My god, will the Apple mouse debate ever end! how many times must I read uninformed comments on apple related threads, from people who clearly haven't touched a Mac in a long time.

Lets clear this up - All Apple's desktops now ship with a 4 button mouse (The so called Apple "Mighty Mouse") complete with a 360 degree scrollball. So yeah, it can right click, on one of three buttons of your choosing.

Apple's laptops have also been able to right click for years now, thanks to some basic and intuitive multi-touch on the trackpad. one simply places two fingers on the trackpad (which incidentally can also be used to scroll) and clicks the button.

coiagp

Couple days ago I read that I could install Steam on my MacBook (X3100 integrated video) in OS X, via Crossover. So long as I keep the video at 1024x800 with all the options medium or low, Team Fortress 2 is creamy smooth and still very much the same as the low-end PC experience.

People were having trouble with this before, but with the newest OS X graphics update, I'm pwning nubs leik it's 2007!

el_gordo

@Quine: @dead_red_eyes: Never had a problem with extra buttons on my mouse on Windows. Dunno what problems you're seeing.

OS X and XP / Vista are the same OS. I've never understood people who understood one but not the other - they work practically the same way (not deep into the core of the code, but from a practical user standpoint). OS X has its fair share of flaws as well, and as more of the "idiot" types from Windows move over, you'll start seeing more of them exploited.

That said, it cost me $400 dollars to make a quad-core setup and put Windows on it. Can you make your own computer to run Apple's OS yet? If so, bravo. My biggest complaint with Apple is the stupid-crazy prices they put on their machines.

Saxboy

Quite sure Starcraft 2 will run on Mac too.
Can't wait.

LightStriker

Awesome. I haven't played a game on my Mac since World of Warcraft... I'm never going back to that.

天人

Huzzah! The first new game I shall buy for my macbook pro, otherwise known as the love of my life.

ConstantCupcake

@K-OSS:

Yup, it's there. Worked fine for me while I was using it. It's a cool program.

dead_red_eyes

@Quine:

Your're damn right about the great uber-button support for mouses on Mac OS X. Half of my games on PC can't recognize the damn buttons for the same exact mouse.

@ZeroSai:

I feel the same way. I took boot camp off of my Macbook Pro sometime ago, just felt that if I had a PC ... then why the hell do I need that stuff on my MBP?

I'm really happy to see that there aren't TONS of biased/trollish Mac hating comments in this comment thread. That shit gets on my nerves real quick.

dead_red_eyes

@ZeroSai: I haven't upgraded since Parallels 1, did they finally get around to including DirectX support?

/checks google.....

Well, looks like its time to upgrade and get some game on. It is SO much better than rebooting.

K-OSS

Will this version ship with the game editor?

CyberSkull

That's strange, since my 7 button gaming mouse uses all buttons for every game and with the exception of an occasional demo (never a full game) all buttons work in all games and are fully customizable.

Aspyr's a solid company though, for the *most* part, Mac gamers should be happy with them. Unfortunately, NWN 2 was nowhere near as good as the original.

Karlott

@Alex: yes,h is why Macs support extra buttons (from right click to button #16) WAY better than windows does. Try it out for yourself.

I configured my razer mouse's 7 buttons to do different functions in different games as well as Macros. With the same mouse, same drivers, but in windows, half the games I play refuse to recognize all of my mouse buttons (even though th Razer drivers for windows are a newer version) because the applications don't properly recieve mouse input from windows.

Quine

@magic_envelope: considering my 1.5 year old iMac (20" with the cheapest card they'd let me get) comp runs halo 3 with the dx9 patch, only graphics whores and media artists really need anything better. The former are dumb anyways imo.

Quine

Fifty tasty Canadian bucks says this will be the buggiest thing ever.

Krackatoa

@gunstarhero:

True, but because its one clicker it doesn`t work nearly as well - or at least says my brother and hes gone through 3 mice and 2 keyboards playing Warcraft 3, the mouse that died the quickest wasn`t actually an apple mouse it was a `Fat1ty` branded mouse.

Morberis

@magic_envelope:

But it looks better, and thats what Apple is about looking good.

Morberis

@Nintenboy01: Because stock HP/Compaq graphic card are better? Eck...

LightStriker

@anonomaly: At the time? About the same ammount of cash. Remember how a dual dual core was costing back 3-4 years ago... And load it with liquid cooling and top of the line video card.

Back then I checked to find the almost exact same config on a PC... Was costing around 180-190$ more.

