Mac??

Any ETA on Democracy 2 for the mac???

They are currently trying to improve the performance. Once that’s done, it will be released, no firm date right now.

can you give us any eta… like… within the month… or two months? any general time??? please…

I have a simple solution for everyone waiting for the Mac version.

Buy a PC!!

Seriously though, at the risk of being trollish, Macs are overpriced and way over hyped. Their price to performance is not nearly as good as a comparable PC. There is barely any software available for Macs and the supposed greater security is simply due to their tiny market share. Macs comprise only ~2% of the computer market (jeremyreimer.com/total_share.html). Why would virus/spyware creators waste their time on a platform that reaches so few people? “Security through obscurity” There are many free anti-spyware and anti-virus programs available online that are more than adequate in protecting a PC, especially if you know what you are doing. I have never been so heavily infested with spyware/viruses that Windows does not operate. In fact, 99% of the time the only spyware I have are tracking cookies.

The 1199 iMac model only comes with 1 GB of RAM. The cost of a 1 GB of RAM, even certified, is around 19-20 through vendors (I work at a computer store). RAM is one of the most critical aspects of a computer, and yet dropping over a thousand dollars on Mac gives you barely any. An $899 Dell has 3 GB of RAM, and adding a 20" LCD is only about 200. So for a 100 dollars less than the iMac, you already have 3x the RAM. You also get a Quad Core Q6600 versus the dual core processor in the iMac as well as a larger hard drive.
dell.com/content/products/pr … l=en&s=dhs
store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/W … sktop/imac

Dell computers are actually well built as well. Dell was one of the few manufacturers to try and embrace BTX case design, which has superior cooling versus ATX. It is in a major computer manufacturer’s best interest to use quality parts, because if they fail they will have to eat the cost of replacement and the hassle of technical support to the customer.

And with the release of service pack 1, Vista is a stable operating system. User access control is EASILY disabled, thus rendering moot all the very ridiculous Apple commercials complaining about it (“allow/deny”).

Macs and Pc’s both have upsides. Living in a student house with three other people all four of us have laptops, two of us have Macs and two of us have PC’s, and none of us would swap with each other because all our machines are perfectly suited to each individual and what we want to us our machines for.

I think those market share stats or slightly out of date, as Apple’s share was something like 8% at the end of last year, and rising all the time.

Point being it’s all about user choice, not being loaded I am accutely aware of the premium on Apple products, but over the long term for me it is well worth it, less time fixing problems and tweaking things means i’ve got more time to work. Also, when the computer does start to feel a little slow, a £30 adds enough another 1 or 2 Gb of Ram to the machine and gives me the performance boost I know my friends running PC laptops will only get from spending £300 - £500 on a completely new machine. Plus Apple’s attention to aesthetically pleasing designs means they hold resale value better than PC counterparts.

Upgrading RAM in PC laptops or desktops is just as easy as it is for Macs and just as cheap. If that doesn’t solve the problem, then backing up your data and formatting and reloading the machine will correct nearly any problem. Dell PCs actually have a built in reload partition on the hard drive. This allows the user to reload Windows without the use of a CD and it can be accessed when the computer starts up with a key combination (CTRL+F11).

A Mac might do what you want, but if you want to branch out you are stuck. New software is always Windows based. Either you run slow emulation software to solve this, or you load Windows on a separate partition, at which point you basically have a really expensive PC laptop, since Macs use x86 CPU architecture just like PCs do.

Whatever you can do on a Mac can be done on a PC with equivalent software. The same can’t be said in reverse.

I do have great respect for Dell machines, i’ve always considered them to be the best of the PC bunch, but if I was going to buy a Dell, I really don’t know where I would start. So many different models, etc etc. It’s all rather confusing.

General software companies are working harder than ever to release PC and Mac versions simultaneously, which due to the intel chips is easier than ever.

The only thing I’ve ever seen a PC do a lot better than a Mac is heavy gaming, but from my point of view, thats what you’ve got games consoles for.

You might be right that it can’t handle other things, but from where i’m standing it handles everything but gaming pretty well, my Mac is running Creative Suite 3, Office For Mac, Msn, Itunes, Half a dozen different browsers, My pop3 email, Rss news, Plays DVDs, Organise photos, all much better than there PC equivalent software does, and I’ve tried. But your right, I am struggling to get software for it.

I think we go back to the question: any news about the Mac version?

Good question. let me chase it.

You can’t play Democracy 2 on a console, now can you? Consoles are (obviously) great for gaming, but I own an Xbox 360 and a gaming computer and I’m on the computer more often than not. The primary reason for this is that strategy games absolutely need a mouse. For example, trying to play Hearts of Iron 2:Doomsday with a gamepad would be torture.

