dragon300zx wrote:

Skip buying prefab systems all together. Buy the parts and do it your self, or have a system builder build it for you. Easier to get replacement parts, upgrade, and you get exactly what you want, and nothing you don't.

This may happen if the above is true... my thoughts were that since Apple switched to Intel that Macs were just pretty PCs running OSX...

wxwax wrote:

I have a bunch of Mac bookmarks.

Give me a couple of hours and I'll post them for you.

Thanks, all I know of is macworld.com and even that isn't _that_ great.

wxwax

NEWS
http://www.appleinsider.com/
http://www.macrumors.com/
http://www.macsurfer.com/


FORUMS
http://forums.macnn.com/
http://forums.macrumors.com/
http://forums.applenova.com/index.php

BARGAINS
http://dealmac.com/

andymillson

All I can tell you is that to do the dual boot option you need to use the bootcamp solution.

As Macs do not use a BIOS (They use EFI http://www.intel.com/technology/efi/) like PC's do this might prevent the system from booting to a windows disc

It is also possible that windows will not recognise the hard drives installed into the Mac, as they are not formatted as fat/ntfs

When you boot he mac with a CD in the drive it will prompt you to attempt to boot from that, but I do not know if you can then install windows from that point on

I am a little loathe to test this option for you, sorry, theres is only so much guinea pig work I am willing to do

Edit : Well I decided to try it after all, and the Mac did not give me the option to boot the Windows CD. Must Have been the bootcamp driver disk I was thinking of last time, or the option goes away if you have installed bootcamp?

Andy

DavidTO

Parallels.

DavidTO

jsedlak wrote:

Also how good is tech support? I have tried to get warranty replacement for a broken iPod once and was basically turned down instantly and called a fool. :cry

The tech support is awesome, best in the business.

Why you would buy a Mac just to run Windows is beyond me, though.

andymillson

DavidTO wrote:

Parallels.

Wont do what he wants. He wants to be able to develop PC games using DirectX10, only available for Vista. Parallels will not alow you to use 3D graphics for gaming etc.

jsedlak

DavidTO wrote:

Parallels.

Not an option.

Article wrote:

VM doesn't support 3D hardware graphics acceleration so 3D graphics rendering in VM is only possible in software mode. Virtual video adapter is generic VESA 3.0 compatible device. Most of the modern computer games utilizing 3D graphics won't run inside VM due to this limitation.

VM virtualized video adapter only supports single monitor mode.



Mac pointing device and keyboard are virtualized as generic PS/2 devices in VM and some of their advanced features may be unavailable, 3rd party drivers won't be able to properly access the devices in guest OS.

I need full 3D hardware rendering as well as I need to test multiple monitor stability. I also need direct access to the XBOX 360 USB controller.

andymillson wrote:

All I can tell you is that to do the dual boot option you need to use the bootcamp solution.

As Macs do not use a BIOS (They use EFI http://www.intel.com/technology/efi/) like PC's do this might prevent the system from booting to a windows disc

It is also possible that windows will not recognise the hard drives installed into the Mac, as they are not formatted as fat/ntfs

When you boot he mac with a CD in the drive it will prompt you to attempt to boot from that, but I do not know if you can then install windows from that point on

I am a little loathe to test this option for you, sorry, theres is only so much guinea pig work I am willing to do

Edit : Well I decided to try it after all, and the Mac did not give me the option to boot the Windows CD. Must Have been the bootcamp driver disk I was thinking of last time, or the option goes away if you have installed bootcamp?

Andy

Thank you for trying! I guess it may be a lost dream at this point. I didn't realize they hadn't completely switched over to the PC's format, including the change to BIOS. Kind of sucks since I love how cheap the MacPros have come, even with two dual core xeons and two 500gb drives.

:cry

jsedlak

DavidTO wrote:

The tech support is awesome, best in the business.

Why you would buy a Mac just to run Windows is beyond me, though.

It isn't that I want to buy a Mac, I want to buy the hardware Mac has because it is the best bang for the buck along with build quality.

DavidTO

jsedlak wrote:

I didn't realize they hadn't completely switched over to the PC's format, including the change to BIOS. Kind of sucks since I love how cheap the MacPros have come, even with two dual core xeons and two 500gb drives.

:cry

I, for one, am really glad we don't have to deal with BIOS.

DavidTO

jsedlak wrote:

It isn't that I want to buy a Mac, I want to buy the hardware Mac has because it is the best bang for the buck along with build quality.

It sure is a sweet machine.

jsedlak

DavidTO wrote:

I, for one, am really glad we don't have to deal with BIOS.

Yeah, I didn't mean to come off as BIOS being better or anything... just stating I thought they were using all PC compatible parts.

DavidTO wrote:

It sure is a sweet machine.

Here is a thought...

Anyway to get the case / powersupply? I assume they use ATX Form Factor for the motherboard...

andymillson

jsedlak wrote:

Not an option.



I need full 3D hardware rendering as well as I need to test multiple monitor stability. I also need direct access to the XBOX 360 USB controller.



Thank you for trying! I guess it may be a lost dream at this point. I didn't realize they hadn't completely switched over to the PC's format, including the change to BIOS. Kind of sucks since I love how cheap the MacPros have come, even with two dual core xeons and two 500gb drives.

:cry

Only the Intel hardware, the Intel cpu's were outstripping the powerpc ones for the same money, made a lot of sense, especially as they developed rosetta (for running powerpc apps inside OS X on intel CPU's).

They are still a BSD box at heart, with Apple tweaks

Booting into XP is a real treat on the Mac book pro, runs alot faster than my PC runnning almost the same hardware. I am definitely a Mac convert and am trying to decide on whether to get my own Mac book pro, or keep using the work one and get a Mac Pro for home