Bought a 15" i7 a couple months ago, 8GB RAM, and the HD7650 GPU is surprisingly capable! Switchable graphics is awesome too... 8 hours battery life on the integrated card is rather nice.
Yes they're a ripoff... yes I look like a hipster, but hey, OS X is solid as a rock, and having a laptop carved from a solid piece of aluminum really puts any other laptop to shame in terms of build quality.
Just a shame I still gotta dual-boot JUST for UDK...
BTW... hope you bought your haters gonna hate gifs, you gon need 'em.
inb4 bla blah overpriced blah blah one button blah blah underpowered
Yes they're a ripoff... yes I look like a hipster, but hey, OS X is solid as a rock, and having a laptop carved from a solid piece of aluminum really puts any other laptop to shame in terms of build quality.
Just a shame I still gotta dual-boot JUST for UDK...
Didn't they just announce UDK for mac?
As for the rip off part, well it really just depends what you are willing to pay for.
I am willing to pay extra for better build quality, better customer service, and a better trackpad (on the laptops.. Can never use a regular trackpad again).
As for the rip off part, well it really just depends what you are willing to pay for.
I am willing to pay extra for better build quality, better customer service, and a better trackpad (on the laptops.. Can never use a regular trackpad again).
Fo sho. I agree.
I built a PC last year which is twice as fast as my MacBook and cost less than half as much, but I sold it 3 months later and bought another Mac. I lost a bunch of money in the process but I had to have the Mac!
It's just a luxury thing.., if you can afford it, and you don't mind spending on it, then it'll always be worth it.
I still don't understand why people say 'OSX solid as rock' when they vouch for Mac.
I mean Jesus, the last time my PC crashed on me was about a year ago, when I trying to play Borderlands, and a quick google showed me the issue was my sound drivers.
On the other hand, a friend of mine couldn't get ZBrush to behave on Mac, and Pixo couldn't figure out the problem, and told him to relay the information to Apple for feedback and get back to them if anything is said.
2 months in, the poor sod still can't get ZB to behave.
That I will agree with, ZBrush on OSX for some reason is nowhere near as reliable as it is on Windows. For general use, they are less temperamental, but as dev machines, you're still better off with a clean Win7 setup.
Still, I've gotten by with Photoshop, Blender, Unity, Reaper...excellent Mac support for these apps.
Just make sure it doesn't have the intel video card and you're fine.
I absolutely love my macbook air and my macbook pro though. I've been using a thinkpad before but now I really love those machines.
The only thing I really hate is that right-mb-drag doesn't seem to work in windows with the built in touchpad. But its sheer size and the gestures make up for it in OS X.
Best thing about the 15" - hi res display! I'd say this is essential for using this as a 3D workstation. (and that's the reason why I had thinkpads before). Now you get great color and great resolution! Make sure they have this for the 13", if not, then I'd not recommend it.
For work, I just seriously work on 3D in Bootcamp / Windows 7. OS X is nice for browsing, coding Qt apps, word processing. For gaming - also windows. I tried a few games with Mac & Windows versions and windows always wins. Either FPS are higher or the machine doesn't run as hot. (also the Mac steam client just sucks imho).
I still don't understand why people say 'OSX solid as rock' when they vouch for Mac.
I mean Jesus, the last time my PC crashed on me was about a year ago, when I trying to play Borderlands, and a quick google showed me the issue was my sound drivers.
In fairness I've never had Win7 crash, ever. But what you said about drivers is exactly the point; the solid thing about Mac is that you can only get OS X on a Mac (properly) which means Apple know exactly what hardware it's gonna be run on, hence the stability.
With Windows, it could be installed on an infinite number of possible hardware configurations, which would explain the tendency to lose stability in certain situations.
However, OS X just 'feels solid', in comparison to Windows, I'm sure users know what I mean. You could liken it to OS X feeling like the ascertive thud when shutting a German car door, and Windows feeling like the light/fragile door of a little French hatchback; it appears to function ok, but you can't help but feel like it's never too far from breaking.
You have to use OS X to know what I mean, it's difficult to describe with crap car analogies.
