Hi Shaun, Well, I won't deny the initial upfront costs for Mac's are rather expensive no matter where you live, but in the long run a user does save money on software upgrades. VoiceOver comes with the OS meaning there are no $1,000 more upfront fees for a screen reader, no expensive SMAs to pay, and Mac OS upgrades are rather affordable provided you have the hardware. There are a lot of free and open source apps that have been ported to Mac OS which means in terms of apps Mac can be a rather affordable solution from a software angle.
Of course, right now there is not a great deal of accessible games for Mac, but that is more due to a lack of developers than decent technologies. I know that OpenAL, from experience, is every bit as good as DirectSound and XAudio2, and is available on Mac. As a result high quality FPS games could be developed with state-of-the-art 5.1 surround sound. SFML is an awesome game programming API, and SDL is reasonable as well for basic game development. There is the Java game APIs such as Jinput, Joal, Jogl, etc which means that there are plenty of Java APIs for developing games on Mac. Point being, the technologies for Mac are out there all we need is more developers like Draconis to develop games for Mac. One thing I do agree with is Draconis's marketing strategy regarding Mac OS. They could have probably really soaked the blind Mac community with games that cost $20 or more, but didn't. On the contrary they brought the cost of their games like Silver Dollar and Change Reaction down to under $10 which means more people would be willing to buy them, and as a result they have flooded the blind Mac user community with low cost and affordable games. Simple games to be sure, but they are high quality and affordable on anyone's budget. Moreover they have put the time and effort into developing a game engine which should make developing future titles for Mac a breeze. They will help keep the costs down while making turn around times for development of new and old titles fairly quick. So I expect to see great things from Josh and others on the Mac front in the not too distant future. I think that one thing that will help Mac in terms of games is future compatibility. ?What I mean by that is a lot of games for Windows are for various reasons nearing the end of life in terms of technical support because the languages and APIs they use are seriously out of date. Most of the Draconis titles, for example, are inherited from James North who wrote them in VB 6, using DirectX 8, for an entirely different era of computers running Win 95, 98, and XP. Now that Josh is rewriting them from scratch in C++ they will be more compatible with Mac OS without any of the issues of compatibility plaguing their VB 6 titles for Windows. The same will hold true for any other developer who chooses to follow their example and start over with a clean slate so to speak. It may take some time for us to see the number of games for Mac currently available for Windows, but in the end they will likely be more stable and more compatible than those we see on the Windows side of the equation. Cheers! On 2/16/14, shaun everiss <sm.ever...@gmail.com> wrote: > I agree tom. > In the early days I had a lot of stuff I did not buy. > Most of that has been replaced with free or low cost stuff. > I hardly buy anything, games etc I may buy once a year if that > because of the price. > One of my pet peevs are that prices for some things have been a bit high. > The apple system solves that. > The big issue is getting in. > To get in at least in new zealand, its 4-6000 for a mac at least in > one of the computer places I checked out, granted its fully loaded > but who has that much unless you do. > its at least 1000 or more for an iphone or something. > Now if you can afford the initial headake every so often to keep your > devices supported, software including the os really is quite small. > 1-10 dollars in general for apps some are more. > 30 or so dollars for a mac system os upgrade on a computer and > nothing for the phones. > On the other end of the scale, pcs can be got for as little as 400 > straight up, ofcause its about 700-1000 for a good or reasonable > laptop, and true you don't get all the power of a mac, but still its > cheaper. > Prices for pc apps can get up there though. > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
