33 replies to this topic

[Manill66]

I remember watching a show on facebook and if I remember correctly they use macs. Now for web I can understand why you would use a mac but what about for gaming. What do companies like Infinity Ward, Treyarch, EA, Dice, Ubisoft, etc. use? And what do you use?

[dilyan_rusev]

This is a very sensitive subject I like Windows primarily because I am used to it. I do appreciate the workmanship of Macs, but I wouldn't change my typing habits. People use Macs because they are very well built, they are very beautiful, and they have grown to be a kind of lifestyle. More technical people that don't really care that much about aesthetics (like me) would pick whatever makes sense at the time of purchase, regardless of brand.

I met a gal that used to work at Ubisoft, and if I remember correctly, they use Windows. I can't imagine that this is for everybody there.

I worked at a medium-sized company that didn't do games. There are a few reasons why Windows was chosen:
1) it is fairly easy to become a golden partner (just need to have a lot of people with certificates), which gives you a special MSDN license. That license more or less gives you all Microsoft software for free.
2) the sys admins were more familiar with Windows. It is fairly easy to manage. Microsoft does everything, and even if it is not the best, it does integrate in a nice, manageable way.
3) huge part of the business was extending Microsoft software and frameworks

Designers tend to like Macs. I guess this might have something historical, as Macs were marketed as the meeting point of liberal arts and technology. With products like iPod, iPhone and iPad, Apple built a kind of culture. Technology to their fans is more than gadgets, they really *like* them - like an emotional connection.

Another thing to consider is price. Apples computers are expensive. With PC manufacturers like Lenovo, you usually strike a deal that covers not only the hardware, but also support and some liability in case of hardware failure. I do not know if Apple offer wholesale discounts outside of academia, but in any case, their computers are more expensive. Also, up until very recently, OS X updates cost a lot of money, while service packs for Microsoft products are free, and, in case you are not a gold partner, you can have MSDN subscription, which greatly reduces the price of Microsoft software for big companies.

[Tom Sloper]

Art and audio people tend to like Macs.
Programmers usually use PCs, unless programming for an Apple-based platform.

[joew]

Everyone here uses a Mac since we do all cross platform stuff and with a Mac you can install Windows 7 and then boot into either OS.

Edited by Saruman, 05 August 2012 - 05:26 PM.

[DZee]

I much rather run on Unix for programming. It depends what technology you are using, but if you are an advocate of open source development it is the only real choice. Installing trough the package manager is a snap and gets you started on things instantly.

I don't want to generalize, but from what I've witnessed most companies use Windows for the Visual Studio suite, Visual C++ and C# usually mean using Windows. There's probably an artist department running on macs depending on their preference.

Edited by DZee, 05 August 2012 - 06:42 PM.

[Hodgman]

Under the hood, the hardware is all the same these days... So it's a question of which OS.

As for art -- pretty much all the popular art software is available on both PC and Mac OS's, so there's no difference there.
All that's left is which file manager (Windows Explorer vs Mac Finder) you prefer....

[Shippou]

This is my own experience with both operating systems, and my own opinion on the subject at hand.

Mac is a more "closed" when it comes to it's programs. Trying to find compatible, and functional programming tools, is difficult at best. Running Wine or some other Windows emulator, just bogs down the system, and produces many problems .
I prefer Windows XP, due to all the tech toys I have accumulated, and for me, it's easy to produce cross platform compatible programs. On a Mac it is much more difficult for me.

Edited by Shippou, 05 August 2012 - 11:36 PM.

[joew]

DZee's comment interesting, and very misinformed. C# is a Microsoft property, so it's only going to work on Microsoft devices untill some one developes a framework free compiler and library.

Actually in regards to this it is you that is misinformed. There has been a C# and .Net implementation called Mono that runs on linux, osx, windows, iOS, android and quite a few other operating systems. It has actually existed since way back in the .Net 1.0 days and is used in quite a lot of products. One large example in game development is Unity as they use C#/.Net for cross platform scripting.

Edited by Saruman, 05 August 2012 - 09:32 PM.

[teutonicus]

Programmers use both (out of necessity more than anything; Mac is required to develop for iOS/OSX but existing engine and toolchain is Windows based), artists and everyone else use Windows exclusively. This from standpoint of an iOS/OSX developer.

Main issue for developers is usually development environment + tools. Everything else you adapt to pretty easily. XCode does some things better than VS and vice versa, but overall I prefer working in VS and with the tools available to me on Windows. This is probably more because of familiarity than anything else though.

[Ripiz]

This is a bit off-topic, but the way people say this really bugs me.

Macs vs PCs?

Are you implying Macs are NOT Personal Computers? Do they still belong to Apple even though you just paid $5,000 for it or something?

[Platinum_Dragon]

Apple II is the first Personal Computer (PC). So, Apples are PCs [as a joke fruits], but PCs [as a joke fruits] are not Apples.

Why do people use PC as a synonym for Wintel?

[SimonForsman]

This is a bit off-topic, but the way people say this really bugs me.

