The brightness and sound volume and all other such keyboard keys can be set in Windows 7 Boot Camp control panel to either to their OS X function or behave like windows 7 control keys.

Personally, I turned off their OS X functions as many games require the use of F keys so switching to desktop when trying to quicksave is not the best solution.

Oh and also, I had the same issue with faster and louder fans on my iMac, but that was just because they were caked in dirt.

Clean them up and the loud buzz will be gone.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Rocketeer

Hmm this is interesting. To get to the point people can't seem to ignore ... Mac OSX certainly runs better than Windows on Macs. I have a Imac with bootcamp and windows 7 and there are certain things where you plainly notice its not as smooth. For example brighness controls on keyboard do not work, system temperature rises faster(and thus fans run faster and louder) and current drivers can be a pain to aquire(im talking about ATI drivers and stuff). 

Nothing major, but the system definitely runs better on OSX which is really not much of a suprise ...

 

That being said i see more and more publishers getting OSX versions of their games ready, in the past it has pretty much been only blizzard, but nowadays we saw CCP and Turbine also enter the fray. Reason is imho simple, the Mac market is growing far faster than the PC market. We have year over year groth rates of 20% on Mac, and apple is actually the biggest PC manufacturer in the US now. Not to mention that you have not alot of competition on that market, so its a win-win situation really.

 

Though im very disappointed by the way arena.net chose, Transgaming is known for their easy and fast "conversions", but they really just add a translation layer for directx, performance aswell as quality has always suffered in the past. There is a reason Blizzard is not working with them but rather making native versions, just as Turbine has chosen.

I might be more in favour of that approach if i ever had actually seen it working properly on anything actually using directx9+. It also means arena.net is outsourcing things and will depend on transgaming to fix any issues on "their" side... 

The keyboard brightness is almost certainly a driver issue.  If Apple wrote drivers for both Mac OS X and Windows, is it really any surprise that they put more effort into the former?  And if Apple didn't write Windows drivers at all but left Microsoft to do it or use a generic keyboard driver, it again shouldn't be surprising that the drivers aren't as good.  The blame is almost certainly on Apple.

Its not a driver issue, since you can't write a driver that globally intercepts keystrokes afaik. For example the F1 key has a different meaning on desktop than within an application. I guess you COULD hack it in some way, but then your driver wouldn't get certified by microsoft. AFAIK its not possible in windows to assign a keypress to globally control brightness. If there is i would be delighted to know how, since im currently using a desktop shortcut that opens the energy options, which is a major pain.

I'm not sure if this is the issue affecting you, but there was some Apple hardware recently that used some modified version of SATA rather than the standard version that the entire rest of the world uses.  They measured hard drive temperature to determine the need for fans, but made sure that if you bought your own hard drive or SSD elsewhere rather than paying Apple's exorbitant prices, it wouldn't work right because it was the normal SATA.  It's a vendor-lockout issue.  Windows might not have the right drivers for it, in which case, the problem is that Apple's hardware design was basically defective.  Industry standards exist for a reason--to prevent this sort of thing from happening.

Thats quite correct, though not my issue since i don't have one of those SSDs. I have a regular boring spinning harddrive. The issue simply is that my CPU more often goes into full throttle on windows. I.e. if i open a folder i see a CPU frequency spike on windows before it goes down again, that spike is not there on OSX. I guess you could say OSX is more sluggish, and less happy to leave the CPUs energy savings mode. I guess thats due to the fact that apple put alot of effort into making their laptops run as long as possible. And yeah i already tried playing with the settings on windows ...

I'm surprised that you'd have trouble getting video drivers for Windows.  If you go to AMD's web site and tell it what card you have, does it not take you to the right drivers?

-----

No it doesn't. The drivers it takes me too are over a year old, i.e. older than the drivers that come with bootcamp. You see the Imacs use a beefed up mobile version of the chips, something you usually only see in highend laptops. And AMD thinks laptops are not their problem. What i have to use is basicly a hacked version of their normal current drivers that doesn't do the hardware check upon installation and works like a charm ... still this is basicly a third party modified driver and im not totally happy with the situation.

I guess thats Apples fault too in a way, but one of the reasons i bought the imac was because i wanted a energy efficent and silent system ... so i can hardly blame them for choosing hardware which does just that. Besides shoveling the blame around between apple and amd doesn't help me as a enduser.

If a game is originally written in DirectX and you want it to run natively on Mac OS X, then you have to redo all of the DirectX stuff in OpenGL.  You'll also have to redo all of the HLSL shaders in GLSL.  For many commands, there will be an OpenGL or GLSL equivalent for the DirectX or HLSL that you used the first time.  But when there isn't, it can get complicated.

Or worse, there could be an equivalent that is available in OpenGL on both Windows and Linux, but not for Mac OS X because Apple hasn't bothered to write drivers for recent versions.  The latest version of OpenGL and GLSL is 4.3, but Apple drivers don't support anything after OpenGL 3.2 and GLSL 1.5.  That means that a game might have done something in DirectX or HLSL for which there is an easy OpenGL or GLSL equivalent--but the OpenGL or GLSL won't work on Mac OS X because Apple hasn't bothered to provide working drivers.  For a purely DirectX 9.0c game, the OpenGL and GLSL equivalents will probably be available, but anything more modern may require stripping features out of the Mac OS X version to get it to run at all.

