Apple Macintosh: Difference between revisions

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{{quote| '''*BONG!*''' "Welcome to Macintosh.''}}
 
Traditionally, the Apple "Mac" Macintosh computer has been known for desktop publishing, Photoshop, audio and video editing, networking, and high prices, not gaming. <ref>(In fact, Apple management for some time actively ''discouraged'' any attempts to turn the Mac into a gaming machine, because they envisioned it as a business tool and feared that gaming would add to the already somewhat whimsical image of the computer.)</ref> But despite this it ''has'' a gaming history, including a small number of original titles, most famously ''[[Myst (Video Gameseries)|Myst]]'' and ''[[Marathon (Video Game)Trilogy|Marathon]]''. Another ironic moment is that, due to being based on the popular Motorola 68000 CPU, widely used at the time in various video game platforms, the Mac had a long history as an authoring platform for console games in the eight-bit and 16-bit era.
 
The Mac was a revolutionary computer, with its Xerox Alto-inspired graphical user interface <ref>though Mac OS X made it so modern Macs have a terminal feature to provide text-based functions other [[UNIX]]-based operating systems have</ref>, and Apple marketing executives were worried that it would be seen as a toy. So the only games developed for it prior to its release in January 1984 were a [http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Puzzle.txt 600-byte] [[Puzzle Game]] and a real-time board game by an Apple programmer that [http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Alice.txt went intentionally underpromoted.] After the launch, games were ported over from other systems, but there were only a few unique titles.
 
Several companies stepped forward to fill the gap. Silicon Beach's ''[[Enchanted Scepters]]'' and ''[[Dark Castle (Video Game)|Dark Castle]]'' demonstrated the Mac's mouse-based input and multimedia capabilities, respectively. ICOM Simulations created the first fully mouse-driven [[Adventure Game]] in ''[[Deja Vu]]'', followed by ''[[Shadowgate (Video Game)|Shadowgate]]'' and two other "MacVentures". In the 1990s, Bungie gave Mac users a reason to be proud with ''[[Marathon (Video Game)Trilogy|Marathon]]'' and ''[[Myth (Video Game)|Myth]]''. ''[[Halo]]'' [[What Could Have Been|would've been their next Mac title]], but Microsoft bought them out and turned it into a launch title for the [[X Box]]. Other major developers included Ambrosia (''[[Escape Velocity]]'') and Casady & Greene (''[[Crystal Quest]]'', ''[[Glider]]''). Still another Mac debut, Cyan's [[Hyper Card]]-based ''[[Myst (Video Gameseries)|Myst]]'', went on to reign as the all-time best-selling PC game for nearly a decade.
 
The Mac hardware went from the 68k [[CPU]] family to the PowerPC, and [[Mac OS]] went from Classic to X, but it remained a system of third-party ports from those who were willing. And as the "wintel" platform caught up with the Mac's technical sophistication, porting became more difficult and fewer were willing.
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Much like earlier 80x86 competitors to Windows such as [[UNIX|Linux]], native game ports have mostly died away as a result, replaced with the common CPU architecture's ability to use various types of emulation to run Windows games at a decent speed or simply reboot into Windows using the Boot Camp bootloader software. In particular, a commercial enhancement of Wine [[Punny Name|called Cider]] is bundled into most current Mac game "ports", so native Mac games have been reduced from those ported by third parties to those originally written by [[Multi Platform]] Mac developers, like [[Blizzard Entertainment|Blizzard]], [[Id Software|id]], and (in a recent surprise) [[Valve]], bringing [[Steam]] to the Mac.
 
