adzoox's Journal: There's no software on the Macintosh ... No store carries it

This is the second most ridiculous statement I hear from people who are just plain disrespectful (to me and my livelyhood), ignorant, and well ... for lack of a better word ... silly.

(The other is: Apple is going out of business, arent they?)

First; games. The one thing I think about games is that consoles are much better to play games on. They are designed specifically for the purpose, have nice controllers of every type and are availible pretty much anywhere (PSX PS2 Nintendo, etc) I also feel that games tax video hardware and possibly add to hardware wear. They also take a lot of hard drive space (more intensely graphic games should be run from a hard drive image)

The other issue concerning games is availibility. Most 12 and under titles are Win/Mac. Usually the ones in this category that aren't cross platform, are cheap knockoffs or poorly coded crap. I have yet for someone to give me an example of a children's title or game of quality that is not availible on the Mac, or, that has a VERY close equivalent.

Concerning Win/Mac titles, as an Apple Rep for a marketting company called MarKet Source I discovered that places like Circuit City, Best Buy and Sears carried lots of hybrid titles. Myst, Diablo, Children's educational titles, Scrabble, etc were all hybrid - in Best Buy this amounted to 100 titles. In Circuit City it amounted to 25 titles. In Walmart ;25 titles.

Then there's emulation and clones. Most non complex games have a Mac counterpart. In my opinion, Solitare and Chess are better on the Mac. There must be a dozen different types of Tetris. There is minesweeper, etc as well.

One of the best "helps" to the Mac community and game/program use has been Connectix. Not only with Virtual PC (now owned by Microsoft) but through the ONLY legal Playstation emulator that made it to market; Virtual Game Station. CVGS as it was called, allowed Playstation game emulation. What was so great about it is that it worked on even the most modest of Macs. It works flawlessly on my main machine; a PowerBook Pismo G3 500. This opened the entire 4000 title playstation library up to Mac Users. This title is no longer (conventionally) availible (Sony bought it to cease development) For OS X there is a great emulator for Playstation games called FlareStorm that works quite well. It's requirements aren't as leanient though.

The best way to obtain software if you have a Mac is by download. The program Graphic Converter is my favorite shareware program. Close in photo manipulation capability to PhotoShop and easy to use and affordable as iPhoto, it is also VERY well supported by it's author.

The two best sites for downloads on the Mac are:

www.MacUpdate.com & www.versiontracker.com

Then, of course, there are all of Apple's iApps and Pro Apps. Each the best PERIOD for the intended purpose.

I have yet to find a title or type of program that doesn't have a superior Mac version or at the very least an equal. AppleWorks in my opinion is better than Microsoft Office especially with the addition of Keynote (A superior, but format compatible PowerPoint)