Thats what Turbine did, for exactly the reasons you specified. And im ok with that, the game still looks very good(i admit im one of those you have to point graphical features out for to notice them), and it has the benefit of actually running faster on OSX than it does on bootcamp, loading screens are much faster too and the microlag that bothered me for years is gone.

Though i fully lay that at the feet of OpenGL vs DirectX, i don't think OSX vs windows has anything to do with it. Though who knows, if they had to rewrite parts of the engine anyway maybe they corrected some designflaws or something. God knows i usually tried to improve code if i had to rewrite it anyway.

Above, you talk about trouble getting video driver updates for Windows.  You know what's worse than the hassle of updating your video drivers?  Needing updated drivers that don't exist.  You can't blame game developers for that.

Well no windows drivers is a big problem if the software only runs on windows ... Tbh i didn't expect that issue, i mean the Imac nowadays is basicly a fancy looking but normal PC isn't it? Fully expected AMD to provide normal driver support for it, especially because the normal driver works fine on it once the installer got hacked ...

Originally posted by Hell_Hammer

The brightness and sound volume and all other such keyboard keys can be set in Windows 7 Boot Camp control panel to either to their OS X function or behave like windows 7 control keys.

 

Personally, I turned off their OS X functions as many games require the use of F keys so switching to desktop when trying to quicksave is not the best solution.

 

Oh and also, I had the same issue with faster and louder fans on my iMac, but that was just because they were caked in dirt.

Clean them up and the loud buzz will be gone.

Brigthness keys don't work for me on windows no matter the setting in bootcamp. And my fans are not covered in dirt, unless they shake it off by booting into OSX and then sneakily reapplying it on booting in windows. That would be going a bit far even for apple ...

Still, thanks for trying to help. The thing the brightness keys once worked with the original apple bluetooth keyboard and then stopped ... only they though, sound and the player controls work like a charm. 

Originally posted by Rocketeer

Originally posted by Quizzical

The keyboard brightness is almost certainly a driver issue.  If Apple wrote drivers for both Mac OS X and Windows, is it really any surprise that they put more effort into the former?  And if Apple didn't write Windows drivers at all but left Microsoft to do it or use a generic keyboard driver, it again shouldn't be surprising that the drivers aren't as good.  The blame is almost certainly on Apple.

Its not a driver issue, since you can't write a driver that globally intercepts keystrokes afaik. For example the F1 key has a different meaning on desktop than within an application. I guess you COULD hack it in some way, but then your driver wouldn't get certified by microsoft. AFAIK its not possible in windows to assign a keypress to globally control brightness. If there is i would be delighted to know how, since im currently using a desktop shortcut that opens the energy options, which is a major pain.

I'm not sure if this is the issue affecting you, but there was some Apple hardware recently that used some modified version of SATA rather than the standard version that the entire rest of the world uses.  They measured hard drive temperature to determine the need for fans, but made sure that if you bought your own hard drive or SSD elsewhere rather than paying Apple's exorbitant prices, it wouldn't work right because it was the normal SATA.  It's a vendor-lockout issue.  Windows might not have the right drivers for it, in which case, the problem is that Apple's hardware design was basically defective.  Industry standards exist for a reason--to prevent this sort of thing from happening.

Thats quite correct, though not my issue since i don't have one of those SSDs. I have a regular boring spinning harddrive. The issue simply is that my CPU more often goes into full throttle on windows. I.e. if i open a folder i see a CPU frequency spike on windows before it goes down again, that spike is not there on OSX. I guess you could say OSX is more sluggish, and less happy to leave the CPUs energy savings mode. I guess thats due to the fact that apple put alot of effort into making their laptops run as long as possible. And yeah i already tried playing with the settings on windows ...

I'm surprised that you'd have trouble getting video drivers for Windows.  If you go to AMD's web site and tell it what card you have, does it not take you to the right drivers?

-----

No it doesn't. The drivers it takes me too are over a year old, i.e. older than the drivers that come with bootcamp. You see the Imacs use a beefed up mobile version of the chips, something you usually only see in highend laptops. And AMD thinks laptops are not their problem. What i have to use is basicly a hacked version of their normal current drivers that doesn't do the hardware check upon installation and works like a charm ... still this is basicly a third party modified driver and im not totally happy with the situation.

I guess thats Apples fault too in a way, but one of the reasons i bought the imac was because i wanted a energy efficent and silent system ... so i can hardly blame them for choosing hardware which does just that. Besides shoveling the blame around between apple and amd doesn't help me as a enduser.

If a game is originally written in DirectX and you want it to run natively on Mac OS X, then you have to redo all of the DirectX stuff in OpenGL.  You'll also have to redo all of the HLSL shaders in GLSL.  For many commands, there will be an OpenGL or GLSL equivalent for the DirectX or HLSL that you used the first time.  But when there isn't, it can get complicated.

