Introduction

Fight for the Future

Last week, I attended MacWorld Expo 2001 and instead of just seeing a simple computing event, I witnessed a new battle between the titans of computing. Sure, Apple's new titanium PowerBook looks great and yes, the Pioneer developed DVD-R/CD-RW drive bundled in the 733MHz G4 is amazing, but before I discuss the interesting products I saw at MacWorld, I want to talk about the other battle the expo was host to: the battle between NVIDIA and ATI. After years of using ATI video products exclusively, Apple will now make the Radeon DDR an option and ship its high-end machines with the NVIDIA GeForce2 MX.

The new titanium G4 PowerBook)

DVD Authoring on the G4

Gaming on the Mac

Before I explain NVIDIA's and ATI's strategies, it's important to understand Apple's own strategy for gaming. Sure, the Mac is a clear winner for digital artists using Photoshop, but when it comes to games, there is no contest between the PC and the Mac. The PC has far more games, better games, and better hardware.

I could write a funny caption, but I'm nice so I won't point out that he is wearing a yellow Cal hat.

They may be using Razor mice, but they're not even using WASD!

For programmers, PC development was superior to that of the Mac. On the software side, the PC simply saw a greater rate of innovation from the original protected mode DOS extenders to Windows advanced memory management and the shift to programmer-friendly 3D APIs. Even today, the MacOS lacks virtual memory management and a true multithreaded environment. However, Apple has already aggressively adopted OpenGL as the official 3D API for the Mac and will be launching the Mach-kernel based MacOS X shortly. On the hardware side, the G4 CPU is catching up to the x86 architecture in overall performance, and an Altivec-enhanced version of Quake III is on the way.

The only absolute advantage that the PC seems to have is 3D acceleration. When the Mac was still chugging along with the ATI Rage 128 Pro, PC users had the GeForce DDR. When the Mac got its Radeon 32MB DDR, ATI already had the 64MB DDR Radeon on the PC and NVIDIA had the GeForce 2 Ultra. Unfortunately this too will change shortly.