And about the ZBrush thing... Pixlogic can't even build a stable app for PC, so we can't expect them to do a good job on Mac ;p. I've run Mudbox on mine for a couple years now and it rocks just as well as Windows.
only problem with mac is too pricy in the low spec segment
but im still interested in doing iphone dev which only works on mac
i think ill get a mac mini someday, those seem reasonably priced
I still don't understand why people say 'OSX solid as rock' when they vouch for Mac.
I mean Jesus, the last time my PC crashed on me was about a year ago, when I trying to play Borderlands, and a quick google showed me the issue was my sound drivers.
On the other hand, a friend of mine couldn't get ZBrush to behave on Mac, and Pixo couldn't figure out the problem, and told him to relay the information to Apple for feedback and get back to them if anything is said.
2 months in, the poor sod still can't get ZB to behave.
Like you,
I have never had any major issues in windows. I even found windows ME was stable for me.
Actually the latest OSX lion is even more unstable than wn7 for me.
BUT, what I like about OSX is the work flow. I just seem to function much faster in OSX than I do in windows, and I have been using windows since 3.1!
Yeah I'll probably try to pick up a second hand mac mini as well. Though I might go for a higher spec one with a non intel integrated GPU if I can afford it. Then again maybe having a lower spec system to test on would be a good thing...
Is there anything I should look out for when buying second hand mac hardware? I hear that the OS is sort of digitally signed or something, how does Apple handle the transfer of ownership?
I never did upgrade to Win7 either as Vista worked near flawlessly for me after a few tweaks. I think I crashed it like once in 3 years.
would be new to me that OS X is signed, pretty sure it isn't. There's just 2 versions - one computer specific, it only installs on the same hardware it came with, the other version is hardware independent and can be installed on all macs that support it (that one you buy in the Apple store, or now, via the app store).
CPU wise make sure you get at least a core 2 duo. Other CPUs won't run the current OS, Lion. Although if you want to be on the very safe side, get a core-i processor. Apple is known to abandon older hardware quickly
Actually, I would suggest getting a new one or one from Apple's own refurbished store. I looked at EU ebay a few months ago, and the prices of used Mac mini's weren't that far away from new/apple-refurbished machines.
Is there anything I should look out for when buying second hand mac hardware? I hear that the OS is sort of digitally signed or something, how does Apple handle the transfer of ownership?
Whilst I'm not 100% on the legalities, I think the OS is just transferred with the machine. I've sold 7 or 8 Macs in the past and never had problems, just sent the system discs (which include the OS) along with the computer.
If you're buying used, try to get one with Applecare, it's a 3 year warranty that is transferred with the Mac. The warranty is registered to the serial no. upon purchase so if you need it repaired, and the Mac has Applecare, it'll show up on their system.
Macs also hold their value exceptionally well, same as iPhones. For example, I bought a MacBook Pro back in 2007 for about £1400, and sold it 18 months later for almost £1200.
In terms of what to look out for, there's nothing glaring that should be an issue, and Macs, even MacBooks aren't particularly difficult to repair in terms of HDD's, Optical Drives, RAM, Fans etc, and most of those parts are just regular parts, not 'Mac-Specific'... however, if the logic board (basically the motherboard) fails, then it's VERY expensive to replace, and in most cases will be cheaper to just buy a new Mac.
Also see if you can find a student friend when you buy, you can get around 20% discount off a new Mac/MacBook at the Apple Store which sometimes brings prices down to almost used level.
Make sure it has an Intel chip obviously, PowerPC versions don't work AFAIK.
Yeah don't go PowerPC whatever you do, almost nothing supports that architecture now. You should be ok though, I think they made the Intel switch in like 05/06 so you shouldn't really be looking at 6 year old Macs anyway.
In fact make sure its a core 2 duo because OSX Lion requires it, and to work with the latest version of XCode you need the latest OS, right?
[Apple] are sneaky [bastards].
Yeah I dislike how they do that. Technically you could run an older XCode, but then you'd want to run iOS5 if you're developing, which needs XCode 4.x.x which needs Lion.
Having said that, Lion is only £20 for the OS (regardless of which previous version you're coming from).
Anyone here has experience with building a PC box that runs OSX? You could potentially get the best of both worlds that way. I'd love to hear from someone who tried it.
Anyone here has experience with building a PC box that runs OSX? You could potentially get the best of both worlds that way. I'd love to hear from someone who tried it.
