Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
OS X Operating Systems Entertainment Games

Electronic Arts Delivers OS X Games 97

pete314 wrote to say that "Electronic Arts had broken its WWDC promise to launch games for OS X on the same day as the Windows version." Thankfully, the company has come through, with four new titles now available for order: Battlefield 2142, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Need for Speed Carbon, and Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars . Thanks to mr100percent for the update.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Electronic Arts Delivers OS X Games

Comments Filter:
  • by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) * on Monday August 20, 2007 @08:24PM (#20299315) Journal
    Company tries to do something new and doesn't deliver on time. The sky *is* falling, yes ? I mean, it looks like it's still up there, but that's an illusion, right ?

    The games will come. I doubt they intended to say one thing and do another, even if it is EA...

    Simon.
    • by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
      Shock, Horror: Company tries to do something new and doesn't deliver on time. The sky *is* falling, yes ? I mean, it looks like it's still up there, but that's an illusion, right ?

      Shock, Horror: A Shock, Horror post on Slashdot!

      The interesting observation here is, for Slashdot, the glass is always % empty, never % full.

      EA released 4 of the 6 promised games on Mac recently. We don't get news on that, instead we get news how they "broke their promise" to deliver the last 2 games on time. Let's laugh at EA.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      The interesting thing is that, with EA's rep as prolific-and-therefore-low-quality game dev/pub/distrib, I'm hearing a lot of Windows fan(boy)s trashing this move. These games suck, no serious gamer would ever want these games, Carbon is the worst NFS ever, etc., etc. But that's not the point. The point is that EA is hopping on the and-the-Mac-too bandwagon. World of Warcraft is on the Mac. Civ is on the Mac. Most of the big-name games are on the Mac, too, because despite its small marketshare, those within
      • The other thing is there is not much competition in the mac game market, so it seems even a crummy out of date game can still sit on the shelves as a best seller for years. I think it is foolish to overlook the mac game market because mac users will obviously spend a lot of money on stuff for their favorite little pet computer.
      • by wenzi ( 6465 )
        The mac may have a small marketshare, but in terms of mind share it is much , much larger. The last developers conference I went to, I guessed that at least half were mac laptops. Second windows, and then Ubuntu Linux.
  • Since they're running under Windows emulation anyway, I reckon that within 6 months it'll be faster under VMware or Parallels than under their cobbled together WINE derivative.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by tomaasz ( 5800 )
      WINE is not an emulator, remember? It's a substitute library that handles the win32 calls so in theory it can be faster than Windows itself, as opposed to VMware or Parallels, which waste resources actually emulating virtual hardware.
      • It's a substitute library that handles the win32 calls so in theory it can be faster than Windows itself

        That's still emulation. FreeBSD's Linux and SCO emulation works that way, handling the system calls directly. Meanwhile both VMware and Parallels include specialized drivers and libraries that bypass the hardware emulation when possible. The difference is not so great as you imply.

        In theory, yes, WINE could be faster.

        But the difference between theory and practice in practice is greater than the difference
      • by Ilgaz ( 86384 ) *

        WINE is not an emulator, remember? It's a substitute library that handles the win32 calls so in theory it can be faster than Windows itself, as opposed to VMware or Parallels, which waste resources actually emulating virtual hardware.

        I wonder what will happen if Mactel shares comes to a significant point like 30% and what kind of tricks MS will pull to stop those Mac users running latest/greatest games. If we deal with a billion dollar software giant like EA, a single line in DirectX 11 EULA may be enough.

        Doesn't they (MS) already disallow running "home" editions of Windows under virtual environment just with EULA? It doesn't bother you as home user but a business or software giant with army of lawyers will sure care about it.

        There is

    • Except that this is a dedicated, tweaked, and optimized wrapper rather than a virtualizer with very poor and spotty 3D support.
    • by Vacuous ( 652107 )
      uhm... IIRC VMWare doesn't even support 3d acceration.
  • A bit off topic, but is there any chance of this game, or other new ones running in bootcamp? Still on Windows here and have no idea what it can run.
    • Re:Boot Camp? (Score:5, Informative)

      by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Monday August 20, 2007 @08:45PM (#20299477) Homepage

      Boot Camp is Windows.

