Totally agree with this game developer's sentiments. Apple HATES game developers, and that's because Steve Jobs personally HATES games. Whatever Steve doesn't like doesn't get accomplished... yet MISSING GAMES ARE THE #1 BIGGEST PROBLEM WITH THE MACINTOSH PLATFORM!!!
It is also sooo true about the rapid turnaround at internal departments within Apple... and the new team has NO IDEA about what the previous team had accomplished.
Folks, the inner workings of Apple are a complete disarray, and you need no more proof of this than the fact that WE HAVE NO GAMES ON MAC OS X!
STEVE JOBS, WHY DON'T YOU GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER?! THE WHOLE WORLD WANTS GAMES.
Lying and using absolutes is no way to win a debate or get your point across:
1) There are games for Mac OS X.
2) The whole world doesn't want games.
3) I feel games on OS X is one of the smallest issues. Sure it will bring in some switchers but I don't think it would be many as from what I read gamers want more control over changing out video cards and such.
4) Steve Jobs may not be a gamer but to say Apple hates gamers makes no sense. I recall a recent keynote where Apple was working with at least two game developers to bring games to the Mac. As the Mac marketshare increases I think we'll see more developers wanting to develop for the Mac. Maybe then we'll see Apple try to compete with Windows on that level, but it being such a small segment of the market I wouldn't count on it. Apple has to many other important things to worry about.
But... I don't play computer games. Not because there aren't so many games.. no, but because I don't care so much about computer games. It typically takes too much time and uh... I think the kind of games I would like aren't available on computers anyway.
- Hence... I have a Nintendo Wii, that I occasionally play games on in the sofa.
I guess Apple thinks that all their customers are like me. But we all know that's not the case.
No, but some of us want to pretend it is. \
Seriously, I think a lot of the bad feelings on this issue date back to the late '80s/early '90s, when Apple, quite foolishly, thought that part of getting the Mac taken seriously as a BUSINESS machine was to stifle game development for the Mac.
Up to that point, Mac gaming was actually doing quite well, and was ahead of it's PC cousin.
Now, I'd say that Apple's stance towards gaming has changed from outright hostility to, well... indifference. They say all the right things from time to time, but as Valve, a premiere game developer states, they never seem to follow up.
So what we're left with is gamers continuing to be upset with Apple for not following through, and distrusting Apple due to its "we hate games" legacy, and non-gamers insisting that games don't matter and telling gamers to "go buy a console." How quaint.
A semantic comment (?quibble?) here: Las Vegas calls gambling "gaming". From the title I thought that the article was somehow about Apple getting involved with on-line gambling.
Further afield, we Mac users have constantly been told that the latest advance, whether the introduction of OS X or Intel CPUs, would make it easier for the developers of Windows software to make Mac versions, and soon after the introduction of the Windows versions. While I'm not very interested in computer games from what I have read over the years this hasn't happened and isn't likely to anytime soon. Maybe it'll take Apple breaking through the 10% of installed computers barrier for developers to take notice, if only for the sake of their pocketbooks.
It's not like they'd have to change their entire business to accommodate gamers.
The amount they charge for a three year old graphics card is ridiculous. Apple doesn't need to make systems specifically for gaming, but why scare people off?
I don't play a lot of computer games, but I'd like my Mac Pro to be uniformly updated. Is that too much to ask?
several people have made the [very good] point that "hardcore" gaming is done far more on a dedicated console than on a pc, and i can't see that changing. if i were a gamer i would rather buy a console every 2-3 years and play games specifically designed for the hardware i have than to be tearing open my peecee every 6 months to add ram/swap video cards/etc.
the need for a pc to play networked games is gone. the need for a $5,000 pc to get good 3d graphics is gone. i suppose if halo 3 were playable with my keyboard and mouse the way quake was i might try it. no, that would require a $450 console investment.
if you want games make that $450 console investment.
if you were designing computers, why add $450 worth of video hardware to make them more appealing to the ever shrinking pc gamer market? that would also make them more expensive, and therefore less appealing to every other customer.
To all who want to play games, get a cheap PC or add Boot Camp--- the solution is easy and I am thinking that the article misses the point that so many developers have never wanted to make Mac games because the market is "oh, so small"-- they have said so!!!
Could Apple help? Who knows? Hackers certainly don't need an iota of help from Apple and their hurdles are enormous-- so why do game developers need something more than Apple already offers application developers. This is ONE BIG whiny story.