Building your own Mac? That sounds like an Oxymoron. Macintosh has always been a symbol of "I don't know how it works and I don't want to know", hands-off types. I just find it odd since Apple has always tried to make computing an appliance type relationship rather than the precision tool that computers really are.
Appliances are simple devices that are narrow in scope, they do one thing (i.e. keep food cold/hot, wash clothes, etc.). Computers are complex and broad in scope; they don't do one thing, they do many things (communication, calculation, data parsing, categorizing, referencing, and storage, all in one device). Perhaps that's changed in the past decade, but that's my impression of what a Mac tried to do. It tries to make a toolbox into a hammer. It's so limiting to what hardware you can use, why would you tie yourself down to a single hardware platform like that? I can build myself a PC with all the hardware that suits my needs for a fraction of the cost and more performance than a Mac. All the while, I can choose any OS I want (e.g. Win7, XP, Vista, all the flavors of Linux, FreeBSD, Unix, Minix, and so on.).
Go ahead and get a Mac I guess. I just never saw the advantage compared to other options that aren't so hardware limited. I guess I just don't see what's so great about it.
Building your own Mac? That sounds like an Oxymoron. Macintosh has always been a symbol of "I don't know how it works and I don't want to know", hands-off types.
actually that's just computer users in general, most of the hardcore mac people I know are the brainy engineer types - apple started out as build your own computer kits, remember?
Anyone here has experience with building a PC box that runs OSX? You could potentially get the best of both worlds that way. I'd love to hear from someone who tried it.
For the past 2 years I have been running real macs.. The 2 years before that I was using a hackintosh.
first one was just with hardware I already had... Very unstable, got kernel panics randomly and every update would kill it.
After that I had enugh and bought a new motherboard which was supported. I ran OSx with no issues at all. I would keep it running for weeks or months with out turning off or restarting. It would handle all updates flawlessly.
Moral of the story, buy the right hardware and you will have a good home made Mac experience.
Building your own Mac? That sounds like an Oxymoron. Macintosh has always been a symbol of "I don't know how it works and I don't want to know", hands-off types. I just find it odd since Apple has always tried to make computing an appliance type relationship rather than the precision tool that computers really are.
A very naive view that kinda sounds like the first time you heard about Apple was yesterday.
As Justin said, a lot of 'hardcore' Mac users probably know more about tech than most 'techie' PC users.
Sure the MacBook Air's and iMacs are straight consumer marketed products, but the Mac Pro stuff is some serious (and seriously expensive) hardware.
Right now you can order a Mac Pro with two 3ghz 12-core Westmere's (24 cores!!!!), 64GB RAM and 4x512MB SSD's... for $15k lol but still, high-end Macs do exist.
Remember some pro apps still only run on Mac too... Final Cut and Logic.
The consumer level stuff is just luxury, same as luxury cars. Why do people buy Audi's when they could just buy VW's or even a SEAT (here in the UK they're the same cars)? If people have the money and want a bit of aesthetic as well as good build quality then why not!
And yeah, don't even bother with a hackintosh. There's a reason OS X only runs properly on Macs. You'll be lucky to get everything working and even if you, it probably won't work for long.
Thanks for the links guys. I'm seriously considering making that switch. About to get a new PC anyway, and if I can aim to get the right hardware, then running a ~$1k PC with OSX sounds like an awesome way to go.
BTW, how is running 3dsmax on OSX going these days? I remember seeing some demo a couple of years ago that basically ran it as if it were native. Not that I would, I would probably just use Maya or Modo, but just curious.
BTW, how is running 3dsmax on OSX going these days? I remember seeing some demo a couple of years ago that basically ran it as if it were native. Not that I would, I would probably just use Maya or Modo, but just curious.
I've run 3DS Max on a BootCamp setup (XP then 7) for like 3 years or so now and it's fine, just as stable as on Windows (effectively because Windows on a BootCamp partition is no different to Windows on a PC), but I've never tried it under virtualisation. I wouldn't expect much out of it under a VM though, anything taxing under virtualisation is usually pretty sketchy at best.
Maya's pretty solid though, there used to be questionable performance up until about 2010 but it's been great since. I've switched to Maya 2012 on OS X as my main 3D app now, and find UDK is the only app I switch to Windows for.