      It's Apple's name for basically a partitioner, a boot loader, and a set of drivers.

      I have a MacBook Pro and I use it for one thing and one thing only: Windows for Half-Life 2. It runs fantastic, but since Windows is on the bare metal, this is basically hat you'd expect.

      If you don't want to go that route (which is really the only good way to do things right now for games) there is through these special game packages (they should work pretty well, but don't expect decent performance I'm betting).

      Past that is Parallels (which is amazing) and it's new ability to run Direct3D stuff. That said, Half-Life 2 runs with all the details on very well on my MacBook Pro at full resolution (15" model). In Parallels it stutters unbearably at 640x480 with lower details. We are talking up to 5 (yes 5!) FPS. This is partly due to RAM (when I'm in Windows, it's got a full 2 gigs, when in OS X it has to share so it gets about a gig), partly due to optimization (they just released that not too long ago, they can tweak for better performance), partly due to the nature of Parallels (it will never be as fast as running native). For simpler things I'm sure it will run great. I bet you would have no problem with Half-Life, or Quake 3, or any other game from more than a few years ago. But for something as complex and detailed as HL2, it wasn't great.

      Note that HL2 was the only thing I tested as that's all I was really interested in playing.

      Hope that answers your question.

      • I am thinking about installing Bootcamp, just to play Bioshock - I too have Parallels but was pretty sure it was not up to the task yet.

        However an interesting alternative would seem to be Crossover. They explicitly support Half Life 2, so I was wondering if you had tried that option for running in OS X- it's basically a commercial version of Wine and thus a lot like what EA is doing. Especially if you replaced some DLL's with native ones...
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by snuf23 ( 182335 )
        "This is partly due to RAM (when I'm in Windows, it's got a full 2 gigs, when in OS X it has to share so it gets about a gig)"

        It has nothing to do with RAM. 1GB is plenty for Half Life 2. It's not longer a new game by a long shot.
      • ...and use it to slice my Swiss cheese for sandwiches. Sorry couldn't resist...
    • I don't know about the other games, but CnC 3 in boot camp runs perfectly smooth on my Late 2006 iMac (2.0 GHz, 2 GB RAM, x1600) in 1440x900 with all details on medium.
  • by MBCook ( 132727 )

    I give this news a solid 'meh".

    I like games. I have a Mac. But I also have consoles. If I wanted to play Madden, I could. It doesn't bother me that EA isn't doing this. Considering what many of their games are like (quality wise), this is probably a boon.

    In all seriousness though, it doesn't matter too much. There are tons of web games. There are lots of console games (currently playing MGS: Portable Ops, FFXII, Picross DS, Chrono Trigger, and Metroid Prime 3 coming very very soon). I can boot into Window

    • I'm not an expert on Cider but wouldn't it be native in the same way that OpenGL and SDL are native to many platforms? They're not providing binary translation, they're providing APIs that wouldn't otherwise be available.

      Sure there may be some optimisation issues but you could say the same about a shell script being moved from OpenBSD to GNU/Linux.
      • by MBCook ( 132727 )
        Yes, but there will still be issues. They have to simulate all the Windows stuff, the way it works, etc. They have to simulate the windows input system for example, keeping their own queue of events (I'm guessing). Some things can be directly mapped, some cant. It's like WINE (which it is based on). Running a program will almost certainly be slower. It may be impreceptable, it may be minor, or (in the case of things like games) it may be major.
  • Pretty inaccurate (Score:5, Informative)

    by mr100percent ( 57156 ) on Monday August 20, 2007 @08:40PM (#20299437) Homepage Journal
    MacNN reported on Sunday [macnn.com]:

    Four titles are available now for order: Battlefield 2142, Need for Speed Carbon, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars (trailers of which are available on Apple's website) are the "first games ever" published by EA for Mac OS X, according to release. The games are now available for order via the Apple Store and at Apple's retail stores nationwide later this month: Need for Speed Carbon and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be available on Tuesday, August 21, and Battlefield 2142 and Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars will be available on Tuesday, August 28.