Macs vs PCs?

Are you implying Macs are NOT Personal Computers? Do they still belong to Apple even though you just paid $5,000 for it or something?

This is a bit off-topic, but the way people say this really bugs me.

Macs vs PCs?

Are you implying Macs are NOT Personal Computers? Do they still belong to Apple even though you just paid $5,000 for it or something?

Usually when people said PC in the past they meant the IBM PC or compatible systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible
in the 90s it carried over to the x86 Windows machines (as most Windows machines were IBM PC compatible still and the Apple/amiga,etc machines at the time were not).

It has very little to do with the actual meaning of the abbrevation and more to do with 20-30 years of marketing. (Even Apple have tried to make people think that they're not selling PCs in the past)

[abcdef44]

Ubuntu beats them all out of the water...
Triple booting with Grub only to recompile my stuff on OSX86 and Vista.

[Bluefirehawk]

I remember watching a show on facebook and if I remember correctly they use macs. Now for web I can understand why you would use a mac but what about for gaming. What do companies like Infinity Ward, Treyarch, EA, Dice, Ubisoft, etc. use? And what do you use?

I am surprised this thread hasn't resulted in a crusade yet.

Under the hood, OSX is a modified unix. The only oddball these days is Windows. It has a bad memory management and allows the graphic driver to work as direclty as possible with the graphics hardware, which makes the system unstable and vulnerable. But also is the quickest for every task where a big graphic card is needed. Microsoft knew, Windows lives and dies with gaming and V.R. I don't know what they think now, but we live in interesting times, maybe we see the fall of windows: http://www.slashgear...rophe-25240280/

Going back to the question: most games are developed for Windows today. But why do you even care? The biggest difference for you are the different toolsets available. You can develop top games for all platforms.

Ubuntu beats them all out of the water...

They all have their pros and cons, that's why they survived all these years. HasUbuntu finally received an acceptable powermanager?

Edited by Bluefirehawk, 06 August 2012 - 12:53 AM.

[Dynamo_Maestro]

For me Windows dominates only because I see no real use of an apple product, but this is for me only, iPhones, iMacs, iPads etc did not appeal to me at all neither did their OSX

If Apple created something I needed, I would buy it, now sure iPhones are popular but then so are a lot of things. Also could you elaborate on why you would think Macs are better for 'web'? I hear a lot of vague statements like this where Macs are complimented for doing something 'better' than windows but never really explained how.

[woytah]

When I was working on Android project on Windows I used:
Firefox, Eclipse, command line (git), Skype, Thunderbird

When I was working on Android project on Mac I used:
Firefox, Eclipse, command line (git), Skype, Thunderbird

So basically both (Mac, PC) are pretty the same, as long as I could use software that I like. The only difference was when I had to navigate to build *.apk file and send it via e-mail. On Windows I used explorer (or totalcmd), on Mac - Finder. Thats it!

[Vodahmin]

I think it really comes down to your computer habits and the price. I personally like the look and feel of Macs but wouldn't buy one, since this is not what I'm looking for when buying a computer - I could buy a better-performance PC for the same price. I think this reflects the way many people think. It's just that when you buy a Mac, you always pay more fore something that has nothing to do with actual computing (like design and brand). There's no wonder why Macs are so much loved and favored by Hollywood. Through great marketing they've become a symbol of "being cool and trendy" - the high price they put on the brand is also a marketing trick, so the product is even more desired and increases the prestige of its owner. If this is important to you, I guess Mac would be the right choice, otherwise stick with PC - if you care about performance and freedom you'll be better off in the long run.

[FlyingDutchman]

The one big thing that really speaks for a mac is that it is based on UNIX. You have the whole power of the shell which really eases development and in general allows for building a great asset pipeline. I always hate it when windows programs dont work from the command line and/or cannot be automated. I don't know if that is something important for you and your goals but definitely something to consider. It also means that you get all this awesome open source software for nothing. If you want to do server programming for your new MMORPG than unix is IMHO the way to go. Also, with the raise of OpenGL (ES2) the game is changing anyway in the future. A lot of companies want to develop for iPhone/iPad as well as PC systems so they will PROBABLY choose OpenGL over DirectX... (and yeah i know there is MinGW, but that is nothing like a real shell).

The one big thing that really speaks for windows is Visual Studio. There is nothing like this on Unix/Mac (XCode maaaaayyyybeeee)... and that a lot of sample code on the internet is written for windows systems.

Edited by FlyingDutchman, 06 August 2012 - 02:27 AM.

[abcdef44]

The one big thing that really speaks for windows is Visual Studio. There is nothing like this on Unix/Mac (XCode maaaaayyyybeeee)... and that a lot of sample code on the internet is written for windows systems.

No, most is written for Unix/Linux. Have a look at sourceforge. Also there's Eclipse which is superior to many other IDEs.

[FlyingDutchman]

i said a lot.. :-) for example the NeHe tutorials were windows only ..
And sorry, but you cant compare Eclipse to Visual Studio...