Or worse, there could be an equivalent that is available in OpenGL on both Windows and Linux, but not for Mac OS X because Apple hasn't bothered to write drivers for recent versions.  The latest version of OpenGL and GLSL is 4.3, but Apple drivers don't support anything after OpenGL 3.2 and GLSL 1.5.  That means that a game might have done something in DirectX or HLSL for which there is an easy OpenGL or GLSL equivalent--but the OpenGL or GLSL won't work on Mac OS X because Apple hasn't bothered to provide working drivers.  For a purely DirectX 9.0c game, the OpenGL and GLSL equivalents will probably be available, but anything more modern may require stripping features out of the Mac OS X version to get it to run at all.

Thats what Turbine did, for exactly the reasons you specified. And im ok with that, the game still looks very good(i admit im one of those you have to point graphical features out for to notice them), and it has the benefit of actually running faster on OSX than it does on bootcamp, loading screens are much faster too and the microlag that bothered me for years is gone.

Though i fully lay that at the feet of OpenGL vs DirectX, i don't think OSX vs windows has anything to do with it. Though who knows, if they had to rewrite parts of the engine anyway maybe they corrected some designflaws or something. God knows i usually tried to improve code if i had to rewrite it anyway.

Above, you talk about trouble getting video driver updates for Windows.  You know what's worse than the hassle of updating your video drivers?  Needing updated drivers that don't exist.  You can't blame game developers for that.

Well no windows drivers is a big problem if the software only runs on windows ... Tbh i didn't expect that issue, i mean the Imac nowadays is basicly a fancy looking but normal PC isn't it? Fully expected AMD to provide normal driver support for it, especially because the normal driver works fine on it once the installer got hacked ...

1)  If the keyboard were to somehow communicate directly with the monitor without the OS being able to see it, it wouldn't matter if you were using Windows or Mac OS X, or for that matter, had just turned on the power and hadn't yet loaded an OS.  If the OS can see it, it's hard to imagine what it could be other than a driver issue.

2)  I don't think you understood what I said.  The problem isn't some particular SSD.  The problem is that the hard drives Apple shipped at some point aren't the standard SATA that the rest of the world uses.  Apple added some extra stuff to detect the hard drive temperature, and then based fan speed on the hard drive temperature.

If you replace it by your own hard drive, it will work for data, but won't be able to detect the hard drive temperature, so it will have the fans going full blast whether you're in Windows or Mac OS X.  If the fan speed being based on hard drive temperature is based on something in the BIOS, then it wouldn't matter if it's Windows or Mac OS X.  But if it's something in drivers, then it won't work properly in Windows unless it has whatever special stuff the Mac OS X version has to control the fan speed.

3)  What happens if you go to the Catalyst 12.8 page while you're running Windows, download it, and try to install it?

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonaiw_vista64.aspx

Macs aren't on the list of unsupported hardware (certain vendors ask AMD to artificially disable driver updates), so I'd think it should work.

4)  Recoding a lot of stuff in OpenGL and GLSL is a lot of work.  It also means two separate code bases to maintain and debug.  For really popular games, doing so to make a Mac version might well get you enough additional sales to be worth the trouble.  Guild Wars 2 might do it eventually, as it seems to be a very popular game.  But for most games, the tiny fraction of added sales doesn't justify the cost.

5)  I wasn't talking about Windows drivers.  I'd be surprised if you can't get Windows drivers that run DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.2 (assuming you have recent hardware) for your Mac.  The problem is that you can't get Mac OS X drivers that run anything more recent than OpenGL 3.2, which is several years old and roughly the OpenGL equivalent of DirectX 10.  Apple writes their own drivers for Mac OS X rather than letting AMD or Nvidia do it.  I'm not sure why, as AMD and Nvidia write their own Linux drivers, and that has far smaller market share (in desktops and laptops, but not counting servers) than Mac OS X.

Originally posted by Quizzical

1)  If the keyboard were to somehow communicate directly with the monitor without the OS being able to see it, it wouldn't matter if you were using Windows or Mac OS X, or for that matter, had just turned on the power and hadn't yet loaded an OS.  If the OS can see it, it's hard to imagine what it could be other than a driver issue.

2)  I don't think you understood what I said.  The problem isn't some particular SSD.  The problem is that the hard drives Apple shipped at some point aren't the standard SATA that the rest of the world uses.  Apple added some extra stuff to detect the hard drive temperature, and then based fan speed on the hard drive temperature.

If you replace it by your own hard drive, it will work for data, but won't be able to detect the hard drive temperature, so it will have the fans going full blast whether you're in Windows or Mac OS X.  If the fan speed being based on hard drive temperature is based on something in the BIOS, then it wouldn't matter if it's Windows or Mac OS X.  But if it's something in drivers, then it won't work properly in Windows unless it has whatever special stuff the Mac OS X version has to control the fan speed.

3)  What happens if you go to the Catalyst 12.8 page while you're running Windows, download it, and try to install it?

