The Mac

Yes: Myself (Lassie developer), John Green (Nearly Departed), and Tucker (Something Amiss) are all Mac freaks. I think Tucker has the meanest beast among us with a G5 tower, John uses a G5 laptop, and I'm on a first-gen G4 tower. And I don't think our respective projects are TOO bad, so we must be doing something right ;-)

I'm getting a Apple PowerMac G4 Dual 450MHz computer. I will order a 512 stick of ram so it will have one gig of ram. Think this will work well for me.

Yeah... that's almost what my system is. I'm running a 533-dual G4. VERY reliable system, although games won't run at full speed for you; guaranteed. I'd guess I average about 60-75% performance while running an 800x600 LassieAS game; although I've never benchmarked it with a frame rate tracker to see for sure. One thing IS sure though: as you optimize to give yourself the best-possible looking game on your system, you know that everyone else will get as good or better an experience. That's one thing that I hate about developing Flash on a PC: PC's run Flash so much faster that you get comfortable seeing your pretty-pretty animation, then get all bummed when it looks like crap on 50% of the rest of the world's computers. However, when you develop at the bottom, you've got no where to go but up!!

I know the video that comes with it is not the best but I don't know a lot about macs and where to start looking for a video card. Do they have to be for a mac of will agp/pci PC video cards work? I don't use NPC and such in my games as i like the Myst style games. Just have to see how it goes, I may have a pc for sell. lol

PC's run Flash so much faster that you get comfortable seeing your pretty-pretty animation, then get all bummed when it looks like crap on 50% of the rest of the world's computers. However, when you develop at the bottom, you've got no where to go but up!! So u admit PC's r better greg? :P

is a minimac 1.25 ghz g4 with 256Ram any use? the guy is asking for £325 GBP (includes mouse, keyboard, monitor) i can get a 3.2ghz bare bones PC for a lump less i know nothing about Mac TBH

They say 512 to a gig to run OSX but I haven't tried it yet so can't say.

So u admit PC's r better greg? :P Nope, not in the least bit :D Quite honestly, I don't really think one system is better than than the other, because it all comes down to what you're doing with it. And for stuff like Flash performance, that's just a simple truth of the processor architecture: PC's are better at math than Macs, while Macs (have traditionally been) better at graphics processing (a point that is loosing emphasis now with the introduction of Intel chips). And while people think that things like Flash animation and 3D are graphics operations... they're not. There is relatively little pixel pushing involved, it's all about plotting points an mathematical transformations. Hence the PC being faster. However, I do believe firmly in personal preference... and I just like Mac better. I find Windows very irritating, overly complicated, and very needy of my attention in keeping it happy and healthy.

They say 512 to a gig to run OSX but I haven't tried it yet so can't say. I'm running 768mb on my 533-dual G4 and it performs like a dream. Very stable, even with several heavy weight apps running. I'm not connected to a network (save the internet), so IP errors aren't choking it (admittedly, Mac's SAMBA protocols can be flaky, and are accountable for probably all three times my computer has crashed over the five years I've had it)... Here's a MASSIVE optimization tip though... purge the Library fonts. The system has a bunch of additional fonts that just slow things down. All you have to do is move those fonts out of the library "Fonts" folder and store them elsewhere so it doesn't load them on startup. If you ever want to activate one of those fonts, just drop it back into the Fonts folder. When you're done using the font, put it back in your storage folder. Very memory efficient, and makes for a SUPER fast load. My tower boots in about 15 seconds...seriously. So to downsize fonts, just move the contents of "Root/Library/Fonts" elsewhere. Mind you, that's the "Library" folder in the root of the *drive*, NOT THE SYSTEM FOLDER. The system library has a fonts folder as well with about fifteen typefaces used to render the OS interface. DON'T move those... suddenly all your menus and icons render without text and it becomes VERY difficult to place the fonts back in the right spot since you can't see icon labels. :D

Thank you for the tip. I'm going to have on my lan and hook to the internet so i can use it online. Firefox work okay with the mac?

Well iv jus started using macs at university and im not completely bowled over yet... i mean i can see where macs have been leading the way over the years while windows just copies (hey its the way its been since the start!) but i think they're pretty much even now, and im used to windows, and find the mac interface a little irritating. Also, its a pain in the butt trying to get work done in windows to work on a mac sometimes... and then theres the games... My point is that, while it might have been in the past, i cant see where one is much better than the other anymore. I dont see how it would be worth moving from one to the other. Having said that, i concede that Macs are SEXY looking, if you can describe machines like that!

Yep... you're absolutely right. There's not much difference any more. It all just boils down to what you prefer. Unless of course your job involves working with MS Office products... then the ONLY option is PC since the Mac builds of those products are some of the shottiest, most unstable applications that a consumer has ever paid money for. Thankfully my job entails Flash and Photoshop, not Word and Excel!

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