Named after the McIntosh apple, which you can find in the produce section of a grocery store near you. No relation to a Mac(kintosh) coat, Mac(aroni) and Cheese, a McDonald's Big Mac (though you won't believe how often this crops up in [http://vi.sualize.us/view/loucypher/0b9eedcf43dd8118d2eb1728ded9d6af/ jokes] in both fandom and hater circles alike), [[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Animation)|Big Macintosh]], [[Clifford the Big Red Dog|a blue dog named Mac]], [[FostersFoster's Home for Imaginary Friends|someone who has a blue imaginary friend]] or somebody on the street yelling "Hey, mac!" to you.
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=== Specifications: ===
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* [[CPU]]: Motorola 68000, 8 Mhz.
* [[GPU]]: ''None.'' Somewhat ironic, but for all the graphical sophistication of its interface the Mac's entire graphical subsystem consisted of a simple DMA video controller, based on just two discrete logic chips, with all graphics drawn in software.
* The machine's entire ''chipset'' fit into just 10 chips (6 programmable logic devices, two custom chips for the clock and floppy drive, an 8530 dual serial port and a 6522 VIA to handle interrupts), a tiny number in 1983 considering most desktop PCs were still being built out of discrete TTL chips (which required dozens of individual chips to do the same thing). Burrell Smith wanted to put the entire machine's guts into one big chip called the "[[Fun Withwith Acronyms|Integrated Burrell Machine]]", but they couldn't get the chip debugged in time and had to fall back on Smith's original PLD-based design. Apple eventually got it working for the Macintosh SE and Classic, though.
 
== Memory ==
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* [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything]]: The Macintosh was one of the most carefully crafted computer platforms to that point in computing history — menu bar at the top of the screen to give the mouse an easy target, windows that could automatically redraw themselves, and an entire architecture of "resources" that allowed users to hack around with their software without needing the source code. The ultimate, however, was the RoundRect — the ubiquitous rounded-corner rectangle of street signs, luggage, and cafeteria trays was made an important graphics primitive at the urging of Steve Jobs himself.
* [[Double Standard]] / [[Hypocritical Fandom]]: With Apple's recent resurgence, there have been concerns of a [[Double Standard]] recently in that [[Mac OS|Apple]] will not get as much vehement opposition and criticism in comparison to Microsoft when it comes to being just as shifty and underhanded in their quest for your money as well as other notable controversial business decisions also done by Microsoft's competition (Monopolies and/or dominance of a market, [[Follow the Leader|Following the leader]], etc).
** [[The Daily Show (TV)|Jon Stewart]] [http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-28-2010/appholes finds it quite puzzling] that Apple has had a heavy-handed tendency to enforce litigation against anyone who leaked details of unreleased or rumored products, yet they are still looked at as a better light than Microsoft.
* [[For Want of a Nail]]: Averted with the Resource Manager, which was almost canned by a petulant manager, crammed into a tiny sliver of memory by developer Bruce Horn, and turned out to be one of the most important design elements of the entire system.
** Said manager also once almost fired Andy Hertzfeld, the main programmer of the Toolbox, the main Mac OS [[API]], and chief architect of the OS itself, over the ''insubordination'' issues — the guy was once in the Navy, y'see.
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* [[Took a Level In Badass]]: The move from 68K to PowerPC, the move from OS 9 to OS X, and the move from PowerPC to Intel.
* [[Viewer-Friendly Interface]]: The old-world PowerPC Macintoshes were the inspiration of this trope. Hardware errors are indicated with an Icon of a Sad Classic Macintosh with a bunch of (commonly ignored) numbers in small font underneath it and usually with a heart-skipping sound being played back from the speaker. Also, system crashes were indicated with just a [[Cartoon Bomb|large bomb]], a message saying that the system has crashed and needs to restart, and a restart button, with no technical details displayed at all.
* [[We Will Use Wiki Words in Thethe Future]]: Apple was at least partly responsible for mainstreaming CamelCase terminology through the 1980s.
* [[Where Are They Now]]: Many of the original Mac development team left Apple to do great things in their own right, including Smith and Hertzfeld founding Radius to make graphics hardware for the Mac and Atkinson retiring from computers to become a nature photographer.
** Hertzfeld now works for Google, and Smith is retired, having parted ways with him at some point for the reason Andy chose not to disclose. Susan Kare went with Jobs to the NeXT, but is now an independent graphical designer.
* [[Working Title]] and [[Sure, Let's Go Withwith That]]: After years of Mac fans referring to Apple products by their code names (especially the confusingly named G3 PowerBooks, best known to users as Kanga, Wallstreet, Lombard, and Pismo), Apple started using the code names of OS X releases in its marketing, starting with 10.2 Jaguar.
* [[Wrong Genre Savvy]]: Jef Raskin, the creator of the Macintosh project, whose original vision was almost but not entirely unlike the finished product. Given a chance to realize his vision in the Canon Cat, Raskin's original concept proved a complete failure in the market. Also, the entire company circa 1994, when game programmers (most notably [[Id Software|John Carmack]]) were gushing over the PowerPC architecture and Apple did absolutely nothing to support their interest. (Apart from the Pippin, Apple never really made a serious effort in the gaming market until the introduction of the second-generation iPod Touch.)
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== Original Titles ==
 