Microsoft can and has done EFI booting but the problem is that the hardware makers don't seem to care to offer it.
Microsoft has not officially released an EFI windows yet. HP has EFI servers and they had to make an EFI boot manager to be able to launch windows 2k3.
M$ announced that EFI would first be supported in Vista 64bit SP1. We're still waiting on that.
The problem isn't the hardware. Intel, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Abit, and Foxconn all have EFI readied motherboards. They can only release some for linux people, since the most widely used OS in the world isn't compatible.
For all of you that say PC gaming can be 100% replaced by a console, you're 100% wrong.
This has been debated over and over and over again.
Points for pc gaming:
A) You DON'T need a top of the line video card to play the newest games. As Crytek said in a recent interview, their specifications are made for computers 3 years old from the release date.
You DON'T have full control / accuracy on a console like you have a PC
C) With a console you don't have the speed of a PC for games. I'm talking about load times (my biggest complaint about consoles).
D) On RTS and FPS games Mouse + Keyboard smokes a game pad any day.
E) Mods. Some of the biggest mods I've ever seen was Urban Terror / Counter Strike. There were so many mods for Quake 3 and half-life. Impossible with consoles.
F) Communication for Multiplayer games is much easier on PCs vs consoles. Teamspeak, Ventrillo, X-Fire, Built-in communication, built-in chat communication.
I think it's beginning to be a common misconception that PC gaming is a niche market. The expansion pack to world of warcraft (burning crusades) sold over 2.4 MILLION copies in 1 day. Battlefield 2 has sold over 2.5 million copies. These are just 2 games.
PC gaming is alive and well. It will never die. Most of the innovation for consoles comes from pc gaming. It would be hard to have one without the other.
For all the people that want to switch to mac but can't because of games, it only hurts apple in the end. Why not create a small team internally in apple? Get APIs together, Listen to the developers, add at least low end graphics cards isntead of dedicated graphics cards to your lower class machines, and go from there.
Microsoft has not officially released an EFI windows yet. HP has EFI servers and they had to make an EFI boot manager to be able to launch windows 2k3.
M$ announced that EFI would first be supported in Vista 64bit SP1. We're still waiting on that.
The problem isn't the hardware. Intel, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Abit, and Foxconn all have EFI readied motherboards. They can only release some for linux people, since the most widely used OS in the world isn't compatible.
Chicken Vs. Egg here.
Not only is EFI booting not here until Vista 64bit SP1, it won't be 100% native EFI booting (INT10 will still be required for video) so this does little to cause video card vendors to move to EFI.
I don't know enough about gaming but one conversation i had with a prolific gamer gave me the impression that gamers frequently like to tweak their engine to the extent of being able to manipulate the graphic cards etc., and that in their endless quest for "responsiveness and speed" the gaming engine almost "becomes the OS".
And i have seen some of the machines owned by gaming addicts. They are virtually unusable for anything else!
If this is true, i don't blame Apple for not wanting to have anything to do with this section of consumers because the last thing you want is a good consumer strategy to be affected because a bunch of gamers wanted their copy of 'Doom' to run 2% faster or something.
So maybe in this regard, it is wise to ask Valve - "What exactly are those three things that you request from Apple after which they become unavailable?"
That may well be the problem Apple has with you guys!
If Apple can do Anything that fits a reasonable projected cost-benefit ratio/ profit margin tolerance, to increase the size of its market base, it should do it; -regardless of the peculiarities of the chairman.
If there is a way to make things more open, include better graphics on all models (esp. since apples are supposed to be better: this means you, MacMini and MacBook), put pressure on ATI/Nvidia for easy ROM flashes for cheap cards, open systems like OpenGL or a cross-platform translation of Direct3D, providing custom cross-platform compilers/porting engines, they should do it. It's just good business sense.
The history of american business is littered with the corpses of companies that stayed too scared & closed and did not expand, merge, acquire & conglomerate when at the height of their powers. (it's the only reason AOL survived in any way) One of the most successful models is an innovative conglomerate, as opposed to a stifling dictatorial integrator.
Everything I have seen points to Newell being correct. Apple has no interest in gaming or gamers, and pays lip service to that market at best. Whether it should do more is a different question.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skanoza
I don't know enough about gaming but one conversation i had with a prolific gamer gave me the impression that gamers frequently like to tweak their engine to the extent of being able to manipulate the graphic cards etc., and that in their endless quest for "responsiveness and speed" the gaming engine almost "becomes the OS".
