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WWDC 2007 Keynote Analysis
Introduction
The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference kicked off in San Francisco today, beginning with the highly anticipated Steve Jobs keynote speech. Apple fans have been waiting for this day since MacWorld San Francisco back in January. Steve Jobs covered four different topics during his keynote - Gaming, OS X 10.5 Leopard, the iPhone and Safari. I'll discuss the various announcements and sort out the compelling features from the shiny new fluff. Before you continue, I'll save you some time and talk about what wasn't announced: no new Mac hardware and no breakthrough technologies that will make waves over the course of the next few months in the way that the iPhone has. Games Electronic Arts and id Software were present at the WWDC keynote to announce the porting of their games to the Mac as well as the PC; games such as Command & Conquer 3, Madden, and Tiger Woods. It appears that EA is accomplishing this by using Transgaming's Cider technology which wraps a Windows game and the Win32 APIs in a layer that translates the calls to Mac OS X calls. I must note that Apple has had some games, most notably World of Warcraft, available on the Mac for some time. Games like The Sims, Civilization IV and Lego Star Wars are available to purchase, but fail to compel hardcore gamers to even consider the Mac as a legitimate gaming platform. While the gaming market is very large on the PC side, there is a problem with Mac gaming. Folks who buy a mainstream consumer Mac aren't going to be able to play the high-end games as well as those who either build their own PC or who buy mainstream PCs and throw an additional $200 graphics card into the system.
* I will give you that the iMac is sorely due for an upgrade, which would probably include a graphics update as well, but I don't expect anything astounding - iMacs use mobile graphics. Now consider that for $750 at Newegg, you can get yourself a good upgrade - Intel Motherboard, Core 2 Duo 2.13Ghz CPU, GeForce 8600GTS 256MB and 2GB of DDR2-800 RAM - and when it comes to games you'd beat the pants off any Apple configured machine south of $2,000. Even if you add in the rest of the parts for a full computer - $100 for a case and power supply, $250 for an LCD, you still end up at the same price as a Mac but with notably better gaming performance. Even if you don't want to build your own PC, you can drive over to Best Buy and pick up a comparable computer for around $850 (HP a6040n - 1.83Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM) and then throw a $200 video card in it and play games at a reasonable resolution and acceptable frame rates. Mac gaming will be restricted to two sets of people: those people who have bought $2,000+ Macs (MacBook Pro or Mac Pro Workstations) and want to play games on the side of whatever professional tasks they conduct on their Mac (if any); as well as those who are only interested in casual gaming and don't need the horsepower afforded by a $200 graphics card. EA demoed their Harry Potter title for the Mac at the conference and it is an example of a game that could thrive because it's not entirely dependant on how good the game looks. Unless Apple reverses course and releases the mythical "xMac" that will allow users to swap out graphics cards, CPUs and RAM like a normal home-built PC does, publishers will continue to draw meager sales from enthusiasts and hardcore gamers.
Page 1: Introduction / Games
Page 2: Leopard Page 3: Leopard - What's Missing / One More Thing - Part I & II Page 4: Wrap-Up
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