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonaiw_vista64.aspx

Macs aren't on the list of unsupported hardware (certain vendors ask AMD to artificially disable driver updates), so I'd think it should work.

4)  Recoding a lot of stuff in OpenGL and GLSL is a lot of work.  It also means two separate code bases to maintain and debug.  For really popular games, doing so to make a Mac version might well get you enough additional sales to be worth the trouble.  Guild Wars 2 might do it eventually, as it seems to be a very popular game.  But for most games, the tiny fraction of added sales doesn't justify the cost.

5)  I wasn't talking about Windows drivers.  I'd be surprised if you can't get Windows drivers that run DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.2 (assuming you have recent hardware) for your Mac.  The problem is that you can't get Mac OS X drivers that run anything more recent than OpenGL 3.2, which is several years old and roughly the OpenGL equivalent of DirectX 10.  Apple writes their own drivers for Mac OS X rather than letting AMD or Nvidia do it.  I'm not sure why, as AMD and Nvidia write their own Linux drivers, and that has far smaller market share (in desktops and laptops, but not counting servers) than Mac OS X.

1. Its a logitech keyboard. Are you telling me logitech isn't properly building windows drivers for their stuff? And how come i have never seen a normal(windows keyboard) with brightness controls? You only ever see it on laptops.

2. So they put a temperature sensor on the harddrive and only turned on the fan that cooles it when needed? Thats spiffy but not the problem i think, my system is not constantly louder under windows. If im not doing anything intensive its just as near silent in windows as it is on OSX.

3. It does not work, the driver says on installation that my video hardware is unsupported. They have their own category for imacs in bootcamp, there we may download the drivers from january 2011 ... see here http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/bootcamp-win7.aspx

4. I admit im suprised myself Turbine chose that way for LotRO, by no means a title as big as GW2 or WoW, yet they did and im thankful. And i call shame on arena.net, if Turbine can do it what is their excuse for not doing it? People using non windows systems are very sensitive wether you dedicate yourself to the platform and produce a native client(and we know its not easy) or wether you use a, sorry, halfassed emulation/translation software. 

5. If i wasn't techsavy enough to install unsupported drivers from a thirdparty site and confident enough to not worry about compromising my system with them ... yeah it would be a tad bit problematic. Graphic drivers that approach their 2nd year are considered old, correct?

As for why apple doesn't let them write their own drivers ... maybe its the state of the linux drivers thats putting them off? Last i used them they where beyond horrible, outdated and prone to produce kernel panics. Honestly, they most likely simply do not meet apples quality standards. Not that i blame them, they focus their driver developement on Windows ... im pretty sure there are big differences between writing drivers for OSX and Windows, it doesn't sound so farfetched that neither amd nor nvidia have the kind of expertise on OSX in their team that apple has ...

Atleast thats my explanation. There does exist a amd driver as i linked above, the fact that they ceased developement on it ... take that how you will.

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

Originally posted by SnarlingWolf

Originally posted by Loke666
Thats nice, there are few MMOs avaliable for MAC users.

Wasn't much of a reason to do so for 2 main reasons:

 

1) They made the intel based Macs specifically so users could have access to all of the Windows programs and games. That made making a Mac client redundant.

 

2) Most gamers use PCs making it the,by far, major market share.

 

 

If you have the money and time I suppose why not, but it really is never necessary because of reason #1.

With MAC OS X being superior to Windows in every possible way, its just plain stupid to have to run a duall boot on a macbook pro.

Obviously 10/10 :S

Originally posted by Fendel84M
Smart move IMO gives the wow Mac players another choice without needing windows.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Apple really doesn't want to support gaming as it shows by the video cards they have in their PCs.

Originally posted by botrytis

Originally posted by Fendel84M
Smart move IMO gives the wow Mac players another choice without needing windows.

No good deed goes unpunished.

 

Apple really doesn't want to support gaming as it shows by the video cards they have in their PCs.

Never had any issue with mine. I can run GW2 with everything turned to max at 2560x1440 resolution, what more do you need? I have yet to find a game that won't run well on my 27" 2011 IMac. The 6970M they use is a fairly powerful card imho.

Originally posted by Naqaj

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

With MAC OS X being superior to Windows in every possible way, its just plain stupid to have to run a duall boot on a macbook pro.

You did that on purpose, didn't you? Really not helping ...

Psssst, here on fanboycentral.com, someone's always going to start.

But I haven't heard old Mac-n-PC since the 80s.  It's heartwarming, in a strange way.

Originally posted by Rocketeer

Originally posted by botrytis

Originally posted by Fendel84M
Smart move IMO gives the wow Mac players another choice without needing windows.

No good deed goes unpunished.

 

Apple really doesn't want to support gaming as it shows by the video cards they have in their PCs.

Never had any issue with mine. I can run GW2 with everything turned to max at 2560x1440 resolution, what more do you need? I have yet to find a game that won't run well on my 27" 2011 IMac. The 6970M they use is a fairly powerful card imho.

