Post by trog @ 12:11pm 24/04/09 | 51 Comments
Computer giant Microsoft reported earnings of 33 cents per share, with a net income of $2.98 billion, a decrease of 32% from the same period in 2008. Third-quarter revenue came in at $13.65 billion, a 6% decline from the same period of the prior year.Apple, however, aren't doing too badly, with revenue up 8.7% over the previous year.
What a time to be alive, eh? I remember back in the day when seeing something with the Apple logo was a shock. After being at GDC recently and seeing the sheer number of tech-savvy games developers that have adopted the MacBooks, I think it's fair to say the tables have turned on Microsoft in the desktop world - while they're still dominant, Apple are most definitely in the game.
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Posted 12:16pm 24/4/09
Posted 12:27pm 24/4/09
This is still a lot of value wiped off the company but at least they are clawing their way back now.
Posted 01:07pm 24/4/09
Was there a hidden joke in the second quote, about how how apples cant acutally play games.
If all the games developers have mac's, why arent there ore mac games.
Posted 01:09pm 24/4/09
do people still pay money for games?
Posted 01:25pm 24/4/09
Posted 01:53pm 24/4/09
Posted 02:07pm 24/4/09
I can think of... oh... probably about... none.
The fact the Microsoft had a drop in profit, during this "GFC" is hardly suprising. They still made a profit... I hardly see it as a bad outcome.
edit: neither does the market - shares up 0.75%. Their 3rd QTR guidance is also looking pretty bleak - below market estimates.
last edited by mongie at 14:07:21 24/Apr/09
Posted 02:04pm 24/4/09
Posted 02:21pm 24/4/09
Posted 02:27pm 24/4/09
Posted 02:30pm 24/4/09
there are lots of games supported by mac
http://www.apple.com/games/articles/
last edited by TiT at 14:30:37 24/Apr/09
Posted 02:51pm 24/4/09
Probably because Macs are overpriced and inflexible making them undesirable as gaming machines.
Just because they build games on Macs doesn't mean they expect there to be a market for games on Macs. They build cars with giant robotic arms but they don't build cars for giant robotic arms, that would just be stupid.
Posted 02:59pm 24/4/09
I've copied down some of the more popular ones because noone ever seems to click a link before speaking s*** about osx and games...? Flame away...
Age of Empires
Age of Empires II: Gold Edition
Age of Empires III
Aliens vs. Predator
Alone in the Dark
Baldur's Gate
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
Battlefield 1942 Deluxe Edition
Battlefield 2142
Beyond Castle Wolfenstein
Black & White
Black & White 2
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars
Call of Duty
Call of Duty 2
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Carmageddon
City of Heroes
City of Villains
Civilization II
Civilization III
Civilization III: Complete Edition
Civilization IV
Civilization IV: Warlords
Command & Conquer
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
Command & Conquer: Generals
Crash Bandicoot (video game)
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped
Day of the Tentacle
Descent
Deus Ex
Diablo
Diablo II
Doom
Doom II
Doom 3
Duke Nukem 3D
Dungeon Siege
Escape from Monkey Island
EVE Online
Fallout
Fallout 2
Full Throttle
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
Halo: Combat Evolved
Homeworld 2
Icewind Dale
Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures
Lego Star Wars: The Video Game
Max Payne
MDK
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights 2
No One Lives Forever
Sid Meier's Pirates!
Prey
Prince of Persia (1989)
Prince of Persia (2008)
Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame
Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones
Quake
Quake II
Quake III
Quake 4
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Return to Zork
Rise of Nations
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six
Settlers 2
SimCity 2000
SimCity 3000
SimCity 4
The Sims
The Sims 2
Sonic The Hedgehog (video game)
Sonic The Hedgehog 2
Sonic The Hedgehog 3
StarCraft
StarCraft: Brood War
Star Wars: Dark Forces
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
Super Mario Kart
Super Mario World
System Shock
Theme Park
Tomb Raider
Total Annihilation
Unreal
Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament 2003
Unreal Tournament 2004
Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans
Warcraft II: Battle.Net Edition
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos
Wipeout 2097
Wolfenstein 3D
World of Warcraft
Worms
Posted 03:00pm 24/4/09
Posted 03:07pm 24/4/09
Yeah i dont think so, but the rest of the list is more than i though, have to give quake a try.
Posted 03:19pm 24/4/09
Apple's stock is going relatively quite well.
Posted 03:25pm 24/4/09
Posted 03:41pm 24/4/09
vs. Ipod & Itunes.
Posted 03:58pm 24/4/09
not to mention loads of others that have made the switch due to integration of iphone apps.
games: already covered... as to whether they were released within 6months or not, is in the past. Macs are now becoming more and more mainstream, and with the growing market share, games will be ported closer and closer to other release dates. To the point when they will be built side by side and released at the same time. As trog said, the developers have adopted mac as their prefered machine. HOWEVER they still have to design and build for the market, not themselves. PC machines still out number macs by a long way, but that margin decreases daily.
I still use a pc as my main machine because i have to, for the work i do. But with native dual boot OSX and windows on my laptop now, i find i use it far more. My main machine is becoming more and more a torrent and HTPC machine.
Posted 09:39pm 24/4/09
You're such a fanboy is disgusting. Apple being mainstream has such a long way to go.
