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• Final Thoughts

  Two months ago, I never thought I would become a Mac fan. I had toyed with the idea, but if my Vista PC wasn’t compromised, I’m sure I’d still be a PC guy. But my time with the MacBook changed things. When it comes to my core computing applications: Internet, office productivity, and digital imaging and content creation, the MacBook works beautifully. It’s incredibly stable, extremely responsive, and a pure joy to use. Small touches like Cover Flow for the normal Finder and integrated Canon RAW support bring the extra level of polish that’s lacking from Windows Vista. With the unibody MacBooks adding a final tactile complement to software, it’s hard for me to imagine ever going back to Windows after making the switch on my primary PC. The MacBook itself is a stunning piece of hardware. Starting with the aluminum exterior and wonderfully intuitive multitouch trackpad to digging internally to the Nvidia GeForce 9400M chipset and careful motherboard design, the MacBook is one of the best notebooks I have used at any price.  Sure, as a techie I’d love to have a higher-quality screen from the MacBook Air, and the backlit keyboard of the 2.4 GHz model, and yes, the addition of FireWire or at the very least an eSATA port would have been welcome. But, the notebook does everything else so well, so efficiently that I still get a smile every time I use my MacBook. I’m not the first PC guy to be impressed by the latest Macs. Our colleagues at Anandtech were pleasantly surprised to see the superior battery life of Mac OS X over Vista and our colleagues at Wired aren’t the only ones to comment on the speed of Mac OS X over even Windows XP. We’re just the first to look into the possibility of performance penalties in running hacked Mac operating systems. Windows Vista is still my platform of choice for home theater PCs and gaming. Windows Media Center still offers a better living room interface than Apple Front Row, and its support for ATSC HDTV makes it must-have in a digital living room. More importantly, I can build Windows Media Center PC of my choice, combining a silent CPU and power supply with a ton of hard drives and multiple ATSC tuners. The Mac doesn’t have anything like Media Center. Plex, the Mac OS X fork of XBMC and Boxee both show a lot of promise, but without the ATSC integration that Windows Media Center offers, it’ll be a while before I even think about leaving Windows Vista behind. The Mac also can’t compete with the PC when it comes to games. While StarCraft 2 will likely be the Mac Game of the Year in 2009, the PC version of Mirror’s Edge already has me itching to rebuild a gaming PC. But I’m waiting to rebuild. In January, Apple is expected to launch a new set of desktops. If these systems offer Core i7 quad-core CPUs, a modern GPU, and arrive at a reasonable price, I’ll be the first to get one to dual boot Vista for games and OS X for everything else. If Apple comes through with a netbook, I’m not sure if I’ll pick one up or not. The MacBook already does what I need in a notebook and the iPhone does everything else I need for extreme portability. An Apple netbook would need eight-hour battery life and full Office 2008 document support for me to make the switch.  Who knows, maybe iWork ’09 will run on ARM?