Never had any issues... except, of course, for the major issues that you describe above.

By performance, a Radeon HD 6970M is roughly a desktop Radeon HD 6850.  In the latest generation, that's roughly a Radeon HD 7770, which is a $120 card.  When you bought the 6970M, the 6850 was probably a $150-$180 card.  That's certainly capable of handling games, but you're getting roughly the performance of a $800-$1000 (excluding peripherals) gaming PC, and surely paid a lot more than that for it.  Though I guess a fair chunk of the price tag is the large monitor.

-----

As for your replies above that I won't quote for the sake of brevity:

1)  Logitech may have made the keyboard, but what about the monitor?  Adjusting monitor brightness from a keyboard isn't a standard monitor function.  I still say it's almost certainly a driver issue.

2)  If it's only intermittently loud, then the issue I brought up surely isn't your problem.  If it were, the fan would be going full blast all of the time.

3)  Is the Windows side of Boot Camp somehow fundamentally different from wiping the hard drive and doing a clean install of Windows?  Or would the latter not have the proper drivers for an iMac?

Laptop drivers can be finicky, especially if you're using some sort of discrete switchable graphics.  I don't know if iMacs go that route.

4)  Perhaps the bigger question isn't why ArenaNet didn't recode everything in OpenGL, but rather, why Turbine did.  If your DirectX implementation relies heavily on features that aren't available in OpenGL (or are only available in newer versions of OpenGL that Apple doesn't support), then porting it from DirectX to OpenGL is impractical.  Sometimes it would mean you lose a couple of features that you can live without, but sometimes it would mean losing features that are so central to the game that there's no point in bothering.

5)  Mac OS X is a much bigger market than Linux.  On the other hand, people who buy a video card for a Linux machine will consider the brand and drivers, while that isn't even an option if buying from Apple, so it's not clear that high quality Mac OS X drivers would increase sales for AMD or Nvidia.

Regardless of whether drivers would be better or worse if written by AMD or Nvidia rather than Apple, by not providing modern drivers, Apple is making it much harder than necessary to port games to Mac OS X.  By not letting you use standard Windows drivers, Apple is making it much harder than necessary to run games through Boot Camp.  If you have trouble playing games on your iMac, you should point your finger at Apple first, before taking game developers to task.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Rocketeer

Originally posted by botrytis

Originally posted by Fendel84M
Smart move IMO gives the wow Mac players another choice without needing windows.

No good deed goes unpunished.

 

Apple really doesn't want to support gaming as it shows by the video cards they have in their PCs.

Never had any issue with mine. I can run GW2 with everything turned to max at 2560x1440 resolution, what more do you need? I have yet to find a game that won't run well on my 27" 2011 IMac. The 6970M they use is a fairly powerful card imho.

Never had any issues... except, of course, for the major issues that you describe above.

By performance, a Radeon HD 6970M is roughly a desktop Radeon HD 6850.  In the latest generation, that's roughly a Radeon HD 7770, which is a $120 card.  When you bought the 6970M, the 6850 was probably a $150-$180 card.  That's certainly capable of handling games, but you're getting roughly the performance of a $800-$1000 (excluding peripherals) gaming PC, and surely paid a lot more than that for it.  Though I guess a fair chunk of the price tag is the large monitor.

Well obviously i meant i never had a issue in the context of the capabilities of the graphics card. I didn't feel the need to reiterate on the issues i do have with the system as they are in the same thread and i assume people are reading the posts in order :D. And yes, the display makes up about 900-1k$ of the systems pricetag. Back then (mid 2011) thats just what you paid for a high quality LED backlight display in 27" size and that resolution. 

-----

As for your replies above that I won't quote for the sake of brevity:

1)  Logitech may have made the keyboard, but what about the monitor?  Adjusting monitor brightness from a keyboard isn't a standard monitor function.  I still say it's almost certainly a driver issue.

I don't want to get technical, but changing brightness is a OS controlled option to me. There is a slider in energy settings for it, and the system needs it to dim the monitor for inactivity etc. What i want is to tell windows "If i press F1, dim the screen by 5%". Thats apparently not possible. Thats not a driver issue to me, i want to assign a keypress to a system function, like you can assign keys to change volume level. Again, if you know a workaround i'd be happy to hear it. I don't see the difference between changing volume or changing brightness.

2)  If it's only intermittently loud, then the issue I brought up surely isn't your problem.  If it were, the fan would be going full blast all of the time.

3)  Is the Windows side of Boot Camp somehow fundamentally different from wiping the hard drive and doing a clean install of Windows?  Or would the latter not have the proper drivers for an iMac?

Laptop drivers can be finicky, especially if you're using some sort of discrete switchable graphics.  I don't know if iMacs go that route.

Yes, afaik the imacs do. Thinking about it thats probably the issue, but lets answer in order.

1. Bootcamp is basicly installing windows as normal, and then booting into it and installing the apple provided drivers ontop.

2. The Imac afaik has two gfx cards, the intel one and the ati. It probably switches between them as needed on OSX but not on windows, that could explain the loudness ... maybe.