And i have seen some of the machines owned by gaming addicts. They are virtually unusable for anything else!
Quote:
Originally Posted by rjwill246
To all who want to play games, get a cheap PC or add Boot Camp--- the solution is easy and I am thinking that the article misses the point that so many developers have never wanted to make Mac games because the market is "oh, so small"-- they have said so!!!
...
Hackers certainly don't need an iota of help from Apple and their hurdles are enormous-- so why do game developers need something more than Apple already offers application developers. This is ONE BIG whiny story.
Quote:
Originally Posted by desarc
if i were a gamer i would rather buy a console every 2-3 years and play games specifically designed for the hardware i have than to be tearing open my peecee every 6 months to add ram/swap video cards/etc.
the need for a pc to play networked games is gone. the need for a $5,000 pc to get good 3d graphics is gone. i suppose if halo 3 were playable with my keyboard and mouse the way quake was i might try it. no, that would require a $450 console investment.
if you want games make that $450 console investment.
if you were designing computers, why add $450 worth of video hardware to make them more appealing to the ever shrinking pc gamer market? that would also make them more expensive, and therefore less appealing to every other customer.
I don't say this lightly, but you guys seem totally misinformed about PC gaming and the required hardware.
Here's a tip: if you take a normal desktop PC that is newer than two years old and add a $130 graphics card today, it becomes a decent gaming machine able to run e.g. Bioshock well. Better than the average machine on Steam, actually, and machines on Steam are in turn better than the average gamer machine since Steam is focused on first person shooters.
To get equivalent or better performance from a Boot Camped Mac compared to what you can get from a $700 PC, you need a Mac Pro with a X1900XT - that's what, $2500 or so?
Integrated graphics found in most Apple machines are worth nothing for gaming. Boot Camp doesn't help when the problem is totally gimped hardware.
You can play games just fine buying a new computer every two, three years without opening it up once. Alternatively, you can swap some components yourself and get by somewhat cheaper.
If microsoft ever moved past their 80s technology, yes im talking about bios, then most video cards would be made with efi. That would help some
EFI is not a hardware barrier, it's software. Firmware can be written for almost all video cards out there to make them work with EFI. It's a bitch (just like drivers are a bitch), but that's how it's done--not by hardware modification.
You really should use words like 'firmware' and 'drivers' for video cards interchangeably, because they really are just a matter of coding. Apple could write drivers if they wanted to, or at least pay NVidia to. Actually, if they ordered enough units, I'm sure NVidia/ATi would make the drivers themselves.
Apple has shown they have no interest in gaming after they downgraded the card in the new iMac in favor of the cheaper 2600/2400's.
Maybe it was due to form factor or heat, but regardless, it was a downgrade, and it was lame.
Switching cards to EFI kind of silly. Why would NVidia/ATi do that? The only Mac that can use PCI cards is the Mac Pro, and that's only a tiny part of the mac using population (Also, they're not usually the gaming type).
The Macbook--Apple's top selling mac--has integrated graphics!
Since 90%+ of computers Apple sells (all but mac pro) don't have upgradeable video cards, it's APPLE'S job to put good cards into their computers. Don't blame the video card manufacturers, it's Apple that chooses the cards. Drivers cost money to write, but that's the cost of not using Windows. Apple's margins are the highest in the industry anyway, they can afford to put in some better hardware and write the drivers for it.
To get equivalent or better performance from a Boot Camped Mac compared to what you can get from a $700 PC, you need a Mac Pro with a X1900XT - that's what, $2500 or so?
That's the bottom line.
I'd also like to add that the X1900 XT in the mac pro is 20 MONTHS OLD.
Apple made a big deal about games at WWDC this year. Then they released fancy new iMacs with video cards that perform worse than the ones they sold last year. I think that single act proved that Apple doesn't care about games.
The vast majority of people who play games on their computers are casual gamers, people who play games to have a bit of fun. I do that. I have a favorite card game for short breaks and a few RTS games for times when I have a couple of hours. I don't need anything more than a 3 year old Mac with a stock video card for that. However, should I choose to try a newer game I'm out of luck because (a) most games aren't available for Mac, (b) even games with modest requirements on the PC are too much for most Mac graphic cards, and (c) I can't upgrade my graphics without buying a whole new computer.