    The company also said that Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 08 and Madden NFL 08 are expected in the "September/October window."
    Heck, did anyone even check EA's Mac platform page [ea.com]?
    • I did. I though it was a place holder or something. Though it directs you to the games individual sites there is no information on those sites about a Macintosh version.

      No press release, not even a news item. Certainly no client to download.

      Near as I can tell, if you bought these games and have been rebooting to play them on a windows partition waiting for EA to finally come through... You're screwed. you'll have to buy the game again if you want to play the thing in OS X.
  • If you follow the links on TFA you'll find it refers back to a lengthier piece written at arstechnica.
    http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070818-gami ng-on-the-mac-getting-better-but-not-there-yet.htm l [arstechnica.com]
    • Thanks for the link. People really aren't buying MACs expecting the ultimate gaming experience, are they? If so those Apple store employees are doing quite the sales job.
  • by Joe The Dragon ( 967727 ) on Monday August 20, 2007 @08:52PM (#20299545)
    There mini still has the low and gma 950 only 1 gb of ram and laptop parts.

    The I-mac update only added mid-range video cards and there build in screens remove choice and make games slow down when running at full screen.

    The mac pro at $2000+ is over top in cost and only comes with a low end 7300 and 1gb of ram in the base system and adding ram costs a lot because of the FB-Dimms and the video card up grades are a rip off as well $249 to go from a 7300 gt to a a ATI x1900 XT with a EFI rom or you can add one to your mac pro for $399.00 so you are paying $150 for a 7300 gt with a EFI rom. You can much better video cards on the pc for the same price this may be part of why EA is pushing the games back.
    • The mini's a very entry-level Mac. It can be used as a media center and for basic use. It's not a hardcore gaming machine.

      The iMac is the mid-range desktop solution, it comes with an OK graphics card.

      The Power Mac is a powerhouse, but it's mostly for professionals.

      The Macbook is somewhere between the Mini and the iMac. It's the entry level mobile platform.

      The Macbook Pro is the professional powerhouse mobile offering. It has a pretty good (DX10 actually) video card.

      Macs aren't aimed at gamers, since in the past most Mac users have been audio/video professionals and basic internet/im types.

      Apple isn't a gaming company. They've never claimed that. But they CAN be used to play games, just like any PC.
      • Apple also wants you to use them as your home system but they need a mid-range tower and better gameing hardware to get more people to stop useing pc's for gameing.
      • I agree with everything you said until "Apple isn't a gaming company. They've never claimed that."

        I've been told personally from Apple twice that they were going to be "big into games". Both times they made a huge deal then..after a couple of months..they lost interest.

        Sadly, the best thing Apple ever did for game developers was releasing Boot Camp.

        • Apple and Gaming (Score:5, Informative)

          by LKM ( 227954 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @02:42AM (#20301779)
          Well, when talking about Apple and gaming, it's kind of important to keep in mind Apple's history. During the early years of the Mac, Apple was scared that people would perceive it as a toy. This is kind of what happened to the Amiga 500, by the way: A powerful desktop computer that was mainly used for gaming. Apple, however, wanted a "serious" computer, a business computer. Macs didn't look very serious next to DOS computers with their green screens and text input, so Apple discouraged game development on Macs so as not to give people the impression that Macs were toys.

          Later, Apple tried to change that and introduced the Pippin, a Mac-compatible gaming console, to increase the Mac gaming market share. It failed. Then, there were the Sprockets on pre-OS-X systems. Basically, that was Apple's gaming API, and it didn't survive the move to OS X.

          After that, Apple never really did anything for gaming. I think they've basically given up caring too much. Gaming is nice, but Apple doesn't really need it to survive, and after their ambivalent past and many failed steps to get gaming on the Mac, I think they've just stopped caring.
          • Good history. That's roughly how I remember it as well except Sprockets was never really well supported.

            But my original point was that Apple occasionally says that games are a "good thing" but they rarely follow up on it.

            • by LKM ( 227954 )

              But my original point was that Apple occasionally says that games are a "good thing" but they rarely follow up on it.

              Yeah, exactly. They say gaming is important if they have some major stuff to show at a Keynote, but I don't think they ever intended to actually do anything other than showcasing stuff that happens anyway.