4)  Perhaps the bigger question isn't why ArenaNet didn't recode everything in OpenGL, but rather, why Turbine did.  If your DirectX implementation relies heavily on features that aren't available in OpenGL (or are only available in newer versions of OpenGL that Apple doesn't support), then porting it from DirectX to OpenGL is impractical.  Sometimes it would mean you lose a couple of features that you can live without, but sometimes it would mean losing features that are so central to the game that there's no point in bothering.

I don't think that you can circumvent that issue by using a transgaming wrapper. Thats basicly a modified wine and translates directx to opengl calls. If a directx call does not have a opengl corresponding call you can't translate it. Well i guess it could be done in software emulation, but you sound techsavy enough to properly guess how that would turn out.

5)  Mac OS X is a much bigger market than Linux.  On the other hand, people who buy a video card for a Linux machine will consider the brand and drivers, while that isn't even an option if buying from Apple, so it's not clear that high quality Mac OS X drivers would increase sales for AMD or Nvidia.

Agreed. But quality of drivers might influence Apples choice of which to include in the next mac generations. Apple does have some cloud that way, and im not talking about iCloud. 

Regardless of whether drivers would be better or worse if written by AMD or Nvidia rather than Apple, by not providing modern drivers, Apple is making it much harder than necessary to port games to Mac OS X.  By not letting you use standard Windows drivers, Apple is making it much harder than necessary to run games through Boot Camp.  If you have trouble playing games on your iMac, you should point your finger at Apple first, before taking game developers to task.

Hmm maybe i chose my words poorly. Im not taking arena.net to task over the state of the imacs windows drivers, or the old Opengl version in OSX. Im taking them to task for choosing a translation company with a imho poor trackrecord over producing a native version. Wouldn't have done so a month ago, but if Turbine can do any excuse that arena.net could bring would just sound hollow. This isn't blizzard we are talking about, and neither is it a multi million sub game, its freaking Turbine and freaking LotRO we are talking about. And apparently they are doing it without having to sell a kidney per dev. 

1)  I change brightness on my monitors by pressing buttons directly on the monitors.  Windows probably isn't even aware of the monitor brightness.  Doing it from a keyboard requires doing something special with drivers.

3)  If you've got discrete switchable graphics, then Apple is supposed to be the one that repackages the normal drivers to make them available to you.  If they're not, then the problem is with Apple.  Discrete switchable graphics is nifty for laptops, as it allows lengthy battery life at idle.  But it's a dumb idea if you're not going to run the system off of a battery, because you run into driver problems.

4)  If something can't be recoded directly in an old version of OpenGL, then it surely can't be done by automatically translating DirectX API calls into OpenGL API calls.

5)  Apple is notorious for being extremely finicky and dumping suppliers for any reason or no reason at all.  If AMD or Nvidia were to write drivers for Mac OS X and actually make them better than the Windows drivers, Apple would probably still switch away from them within a few years, anyway.  Threats of "I won't buy your stuff if you write bad drivers" are less effective if you weren't going to buy their stuff anyway.

How hard it would be to convert GW2 to OpenGL for a Mac OS X (and perhaps Linux while you're at it, since switching to OpenGL likely does most of the work here) version depends greatly in internal details not merely of which features are implemented, but how those particular features are implemented.  That's basically impossible to gauge without seeing the source code.

Really, though, if GW2 is successful for long enough (say, if they're still selling 100K copies per month a year from now), then porting the game to Mac OS X and running it natively in OpenGL likely makes sense.  But it shouldn't be the highest priority as the first thing to do.  You do the Windows version first, since that's where most of the market is (and a much larger percentage of the gaming market than the total laptop or desktop markets), and don't worry about other versions until the game is stable and polished.  You cite LotRO, but they didn't even announce a Mac version until more than five years after the Windows version launched.

And you definitely don't start working on a port before launch unless it's written in OpenGL right from the start without any use of DirectX.  If the Windows version of your game flops, then a Mac version isn't likely to do much better.

Originally posted by Quizzical

1)  I change brightness on my monitors by pressing buttons directly on the monitors.  Windows probably isn't even aware of the monitor brightness.  Doing it from a keyboard requires doing something special with drivers.

Do you even bother reader what i write? There is a setting for it in energy settings on system panel, and windows is perfectly aware of it since it perfectly shows the current brightness level. Do i have to post a screenshot of it? I can click on it and drag it to a higher or lower level, you telling me doing keypress instead of a point, click and drag requires a special driver?

3)  If you've got discrete switchable graphics, then Apple is supposed to be the one that repackages the normal drivers to make them available to you.  If they're not, then the problem is with Apple.  Discrete switchable graphics is nifty for laptops, as it allows lengthy battery life at idle.  But it's a dumb idea if you're not going to run the system off of a battery, because you run into driver problems.

Works fine in OSX, and that dumb idea reduces my energy bill aswell as bringing peace to my room. And discrete graphics mean that there is different hardware for the same job, choosing which to use when is a OS level decision and not a driver decision. The drivers have no clue when you need highpower graphics. Its like multicore CPUs, assigning processes to different CPUs is the job of the OS.