Finally I'd like to make a non-game comment that Apple should pay attention to. I work in software development. I'm working on a medical image product that uses OpenGL. Unfortunately the software requires more graphic horsepower than is available on the MacBook. This means that the otherwise perfect tool for the job, the Axiotron Modbook, can't get the job done. I realize this isn't a big deal for the broader market, but is another area where Apple's refusal to diversify the product line and put real graphics chips in their machines is limiting sales.
Comments
Totally agree with this game developer's sentiments. Apple HATES game developers, and that's because Steve Jobs personally HATES games. Whatever Steve doesn't like doesn't get accomplished... yet MISSING GAMES ARE THE #1 BIGGEST PROBLEM WITH THE MACINTOSH PLATFORM!!!
It is also sooo true about the rapid turnaround at internal departments within Apple... and the new team has NO IDEA about what the previous team had accomplished.
Folks, the inner workings of Apple are a complete disarray, and you need no more proof of this than the fact that WE HAVE NO GAMES ON MAC OS X!
STEVE JOBS, WHY DON'T YOU GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER?! THE WHOLE WORLD WANTS GAMES.
Lying and using absolutes is no way to win a debate or get your point across:
1) There are games for Mac OS X.
2) The whole world doesn't want games.
3) I feel games on OS X is one of the smallest issues. Sure it will bring in some switchers but I don't think it would be many as from what I read gamers want more control over changing out video cards and such.
4) Steve Jobs may not be a gamer but to say Apple hates gamers makes no sense. I recall a recent keynote where Apple was working with at least two game developers to bring games to the Mac. As the Mac marketshare increases I think we'll see more developers wanting to develop for the Mac. Maybe then we'll see Apple try to compete with Windows on that level, but it being such a small segment of the market I wouldn't count on it. Apple has to many other important things to worry about.
- I work with animation.
- I work with illustration.
- I do video editing.
- I do DVD authoring.
- I create music.
- I write.
- I communicate and use the web.
But... I don't play computer games. Not because there aren't so many games.. no, but because I don't care so much about computer games. It typically takes too much time and uh... I think the kind of games I would like aren't available on computers anyway.
- Hence... I have a Nintendo Wii, that I occasionally play games on in the sofa.
I guess Apple thinks that all their customers are like me. But we all know that's not the case.
No, but some of us want to pretend it is.
Seriously, I think a lot of the bad feelings on this issue date back to the late '80s/early '90s, when Apple, quite foolishly, thought that part of getting the Mac taken seriously as a BUSINESS machine was to stifle game development for the Mac.
Up to that point, Mac gaming was actually doing quite well, and was ahead of it's PC cousin.
Now, I'd say that Apple's stance towards gaming has changed from outright hostility to, well... indifference. They say all the right things from time to time, but as Valve, a premiere game developer states, they never seem to follow up.
So what we're left with is gamers continuing to be upset with Apple for not following through, and distrusting Apple due to its "we hate games" legacy, and non-gamers insisting that games don't matter and telling gamers to "go buy a console." How quaint.
.
Further afield, we Mac users have constantly been told that the latest advance, whether the introduction of OS X or Intel CPUs, would make it easier for the developers of Windows software to make Mac versions, and soon after the introduction of the Windows versions. While I'm not very interested in computer games from what I have read over the years this hasn't happened and isn't likely to anytime soon. Maybe it'll take Apple breaking through the 10% of installed computers barrier for developers to take notice, if only for the sake of their pocketbooks.
The amount they charge for a three year old graphics card is ridiculous. Apple doesn't need to make systems specifically for gaming, but why scare people off?
I don't play a lot of computer games, but I'd like my Mac Pro to be uniformly updated. Is that too much to ask?
the need for a pc to play networked games is gone. the need for a $5,000 pc to get good 3d graphics is gone. i suppose if halo 3 were playable with my keyboard and mouse the way quake was i might try it. no, that would require a $450 console investment.
if you want games make that $450 console investment.
if you were designing computers, why add $450 worth of video hardware to make them more appealing to the ever shrinking pc gamer market? that would also make them more expensive, and therefore less appealing to every other customer.
Could Apple help? Who knows? Hackers certainly don't need an iota of help from Apple and their hurdles are enormous-- so why do game developers need something more than Apple already offers application developers. This is ONE BIG whiny story.