              • by toriver ( 11308 )
                A lot of Mac gaming "died" when Microsoft bought Bungie (Marathon, the Myth series) to make Halo. Had they not, the world might have been a different place.

                Of course, most strategy games and FPSes - ironically, including Halo - get ported to Mac anyway.
      • by Tom ( 822 )

        The Macbook Pro is the professional powerhouse mobile offering. It has a pretty good (DX10 actually) video card.
        Err... I own one. The latest MBP is a screaming gaming machine if I've ever seen one. There are few others that compare on the market.

        Heck it runs Oblivion in 1680x1050, full details, extra-high-res textures and modded to increase the view distance. :-)
      • Because they are not trying to grab markets where there is a lot of money spent. They still spend their time making nice looking machines that run a proprietary operating system. They claim at a recent developer conference that they want/desire/whatever gaming on Mac systems yet they don't offer anything with a good price and performance ratio.

        I have a iMac24 on order... I do wish to use it for games, I don't need a $1800 "The iMac is the mid-range desktop solution, it comes with an OK graphics card" mac
      • The problem is their huge gap between the iMac and the Mac Pro. You used to be able to buy a G5 tower for about $1600, now the cheapest you can get $2500. Most people don't need the huge tower, or the 16 Xeons (or whatever the hell Apple's putting in them that costs so much.) I just want the iMac hardware in a case that can be used to add HDs or video cards.

        Because of this, I actually moved from Apple to Dell. Dell gave me the exact hardware I wanted for a good price, and Windows Vista isn't bad enough to m
      • The mini's a very entry-level Mac. It can be used as a media center and for basic use. It's not a hardcore gaming machine.

        Correct! Worthless for gaming.

        The iMac is the mid-range desktop solution, it comes with an OK graphics card.

        Actually, it comes with a crappy graphics card which is actually slower than the card in the previous iMac line.

        The old 24" iMacs had a GeForce 7300GT standard, which is faster, in most cases, than the top graphics card in the new iMacs (ATI HD 2600 Pro). It could also be upgraded,
    • OSX is for professional computer users... Anyone serious about their computing, content production or coding etc, will use OSX. What is that alternative? Windows? you cannot be serious. So for gaming i bought a cheap, fast PC with a sweet video card. I know all you college students might not be able to do this, but i'm not a fucking college student.

      I'm not going to be bent over and pay $1000 for a PS3, so i use windows on my cheap PC to play games exclusively. I rarely even surf the web on it...

      Fo
      • Same thing here except I bought an XBox/big LCD TV for gaming and mini for browsing. Both PCs are in the bedroom as spare parts/experment boxes, i haven't touched them for much in 3 months.
        • by malf-uk ( 456583 )
          I'd probably ditch my PC as a gaming machine and get a Mini for non-gaming stuff too if more FPS games on the 360 supported mouse & keyboard controls find using an analogue stick for targeting to be clunky and imprecise.
          • Have you considered a PS3? Not only does it support keyboards and mice but you have a choice of bluetooth, USB or RF sets that have a receiver which plugs into USB. I've had success with the MSFT wireless keyboard/mouse combos but I have not admittedly tried to see if games support them.
            • by malf-uk ( 456583 )
              Unfortunately there's nothing for the PS3 that's caught my eye as much my 360. The 360 also supports mouse & keyboard but not for many games. Any game support is mostly limited to RPGs apparently.
    • by solios ( 53048 )
      Apple : Porsche prices for Chevette parts. It's been this way since the iMac and the blue G3s were introduced, way back in 98/99 - they use completely mediocre hardware, stick it in a nice case, and charge you a steep price for the privelege. They got away with GeForce2s and Maxtor hard drives because at the time they were plugged into the only commercial PPC processor on the market. Now Apple's lost that excuse - now you're paying for a pretty case and the ability to legally run OS X on it. There's not
    • Interesting thing to note I own a Laptop with 1GB of ram and an Intel GMA 950 with a Pentium M 1.7Ghz chip. I play Myst Online: Uru Live which is ported over to OSX with the Transgaming Cider thing. My Laptop can run Myst Online: Uru Live at the capped frame rate with all the setting half way, the Mac Mini's can't, even at minimum settings they have a low frame rate (1 or 2 FPS) and have huge rendering issues. As far as we can work out its the intel driver for OSX limiting Mini owners from playing as Mac's
    • The Mac market has always been "People with more money than time".