4)  If something can't be recoded directly in an old version of OpenGL, then it surely can't be done by automatically translating DirectX API calls into OpenGL API calls.

Thats what i said ... hence non existing opengl calls are a non factor in deciding wether to make a native port or use a translation software.

5)  Apple is notorious for being extremely finicky and dumping suppliers for any reason or no reason at all.  If AMD or Nvidia were to write drivers for Mac OS X and actually make them better than the Windows drivers, Apple would probably still switch away from them within a few years, anyway.  Threats of "I won't buy your stuff if you write bad drivers" are less effective if you weren't going to buy their stuff anyway.

Then why did intel panic when apple told them their CPUs where not energy efficient enough? If you think a threat from apple wouldn't affect their suppliers your foolish, sorry. Look what kind of labour rights they made foxconn jump through just to freshen up their image somewhat.

How hard it would be to convert GW2 to OpenGL for a Mac OS X (and perhaps Linux while you're at it, since switching to OpenGL likely does most of the work here) version depends greatly in internal details not merely of which features are implemented, but how those particular features are implemented.  That's basically impossible to gauge without seeing the source code.

I agree. However we are talking about a 2007 game with directx 11 updated graphics, thats alot of codebase that actually even predates intel macs, while GW2 probably planned this for quite a while. You don't just pull a client for a different architecture out of your hat a month after release ... They probably atleast considered this while the game was still in developement, and didn't go out of their way to built any major hurdles in.

Really, though, if GW2 is successful for long enough (say, if they're still selling 100K copies per month a year from now), then porting the game to Mac OS X and running it natively in OpenGL likely makes sense.  But it shouldn't be the highest priority as the first thing to do.  You do the Windows version first, since that's where most of the market is (and a much larger percentage of the gaming market than the total laptop or desktop markets), and don't worry about other versions until the game is stable and polished.  You cite LotRO, but they didn't even announce a Mac version until more than five years after the Windows version launched.

The thing is, if its not top priority its never going to get done. Because something always is top priority, they just shuffle it around(balance, bugs, content etc) based on what gets whined about the most while generating the most revenue. Thing is they decided to go mac, and now transgaming is going to take their cut, because thats their buisiness.

And you definitely don't start working on a port before launch unless it's written in OpenGL right from the start without any use of DirectX.  If the Windows version of your game flops, then a Mac version isn't likely to do much better.

Probably, but i'd say "if the windows version flops a success on the mac version won't safe you either". Because lets face it, mac has maybe 3 AAA mmos already including GW2. If you release on that platform its going to be a success because there simply is not much competition. Among the blind the one eyed will be king.

1)  I couldn't find what you're talking about on my desktop.  I tried on my laptop, and I'm guessing that you mean Control Panel -> Power Options -> Change Plan Settings.  That has a brightness option on my laptop that isn't there on my desktop, even though both run Windows 7.  If it's there on some computers and not others, then presumably something has to be done to make it show up.

3)  There are trade-offs between burning an extra 10-15 W at idle and reliably working right.  If a video card can't be quiet while putting out 15 W, then that's a bad cooler on it or a bad BIOS running the fan or something.

5)  You're claiming that Apple is the reason why Intel released ULV Sandy Bridge processors?  Intel has been releasing ULV processors at least since Core 2 Duo, and it would have been a huge shock if they stopped doing so for the Sandy Bridge generation.  It's really just a case where, if someone is willing to pay a considerable price premium for Intel to bin out the "best" chips (in the sense of, can run at the lowest voltages), then Intel will do it.  So will AMD (e.g., A10-4655M or Z-01), Nvidia, or anyone else.

Yes, pressure from Apple will have some effect.  But it's not clear exactly how it would work out.  And pressure from Apple has its limits: it wasn't enough to get Intel to produce the planned top bin of Ivy Bridge graphics when no one else was interested.

Originally posted by andre369
Can MACs even run this game? Thought they were just a cheap computer with an upgraded visual style. 

Macs are typically somewhere around mid-range hardware, not low end.  Smaller form factors like a MacBook Air would likely choke, but recent iMacs or many MacBook Pros have the hardware to run it fine.  OS and driver support may be a different matter, as discussed throughout this thread.

Originally posted by Quizzical

1)  I couldn't find what you're talking about on my desktop.  I tried on my laptop, and I'm guessing that you mean Control Panel -> Power Options -> Change Plan Settings.  That has a brightness option on my laptop that isn't there on my desktop, even though both run Windows 7.  If it's there on some computers and not others, then presumably something has to be done to make it show up.

3)  There are trade-offs between burning an extra 10-15 W at idle and reliably working right.  If a video card can't be quiet while putting out 15 W, then that's a bad cooler on it or a bad BIOS running the fan or something.

