SkipG Posted June 16, 2012 Share Posted June 16, 2012 After 10 years since playing CMx1, it's time for me to get back in the game. I've a new MacBook Pro arriving next week with the following specs: Processor: 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 w/ 6MB shared L3 cache Memory: 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3L Storage: 256GB Flash Display: 15.4-inch supporting resolutions at 2880x1800, 1920x1200, 1680x1050, 1280x800, and 1024x640 Graphics/Video Support: Intel HD Graphics 4000/NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory The machine comes with OS X Lion, which I can upgrade for free to Mountain Lion when it's released next month. I plan to dual boot via Boot Camp to Windows 7 Home Premium w/SP1 (64bit). I'd very much appreciate the community's thoughts on which version of CMBN+CF I should buy, Mac or Win (I prefer disks in either case) and if the target Windows OS is good enough or do I need Pro. (If Mac is the consensus, assume I should hold off on Mountain Lion upgrade.) TIA and looking forward to participating here more as I get into the game. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stikkypixie Posted June 16, 2012 Share Posted June 16, 2012 I think it's best just to download the demo's and see what runs best. Keep in mind that the missions that come with the demo tend to be a bit smaller than some user created content out there. Have fun 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YankeeDog Posted June 16, 2012 Share Posted June 16, 2012 Yeah; try the demos first and see what works/looks best. But chances are, performance under the two OSes will be pretty similar. Personally, I find the convenience of not having to boot over into Windows makes the choice a no-brainer; I'd choose the OSX version over the Win. version even if there was a modest performance deficiency. But I haven't seen any substantial difference on my system, so this made the choice even easier. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfhand Posted June 16, 2012 Share Posted June 16, 2012 Unless I have completely misunderstood Phil's posts, the only way to get CMBN to use all 8 GB of RAM is with the Mac version... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Williams Posted June 16, 2012 Share Posted June 16, 2012 I never realized the Macintosh was still being manufactured until I returned to this forum with the release of CMBN. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyD Posted June 16, 2012 Share Posted June 16, 2012 To all intents and purposes the game on the two operating systems is identical, really. I've got a bootcamp partitioned mac mini and have wound up with the game running on both the OSX partition and the Windows partition. I marginally prefer the Windows side though I don't think I'd be able to give you a reason. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pak40 Posted June 16, 2012 Share Posted June 16, 2012 Well, I'm a Windows guy, but I don't see why you wouldn't get the Mac version in this case. You didn't say what your Windows specs were, or if it's a laptop or desktop. Anyway, the MacBook specs are more than ample and the fact that it's laptop means you can play CMBN anywhere. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 I never realized the Macintosh was still being manufactured until I returned to this forum with the release of CMBN. Don't watch much tv, do you? Macs turn up in shows at roughly the same frequency as all other brands combined. Hollywood loves Mac. Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkipG Posted June 17, 2012 Author Share Posted June 17, 2012 Thank you all very much for the feedback. I'll certainly try the demos and see if there's a discernible difference. Keeping in mind stikkypixie's mention of the demo missions' small size and sfhand's recollection about getting full use out of my RAM, the tests may not be definitive, but I'm sure they'll be fun. MikeyD/Pak40, I need to run Windows on the Mac anyway in order to use some essential Widows-only apps. I've had a dual-boot Mac before (I think with Vista) and seem to remember you could use a memory stick to enhance Windows performance. Do you know offhand if that also works with Windows 7? Michael E/Doug W, Macs are indeed all over the tube. I suspect paid product placement, but it may be those artsy types just like good design. Again, thanks. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Williams Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 I knew Apple still existed, and was doing very well. I just thought their main product line was I-Phones and I-Pads. I never see Macs at work, and I build my own PCs, so it never really occured to me until recently that they were still around. But anyway, OP. Sounds to me like your laptop (if that's what a "Macbook" is) is more than capable of running CMBN in either OS. Well, I can really only speak for Windows 7....but it should be more than enough for that. IIRC, CMBN is only able to access up to 4 gig of ram. Old code. D. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyD Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 Oh, one BIG thing to consider. Your available HD space. You bootcamp your mac, give the smaller fraction of the HD to the Windows partition, which then takes up 20 gigs of hard disk space just for Vista with god-knows-what. So the game may play the same on their side but your mac side might (might) have more elbow room for future modules, mods and additional titles. I'm starting to butt up against that problem right now. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JyriErik Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 Instead of dual booting, you can use Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion to run Windows on a Mac, which allows you to run both OS's at the same time, which can save you a lot of time if you need to switch OS's often. Jyri 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 ...Macs are indeed all over the tube. I suspect paid product placement... Yeah, that thought has crossed my mind more than once. ...but it may be those artsy types just like good design. The Mac has always been popular among—as you call it—the artsy crowd, especially those active in various electronic media. At first that may have been because certain things they wanted to do were only possible on a Mac, or were much easier to do on a Mac. Latterly, it may have more to do with a more user friendly OS. I don't think Mac enjoys quite the same popularity it once did due to improvements in Windows, but I think for a lot of people with money it remains the first choice. A lot of the same people might drive BMWs, not necessarily because it is a better car for them, but as a style statement. So with using a laptop with an Apple logo on the cover. Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyD Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 Mac people are always hearing stories from PC people about their hard drive frying and taking all the data with it. That's a much less common story coming from mac people. You pay an extra $500 or $1000 for a piece of equipment and you expect it to not blow up on you. That being said, I'm a bootcamp mac guy who never visits the mac side of his computer anymore. Windows Vista and a computer that doesn't blow up on me, the best of both worlds 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkipG Posted June 17, 2012 Author Share Posted June 17, 2012 When I retired in '06 and lost access to an IT crew I switched to Mac to minimize DIY tech support at home. In January '10, I bought a high-end 17" Dell laptop (we'd always had Dells at work with good results) to expand my gaming choices (CMx1 being a target). The build quality of the Dell was horrible and the Windows load out didn't work properly. Contact with Dell's call center in India was very frustrating, ending with a request for an RMA when I was told the OS difficulty I was having was a "known problem" with which I was going to have to live. So now I'm an Apple fanboi. Youse guys' responses are most appreciated. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 In January '10, I bought a high-end 17" Dell laptop (we'd always had Dells at work with good results) to expand my gaming choices... Yeah, admittedly the range of games available for the Mac OS is a lot narrower. I always felt that Apple made a huge mistake back 15-20 years ago by not plunging whole-heartedly into the effort to make the Mac the center of one's home entertainment center. It seemed at that time that they were trying to compete for the business market, and they were never going to win that contest. But people who were buying PCs for their businesses, often still bought Macs for use at home. So if that was where their strength already lay, why not exploit that to the hilt? And as part of that program, support game designers who were willing to design for the Mac. Instead, during the decade from the mid-'90s onward, Apple seems to have pretty much given game designers the cold shoulder. Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Williams Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 A couple of years ago I bought my wife a Dell Laptop, which was the first manufactured computer I had purchased since my Amiga 500 back in the 1980s. First thing I did was spend at least an hour removing all the bloatware crap that Dell ships their product loaded with. It has worked fine since then. I occasionally, when she is not around, run Registry Mechanic, and make sure her anti malware/antivirus software is functioning properly. Happy wife, happy life. Lack of game support for the Mac is probably the reason I never paid much attention to it. Quite frankly, my home PC is used 60% for gaming, 30% for web surfing, and 10% for "serious" stuff. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulMG Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 My first PC was an Apple IIe and waiting for Windows games to be ported to the Apple was painful. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkipG Posted June 17, 2012 Author Share Posted June 17, 2012 Michael E, what's particularly confounding about Apple's early strategy is it also targeted the education market, but didn't consider the potential of students' (i.e., young people's) gaming interests. I suspect that particular myopia was a Job's thing. Doug W, ha! I hear you wrt "happy wife, happy life." That's exactly what I was thinking when I said DIY tech support at home. I'm about 60/40 play/serious, but some of the serious stuff is either Windows only or heavy Java/Flash, which Apple doesn't seem to accommodate all that well (another Job's thing). If CMBN works well over OS X, then I may try Parallels or Fusion for the Windows stuff. I know what a pain it is to have to reboot and I'd like to avoid it, but at least it should be quicker with the MacBook's SSD. PaulMG, I've been wargaming on and off since the 1950's (started with dice, a ruler, wooden blocks, and Napoleonic lead). By the age of computers, I was a bit of a grognard and never had an interest in the games developed for or ported to the early Apples. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Williams Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 My first PC was an Apple IIe and waiting for Windows games to be ported to the Apple was painful. Heh, is that a joke? The first PC I ever touched was an Apple IIe, back in high school, where we learned to program simple BASIC. The first PC I ever owned was a Commodore 64 in 1984, which I could only afford after I finished army basic training between my junior and senior years of high school. From there, I bought the Amiga.....and then Commodore folded. Left with two choices, Apple or IBM, I went with IBM "clones", built my first MS-DOS system, which, if I remember correctly, was a 386 16MHz, and have been building my own ever since. It's a lot easier now than it was back then. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 Michael E, what's particularly confounding about Apple's early strategy is it also targeted the education market, but didn't consider the potential of students' (i.e., young people's) gaming interests. I suspect that particular myopia was a Job's thing. Right about Apple's blindness where student interest in gaming was concerned, but I doubt Jobs had much to do with it has he had been pushed out of the company by then. Interesting that when he returned it was the beginning of the big push to re-enter the home market with the iMac, but they still missed the bus on gaming. My guess is that to really impact the gaming market, Apple needed to do two things. The first was to build some hot gaming rigs specifically for that market. That was well within their grasp if they had only thought it worth doing. The second would have been to provide serious technical support to game designers along with some financial incentives. Once the market had grown big enough, the incentives should have no longer been necessary. Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Williams Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 I am not even convinced of Apple's survivability with Steve Jobs' death. He was such a driving force in the company, such a "hands on" CEO....I wonder if someone else with half his vision and personality will emerge to lead the company? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulMG Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 No joke. My nephew and I hooked up a 9" color TV with an RF modulator and were amazed to see Ultima and other games in color after a long time with the green screen. It had two floppy drives so we didn't have to swap/flip discs as often as other people. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkipG Posted June 17, 2012 Author Share Posted June 17, 2012 Doug, agree, with Jobs gone Apple has lost a driving force. Nevertheless, from a tech design standpoint I think Ive (Sir Jonathan to the likes of us ) will continue to perform. And Tim Cook knows his business. One of Apple's greatest skills as a money machine is it's ability to monetize practically everything. Make it simple to use, integrate all your products, and channel your customers to your stores. This business model probably doesn't work all that well with grognard wargamer types like us, but we're not the target market. It sure works for my sweetie, who just can't do without her MacBook, iPhone, and iPad. Is AAPL worth $574/sh? Couldn't say, but the PE is only 14 and many think that's reasonable. Can its money printing press continue to roll, probably. In my view it can roll a lot longer than Facebook's, but then I don't own either of these puppies. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ultradave Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 Macs are also popular with those of us in the scientific computing community who use a lot of Unix programs that can be recompiled on a Mac (because behind the scenes it is pretty much BSD/Unix with Mac graphics and desktop layered on top.) This isn't too much different an environment than most Linux distributions, which are similar to Unix with a desktop environment on top. I have a new MacBook Pro - replaced the old one - about the same specs as yours except a 750GB hard drive. I play selective games, so the lack of the huge variety of PC games didn't bother me. Your specs will run CM just fine on the Mac or on your Windows partition. I used Parallels Desktop and W Vista and PC games run just fine. Dave 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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