      Obviously, not you. Otherwise you wouldn't have time to post about it on Slashdot.
    • I'm not sure since when. It has been fairly recent.

      Maybe Apple has been slow for whatever their reasons might be, but the mini did get an upgrade.

      (Not that I care that much since Apple stopped selling PPC Macs.)
  • Set theory (Score:1, Troll)

    by king-manic ( 409855 )
    Set A of EA gamers
    Set B of Mac Gamers

    intersection of set A and Set B = 3 frat boys who grew up to be graphic artists.

    I'm sure all three of them will be very disappointed.
  • Mac games :D (Score:1, Informative)

    by Vipersfate ( 1143119 )
    I'm running bootcamp on my mac, and I can just play the windows version of the games, but it is nice to see that games are being ported to Mac!
    • by tuxic ( 769908 ) *
      Unfortunately it's not ported at all. EA just want to sound like they are.
      It still runs Windows code, as opposed to Universal Binary-based games which run on any fairly recent Mac whether PPC or Intel, 100 % natively. Electronic Arts claim that they chose this solution to be able to deliver Mac games out the door as fast as they deliver Mac games. What does that mean? Well, sounds like to me they rely on DirectX too much instead of using OpenGL which is a lot more portable. DirectX is Windows-only, so.

      I per
  • for a grand total of 5 games for OS X! woohoo! That's ALMOST enough reason to switch to a mac.
  • Just my two cents. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Shinra ( 1057198 )
    I'd probably switch over to a Mac if more games were available for it, as the main reason I continue to use Windows is for the PC gaming. Yes I know there's bootcamp and VMware and all that, but If I could NATIVELY play games that I KNOW will run on a Mac with no more stress then there is in installing and normal gameplay, then I'd be a happy camper. So this move, while I despise EA, is a good thing and I will applaud them for a rare act of unsuckage. Oh well. Just my two cents.
    • While the AC above is purely flamebait, he has kind of a point, despite his stupidity. That is, if you're really into games, a console for gaming and the hardware platform and OS of your choice for computing. A big reason why I don't care very much that Linux is in a similar (or worse?) gaming situation than the Mac is that I get my dose of gaming from the consoles we have in the game room at work. If that wasn't enough, I'd buy a console for home use. I just don't worry about computer gaming. I use Mac at
  • Any chance we Mac users can try a demo of any of these games before we decide to buy something that runs through an emulation layer like Cider?

    My iMac runs Call Of Duty 2 and WoW for Mac OS X fine, but I have no idea how that translates to Battlefield 2142.
  • Cider? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @02:38AM (#20301759) Homepage Journal
    Call me when EA bothers to design games for Mac from the start like Blizzard and others do. DirectX emulation sounds like it might be unreliable and seems like it just adds cost to development in terms of licensing and hacking around a black box like Cider.

    I think Cider is only interesting to game publishers because it's almost no risk and "free" money. TransGaming promises a lot and asks for little in return. The technology is less than perfect, but hey, if you can sell Mac users games without any unfront investment it probably seems like a good deal, even if the games are inferior to the Windows native version.
    • by tepples ( 727027 )

      Call me when EA bothers to design games for Mac from the start like Blizzard and others do. DirectX emulation sounds like it might be unreliable and seems like it just adds cost to development in terms of licensing and hacking around a black box like Cider.

      Any port from Wii, PSP, or PS3 will more than likely be designed around OpenGL. The Wii and PSP use proprietary APIs designed to parallel GL, and the PS3 just uses OpenGL ES. DirectX is for Xbox 360. So why don't we have more PSP->MacBook ports?

  • Okay, so it's only EA and so not necessarily the best games, but now that a big dev house is starting to consider Mac OS X as a gaming platform, will they consider Linux as well? Given that they've got a similar *nix base then it shouldn't be too far a leap.

