Oswald Rant: Mac vs Linux vs Windows Part 2
A long time ago, in a column far, far away…
Doh! sory bout that fellow urbanites, with all this Star Wars hoopla, I’m somehow wording all my chats and columns with lucasisms:)
Now, in the past few weeks, I have been a busy little girl, between work, and now being unemployed and looking for work, and trying to prepare some columns for Oswald’s 6th Floor website…..well, I been busy:) So for the two or three people who loyally follow my work, this is the second installment of Mac vs Linux vs Windows…..hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoy writing and posting:) In our last episode, Luke and Han solo recived medals to hon….err….shucks! In our last discussion…:)…..we determined that I dont know anything about OS’s other than Windows…and damned little about that. We also discussed the OS Linux and why a few in our gaming community much prefferred that particular OS as opposed to any other, and their feelings regarding the pro’s and con’s of their favorite flavor. This week will be the Mac fan’s chance to sound off. As with the Linux, I decided to simply ask a few questions of some die-hard Mac users and post their responses along with my brilliant insight. If this seems boring to you then I apologize in advance, rest assured that in the final part of this column…next week…we will highlight all the areas we touched upon in a thunderous, cataclysmic finale, worthy of the UT gods themselves (by the way, that is a great book by Ursula K. Leguinn, “The Gods Themselves”, I recommend it) which you wont want to miss:) without further ado, here we go:)
Q. Did you ever use Linux or Windows before? A. Guy Galzerano : “Yes, I use the RedHat version of Linux that came with “Linux for dummies”. A. HornetOSX : “Windows yes, but never Linux” A. Yose : “Yes”
As is becoming apparent, between the Linux and the Mac users, just about everyone I talked to has had at one time or another…used Windows. Linux is fairly well known but in no way compares at this point to the Win crowd or the Mac crowd…I find this odd, after all, what was here first?…the “Apple” or the Bill gates money “Tree”? My only gripe about that last question is Yose, now we dont know which OS he used before, and I wont assume, so you all have to decide which it was when you peruse this column:) And now to our next panel….
Q. Why did you decide to go with Mac, was it a gaming decision? A. Guy Galzerano : “My Dad uses a Mac for work. I started Playing Urban Terror on it”. A. HornetOSX : “I first got into “Mac’s” by accident, it was given to me by a friend, and I got to like it over Windows macchines…Mac’s just run better” A. Yose : “Ease of use…a true “plug n play” environment……certainly not a gaming decision”.
As we can see here…hardly anyone decides to pick a mac for gaming, or transplants from any other OS to mac…rather…people either use Mac from the beginning or in rare cases…very rare…change to Mac from Windows for other reasons than gaming.
This holds true with Linux, although not to the same degree. In short, what we have seen here is simply this….Microsoft rules the PC world as far as gaming goes, the main reasons for linux emergence and for the Longevity of Mac seems to be simply this…people root for the underdog…or do they?….at the conclusion of this interview I will give you the comments of a very special guest interview which might give an entirely different point of view….we shall see::)
Q. Why do you think Mac is a better gaming platform? A. Guy galzerano : “I think mac is a better gaming platform…once you get there. But I dont like how game companies do not support mac or later updates than other platforms, i.e. what happened this X-mas with other I.D. games. Hence, everyone updates their servers and Mac peeps cant get in because of a different protocol. That is when my dad put this Linux machine together. Then too; some of the games like Red Faction and Rogue spear that are produced for Mac really suck.” While other great games arent written for Mac. A. HornetOSX : “Both platforms are really equal in gameplay”. A. Yose : “I dont, but it is a better platform for all my other needs.” Typical, everyone always complains about the same thing, Windows has all the access and licenses, everyone else comes in second fiddle, with almost all games PC friendly and everyone else struggling for a piece of the pie. My recommendation = everyone get Win XP:)