Yeah I dislike how they do that. Technically you could run an older XCode, but then you'd want to run iOS5 if you're developing, which needs XCode 4.x.x which needs Lion.
Having said that, Lion is only £20 for the OS (regardless of which previous version you're coming from).
But £1300 for a new laptop that can run Lion cause you need a Core 2 Duo and not just that Dual Core that you have :thumbup:
Is that possible to upload an application to the appstore by a regular PC with macOSx installed in it?I hope it is,otherwise me too have to search for a second hand mac mini.
I never liked macs,honestly never used one of these before.I'm just can't forsake my freedom to play with the components in my computer case.
Got a 13" Macbook Pro, really great build quality, feels like you've bought something special:) Use it for objective-c/xcode most of the time, but tested Crysis and it ran it on high no problem. Wouldn't use it for intensive high poly work though/maybe not even UDK, apart from clean/low materials/meshes prototyping work. They are sweet as.
Is that possible to upload an application to the appstore by a regular PC with macOSx installed in it?
Technically? Possibly. Legally? No.
Part of Apple's OS X license says that any version of OS X can only run on Apple hardware, so trying to sell something through one of their distribution channels whilst running illegal copies of their software is probably not a smart move.
Part of Apple's OS X license says that any version of OS X can only run on Apple hardware, so trying to sell something through one of their distribution channels whilst running illegal copies of their software is probably not a smart move.
Hold on.I don't mention anything illegal.As you can see there's legal boxed versions of MacOSx.I was thinking to buy one of these instead of buy a mac mini because that would be at least 7-8 times cheaper in that way.
Hmm,I've been searching for macOSx installing on a PC and it seems that requires a 'hacking' which is considered to be illegal.Didn't know about that,sorry.
A very naive view that kinda sounds like the first time you heard about Apple was yesterday.
As Justin said, a lot of 'hardcore' Mac users probably know more about tech than most 'techie' PC users.
Sure the MacBook Air's and iMacs are straight consumer marketed products, but the Mac Pro stuff is some serious (and seriously expensive) hardware.
Right now you can order a Mac Pro with two 3ghz 12-core Westmere's (24 cores!!!!), 64GB RAM and 4x512MB SSD's... for $15k lol but still, high-end Macs do exist.
Remember some pro apps still only run on Mac too... Final Cut and Logic.
The consumer level stuff is just luxury, same as luxury cars. Why do people buy Audi's when they could just buy VW's or even a SEAT (here in the UK they're the same cars)? If people have the money and want a bit of aesthetic as well as good build quality then why not!
And yeah, don't even bother with a hackintosh. There's a reason OS X only runs properly on Macs. You'll be lucky to get everything working and even if you, it probably won't work for long.
Naivety it is not. Hardcore OSX users are really just hardcore Unix users. OSX is just sporting a custom GUI on a tweaked version of FreeBSD that will only run on specially coded hardware (as in DRM). That's why a hackintosh is so hard to build. There's nothing truly special about Apple products other than the ability of their customers to rationalize their irrational purchase, cognitive dissonance abound. I should know. I used to work for the IT department at my college under a certified Mac tech. They're just PC guts with DRM. RISC (aka Power PC) processing hit a wall around '05 and they had to switch to x86 architecture.
For the price of a MBP 15", I could get a business-class laptop from Dell with a professional grade GPU, the same RAM, the same CPU, and probably a bigger hard drive. For the price of any Macbook, I could build a desktop that blows the hell out of them all. So what more do you get over any other brand or home built when you drop the extra cash on a Mac exactly?
Face it, you're buying a pretty computer with a custom Unix build made to hide the complex stuff, superior only in form rather than function. The only reason to buy their hardware is to get OSX and that's only because they use DRM to lock it to the hardware they sell. Take that away and there would be no reason to buy their hardware at all. The whole reason Windows grew so large and Mac didn't is because Microsoft didn't tie their OS to the IBM PC. Anyone who could reverse engineer the IBM BIOS could build one and it would run every MS OS.
So again, Mac hardware is nothing special and is not worth the price. If I want FreeBSD I'll just hit the torrents and get one of the free distribution versions.
So what more do you get over any other brand or home built when you drop the extra cash on a Mac exactly?
Luxury... as I said.
