pro:
- most needed libs included
- XCode became a great IDE
- uncomplicated to setup libs (just add .framework in most cases)
- unix based - you can use most linux stuff
- Cocoa is pretty cool
contra:
- sometimes hard to use specific libs/programs (maybe C#)
- no DX
- sometimes very very very buggy graphics drivers
Mac, Good for programming?
Quote:Original post by PalidineUT, UT2003, UT2004 all had strong Mac support, with a lot of licensed games (America's Army) being released on top of the platform. I think Epic's said that UE3 would have a Mac port.
I don't think that unreal has strong Mac support (please correct me if I'm wrong).
For those on about the debugger, the new debugger in Xcode 3 (Xray) appears to be much better, and supports a unique threaded debugging mode which significantly improves debugging for multithreaded apps. The rewind mode alone is going to save me a hell of a lot of time. It also has a plugin API so you can develop your own analysis "instruments" to inspect the state; I'm planning on writing one for my game to represent AI decisions.
Quote:Any Macbook Pro would more than suffice in terms of feature set. Their only drawback is that, to quote a friend: "they cook your balls & subsequently threaten you with sterility". hot hot hotI had this problem too, but after visiting the local Apple store, they swapped the thermal paste on the CPU and the machine rarely goes over 40'C.
Also, note that on top of the student discount there is a student developer discount; it is insubstantial for the Macbook as opposed to the regular student discount, but is in the area of $700 off a 17" Macbook Pro. You just need to buy an ADC Student account and provide proof of student membership. Check out the ADC Student website.
TBH, I wish I'd gone tablet-PC instead of iBook for my last portable purchase. That said, C++ nutter that I am, having another platform for testing never hurts, and the PPC chip under the hood certainly hasn't hindered the uncovering of endian related issues.
Quote:Original post by FlorentTournade
- Mac keyboards don't have every character printed on them, e.g.: to write || (OR operator) you have to type ALT+SHILFT+L ( It took some time before i find this one...)
Which keyboard do you have? My MacBook Pro and the bundled keyboard with my Mac Pro both definitely have that key.
Quote:Original post by FlorentTournade
MAC Cons:
- The carbon API (the equivalent of Win32) documentation is in my opinion very very poor. You hardly find what you search for.
I haven't used Carbon, but I find that a bit hard to believe.
Quote: - The XCode2 UI is very messy.
I disagree. I've found it generally easy to use.
Quote: - XCode2 has some annoying bugs ( e.g. often you modify a single .cpp and the WHOLE project get recompiled, and our project took half an hour to compile ... so imagine the frustration )
That's not true. I really don't know what else to say, that simply isn't true. At least, it wasn't last time I checked. Maybe you accidently cleaned the build.
Quote: - XCode2 debugger is really a piece of crap. (crashing, not displaying NULL terminated string, not able to display a lot of globals, slow responsivness, etc, etc )
I've never had it crash, it appears to be able to display a NULL terminated string and globals just fine and I haven't noticed any slow responsiveness.
Quote: - OpenGL Profiler is quite good, but I had a lot of trouble with the OpenGL implementation itself ... we had some crashes into OpenGL that corrupted our stack, or that completely crashed the MAC forcing us to un-plug the power coord !! In that respect Direct3D is far more better. OpenGL should REALLY have a debug driver that validates all states and parameters. In its current state it can easily become a pain. (We even sent the game to Apple to see if they could find the cause of the crash and they were unable to help with this one)
Don't think I've ever heard of anything like that. At least not since the very, very early days of OS X (maybe 5 or 6 years ago).
Quote:Original post by kordovaQuote:Original post by FlorentTournade
- Mac keyboards don't have every character printed on them, e.g.: to write || (OR operator) you have to type ALT+SHILFT+L ( It took some time before i find this one...)
Which keyboard do you have? My MacBook Pro and the bundled keyboard with my Mac Pro both definitely have that key.
Yeah, I'm wondering about that too. Every keyboard I can think of (Apple or otherwise) has | printed on the keyboard, and you press shift-\ to type it.
Quote:Original post by Roboguy
Yeah, I'm wondering about that too. Every keyboard I can think of (Apple or otherwise) has | printed on the keyboard, and you press shift-\ to type it.
You've probably only seen American QWERTY (or DVORAK) keyboards. He's apparently from France where most (all?) keyboards are AZERTY.
Here in the French speaking side of Belgium, Mac keyboards don't have a key with '|' printed on it either, and I have to use the previously mentioned combination of keys to get it. Non-Mac keyboards usually require some kind of combination as well (eg AltGr + '&').
Sometimes C-strings are not displayed for me - while at other times they are. Very strange.
But yeah, I find XCode and the debugger awesome!
But yeah, I find XCode and the debugger awesome!
Quote:Original post by Ravuya
Also, note that on top of the student discount there is a student developer discount; it is insubstantial for the Macbook as opposed to the regular student discount, but is in the area of $700 off a 17" Macbook Pro. You just need to buy an ADC Student account and provide proof of student membership. Check out the ADC Student website.
It's really that high? For $99 it's definitely worth the $700 savings. Can you verify that is the current savings? I can't seem to find any quotes without signing up. I'm just about in the market for a new Mac. :)
It's tough to have an objective view on the Mac vs. PC debate as far as programming goes, or in general. A lot of things people say about Macs are just misconceptions because they don't know how to do something - or it's done differently on the different platforms. I will say this, no one I know that has switched to Obj-C and the Cocoa API has ever switched back for personal projects.
Quote:Original post by NickGravelynFrom this page you can see the Canadian ADC Select hardware purchase store, which points out that the 17" MBP is now $2479, down from $3099. So it's not quite $700 but it's pretty significant.Quote:Original post by Ravuya
Also, note that on top of the student discount there is a student developer discount; it is insubstantial for the Macbook as opposed to the regular student discount, but is in the area of $700 off a 17" Macbook Pro. You just need to buy an ADC Student account and provide proof of student membership. Check out the ADC Student website.
It's really that high? For $99 it's definitely worth the $700 savings. Can you verify that is the current savings? I can't seem to find any quotes without signing up. I'm just about in the market for a new Mac. :)
Note that to qualify for the ADC Student discount you must provide proof of post-secondary school membership (fax in your ID card). Otherwise, you must purchase an ADC Select membership ($500 or so) which carries a significantly less important discount. Also check out the Refurbished Mac section on the Apple Store, which has criminally low prices on machines with full warranties ($500+ off last-gen 15" C2D Macbook Pros).
I think you may only have one hardware discount in your entire lifetime with the ADC Student store, and you can have like four or five per year with a Select membership.
Finally, if you're going to buy a desktop machine, I would put the brakes on that until at least next month or so. Pretty much all of Apple's desktop machines are overdue for a refresh and there's strong indicators that there will be a new iMac released soon. My guess is that there will be a release in July.
I really should just write a page for this stuff and link to it. I think I've explained the various ways on how to get a cheap Mac at least 20-30 times on GDNet. [wink]
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