* ''[[Three in Three (Video Game)|Three in Three]]''
* ''AMBER: Journeys Beyond''
* ''[[ARESA.R.E.S.: (VideoExtinction Game)Agenda|ARES]]''
* ''[[Armor Alley]]''
* ''[[Asterax]]''
* ''At the Carnival''
* ''[[Game/Balance Of Power|Balance Of Power]]''
* ''[[Bugdom (Video Game)|Bugdom]]''
* ''[[Chip Wits]]''
* ''Citadel: Adventure of the Crystal Keep''
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* ''[[Crystal Quest]]''
* ''[[Cythera]]''
* ''[[Damage Incorporated (Video Game)|Damage Incorporated]]''
* ''[[Dark Castle (Video Game)|Dark Castle]]''
* ''[[Deja Vu]]''
* ''[[Dungeon of Doom]]''
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* ''[[Hidden Agenda]]''
* ''[[The Journeyman Project]]''
* ''[[Lugaru (Video Game)|Lugaru]]''
* ''[[Lunar Rescue]]''
* ''[[The Manhole]]''
* ''[[Mantra (Videovideo Gamegame)|Mantra]]''
* ''[[Marathon (Video Game)Trilogy|Marathon]]''
* ''Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete''
* ''[[Myst (Video Gameseries)|Myst]]''
* ''[[Myth (Video Game)|Myth]]''
* ''Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis''
* ''[[Pararena]]''
* ''[[Pathways Intointo Darkness]]''
* ''[[Power Pete]]''
* ''[[Prime Target]]''
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* ''[[Scarab of Ra]]''
* ''[[Game/Sensory Overload|Sensory Overload]]''
* ''[[Shadowgate (Video Game)|Shadowgate]]''
* ''[[Shadowkeep]]''
* ''Shufflepuck Café''
* ''[[Spectre (Videovideo Gamegame)|Spectre]]''
* ''Spelunx''
* ''[[Spin Doctor]]''
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* ''[[Abuse]]'' *
* ''[[The Adventures of Willy Beamish]]''
* ''[[Afterlife (Video Game)|Afterlife]]''
* ''[[Age of Empires (Video Game)|Age of Empires]]'' *
** ''[[Age of Empires I (Video Game)|Age of Empires I]]'' *
** ''[[Age of Empires II (Video Game)|Age of Empires II]]'' *
** ''[[Age of Mythology (Video Game)|Age of Mythology]]'' *
** ''[[Age of Empires III (Video Game)|Age of Empires III]]'' *
* ''[[Alien vs. Predator]]'' *
* ''[[Alone in The Dark]]''
* ''[[Alter Ego]]''
* ''[[Alternate Reality (Videovideo Gamegame)|Alternate Reality]]''
* ''[[American McGee's Alice (Video Game)|American McGee's Alice]]'' *
* ''[[The Ancient Art Of War]]''
* ''[[Another World (Videovideo Gamegame)|Another World]]''
* ''[[Archon (Video Game)|Archon]]''
* ''[[Arkanoid]]''
* ''[[Asteroids]]''
* ''[[BaldursBaldur's Gate]]'' *
* ''[[Battle Chess]]''
* ''Battlefield 1942''
* ''[[Black and White]]'' *
* ''[[Bolo (Videovideo Gamegame)|Bolo]]'' *
* ''[[Breakout]]''
* ''[[Captain Blood]]''
* ''[[Carmageddon]]''
* ''[[Carmen Sandiego]]''
* ''[[Civilization (Video Game)|Civilization]]'' *
* ''[[Clive BarkersBarker's Undying]]'' *
* ''[[Command and Conquer]]'' *
* ''[[Creatures]]''
* ''[[Star Wars: Dark Forces Saga (Video Game)|Dark Forces]]'' *
* ''[[Darkseed]]''
* ''[[Day of the Tentacle]]''
* ''[[Defender]]''
* ''[[Descent]]'' *
* ''[[Deus Ex (Video Game)|Deus Ex]]''
* ''[[Diablo]]'' *
* ''[[The Dig]]''
* ''[[Doom]]'' *
* ''[[Dragon's Lair (Video Game)|Dragons Lair]]''
* ''[[Test Drive (Video Game)|The Duel: Test Drive II]]''
* ''[[Duke Nukem 3D (Video Game)|Duke Nukem 3D]]''
* ''[[Duke Nukem Forever (Video Game)|Duke Nukem Forever]]''
* ''[[Fallout]]'' *
* ''[[Flashback (Video Game)|Flashback]]''
* ''[[Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist]]''
* ''[[Frogger]]''
* ''[[Full Throttle]]''
* ''[[Gabriel Knight (Video Game)|Gabriel Knight]]''