Q. Which version of Mac OS do you prefer? A. Guy Galzerano : “OSX” A. HornetOSX : “OSX Unix with a really nice GUI” A. Yose : “OSX” Wow!, that was ez….first time anyone agreed on anything like that, even the Linux users couldnt agree on their favorite flavor:)….me…I could care less, Im Win XP baby!!! However…thats not till next week, back to the Mac attack:)
Q. What difficulties do you find using Mac, when most games and dwnlds are Win friendly? A. Guy Galzerano : “SUPPORT!!!!!” A. HornetOSX : “I rarely find problems with dwnlds, there are a few Win Codecs which can be hard to work with, but just about anything else has a Mac program too. as for games…most games are written for Windows…why?…Game makers aer in it for the money, while the Mac is just as capable as a PC to play games, the fact is, there are more PC’s out there in use. So in order to make money, game-makers focus on PC’s….can you blame them? The Mac has a 5-12% market share (depending on who you ask) so the other 88 to 95% is who they write for…that makes them much more.” A. Yose : “The delay between Win and mac releases is annoying but bearable. I dont feel like I’m missing out on those titles which arent released for Mac because Mac generally sees the best of the Win titles:)
Nuff said, they are happy as Mac users as far as game releases go….thats all that matters:)
Q. Who is the baddest player in the land this week? A. Guy Galzerano : “The player with the dual gigahertz” A. HornetOSX : “Not sure…but I bet he is in iLL or phx:) A. Yose : “Badassbaker.”
Q. Any question you would like to ask Oswald? A. Guy galzerano : “Oswald….can a person eat one hundred pounds of peanut butter in one month?” A. HornetOSX : “Oswald…can I get a free UT T-shirt?” Q. Yose : “Can you give me further control of the UT Eye-Candy? My old 300 mhz mac whimpers whenever I boot UT.”
As promised, a very special interview with someone who actually works @ Apple/MAC/Wannabe OS:)…I’m guessing you know my feelings on Mac with that comment:)
His name is Mike, I am not allowed to tell you anything other than that, but from the brief discussion we had today, he is obviously the most knowledgeable peep on topic Mac I have had the good fortune to speak with…on the flip side, he wasnt able to compare mac with AMD which is my fav, I’m not a celeron user, however…he was great on comparing intel processors with the Mac….why dont you peeps come to your own conclusions:) I did not go through a special questionnare with him…rather we talked and I took notes, here is what he had to say…..
Mike: Of course I love mac, this is why I work for the company:) One of my favorite things regarding mac is we use a large graphics card already in the box, which should be of great interest to your readers, also, we use AGI and Nvidia custom built into our newest units …the G-force 4. With some of our older versions we had problems with Open GL, this is now integrated into all of our systems. I love the g-force 4, however I would have to say 10.1 is my fav of all time, the graphical interface was the best, an all Unix core…like Linux, the most stable OS of all time because it manages itself with very little help from the “end user”. Of course it has been difficult to obtain certain programs for mac over the years…This is changing as we are growing again, just take a look at all the mac spt places on any search engine.
When you talk about Mac vs windows…your comparing apples to oranges, however, I will say this….we put out a test yearly and for example….the G-force 4 in a recent test with the Intel celeron 4 processor was getting much better FPS, to the tune of 60-70%better….thats the benefit of having an in-box dual gig system, and it does this withought eating up system resources. You have to love a system that manages every single part of and updates itself. I mean…what other Os auto allocates memory and controls the use of memory by memory “hungry” programs? In closing, with all the tests that have been run, G-4 is overall 88% faster than Intel 4….nuff said. as it happens …I dont play Q3 even though every test I have ever heard of is run based on the Q3 engine. I do however play Jedi Knight II, and I would have to say that a player with the screen name of “Drancious” is the baddest player in the land:)…….Mike
Welll…thats it for me this week all, normally I do a quote or somethign silly….but I am tired and now I’m unemployed, so till next week, when we wrap this up, I AM AFK:)
Peace……………………….|SAB|MightyjoeYoung