Now, back to Boot Camp!!!
Microsoft can and has done EFI booting but the problem is that the hardware makers don't seem to care to offer it.
Microsoft has not officially released an EFI windows yet. HP has EFI servers and they had to make an EFI boot manager to be able to launch windows 2k3.
M$ announced that EFI would first be supported in Vista 64bit SP1. We're still waiting on that.
http://apcmag.com/apc/v3.nsf/0/E666E...25712C008166C4
Read the link above for more information.
The problem isn't the hardware. Intel, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Abit, and Foxconn all have EFI readied motherboards. They can only release some for linux people, since the most widely used OS in the world isn't compatible.
Chicken Vs. Egg here.
This has been debated over and over and over again.
Points for pc gaming:
A) You DON'T need a top of the line video card to play the newest games. As Crytek said in a recent interview, their specifications are made for computers 3 years old from the release date.
C) With a console you don't have the speed of a PC for games. I'm talking about load times (my biggest complaint about consoles).
D) On RTS and FPS games Mouse + Keyboard smokes a game pad any day.
E) Mods. Some of the biggest mods I've ever seen was Urban Terror / Counter Strike. There were so many mods for Quake 3 and half-life. Impossible with consoles.
F) Communication for Multiplayer games is much easier on PCs vs consoles. Teamspeak, Ventrillo, X-Fire, Built-in communication, built-in chat communication.
I think it's beginning to be a common misconception that PC gaming is a niche market. The expansion pack to world of warcraft (burning crusades) sold over 2.4 MILLION copies in 1 day. Battlefield 2 has sold over 2.5 million copies. These are just 2 games.
PC gaming is alive and well. It will never die. Most of the innovation for consoles comes from pc gaming. It would be hard to have one without the other.
For all the people that want to switch to mac but can't because of games, it only hurts apple in the end. Why not create a small team internally in apple? Get APIs together, Listen to the developers, add at least low end graphics cards isntead of dedicated graphics cards to your lower class machines, and go from there.
/end rant
Microsoft has not officially released an EFI windows yet. HP has EFI servers and they had to make an EFI boot manager to be able to launch windows 2k3.
M$ announced that EFI would first be supported in Vista 64bit SP1. We're still waiting on that.
http://apcmag.com/apc/v3.nsf/0/E666E...25712C008166C4
Read the link above for more information.
The problem isn't the hardware. Intel, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Abit, and Foxconn all have EFI readied motherboards. They can only release some for linux people, since the most widely used OS in the world isn't compatible.
Chicken Vs. Egg here.
Not only is EFI booting not here until Vista 64bit SP1, it won't be 100% native EFI booting (INT10 will still be required for video) so this does little to cause video card vendors to move to EFI.
And i have seen some of the machines owned by gaming addicts. They are virtually unusable for anything else!
If this is true, i don't blame Apple for not wanting to have anything to do with this section of consumers because the last thing you want is a good consumer strategy to be affected because a bunch of gamers wanted their copy of 'Doom' to run 2% faster or something.
So maybe in this regard, it is wise to ask Valve - "What exactly are those three things that you request from Apple after which they become unavailable?"
That may well be the problem Apple has with you guys!
If there is a way to make things more open, include better graphics on all models (esp. since apples are supposed to be better: this means you, MacMini and MacBook), put pressure on ATI/Nvidia for easy ROM flashes for cheap cards, open systems like OpenGL or a cross-platform translation of Direct3D, providing custom cross-platform compilers/porting engines, they should do it. It's just good business sense.
The history of american business is littered with the corpses of companies that stayed too scared & closed and did not expand, merge, acquire & conglomerate when at the height of their powers. (it's the only reason AOL survived in any way) One of the most successful models is an innovative conglomerate, as opposed to a stifling dictatorial integrator.
the need for a $5,000 pc to get good 3d graphics is gone.
Umm... yeah, mainly 'cuz it takes nowhere near $5000 to have a decent gaming PC. Been that way for a long time now, actually.
Where have you been since the '90s?
...
I don't know enough about gaming but one conversation i had with a prolific gamer gave me the impression that gamers frequently like to tweak their engine to the extent of being able to manipulate the graphic cards etc., and that in their endless quest for "responsiveness and speed" the gaming engine almost "becomes the OS".
And i have seen some of the machines owned by gaming addicts. They are virtually unusable for anything else!