    And yes, I know there's Wine and Cedega (which ran worse on my machine than Wine with Dawn of War) but something officially supported would be good. Even if it's just on a few main distros.
    • by Bert64 ( 520050 )
      Well, if transgaming were to release cider for linux and osx simultaneously and based on the same code, it would be very easy to make games available for both linux and osx at the same time with minimal changes.

      Also the more companies that use cider, the more of a development push there will be, and the more wine-friendly the source games will be. Still, would be better to see games written for opengl instead of directx.
  • by lpontiac ( 173839 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @05:44AM (#20302507)
    .. then OpenGL titles are running on Irix emulation.
  • by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @08:33AM (#20303613) Homepage Journal
    The gaming situation now for Apple reminds me a bit of the Linux one a few years ago before Loki went under. It's a UNIX system that you actually CAN get a few games for, and that's nice. If you're getting a system only for games though, you'd be much better off buying the Alienware desktop. You're still paying a premium for hardware and you'll get a lot more bang for your buck. And I'm saying this from an Apple system and having bought 3 Apple machines in the past 5 years. They're good for work, less good for gaming.

    PC gaming in general is usually more of a fight than I'm willing to put up, though. It's come a long way from having to make special boot disks to squeeze every bit of RAM out of DOS, but it seems like on a fairly regular basis a game will come out that doesn't like your hardware or driver levels and upgrading those breaks everything else on the system. That's more work than I'm willing to put in to a game, especially if it's one I've paid $50 - $60 for.

  • NBA games must be late because they have to add in a ref that bets on the game and makes bad calls. The NFL games must be late because they have to add in Michael Vick dog fighting side-games between the Football games.

    By the way, Macs spelled backwards is Scam. That is the truth of Macs and video games.
  • Did anyone notice that the 4 games don't work with integrated graphics? That eliminates 2 of the 3 "consumer" systems that Apple sells!
  • by Enrique1218 ( 603187 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @01:18PM (#20308027) Journal
    I am mac user. I love Apple computers. I think currently Mac OSX is the best operating system out there. However, gaming on the Mac platform is one of its most glaring (frightening) weaknesses. The weakness stems from Apple's stringent control of the Macintosh platform. The control limits the Macintosh platform to a paradigm dictated by Apple. With the exception of the Mac Pro, all current systems Apple sell are intended not to change over their lifetime (except for memory). This situation is advantageous for Apple but terrible for gaming. Gamers like/need to upgrade their systems. In addition, Apple doesn't design any system with gaming as a priority. Gamers who want Mac OS X but are not satify with Apples offerings are left with one option. (buy a PC). For those reasons, I can't see any reason that game developer will take the Mac platform seriously. This deprives the platform of viable avenue of growth and limits its potential. Gaming isn't the only avenue that Apple cedes away to Windows. How long can the Mac platform live on just the creative market?
  • As a Mac gamer... (Score:2, Interesting)

    I gave up on simultaneous release dates the day Microsoft bought Bungie. Bungie was the last game developer to care about Mac OS. The best we have now is Blizzard.

    Blizzard, the same group of insensitive clods who claimed Mac Starcraft would be released the same time it would for PC. Then they said it would be shortly after. Then by summer. Then by Christmas. In the end a FULL YEAR passed before it finally got released. AND, to add insult to injury, they made all copies PC/Mac hybrid discs, and had the aud

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      ... The best we have now is Blizzard. Blizzard, the same group of insensitive clods who claimed Mac Starcraft would be released the same time it would for PC. Then they said it would be shortly after. Then by summer. Then by Christmas. In the end a FULL YEAR passed before it finally got released. AND, ...

      You are about 9 years out of date. Diablo II for Mac came out about two weeks after the Windows version, quite a shock at MacWorld 2000. The D2 expansion, Warcraft III and its expansion, and World of W
      • disparate pricing was often done by the retailer, if you tried to buy from the publisher's website the prices were the same.

        No they weren't. Even if you bought direct from Blizzard the "Mac" version and "Windows" version were different prices. Despite the fact that once the Mac version was released, all copies were hybrids. The price was not temporary while they cleared out inventory of Windows-only discs. That would have been understandable. (& far less offensive)

        Yes, my gripe may be old. But forgetting an insult like that would take a while, I'd think.

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell

Working...