Posted 09:42pm 24/4/09
Posted 04:17pm 25/4/09
HAHA, this is just a misconception spread by Apple marketing. While Macs do have a larger foothold in this industry than they do in any other, it's mainly because they have a lot of design schools using Macs, so a lot of graphic designers learn to do their work on Macs. Most graphic designers and musicians I know prefer Windows over Mac. Again, this is probably just because that's what they know how to use, no system is inherently better for these tasks. Almost any video production company and CG graphics company will use some flavour of Linux, Solaris or other Unix based thing. This is a result of the days when these industries were the only ones working with files that were multiple gigabytes in size, and mainstream OS's (i.e. Windows and Mac OS) could not handle file sizes that big).
After spending the last couple of days making sprite sheets on a Mac, I can't see how graphic design is any better on the Mac than it is on the Windows. Go on, I dare a Mac fanboy to explain it to me without using marketing rhetoric or anecdotal evidence. I do game development on a Mac, but only because I have to rather than wanting to.
The reason there are less games on Mac is because most games are made for DirectX, which is usually a bit easier to make a game in than something like OpenGL. Since you can't get DirectX on a Mac, you can't get those games without an extensive conversion process. If you look through the list posted earlier, you'll find a big chunk of those games are from id software. That's because they use OpenGL and OpenAL for their games.
Posted 05:29pm 25/4/09
Posted 06:15pm 25/4/09
Posted 07:00pm 25/4/09
EA games released from now on, blizzard games, and a fair few other games the PC CD/DVD also has a mac installer. Ports do take ages, which is annoying, but newer tech means they can make standard releases also compatible with OS-X (as long as they aren't tied in heavily with d3d).
No, its because the desktop publishing industry grew up on macs. Macs at design schools are a result, not a cause.
Colour profile are a crapload easier to deal with in OS-X. Musicians, erm, I assume they don't use Pro Logic? Are they using an pro tools setup instead?
Perhaps for the backend, but for the front-end, um, Final Cut Pro. And now that Apple has Final Cut Server with xgrid integration things are starting to change back-end wise. Whats windows got, Premiere? olol. Only real competition that I can think of is AVID, which blows the cost of FCP out of the water.
Its personal preference, macs have much better PDF support (being that the OS is rendering with PDF), colour profiles are easier to manage, and because its an application-centric interface its generally more efficient to work than using a window-centric interface especially for design work. Although Adobe has pretty much screwed this over in cs4.
Indeed. Its the same issue as porting to PS3.
last edited by simul at 19:00:13 25/Apr/09
Posted 07:18pm 25/4/09
Posted 08:35pm 25/4/09
Posted 09:33pm 25/4/09
Posted 09:34pm 25/4/09
Yet more evidence that mac's are gay
Posted 10:20pm 25/4/09
Posted 08:04am 26/4/09
Posted 09:02am 26/4/09
Name a place in Brisbane, where a graphics designer might hope to work, with over a thousand employees?
The largest and most internationally successfull marketing houses here has about maybe 30-50 people in the office. All using Apple computers.
30-50 people and they are considered one of the biggest players in the industry, so I don't what smack you're talking about 1000 employees.
And it's not just the volume of apple computers, it's the fact that the most expensive computer that sits in a room by itself, that they pay a guy 100 bucks an hour to use because he is the only one to know how to use the software, is a mac.
last edited by thermite at 09:02:51 26/Apr/09
Posted 11:38pm 26/4/09
Oh god! He's back and he's telling us Windows hasn't changed in a decade again!
Posted 12:00am 27/4/09
This is the kind of advertising rhetoric I was talking about. What proof do you have of this? Apple has one of, if not the best, marketing teams in the world. Congratulations; you have been suckered in. Here's an example for you: Think about how much internal graphic design and desktop publishing goes on in the state government for all their propaganda and paraphernalia (hint: it's a LOT). Sure, a lot of people I have spoken to in this field learned their skills on a Mac, but I've never seen a Mac in a government office. Ever.
Posted 12:07am 27/4/09
Posted 12:42am 27/4/09
Have you seen the s*** design stuff government departments produce? I'm more than glad to know that a mac has never touched that disaster zone. :D
Posted 01:12am 27/4/09
or defending the importance of user experience and beautiful software. You know, the stuff that apple have been acing for years, that people here don't seem to understand. It's all just dumbed down, right?
Posted 02:22am 27/4/09
Posted 02:15am 27/4/09
Posted 08:48am 27/4/09
Posted 09:07am 27/4/09
Urr... the original comment was "woah dude, lots of people use mac's - you know... graphic designers and marketers etc."
My point is that those industries do not account for much. They don't employ many staff, so there is little need for thousands of pc's. Other industries where PC's are dominant, often use a MUCH LARGER NUMBER OF COMPUTERS.
Posted 09:19am 27/4/09
Posted 09:22am 27/4/09
Not sure whether you're agreeing with me, or saying the same thing, or making some sort of snide comment at my post.
Posted 03:01pm 27/4/09
Posted 05:06pm 27/4/09
I think its going to be very popular.
Posted 05:08pm 27/4/09
Posted 05:12pm 27/4/09
It was running awesome until my ram shat itself.
Posted 05:18pm 27/4/09
Posted 06:57pm 27/4/09
Posted 07:35pm 27/4/09
I play heaps of games, they run great. Left 4 Dead runs better now than ever, so I'm sure you'll be fine. =)
Posted 10:13pm 27/4/09
Edit: Looking for stats doesn't return any great results, though it looks as though by Jan 08 Vista alone had 100 million licenses shipped, this isn't even counting XP or NT (NT base is massive in governments).
last edited by Viper119 at 22:13:22 27/Apr/09