I bought a Mac for the same reason I bought a BMW earlier this year... sure I could get a cheaper model which far outperforms the other, but I wanted to spend that bit extra on something that looks nicer, is built better, and 'feels nice'.
I dunno why the anti-Mac crowd push the 'you could get much more for much less cash' argument... 99% of Mac owners are fully aware of that, the fact is they just like aesthetics and have the cash to buy luxury items rather than take a 'I don't care what it looks like, I just want it to be powerful' attitiude.
You can't really hate on people for that, it's just how some people are.
I dunno why the anti-Mac crowd push the 'you could get much more for much less cash' argument... 99% of Mac owners are fully aware of that, the fact is they just like aesthetics and have the cash to buy luxury items rather than take a 'I don't care what it looks like, I just want it to be powerful' attitiude.
Again, let's not turn this thread into THAT thread...
Yeah I dislike how they do that. Technically you could run an older XCode, but then you'd want to run iOS5 if you're developing, which needs XCode 4.x.x which needs Lion.
err, I'm running snow leopard on my 27" iMac office machine and compiling with the latest version of Xcode every day.
One thing I would say is that OSX is still a little lacking when it comes to preparing assets for modern games. There's a distinct lack of highpoly tools. This is starting to change (and luckily for me, Unity can generate normal maps) but if you have a set workflow to bake normals, it might be worth building a Windows box. I certainly wouldn't suggest moving to OSX in the middle of a development cycle.
If you're being contracted to work on 3D stuff for iOS, it's still totally possible to test everything using Unity / UDK on windows.
err, I'm running snow leopard on my 27" iMac office machine and compiling with the latest version of Xcode every day.
Really?!
Ah my bad. I was running SL too, but my developer is running iOS5/XCode beta and said I should upgrade to Lion for testing... I assumed it was mandatory.
Would this do for compiling apps? I have a shot at one for €290, and it has a C2D processor and Lion is being installed on it. Worth it? What are the implications with that 64MB graphics system (lol).
Also, what is the story with getting UDK games onto iOS devices? Does it compile straight out of UDK without the need for a mac, or do you need to run it all through XCode at the end?
Would this do for compiling apps? I have a shot at one for 290, and it has a C2D processor and Lion is being installed on it. Worth it?
No. Whilst it would probably compile apps and some gentle games, Lion would probably crawl on it and it'd just become a headache, that's a very dated machine. The GMA 950 will run UDK but you won't have much fun with more than about 3 polygons.
I'd just save up for either a Mac Mini or a new MacBook Pro, heck even an 11-inch MacBook Air would be better.
I'm not sure about the UDK signing thing sorry, I've only ever compiled/signed apps in XCode.
Replies
also run a XP virtul machine for 3dsmax.
I use my classic ipod for that.
Bought a 15" i7 a couple months ago, 8GB RAM, and the HD7650 GPU is surprisingly capable! Switchable graphics is awesome too... 8 hours battery life on the integrated card is rather nice.
Yes they're a ripoff... yes I look like a hipster, but hey, OS X is solid as a rock, and having a laptop carved from a solid piece of aluminum really puts any other laptop to shame in terms of build quality.
Just a shame I still gotta dual-boot JUST for UDK...
BTW... hope you bought your haters gonna hate gifs, you gon need 'em.
inb4 bla blah overpriced blah blah one button blah blah underpowered
Didn't they just announce UDK for mac?
As for the rip off part, well it really just depends what you are willing to pay for.
I am willing to pay extra for better build quality, better customer service, and a better trackpad (on the laptops.. Can never use a regular trackpad again).
Fo sho. I agree.
I built a PC last year which is twice as fast as my MacBook and cost less than half as much, but I sold it 3 months later and bought another Mac. I lost a bunch of money in the process but I had to have the Mac!
It's just a luxury thing.., if you can afford it, and you don't mind spending on it, then it'll always be worth it.
Unless you like overpriced garbage
They are really nice though, I like how apple understands simplicity.
I mean Jesus, the last time my PC crashed on me was about a year ago, when I trying to play Borderlands, and a quick google showed me the issue was my sound drivers.
On the other hand, a friend of mine couldn't get ZBrush to behave on Mac, and Pixo couldn't figure out the problem, and told him to relay the information to Apple for feedback and get back to them if anything is said.
