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Intel Apples and The Sims by Cameron Robertson It was nearly a month ago that some of the most shocking news hit the Mac community; Apple was going to the dark side, switching its processors from IBM to its arch nemesis Intel. Indeed, it seems like only a few years ago that Apple was playing the faux apologetic commercials of the toasted Intel guy by the G4. What is the world coming to? Whether or not one agrees with the politics of the situation, the switch certainly will have major repercussions for the Mac gaming community, and more specifically the "Sim" line of games. Its time to face the music; Maxis games on Mac have been in decline since the (much delayed) arrival of SimCity 3000 Mac. There are several reasons for this downfall. First, it was right at this period of time that Maxis was undergoing its own major internal changes. Struggling financially after going public, Maxis was looking to make a buck, not cater to a smaller market. This meant that Mac ports of certain Sim games would never materialize (SimCopter, Sim Tunes, Streets of SimCity, just to name a few). Second was acquisition by our beloved Electronic Arts. The grandiose SimCity 3000 that was already in development in 1997 was sent back to the drawing board and the Sim community would be forced to wait until the beginning of 1999 for SimCity 3000- the PC Sim community that is. The Mac version of the game underwent many delays until finally arriving late that summer. The performance of the port was less than stellar; whether a factor of the job done by MacKiev or the already outdated G3 processor. Mac users were disappointed that their computers that were less than a year old ran the game at barely playable levels. Third was Apple's own decline. Rapidly changing CEO's throughout the 1990s failed to save the struggling innovator. Apple was quickly loosing ground up against Windows 95 as well as its coveted education market. Although Steve Jobs would reappear and complete revitalize Apple with the iMac, iPod and OS X, Apple would never regain its in-house status with Maxis. Indeed, ever since the development of SimCity 3000, all sim games have been ports of their PC brethren, released significantly later. Don't get me wrong; I'm glad that Aspyr has stepped up to the plate and is bringing out not only Sim games, but also their expansion packs. However, like many other ports, all of these games have had major performance issues, a lack of compatibility and availability of third party add-ons and issues with timely updates. The debacle involving the use of the SimCity 4 website content by Mac users is a perfect illustration of this. Enter 2005 where the Apple landscape has been turned upside-down. No one knows what to expect. Will Steve Jobs take up Dell on its offer to produce OS X PCs? Doubtful. However there are a few things to look forward to with Intel Macs. Assuming Apple is successful in securing OS X to only the machines they make and sell, there are still huge advantages. Certainly, Sim games will more than likely remain ports unless there is a sudden upsurge in Mac users, which is not to far fetched looking at how the iPod and Mac Mini have helped to sway the PC vote. However, the most critical part is hardware, namely processors and GPU's. No longer will Apple have to wait for ATI and nVidia to make them special cards. A simple driver will allow Apples to have the latest and greatest graphics cards, powering through the Sims. Second, Apple will have the processors that are already trusted by thousands of gamers world wide; top of the line Pentium 4 (or more likely Pentium M) parts that are exceptional for multimedia. One can split hairs between whether or not AMD would have given slight better gaming performance, however apart from its work in Photoshop the G5 was simply not performing up to what was expected. There is the distinct possibility that Apple's switch to Intel will give them the hardware punch to turn software developer's heads, including Electronic Arts. There is also more to Apple's switch than meets the eye. Already there have been many discussions that even if OS X is secured to Macs by a hardware level, PC hackers will very quickly be able to work around this in a sort of reverse Linux-on-Xbox trick. Although initially it might not contribute significantly to the Mac share of users in the world, such hacking could open up an entire underground of OS X users. Legal or not, the leverage of the number of OS X users would increase, and higher quality ports could be on the way. On top of all of this is the current Mac games- what will happen to them? Will there be some sort of emulation layer that will allow them to run on x86 based machines, or will they need to be ported over? This would mean that Mac Intel users would have to wait for new versions of The Sims 2 and SimCity 4- that is if Electronics Arts would even port them over. While it is likely that Apple will attempt some sort of emulation layer just as they did when they moved to the PowerPC processor, there could be a signifcant loss in performance, something that no current Mac Sim game can really handle. Is this going to be the rebirth of Mac games? Probably not. Gaming on PC's in general has been in decline since consoles took off in the late 90's, and the arrival of the Xbox 360 and PS3 certainly are not going to help matters. Along with that, there is no guarantee that ports of PC Sim games will run at even similar performance levels; however, Mac gamers should finally be able to take the situation into their own hands. They will have access to top processors and GPU's, as well as the hopeful possibility that enough "switchers" can bring some leverage back to Mac gaming. There are also the hypothetical situations involving the substantial growth of Mac users, although the chance of any of these happening is fairly low. However, one thing is for certain; 2006 will not only bring Spore but also a whole new Sim' playing Mac. |
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