The alternative is that I drop Mac support.

EDIT: Or that I spend £615 on a MacBook. Would the basic 1GB MacBook be an acceptable min spec? And are you actually interested in entering a Mac entry, because if I spend £615 on a new machine for judging and then nobody enters anything for Mac then I'll be peeved...

Quote: Original post by superpig
The alternative is that I drop Mac support.

Mini mac is good for me. It will give me an excuse to finally get Mono up and running on the PPC platform and maybe help with some of the bugs they are having.

Quote: Original post by superpig
The alternative is that I drop Mac support.

EDIT: Or that I spend £615 on a MacBook. Would the basic 1GB MacBook be an acceptable min spec? And are you actually interested in entering a Mac entry, because if I spend £615 on a new machine for judging and then nobody enters anything for Mac then I'll be peeved...

I fully intend to enter, but given my project completion rate I wouldn't hold my breath ;)

In reality, it wouldn't make much difference with the MacBook - it is also Intel 950, explicitly sold as a "non-gaming machine", and often the software OpenGL driver is faster than the integrated GPU.

I guess it really depends on the target demographic; are you aiming at the office users who play tetris once in while, or at the gaming users? The Mac mini and the MacBook both fall into the first category - no gamer is going to touch them with a barge pole, while the iMac spans both, and the MacBook is definitely more common with gamers.

Anyway, in my case it is a probably moot point, as I have a cross-compiler setup on my MacBook, so it isn't all that much harder to do the final testing on a friends windows box, and submit the Windows binary.

Quote: Original post by swiftcoder

Quote: Original post by superpig
The alternative is that I drop Mac support.

EDIT: Or that I spend £615 on a MacBook. Would the basic 1GB MacBook be an acceptable min spec? And are you actually interested in entering a Mac entry, because if I spend £615 on a new machine for judging and then nobody enters anything for Mac then I'll be peeved...

I fully intend to enter, but given my project completion rate I wouldn't hold my breath ;)

In reality, it wouldn't make much difference with the MacBook - it is also Intel 950, explicitly sold as a "non-gaming machine", and often the software OpenGL driver is faster than the integrated GPU.

I guess it really depends on the target demographic; are you aiming at the office users who play tetris once in while, or at the gaming users? The Mac mini and the MacBook both fall into the first category - no gamer is going to touch them with a barge pole, while the iMac spans both, and the MacBook is definitely more common with gamers.

Anyway, in my case it is a probably moot point, as I have a cross-compiler setup on my MacBook, so it isn't all that much harder to do the final testing on a friends windows box, and submit the Windows binary.

Re: 10.3.9 - that is more of a problem, because there is no way to test on 10.4, and the back compilation is a little hit and miss. Also, there are very few Mac users (at least in the college scene) still using it, so finding a test machine is a little difficult. A copy of 10.4 can be had for about £40 from a mail order place, or about £80 new from apple, and runs just fine on the mini

Anyway, i don't mean to cause trouble, so I will shut up now :)

You mean the MacBook Pro is more common with gamers?

Considering that I've got six months to obtain a machine suitable for judging games on, I'm comfortable upping the specs to at least those of a MacBook for now. That gives you more CPU, more memory, and 10.4, and a /slight/ boost in the graphics.

Quote: Original post by superpig
You mean the MacBook Pro is more common with gamers?

Considering that I've got six months to obtain a machine suitable for judging games on, I'm comfortable upping the specs to at least those of a MacBook for now. That gives you more CPU, more memory, and 10.4, and a /slight/ boost in the graphics.

If that could happen, it would definitely help! The dual-cores really help out, since we will likely be running OpenGL on the software driver ;)

Yes, as far as serious gaming goes, the Mac Mini and basic MacBook are next to useless - that Intel 950 graphics 'Accelerator' doesn't run even elderly games decently, and is lucky to hit 10 fps (with minimum quality) on something moderately recent like doom 3.

An iMac is a lot cheaper than a MacBook Pro, and is almost identical specs-wise, so a good option for those who don't need the portability and want to save a chunk of cash.

so, what's the end date? So I have an incentive to work?
edit: found it, april 3rd

Quote: Original post by superpig
EDIT: Or that I spend £615 on a MacBook. Would the basic 1GB MacBook be an acceptable min spec? And are you actually interested in entering a Mac entry, because if I spend £615 on a new machine for judging and then nobody enters anything for Mac then I'll be peeved...

Exactly, there's no point if no one's going to use it. Maybe a poll is in order?

Can not the Mac OS-X be ran on regular Intel hardware or some virtualisation kit? Then the spec could be 80% of that of the PC spec (just to be safe although I know some of the virtualisation stuff on common architecture is running 95%+)

Oh - here are the survey results from Valve. Basically, Steam pops up and asks you to take a survey after playing a Steam game (for me, during Half Life 2), and these are the compiled results.

Interesting to see what people have.