2 months in, the poor sod still can't get ZB to behave.
Still, I've gotten by with Photoshop, Blender, Unity, Reaper...excellent Mac support for these apps.
If I do end up getting serious with indie dev I'll have to get a Mac for publishing to iOS devices though, it's just too large of a market to ignore.
I absolutely love my macbook air and my macbook pro though. I've been using a thinkpad before but now I really love those machines.
The only thing I really hate is that right-mb-drag doesn't seem to work in windows with the built in touchpad. But its sheer size and the gestures make up for it in OS X.
Best thing about the 15" - hi res display! I'd say this is essential for using this as a 3D workstation. (and that's the reason why I had thinkpads before). Now you get great color and great resolution! Make sure they have this for the 13", if not, then I'd not recommend it.
For work, I just seriously work on 3D in Bootcamp / Windows 7. OS X is nice for browsing, coding Qt apps, word processing. For gaming - also windows. I tried a few games with Mac & Windows versions and windows always wins. Either FPS are higher or the machine doesn't run as hot. (also the Mac steam client just sucks imho).
In fairness I've never had Win7 crash, ever. But what you said about drivers is exactly the point; the solid thing about Mac is that you can only get OS X on a Mac (properly) which means Apple know exactly what hardware it's gonna be run on, hence the stability.
With Windows, it could be installed on an infinite number of possible hardware configurations, which would explain the tendency to lose stability in certain situations.
However, OS X just 'feels solid', in comparison to Windows, I'm sure users know what I mean. You could liken it to OS X feeling like the ascertive thud when shutting a German car door, and Windows feeling like the light/fragile door of a little French hatchback; it appears to function ok, but you can't help but feel like it's never too far from breaking.
You have to use OS X to know what I mean, it's difficult to describe with crap car analogies.
And about the ZBrush thing... Pixlogic can't even build a stable app for PC, so we can't expect them to do a good job on Mac ;p. I've run Mudbox on mine for a couple years now and it rocks just as well as Windows.
but im still interested in doing iphone dev which only works on mac
i think ill get a mac mini someday, those seem reasonably priced
Like you,
I have never had any major issues in windows. I even found windows ME was stable for me.
Actually the latest OSX lion is even more unstable than wn7 for me.
BUT, what I like about OSX is the work flow. I just seem to function much faster in OSX than I do in windows, and I have been using windows since 3.1!
Is there anything I should look out for when buying second hand mac hardware? I hear that the OS is sort of digitally signed or something, how does Apple handle the transfer of ownership?
I never did upgrade to Win7 either as Vista worked near flawlessly for me after a few tweaks. I think I crashed it like once in 3 years.
CPU wise make sure you get at least a core 2 duo. Other CPUs won't run the current OS, Lion. Although if you want to be on the very safe side, get a core-i processor. Apple is known to abandon older hardware quickly
Actually, I would suggest getting a new one or one from Apple's own refurbished store. I looked at EU ebay a few months ago, and the prices of used Mac mini's weren't that far away from new/apple-refurbished machines.
Whilst I'm not 100% on the legalities, I think the OS is just transferred with the machine. I've sold 7 or 8 Macs in the past and never had problems, just sent the system discs (which include the OS) along with the computer.
If you're buying used, try to get one with Applecare, it's a 3 year warranty that is transferred with the Mac. The warranty is registered to the serial no. upon purchase so if you need it repaired, and the Mac has Applecare, it'll show up on their system.
Macs also hold their value exceptionally well, same as iPhones. For example, I bought a MacBook Pro back in 2007 for about £1400, and sold it 18 months later for almost £1200.
In terms of what to look out for, there's nothing glaring that should be an issue, and Macs, even MacBooks aren't particularly difficult to repair in terms of HDD's, Optical Drives, RAM, Fans etc, and most of those parts are just regular parts, not 'Mac-Specific'... however, if the logic board (basically the motherboard) fails, then it's VERY expensive to replace, and in most cases will be cheaper to just buy a new Mac.
Also see if you can find a student friend when you buy, you can get around 20% discount off a new Mac/MacBook at the Apple Store which sometimes brings prices down to almost used level.
we will use unity to make mobile games.