And you know, you can say whatever you want about Mac mouse, but would you use the mouse that come with an HP? No. With a compaq? No. So, anybody with a sane mind that use his computer a little bit do the same with Mac... Buy a logitech MX. And yeah, they work fine on Mac too.

LightStriker

Hmm, My laptop has a Core2Duo, 2GB of RAM, and a nVidia GeForce 8600M GT. And, it's a Mac.... Now... i get the oppertunity to buy a 2 year old game for $50. Mac games never drop in price. I just run XP on boot cam and I can run Crysis on Medium.

Duscrom

Great news for Mac people. Good game.

Irenicus-the one and only

@tajesmahoney: I don't believe Aspyr hasn't released any games using Cider. It's all native Mac OS X code, so it will run fine.

All the games that EA has published for the Mac recently run in Cider. Which is based on Wine. It's actually Windows code, not native Mac OS X code, so they won't run as well.

Bootes

Yeah i run special emulators to run games to! It's called a PC..

Give it up already.. -.-

K-Squad! (Badass Edition)

I hate to admit it but Macs do kinda suck for gaming. The stock graphics cards on low-end and mainstream Macs just barely meet the minimum requirements of most modern games.

Nintenboy01

Ah, the joys of being a mac user with a gaming rig. Get all the benefits of Apple's vastly superior OS while also being able to use the programs you want to on the PC :).

'sides, NWN2 has a ton of flaws, and some really freaking glaring bugs. Not to mention the major balance issues, like how a properly built Drow Rogue can become damn near unkillable and still taking out almost any baddie in a handful of rounds (especially with the expansion...).

Wraithfighter

@LightStriker:
Nice, but how much more did you have to spend than someone with an equally specced PC?

anonomaly

@gunstarhero: Yep. Standard on all Macs since 2005, I believe. Right-click, left-click, 360 scroll ball with click, and side-mounted squeeze click. 4 buttons.

StocDred

@magic_envelope: His point is the Mac mouse does have Right click. Heck I think some even have 4 buttons.

gunstarhero

@drakino: good news, only a total douche bag would ship a computer mouse with only one button despite humans having 5 fingers.

magic_envelope

@Alex: Yep, right click is handy. Thats why every Mac ships with that capability just like HP or Dell branded boxes. And just like those other machines, if you don't like the included mouse, Macs have these things called USB ports that allow a third party mouse to be plugged in.

drakino

Boot camp is actually pretty bad for PC gaming in my opinion. I hate having to restart every time I want to either play a game or just use the normal OS X. I like parallels because it skips that tedious step and allows you to run both native mac applications and PC applications side by side.

Still, if I want to play PC games, I just use my PC...

ZeroSai

While they take forever, I've been happy to hear the work Aspyr's doing on getting games for the Mac. They are still relevant even with Boot Camp I believe.

Can anyone say how their games run? I've heard rumors that they don't run completely natively on Macs, and therefore take up HUGE amounts of RAM (Like using parallels)

tajesmahoney

I got a ATI XT1800 on my Mac. With 4 CPUs on 2 indepedant pipeline with liquid cooling, with front side bus that put to same most PC... Even if my Mac is 3 years old.

So yeah, I play games.

More power to Mac.

LightStriker

Boot Camp simply provides Windows drivers and the ability to resize the Mac partition. The hardware supports Windows natively, as well as many other x86 OSs. So, to answer your question, yes, Windows on a Mac allows you to play games built for Windows.

I still appreciate having OS X native games though, as it means one less thing to need to reboot for. Having some types of games native to OS X is really handy like MMOs. That way, you can just use the same web browser you always use to look up game info, instead of having to worry about getting bookmarks into Windows. I can also just keep my normal IM program in OS X up and running while gaming, where as a trip to Windows takes me offline.

drakino

Yea, Boot camp and xp = gaming hotness...
I miss my apple ][c days of gaming!

Scrapple

This and half life 2.
I have them for pc, but now I can put them on my macbook, YES.

azurai

@magic_envelope: And the right mouse tends to come in handy in oh, just about EVERY situation.

Alex

@NotAZombie: ... I wonder, is boot camp performance the same as running a mac os with a mac game?

I really wouldn't want to play games on a mac either way... Jobs has this thing about shipping macs with 20$ video cards so he can make more profit... =)

magic_envelope

Viva la games on Mac!

If only I still played games on my computer. I think Myth II was the last non-Flash, non-web-based game I played on my Mac. Must have been a G3 at that time.

sono

Doesn't Boot Camp let you run Windows games?

NotAZombie

See? What'd I tell you, Tori's on a Mac. Apple+Z.

Pezdispenser