To all who want to play games, get a cheap PC or add Boot Camp--- the solution is easy and I am thinking that the article misses the point that so many developers have never wanted to make Mac games because the market is "oh, so small"-- they have said so!!!
...
Hackers certainly don't need an iota of help from Apple and their hurdles are enormous-- so why do game developers need something more than Apple already offers application developers. This is ONE BIG whiny story.
if i were a gamer i would rather buy a console every 2-3 years and play games specifically designed for the hardware i have than to be tearing open my peecee every 6 months to add ram/swap video cards/etc.
the need for a pc to play networked games is gone. the need for a $5,000 pc to get good 3d graphics is gone. i suppose if halo 3 were playable with my keyboard and mouse the way quake was i might try it. no, that would require a $450 console investment.
if you want games make that $450 console investment.
if you were designing computers, why add $450 worth of video hardware to make them more appealing to the ever shrinking pc gamer market? that would also make them more expensive, and therefore less appealing to every other customer.
I don't say this lightly, but you guys seem totally misinformed about PC gaming and the required hardware.
Here's a tip: if you take a normal desktop PC that is newer than two years old and add a $130 graphics card today, it becomes a decent gaming machine able to run e.g. Bioshock well. Better than the average machine on Steam, actually, and machines on Steam are in turn better than the average gamer machine since Steam is focused on first person shooters.
To get equivalent or better performance from a Boot Camped Mac compared to what you can get from a $700 PC, you need a Mac Pro with a X1900XT - that's what, $2500 or so?
Integrated graphics found in most Apple machines are worth nothing for gaming. Boot Camp doesn't help when the problem is totally gimped hardware.
You can play games just fine buying a new computer every two, three years without opening it up once. Alternatively, you can swap some components yourself and get by somewhat cheaper.
If microsoft ever moved past their 80s technology, yes im talking about bios, then most video cards would be made with efi. That would help some
EFI is not a hardware barrier, it's software. Firmware can be written for almost all video cards out there to make them work with EFI. It's a bitch (just like drivers are a bitch), but that's how it's done--not by hardware modification.
You really should use words like 'firmware' and 'drivers' for video cards interchangeably, because they really are just a matter of coding. Apple could write drivers if they wanted to, or at least pay NVidia to. Actually, if they ordered enough units, I'm sure NVidia/ATi would make the drivers themselves.
Apple has shown they have no interest in gaming after they downgraded the card in the new iMac in favor of the cheaper 2600/2400's.
Maybe it was due to form factor or heat, but regardless, it was a downgrade, and it was lame.
Switching cards to EFI kind of silly. Why would NVidia/ATi do that? The only Mac that can use PCI cards is the Mac Pro, and that's only a tiny part of the mac using population (Also, they're not usually the gaming type).
The Macbook--Apple's top selling mac--has integrated graphics!
Since 90%+ of computers Apple sells (all but mac pro) don't have upgradeable video cards, it's APPLE'S job to put good cards into their computers. Don't blame the video card manufacturers, it's Apple that chooses the cards. Drivers cost money to write, but that's the cost of not using Windows. Apple's margins are the highest in the industry anyway, they can afford to put in some better hardware and write the drivers for it.
To get equivalent or better performance from a Boot Camped Mac compared to what you can get from a $700 PC, you need a Mac Pro with a X1900XT - that's what, $2500 or so?
That's the bottom line.
I'd also like to add that the X1900 XT in the mac pro is 20 MONTHS OLD.
Nice 'flagship machine', Apple.
The vast majority of people who play games on their computers are casual gamers, people who play games to have a bit of fun. I do that. I have a favorite card game for short breaks and a few RTS games for times when I have a couple of hours. I don't need anything more than a 3 year old Mac with a stock video card for that. However, should I choose to try a newer game I'm out of luck because (a) most games aren't available for Mac, (b) even games with modest requirements on the PC are too much for most Mac graphic cards, and (c) I can't upgrade my graphics without buying a whole new computer.
Finally I'd like to make a non-game comment that Apple should pay attention to. I work in software development. I'm working on a medical image product that uses OpenGL. Unfortunately the software requires more graphic horsepower than is available on the MacBook. This means that the otherwise perfect tool for the job, the Axiotron Modbook, can't get the job done. I realize this isn't a big deal for the broader market, but is another area where Apple's refusal to diversify the product line and put real graphics chips in their machines is limiting sales.