* ''[[Gadget Past As Future]]''
* ''[[Gauntlet (1985 video game)]]''
* ''[[Ghost Recon]]'' *
* ''[[Gobliiins]]''
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* ''[[Heretic]]''
* ''[[Hexen]]''
* ''[[The HitchhikersHitchhiker's Guide to Thethe Galaxy (Videovideo Gamegame)|The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]''
* ''[[I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream]]''
* ''[[The Incredible Machine]]''
* ''[[Indiana Jones and Thethe Fate of Atlantis]]''
* ''[[Jazz Jackrabbit (Video Game)|Jazz Jackrabbit]]'' *
* ''[[Joust]]''
* ''[[Kings Bounty]]''
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* ''[[Lexi-Cross]]''
* ''[[Lode Runner]]''
* ''[[Loom (Videovideo Gamegame)|Loom]]''
* ''[[Majesty]]''
* ''[[Mario Is Missing (Video Game)|Mario Is Missing]]''
* ''[[Master of Orion (Video Game)|Master of Orion]]'' *
* ''[[Max Payne (Video Gameseries)|Max Payne]]'' *
* ''[[Maze War (Video Game)|Maze War]]''
* ''[[Medal of Honor]]'' *
* ''[[Monkey Island]]'' *
* ''[[Might and Magic]]''
** ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]]'' *
* ''[[A Mind Forever Voyaging (Video Game)|A Mind Forever Voyaging]]''
* ''[[Night Trap]]''
* ''[[No One Lives Forever]]'' *
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* ''[[Railroad Tycoon]]'' *
* ''[[Rainbow Six]]'' *
* ''[[Rayman (Video Game)|Rayman]]'' *
* ''[[Robotron: 2084]]''
* ''[[Rogue (Videovideo Gamegame)|Rogue]]'' *
* ''[[The Adventures of Sam and& Max: Freelance Police (Video Game)|Sam And Max Hit The Road]]''
* ''[[Shadow Warrior]]''
* ''[[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (Video Game)|Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri]]'' *
* ''[[Sid Meiers Pirates (Video Game)|Sid Meiers Pirates]]''
* ''[[Sacrifice]]'' *
* ''[[The Seventh Guest]]''
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** ''[[The Sims]]'' *
* ''[[Simon the Sorcerer|Simon The Sorcerer II]]''
* ''[[Space Ace (Video Game)|Space Ace]]''
* ''[[Space Quest]]''
* ''[[Star Control|Star Control 3]]''
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* ''[[Starflight]]''
* ''[[Starship Titanic]]''
* ''[[Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (video game)]]''
* ''[[A Final Unity|Star Trek A Final Unity]]''
* ''[[Star Trek: Borg]]''
* ''[[Star Trek Elite Force]]'' *
* ''[[Summoner]]''
* ''[[Super Solvers]]''
* ''[[Suspended (Video Game)|Suspended]]''
* ''[[Syndicate (Video Game)|Syndicate]]''
* ''[[System Shock]]''
* ''[[Tetris (Video Game)|Tetris]]''
* ''[[Thexder (Video Game)|Thexder]]''
* ''[[Tomb Raider]]'' *
* ''[[Tony Hawks Pro Skater (Video Game)|Tony Hawks Pro Skater]]'' *
* ''[[Transarctica]]''
* ''[[Ultima II]]''
** ''[[Ultima III]]'' *
* ''[[Uncharted Waters (Video Game)|Uncharted Waters]]''
* ''[[Unreal]]''
** ''[[Unreal (Video Game)|Unreal]]''
** ''[[Unreal Tournament (Video Game)|Unreal Tournament]]'' *
** ''[[Unreal Tournament 2004 (Video Game)|Unreal Tournament 2004]]'' *
* ''[[Uplink]]'' *
* ''[[War CraftWarcraft]]'' *
* From the [[Wing Commander (Videovideo Gamegame)|Wing Commander]] lineup:
** ''Super Wing Commander'' (also available on the 3D0)
** ''Wing Commander III''
** ''Wing Commander IV''
* ''[[Wizardry (Video Game)|Wizardry]]''
* ''[[Wolfenstein 3D (Video Game)|Wolfenstein 3D]]'' *
* ''[[Worms (Video Game)|Worms]]'' *
* ''[[X- Wing]]''
** ''[[TIE Fighter]]''
* ''[[Zork (Video Game)|Zork]]''
 
