Easy Arcade - Plus it runs on mac OS

[JZSlenker]

I would love to have built my cabinet around a Mac instead of a PC.  Having been an IT person for both PC's and Macs I have a certain place in my heart for the reliability and easy of use of the Macs.  Finally Mac meets arcade.  If only it was real.  The april fools joke got me good.

[protokatie]

Hmm, that might actually be doable. Just mod the keyboard dock for the ipad, and make some arcade games that take keyboard input in a way that matches the mod.

Do-able yes, practical, prolly not, unless we see MAME ported to the Ipad (not gonna happen)

[VanillaGorilla]

not gonna happen? you can run mame on an iphone, so why not? theres really no difference...in fact, i'd be shocked if mame WASNT available for ipad..

[Havok]

Having been an IT person for both PC's and Macs I have a certain place in my heart for the reliability and easy of use of the Macs.

Pfft - I've been an IT person and supported Macs and PCs for 15 years now. I came to a different conclusion. I much prefer the overwheming amount of PC hardware and software options. Not to mention paying half what the Mac guys do. Perhaps you should not grant your PC users admin rights...

 

[JZSlenker]

No doubt there is more hardware and software availiable that is why there is a pc in my cab.  But for pure number crunching and encoding I'd take a mac.  Our encoding dept has both and the pc's are always Maxed out on processing power.  They certainly do cost more however as a good friend of mine allways says, you don't get what you don't pay for.  There is a reason pc magazine voted the MacBook pro the best platform to run vista.  Two of our other pc IT guys do all their work on MacBook pros running ms seven.  It's certainly up to the end user which way to go, but for me I'll take an 8 core mac all day when doing After effects, Motion or Smoke work, not to mention video editing or protools.

[Havok]

I bet you an HP z800 12 core workstation would bitchslap your MacBook pro...

However, if you like slower, stick with a Mac.

 

[JZSlenker]

I'm sure it would but it has 4 more cores.  Identical processors and ram ,   Same program after effects for instance doing heavy number crunching like encoding or HD compressing the mac will win handidly every time.  We do crunching that takes hours so speed differences pile up. We've done this very test.  I'm sure the OS is the issue.  10.5 runs fine on macs that are 8 years old ( we have several G4s) still doing rendering work. Show me a 8 year old pc that can run Seven to a usable level.  I've decided that pc people and mac people can not convince each other to change their minds.  I had to learn macs for work.  Before that I felt they (macs) were over priced cool looking machines.  No one could have convinced me that a mac was better than a pc.  After being forced to work with them for a year I bought one for myself and haven't looked back since.   You can't change my mind and I can't change yours.  Agreed?

[Havok]

Agreed. And the Mac is slower.

 

(Might be time for you guys to upgrade - would be a real timesaver...)

[VanillaGorilla]

once you go mac, you never go back. I've never met one who did. And i'll install osx on your 12 core havoc, and it will soundly trounce windows doing any computationally heavy tasks involving frame rendering or encoding. Its just a fact.

[Havok]

once you go mac, you never go back. I've never met one who did. And i'll install osx on your 12 core havoc, and it will soundly trounce windows doing any computationally heavy tasks involving frame rendering or encoding. Its just a fact.

And where are you going to get the drivers to install OSX on the HP? Apple? Enjoy your 8 core sucka!

 

[Space Fractal]

iPad run iPhone OS and not Mac OS. Its was it have been critic for, because its much more control here than MacOS.

This would been very great, if it was a real arcade and a great detailed April fool.

The only problem is Apple would denied Mame it directly (violate various copyright, source and SDK issues) and never been into the AppStore, so its need to been jailbroken first.

[Blanka]

so its need to been jailbroken first.

I think Jailbreaking is going to be much more common on the iPad. Apple cannot keep to the strict policy they use for the iPhone.
Multitouch Playboy will be the dealbreaker on the iPad (line porn on VHS), and it will NOT be available in Apple's store. So other channels are a must for success of the iPad.

[mphuie]

No doubt there is more hardware and software availiable that is why there is a pc in my cab.  But for pure number crunching and encoding I'd take a mac.  Our encoding dept has both and the pc's are always Maxed out on processing power.  They certainly do cost more however as a good friend of mine allways says, you don't get what you don't pay for.  There is a reason pc magazine voted the MacBook pro the best platform to run vista.  Two of our other pc IT guys do all their work on MacBook pros running ms seven.  It's certainly up to the end user which way to go, but for me I'll take an 8 core mac all day when doing After effects, Motion or Smoke work, not to mention video editing or protools.

You must have not been into IT for very long.   There is no magic in OS X that makes it crunch numbers or encode faster than a PC.  It's all the same hardware.  Don't even get me going on how slow G4s and G5s were.  In fact, OS X has a much larger CPU/memory base footprint than Windows.

That said, I do like Macs for home use and do think their notebooks outclass any PC notebook (but you do pay the price).

For a MAME machine, using a Mac is just wasting money.  