5)  You're claiming that Apple is the reason why Intel released ULV Sandy Bridge processors?  Intel has been releasing ULV processors at least since Core 2 Duo, and it would have been a huge shock if they stopped doing so for the Sandy Bridge generation.  It's really just a case where, if someone is willing to pay a considerable price premium for Intel to bin out the "best" chips (in the sense of, can run at the lowest voltages), then Intel will do it.  So will AMD (e.g., A10-4655M or Z-01), Nvidia, or anyone else.

Yes, pressure from Apple will have some effect.  But it's not clear exactly how it would work out.  And pressure from Apple has its limits: it wasn't enough to get Intel to produce the planned top bin of Ivy Bridge graphics when no one else was interested.

1. This is simple, Windows detects wether the display can have its settings can be adjusted by software or not. High quality and laptop displays can, cheap or old displays can't.

3. There is a difference between silent and quiet. When I'm talking about my iMac getting loud, it's still quieter than any desktop I ever used in idle. It's a relative thing, the iMac never gets really loud in a way where it would disturb me ...

5. I'm not claiming anything, in the link I posted there is a quote of a intel chief designer that told that. Apple warned them they would part ways, and intel reacted with the sandy bridge. 

To claim that the existence of Sandy Bridge, or even ULV bins of it, are a response to threats from Apple is ridiculous.  It takes 3+ years to develop a processor architecture, so if Apple warned Intel today that we need such and such or we're leaving, unless Intel already had it in the pipeline (or at slight modification of a project that they were already working on), the soonest they could deliver would be around 2015-2016.

The entire article is muddled nonsense for that matter.  Intel's Ultrabooks do seem to be inspired by the MacBook Air, but it's in an "Apple will pay us a lot more than normal for ULV bins of processors, so let's see if we can convince other laptop vendors to do so, too."  It turned out that the answer to that was mostly "no", as other laptop vendors assumed that consumers willing to sacrifice everything else (price, performance, reliability, features, etc.) for the sake of a sleeker form factor would buy from Apple anyway.

So Intel created a $300 million marketing campaign for Ultrabooks to try to convince consumers that thinness and an Intel sticker are the only things they should care about, even at the expense of price, performance, reliability, features, and so forth.  And even though AMD is competitive with Intel in low power laptop processors but not in high performance ones, so convincing people that they should really want ULV processors rather than high performance ones would likely increase AMD market share.  But Intel thinks consumers are stupid, just like most laptop vendors do.

Originally posted by Quizzical

To claim that the existence of Sandy Bridge, or even ULV bins of it, are a response to threats from Apple is ridiculous.  It takes 3+ years to develop a processor architecture, so if Apple warned Intel today that we need such and such or we're leaving, unless Intel already had it in the pipeline (or at slight modification of a project that they were already working on), the soonest they could deliver would be around 2015-2016.

The entire article is muddled nonsense for that matter.  Intel's Ultrabooks do seem to be inspired by the MacBook Air, but it's in an "Apple will pay us a lot more than normal for ULV bins of processors, so let's see if we can convince other laptop vendors to do so, too."  It turned out that the answer to that was mostly "no", as other laptop vendors assumed that consumers willing to sacrifice everything else (price, performance, reliability, features, etc.) for the sake of a sleeker form factor would buy from Apple anyway.

So Intel created a $300 million marketing campaign for Ultrabooks to try to convince consumers that thinness and an Intel sticker are the only things they should care about, even at the expense of price, performance, reliability, features, and so forth.  And even though AMD is competitive with Intel in low power laptop processors but not in high performance ones, so convincing people that they should really want ULV processors rather than high performance ones would likely increase AMD market share.  But Intel thinks consumers are stupid, just like most laptop vendors do.

 "Apple informed Intel that it better drastically slash its power consumption or would likely lose Apple’s business."

Is a confirmed quote of Greg Welch, he also said that it was a real wakeup call for them. Considering he is the director of intels ultra book group im kinda putting more stock into his opinion than yours, no offense. Obviously, they didn't say we are going to ditch you today, they said "make more energy efficient cpus, or we will start making our own based on the ARM architecture". A threat that would have been wholly unnecessary if intel was going to make sandy bridge anyway right? Cause im sure apple can read roadmaps just fine, they probably have a lawyer for that.

Here's an article talking about Sandy Bridge way back in April 2007:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1026742/justin-ratner-brings-babes

It has details like an on-die GPU and PCI Express controller, too.  Unless Apple's threat to switch away from Intel came before that (and remember that they had only switched to Intel in 2006), they're not responsible for Sandy Bridge.  The particular bins that you can make depend on the silicon you have, and just saying that you'd really like to have a 2.0 GHz quad core bin with a TDP of 12 W doesn't make it magically happen.

The rumors about apple switching to ARM is old news, too:

http://semiaccurate.com/2011/05/05/apple-dumps-intel-from-laptop-lines/

Intel might have been surprised that Apple might switch to ARM for desktops and laptops, but that doesn't mean that Intel is going to (or can) change their roadmap in response.  Higher performance, lower power consumption, and lower cost of production have been the goals for a long time.  Intel will deliver the best that they can (as will AMD and ARM), and Apple saying that's what they want just like everyone else won't change what Intel, AMD, and ARM can deliver.