by David Pickett

Created on: April 06, 2009   Last Updated: April 08, 2009

Having never owned a Mac myself, I've never really had the chance to make an unbiased judgdement. Saying that, I am hopefully going to purchase a Mac of my own in the coming months. Why? For the user interface, the design, the programs and for the style. Notice gaming doesn't appear in that list. I have rather left the gaming scene apart from waiting for some releases soon.

In my opinion, gaming on a PC is a right pain. There are so many different things that can go wrong, it's unbelievable. Half the time you get no error message, no help and you have no idea what the problem is. Installing things on PCs can also be a pain, unlike Mac OS X, Windows doesn't update all links automatically, which causes mayhem.

I use Ubuntu Linux and gaming on Linux seems rather boringly easy compared to Windows a lot of time, despite what many people might say. Mac OS X is built on the most solid UNIX system,compared to Window's Windows system. UNIX being the system behind Linux as well, the two are quite similar. So gaming on a Mac.

Macs are simple and easy to use and one huge huge feature is the ability to end a program without causing the computer to crash. You can do that on a PC, you might say. Well not in the same way and certainly not as effectively. Gone are the days of the OS becoming unstable because of a buggy app Mac. OS X and Linux are stable no matter what in most cases. This makes gaming far more reliable on a Mac.

Another thing people use against Macs is that they are hard to customise and not upgradable. In terms of gaming support, this makes a huge difference as the person on the end of the phone or e-mail knows exactly what components you have, what part code and everything. You don't have to spend hours doing a DXDIAG as the information is already there as long as you haven't frankensteined your Mac. This gives a huge, often untalked about boost to the whole gaming on a Mac experience.

Finally, one issue is the amount of games available. Admittedly, the range for Macs isn't as vast as for a PC, but the top games are often represented such as Call of Duty and The Sims. Gaming need not be a chore and when you consider what else you get, a Mac is a seriously good option for choosing your next gaming setup although it does come with a few problems. Hopefully in the future Apple will be able to get lots of support from game studios and we can see a move away from traditional PC gaming into a new age.

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