Yeah don't go PowerPC whatever you do, almost nothing supports that architecture now. You should be ok though, I think they made the Intel switch in like 05/06 so you shouldn't really be looking at 6 year old Macs anyway.
[Apple] are sneaky [bastards].
Yeah I dislike how they do that. Technically you could run an older XCode, but then you'd want to run iOS5 if you're developing, which needs XCode 4.x.x which needs Lion.
Having said that, Lion is only £20 for the OS (regardless of which previous version you're coming from).
Congrats on the new job Belias!
Sorry for hijacking your thread :poly136:
This might help you
http://lifehacker.com/always-up-to-date-guide/
http://lifehacker.com/hackintosh/
Appliances are simple devices that are narrow in scope, they do one thing (i.e. keep food cold/hot, wash clothes, etc.). Computers are complex and broad in scope; they don't do one thing, they do many things (communication, calculation, data parsing, categorizing, referencing, and storage, all in one device). Perhaps that's changed in the past decade, but that's my impression of what a Mac tried to do. It tries to make a toolbox into a hammer. It's so limiting to what hardware you can use, why would you tie yourself down to a single hardware platform like that? I can build myself a PC with all the hardware that suits my needs for a fraction of the cost and more performance than a Mac. All the while, I can choose any OS I want (e.g. Win7, XP, Vista, all the flavors of Linux, FreeBSD, Unix, Minix, and so on.).
Go ahead and get a Mac I guess. I just never saw the advantage compared to other options that aren't so hardware limited. I guess I just don't see what's so great about it.
actually that's just computer users in general, most of the hardcore mac people I know are the brainy engineer types - apple started out as build your own computer kits, remember?
For the past 2 years I have been running real macs.. The 2 years before that I was using a hackintosh.
first one was just with hardware I already had... Very unstable, got kernel panics randomly and every update would kill it.
After that I had enugh and bought a new motherboard which was supported. I ran OSx with no issues at all. I would keep it running for weeks or months with out turning off or restarting. It would handle all updates flawlessly.
Moral of the story, buy the right hardware and you will have a good home made Mac experience.
A very naive view that kinda sounds like the first time you heard about Apple was yesterday.
As Justin said, a lot of 'hardcore' Mac users probably know more about tech than most 'techie' PC users.
Sure the MacBook Air's and iMacs are straight consumer marketed products, but the Mac Pro stuff is some serious (and seriously expensive) hardware.
Right now you can order a Mac Pro with two 3ghz 12-core Westmere's (24 cores!!!!), 64GB RAM and 4x512MB SSD's... for $15k lol but still, high-end Macs do exist.
Remember some pro apps still only run on Mac too... Final Cut and Logic.
The consumer level stuff is just luxury, same as luxury cars. Why do people buy Audi's when they could just buy VW's or even a SEAT (here in the UK they're the same cars)? If people have the money and want a bit of aesthetic as well as good build quality then why not!
And yeah, don't even bother with a hackintosh. There's a reason OS X only runs properly on Macs. You'll be lucky to get everything working and even if you, it probably won't work for long.
BTW, how is running 3dsmax on OSX going these days? I remember seeing some demo a couple of years ago that basically ran it as if it were native. Not that I would, I would probably just use Maya or Modo, but just curious.
I've run 3DS Max on a BootCamp setup (XP then 7) for like 3 years or so now and it's fine, just as stable as on Windows (effectively because Windows on a BootCamp partition is no different to Windows on a PC), but I've never tried it under virtualisation. I wouldn't expect much out of it under a VM though, anything taxing under virtualisation is usually pretty sketchy at best.
Maya's pretty solid though, there used to be questionable performance up until about 2010 but it's been great since. I've switched to Maya 2012 on OS X as my main 3D app now, and find UDK is the only app I switch to Windows for.
But £1300 for a new laptop that can run Lion cause you need a Core 2 Duo and not just that Dual Core that you have
I never liked macs,honestly never used one of these before.I'm just can't forsake my freedom to play with the components in my computer case.
£1300? Where's that price from?
You can get a MacBook Pro with an i5 for under £1000 right now from the Apple Store, in fact I think you can get an i5 MacBook Air for like £850.
I had a Core2Duo in 2007, you should be able to get one for like £400, albeit a low spec one, but then, the Core2Duo is an old processor.