• Console games and PC games go separate ways

  A look at the NPD games sales charts for the month of March 2006 tells you everything you need to know about how consoles and PCs are dividing like drifting continents, with game genres split between them like separate species. The weird hybrid of anime and Disneyland, Kingdom Hearts II, took the lead spot again in the console sales charts, with mainly action combat games - among them, mostly first-person shooters - and sports titles following. Meanwhile, the PC games chart - whose titles now sell with one-third the quantity - is dominated by simulated worlds and gothic role-playing, with the add-on Sims 2: Open for Business leading the top spot, and Sims 2 itself at #7. Interspersed among them are all the major genre franchises we've come to know, with the powerhouse World of Warcraft clinching tightly to #5, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion at #2, and Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, D&D, Age of Empires, and Civilization IV all well represented. Are PC games becoming a minor player? Not really, believes Parks Associates' Michael Cai. While that continent may continue to drift, he believes it's in a state of transformation, and may yet have its just revenge. The secret is in the online component. Consoles and console games dominate the retail market today, he explained, and because of that, they command the spotlight. But as the online business models for PC games change, away from the "per-box" retail model and more toward subscriptions, gaming-on-demand, and ad-subsidized services (more on that later), the big franchise games and role-playing simulations that are already well established on the PC side, are perhaps best suited to these models. They fit like a glove. A "blood elf" - a kind of well-endowed Darryl Hannah/Christopher Walken hybrid, due to inhabit the long-awaited Continent of the Upgrades in World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. Welcoming the new business models to E3 this year could be an absolute blitz of PC games franchises, all of which are battling with each other for the biggest splash. I would say there's a "blizzard" ahead, but that name's been taken already. Blizzard's The Burning Crusade expansion to WoW, expected at E3, actually will create an entirely new continent, called "Outland," where one might find a new race of so-called "blood elves." (Oh, you never will believe where those Keebler cookies come from.) Meanwhile, Namco - yes, the company that introduced the world to Galaxian and Pac-Man - will actually try to knock WoW off its throne, with its much-anticipated Warhammer: Mark of Chaos. The company describes it as dealing particularly with "WAR, focusing on the armies and battles while de-emphasizing the tedious aspects of base and resource management." Which should already win this title some followers at the Defense Dept. Sticking a finger in the notion that first-person shooters are entirely migrating to console-based platforms, CryTek is likely to demonstrate its even-more-perfected rendering engine, in a demo of its upcoming sequel to Far Cry, entitled Crysis. This is the game that should prove the viability of Microsoft's DirectX 10 rendering library, due to become one of the foundation components of its upcoming Windows Vista operating system. The difference between DirectX 10 worlds and DirectX 9 worlds (for Windows XP), gamers are led to believe, will be clearly visible. But if the first-person shooter crowd is all gathering together around consoles, and if shooter games are more adapted to the retail model than the online sales model (How long can a gamer go on subscribing to the right to keep shooting down the same thing?), then could Crysis be less well received among publishers and retailers than it's likely to be among fans? This could be a bright comet of a game that burns out fairly quickly, as franchise role-playing and strategy titles such as Midway's Unreal Tournament 2007 appear well positioned to command and conquer - to borrow a phrase - the resurrected realm of PC gaming. And there's one more little thing: While fans of the Star Trek movies will happily remind you that it's generally the even-numbered films that are the best, and the odd-numbered ones that are as cursed as a red-shirted security officer in a dark cave, they'll also tell you that there has never really been a completely perfect Star Trek game, for any genre, in the last quarter-century. So the question on at least some people's minds at E3 (they'll be the ones in Starfleet uniforms) is whether Perpetual's Star Trek Online - which is likely to be previewed on Tuesday - will break this curse. Set 20 years after the last "Next Generation" movie, with slightly updated ships, set decoration, and uniforms designed under the direction of no less than Trek veteran artist Andrew Probert, the screen shots of this MMORPG look perhaps even more stunning than some of the odd-numbered films (Trek V comes to mind). But with the promise of away-team exploration of multiple worlds, and true 3D combat among fleets of starships, manned by multiple live players simultaneously, the question transcends whether this game will feel like a Trek movie, and becomes whether it places the gamer in anything resembling his understanding of the Trek universe.

• E3 2006 News Archive, Continued 3

  Microsoft banks on Xbox 360 installed base, cross-platform gaming Microsoft confirms the latest new entries in its favorite franchises, including Halo 3 and D.O.A., in a bid to establish itself as the next-gen console that's already established. But Nintendo had, by most accounts, a surprisingly successful gala earlier this morning, leaving many to wonder whether there's enough middle ground for Microsoft to make up. Super Mario Galaxy coming to a Wii near you No Nintendo gaming platform would be the same without a Super Mario game, and the Wii is no exception. Nintendo has big little plans for the DS With all the attention currently being lavished on the Wii and its motion sensitive controller it might be easy to overlook the handheld market. Lights, camera, Orc: World of Warcraft movie in development Millions of World of Warcraft fans will finally get their own movie. Blizzard Entertainment and Legendary Pictures have announced an upcoming live-action movie based on WoW. PS3 controller looks a little wimpy against Nintendo's Wii While the 4D controller Sony rolled out late yesterday afternoon looked like it might generate a bit of interest, the fact that only one game - Incognito's Warhawk - was even partway prepared to make use of it, could score Nintendo at least a takedown this morning. Nintendo is coming for Sony and Microsoft gamers with a vengeance One of the clear unspoken messages to emerge from the Nintendo press conference earlier today was that they are no longer to be considered the "Third way" in console gaming. The Wii has a family feel to it, but the game lineup speaks differently: This will be a console for hardcore, gun toting, mania loving gamers as well as Mario fans. Nintendo shows off more controller action with Red Steel from Ubisoft One of the several games which Nintendo showed off at its press conference earlier was Red Steel from Ubisoft, a first person game which contains both shooting and sword fighting. Yes, yes that is just showing off the controller, but as long as it's fun we won't complain. Nintendo showcases Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess At a rather upbeat and entertaining press conference at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, Nintendo showcased their upcoming Wii console with a play through of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Nintendo Wii hitting store shelves in Q4 Nintendo today announced at its keynote at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) that it will be launching its next-generation gaming consoled "Wii" in the fourth quarter of this year. Alienware announces SLI notebooks Alienware will be offering two portable computers that integrate two Nvidia GeForce Go 7900 graphics processors in SLI configuration. Join our discussion on E3 2006