[Space Fractal]

Macs with the MacOS 10.X is really excellent, no doubt... Even I have recently got a iMac Mini too.

Then I have plans need soon to get MultiFE ported to that machine (BlitzMax run excellent on Macs too), so that OS got more frontends to been choice from (which is not very much). I gonna think MultiFE have a better home on MacOS and not on Windows, due there is soo many frontends out here, so I would trying that to see what it happens.

[Blanka]

or a MAME machine, using a Mac is just wasting money.  

At least it is the only machine you can get to boot decent without crap being displayed. And a Mini has not a bad price for a very capable emu system.

[tylervalo]

once you go mac, you never go back. I've never met one who did. And i'll install osx on your 12 core havoc, and it will soundly trounce windows doing any computationally heavy tasks involving frame rendering or encoding. Its just a fact.

And where are you going to get the drivers to install OSX on the HP? Apple? Enjoy your 8 core sucka!

 

OSX has been installed on PC hardware reliably for a few years now.  Now a days you can take an off the shelf copy of Snow Leopard, install it on about 75% of PC hardware with an EFI simulator and have a 100% working Mac.  I've done it for years.

PS: I also own a MBP

[DJ_Izumi]

In my experience, home brewed software like emulators and front ends for emulators are rarely 'User Friendly' since they assume a certian level of technical skill is posessed by the user of the emulator.  So the platform that the emulator is run on is thusly irrelevant unless you're looking at an emulator as a consumer product which would be streamlined for the end user, but these emulations also often lack the tweaks and features that a hobbiest would want.

[Havok]

OSX has been installed on PC hardware reliably for a few years now.  Now a days you can take an off the shelf copy of Snow Leopard, install it on about 75% of PC hardware with an EFI simulator and have a 100% working Mac.  I've done it for years.

PS: I also own a MBP

And there's no performance hit with the simulator? If you say no, you're lying. So then we're still back to my original statement: HP\Windows is the top dog now. MBP has been left in the dust.

[Blanka]

And there's no performance hit with the simulator? If you say no, you're lying.

The simulator has no performance hit.
The EFI simulator comes only in during boot time. After booting, the speed is perfect comparable to a similar equiped real mac. It's even easier to make a faster than real mac, as the videocards in Macs are seriously bad by default.

[Havok]

Interesting - just read up on that. However, it's not legal. So, the business community, which would be the people that would pay this kind of money for that performance, wouldn't do it. Or at least, shouldn't.

[Blanka]

However, it's not legal.

It's violating an Eula. How legal is an Eula anyway? In the Netherlands a judge wont expect you to read 20 pages of unreadable crap and see a click on "i accept" as a reason that you took notice of all text in the agreement. So the EULA is void most of the time. I think if you buy a full copy of OSX here with a EFI emulator by some other company, and work with it, there is little chance they can sue you.

[Neverending Project]

Interesting - just read up on that.

I'm picturing The Matrix.

Read in your best Keanu Reeves voice...

I know Kung Fu.

[BobA]

Looks like the first step.  The ipad has apparently been jailbroken.

Make Link

[VanillaGorilla]

I second Tylervalo. I've been hackintoshing for more than 5-6 years now...Every mac I've home brewed was faster than any available retail mac...And now with EFI emulation, it's easier than ever. In fact, my first mame cab was built from the remains of my first hackintosh hardware setup after it got a little long in the tooth - (p4 on a 915 chipset)..And I also own genuine apple hardware, (im typing on a MBP 2.33 17" glossy unibody right now!)...that makes it feel a little less 'wrong' violating the EULA I dont think steve would mind, in fact, I think they kind of tacitly endorse it. Apples has always understood the mind frame of the hardcore enthusiast. Thats where they came from and live.... Now if you try selling any of it, they will come down on you like Thors hammer, but thats a different story altogether...

[Havok]

Haha - pretty much. It helps that I'm an IT professional, so this stuff makes sense anyways. However, I would love to just be able to download a skill and have at it...

Interesting - just read up on that.

I'm picturing The Matrix.

Read in your best Keanu Reeves voice...

I know Kung Fu.

[mphuie]

or a MAME machine, using a Mac is just wasting money.  

At least it is the only machine you can get to boot decent without crap being displayed. And a Mini has not a bad price for a very capable emu system.

$600, are you joking?  You can easily build a barebones PC for under $200.

[Blanka]

$600, are you joking?  You can easily build a barebones PC for under $200.

With all the same specs (wifi, gigabit, DVD burner, FW800, BT, 9400M, Core2Duo, silent) and a legal OS install? You are joking!
Try it on new-egg and post you order list here!

The 100$ you will save on the mini is an amount I want to spent extra for No-TEXT booting, no FUGLLY case, better energy use and no hassle silent operation. 2 hours of assembly and installing windows is 2x 70$ or so too!

[planetjay]

MAME is on the iPod Touch and iPhone.

NES, SNES, and N64 too.

As the iPad is jailbroken as mentioned earlier it probably works. The question is where to buy a cheap Wii-mote?