If you’ve tried the software on a Mac and PC and have come to conclusion that it runs better on the Mac, it is probably because the PC was not very powerful or had a bunch of “bloatware” running on the system. An example of bloatware would be Norton Antivirus, a poor piece of software considering there are free antivirus programs that use less resources and do an adequate job for the user. Many new computers from major manufacturers come with bloatware pre installed which unfortunately never gets removed by the user. Once removed from startup, the computer runs as it should. This is most often a problem with cheaper systems with little RAM to spare. See the pcdecrapifier.com/ for more on bloatware. I have never actually used the program since I know what to remove myself, but it apparently is quite good.

My latest build runs everything super smooth, and even my older systems are smooth. I often times have multiple programs and 20+ windows open on an older Windows XP system with no problems.

The bottom line is that the premium you pay for a Mac isn’t worth it.

I used to be a mac hardware engineer many years ago. Apple make unbelievably well designed hardware, and crappy operating systems. They would have cleaned up big time just making PCs that run windows.
But I guess the ipod saved them .

You can’t play Democracy on a games console, thats true.

Anyway, I know exactly what you mean about bloatware, since whenever a friend buys a PC I have to spend a day removing all the crap. Fact is I’ve tried all my key programs on the Mac i’m now using, and a PC with the same specs with the bloatware removed, everything ran a lot quicker on the Mac, possibly because I couldn’t removed the piece of bloatware known as Windows Vista. Again, I also tried on a PC priced at the same level, with the crap removed, obviously with better specs, their was no noticable difference in performance in the programs I run most frequently.

Fact is, for me, I’m a freelance web designer, I need my system to simply work, I can’t afford to be chasing problems and double checking virus software every day. Or the time to put a custom PC together. If a Mac is worth the money is dependant on what you need, and what you can’t afford to spend time on.

It is true that at times I take for granted my knowledge of computers that allows me to optimize my Windows machines. This isn’t the case for many people and because of that, a Mac would actually run better for them. Is it worth the extra $200 you pay along with the limited software selection you get? I guess that depends on the situation.

Do you have any recent market share information? I would look myself but you mentioned Apple at around 8% so it seems like you might already have something.

I’d say that really it’s only very specialist software areas that you notice any difference in software selection, and when you can’t wait the added few months for new versions of softare like Adobe Photoshop etc. But I think its only very niche areas where you’d really notice it.

The 8% I quoted earlier was based on this article - >> appleinsider.com/articles/07 … in_q3.html

And it would actually seem that when you break the PC sells into individual manufacturers, Apple is atleast in the same league in terms of sales.

I have not run Windows on my computers for years. I have been unable to afford a Mac, so I used Linux. A few months ago I was able to “procure” an old dual-g4 quicksilver. It had 10.2 installed on it. I promptly installed Leopard and now it runs maybe 5X faster than 10.2.

Anyways, I was a Windows guy for years, even defending Microsoft’s anti-trust practices. I have been using Linux for 3-4 years as my main computer, until I got my G4. I agree, the hardware is way overpriced, and the software selection is much smaller than that of Windows, but I believe the hardware price is inflated because of the costs associated with developing the OS (Mac OS X), and we all know why there is no software. I believe the quality of OSX to be far superior to any OS I have used before (Windows 9X/XP/Vista, Ubuntu/Gentoo/Fedora, and OS9). I’m not just talking skin-deep here either, the engineering prowess goes much further than “skin-deep.” From the microkernel (mach) design, to the well-developed frameworks like Cocoa, and even to the nice little things like Expose and Spaces, Mac OS X is designed from the ground up to be the best (desktop, maybe server) operating system in existence. I also agree to the comment about how the OS design used to be horrid, this is true, and I frequently ridiculed my friends that used OS 9, 8, etc. Finally, I would like to say that I was a Democracy 1 buyer/player (until I removed Windows), and I would very much like to purchase the new version, to run on my new Macbook Pro, or even the G4. I know that this might be a challenge, considering the D3D nature of the game, but I believe that porting it to a cross-platform framework/language (i.e. OpenGL) would greatly increase your userbase. I could also see benefit in making an iPhone version of this game, because it could be miniaturized very easily, and the controls would have to be changed drastically. An iPhone version would be very easy to create, giving that you had a Mac or even a Linux/Unix version working. The power of the iPhone and the frameworks that it supports are really amazing (OpenGL, Open AL, etc). Using the iPhone would even allow you to go into the “console” market, because I see the iPhone becoming a competitor to the DS and PSP very soon (Look at the WWDC '08 demos). As always, thanks for making a great and innovative game!!!

So nothing new about the Mac version? And it would be nice if Mac vs. PC discussions would be discussed elsewhere.

-Nick

Democracy 2 is currently in beta testing for the MAC, so expect it soon!

So it is no public beta testing? I would not have had a problem to be a beta tester for the game. 8)
So long…

-Nick

Same here cliff, i’d gladly beta test the Mac version.

It seems to be taking a very long time to port it over.

I hope that the declaration that all those who bought the PC version will get the Mac version for free is still valid.

And: I’m planning to have a full university course with the game (so will need to buy a university license), but we need a Mac version. So hopefully it will be soon.

-Nick