== Ports: Mac OS X (Intel-only titles marked with an asterisk) ==
* ''[[Age of Mythology (Video Game)|Age of Mythology]]''
* ''[[Aquaria (Videovideo Gamegame)|Aquaria]]''
* ''[[Bio ShockBioshock]]'' *
* ''[[Braid (Video Game)|Braid]]''
* ''[[Call of Duty]]'' *
* ''[[Darwinia (Video Game)|Darwinia]]''
* ''[[Date Warp]]''
* ''[[DEFCON]]''
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* ''[[Duke Nukem Forever]]'' *
* ''[[Dungeon Siege]]''
* ''[[Fable (Videovideo Gamegame series)|Fable]]'' *
* ''[[Football Manager (Video Game)|Football Manager]]''
* ''[[Giants: Citizen Kabuto]]''
* ''[[Guitar Hero|Guitar Hero III]]'' *
* ''[[Half-Life 2 (Video Game)|Half-Life 2]]'' *
* ''[[Halo|Halo: Combat Evolved]]''
* ''[[Jade Empire]]'' *
* ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]''
* ''[[Machinarium (Video Game)|Machinarium]]''
* ''[[Minecraft]]''
* ''[[Modern Warfare]]'' *
* ''[[Need for Speed|Need for Speed: Carbon]]'' *
* ''[[Neverwinter Nights]]'' *
* ''[[Plants vs. Zombies (Video Game)|Plants vs. Zombies]]'' *
* ''[[Portal (Video Gameseries)|Portal]]'' *
* ''[[Psychonauts (Video Game)|Psychonauts]]'' *
* ''[[Second Life]]'' *
* ''[[Science Girls]]''
* ''[[Spore]]'' *
* ''[[Starcraft|Starcraft II]]'' *
* ''[[Team Fortress 2 (Video Game)|Team Fortress 2]]'' *
* ''[[World of Goo (Video Game)|World of Goo]]''
* ''[[World of Warcraft]]''