Technically? Possibly. Legally? No.
Part of Apple's OS X license says that any version of OS X can only run on Apple hardware, so trying to sell something through one of their distribution channels whilst running illegal copies of their software is probably not a smart move.
You are ignoring the point, the point was they have shitty shitty work practices.
Not that I want this thread to turn into one of THOSE, as game developers I think we all can see the benefits in owning at least a mac mini. :thumbup:
Hold on.I don't mention anything illegal.As you can see there's legal boxed versions of MacOSx.I was thinking to buy one of these instead of buy a mac mini because that would be at least 7-8 times cheaper in that way.
Hmm,I've been searching for macOSx installing on a PC and it seems that requires a 'hacking' which is considered to be illegal.Didn't know about that,sorry.
Naivety it is not. Hardcore OSX users are really just hardcore Unix users. OSX is just sporting a custom GUI on a tweaked version of FreeBSD that will only run on specially coded hardware (as in DRM). That's why a hackintosh is so hard to build. There's nothing truly special about Apple products other than the ability of their customers to rationalize their irrational purchase, cognitive dissonance abound. I should know. I used to work for the IT department at my college under a certified Mac tech. They're just PC guts with DRM. RISC (aka Power PC) processing hit a wall around '05 and they had to switch to x86 architecture.
For the price of a MBP 15", I could get a business-class laptop from Dell with a professional grade GPU, the same RAM, the same CPU, and probably a bigger hard drive. For the price of any Macbook, I could build a desktop that blows the hell out of them all. So what more do you get over any other brand or home built when you drop the extra cash on a Mac exactly?
Face it, you're buying a pretty computer with a custom Unix build made to hide the complex stuff, superior only in form rather than function. The only reason to buy their hardware is to get OSX and that's only because they use DRM to lock it to the hardware they sell. Take that away and there would be no reason to buy their hardware at all. The whole reason Windows grew so large and Mac didn't is because Microsoft didn't tie their OS to the IBM PC. Anyone who could reverse engineer the IBM BIOS could build one and it would run every MS OS.
So again, Mac hardware is nothing special and is not worth the price. If I want FreeBSD I'll just hit the torrents and get one of the free distribution versions.
Luxury... as I said.
I bought a Mac for the same reason I bought a BMW earlier this year... sure I could get a cheaper model which far outperforms the other, but I wanted to spend that bit extra on something that looks nicer, is built better, and 'feels nice'.
I dunno why the anti-Mac crowd push the 'you could get much more for much less cash' argument... 99% of Mac owners are fully aware of that, the fact is they just like aesthetics and have the cash to buy luxury items rather than take a 'I don't care what it looks like, I just want it to be powerful' attitiude.
You can't really hate on people for that, it's just how some people are.
Again, let's not turn this thread into THAT thread...
err, I'm running snow leopard on my 27" iMac office machine and compiling with the latest version of Xcode every day.
One thing I would say is that OSX is still a little lacking when it comes to preparing assets for modern games. There's a distinct lack of highpoly tools. This is starting to change (and luckily for me, Unity can generate normal maps) but if you have a set workflow to bake normals, it might be worth building a Windows box. I certainly wouldn't suggest moving to OSX in the middle of a development cycle.
If you're being contracted to work on 3D stuff for iOS, it's still totally possible to test everything using Unity / UDK on windows.
Really?!
Ah my bad. I was running SL too, but my developer is running iOS5/XCode beta and said I should upgrade to Lion for testing... I assumed it was mandatory.
Would this do for compiling apps? I have a shot at one for €290, and it has a C2D processor and Lion is being installed on it. Worth it? What are the implications with that 64MB graphics system (lol).
Also, what is the story with getting UDK games onto iOS devices? Does it compile straight out of UDK without the need for a mac, or do you need to run it all through XCode at the end?
No. Whilst it would probably compile apps and some gentle games, Lion would probably crawl on it and it'd just become a headache, that's a very dated machine. The GMA 950 will run UDK but you won't have much fun with more than about 3 polygons.
I'd just save up for either a Mac Mini or a new MacBook Pro, heck even an 11-inch MacBook Air would be better.
I'm not sure about the UDK signing thing sorry, I've only ever compiled/signed apps in XCode.