Macintosh + FFXI

[Phraust]

[...]

Also, if you want to go XP, you'd better do it now. Microsoft is stopping issue of new XP registration codes at the end of this month. After that, you go Vista or wait for Windows 7.

Windows XP has had something like 6 horizon dates. If it keeps selling, they will sell it. (Just saying, not picking a fight.)

[Jensken]

I used to have a Mac growing up in the 90s and was never a big fan (hi2u constant freezing + lack of software support). After using Windows ever since XP, I never thought I'd get a Mac again but after my HP laptop conked out in Feb. I went ahead and got a late 2008 MacBook since it was relatively cheap at $949 due to the new MacBooks coming out. I am honestly satisfied with it 100%, and it has run better than any other computer I've ever owned. Setup out of the box took like 15mins, and then I immediately DL'd MS Office to go with all the programs that came preloaded with iLife and Leopard. Plus, nowadays most major programs can be run on Mac, and Mac's customer support is top notch. There are a few drawbacks tho, like only having 2 USB ports and only a 160 GB HD, but I can buy a splitter or upgrade to a bigger HD down the road if need be.

tl;dr Windows user wary of Macs buys one, loves it.

[Mayareira]

So basically, Apple gets brownie points for calling their upgrades by different animal names?

First Mac "OS X" OS was released back in 2001 and with their current pace, "OS X" serie is expected to end in 2019~. Saying "10.6" is merely an "upgrade" over the 10.1 Ceetah is simpy not true, they are completely different operating systems. They are not compatible, they don't share any system file and heck, not even same kernels.

By your logic, Mac OS X 10.9 in 2017~ will just be a service pack to the first OS X OS released back in 2001, an eighteen year old OS.

Apple - Downloads - Mac OS X - Mac OS X Updates

This is how OS X updates work. Releases like 10.5.1-2-3-4 are the service packs of the OS, and they are naturally free.

SP1 -> SP2 is "just a service pack" but Win95 -> Win98 is "an OS by itself", because they called it by a new name?

Erm, not "by my logic". Microsoft released and sold Windows 98 as a new operating system and they define service packs as;

Service packs are the means by which product updates are distributed. Service packs may contain updates for system reliability, program compatibility, security, and more. All of these updates are conveniently bundled for easy downloading.

[Faxanadu]

Does Boot Camp or any other program work to run windows on Mac towers? (1-2 years old)

[Isiolia]

Well, to a point though, Apple doesn't release OS updates outside of point upgrades. MS does.

I would agree in general that OS X paid upgrades tend to be more extensive than most service packs. A lot of it is just under the hood type stuff though.

Most of them are similar to the 95->98 or 2k->XP transitions. Not like MS didn't charge for those. Different, but more of a refinement than a revolution compared to the previous version. IMO, not trying to completely reinvent the UI every time is a good thing too...I mean, OS X has definitely changed since the $29 release candidate I bought way back when, but it's not unrecognizable. It does, however, make the OS seem like not much of a change to the layman.

Most of it does come down to the fact that Apple assumes they sold you the machine. That $29 10.6 is an "upgrade version", which isn't to say it's a bad thing, but it's a different positioning than selling a Windows license for a machine that has never had one. Granted, there's a thriving hackintosh community as well, but that's probably not something Apple is basing the price on.


edit: Boot Camp works on any Intel based Macs. Some models aren't officially supported to run certain OSes. For instance, I'm typing this on an earlier Mac Pro, which doesn't (for some reason) have official boot camp support for Vista 64. I have it installed and working fine, but it took scrounging up drivers myself rather than having Boot Camp install them automatically.

[Gryffes]

Imagine if Microsoft built PCs and made it so you couldn't run windows on anything but microsoft PCs.

Yeah its fucking retarded. And so are mac users.

[Blabj]

OS wars are stupid, as are console wars, my dad could beat up your dad and my girlfriend is cuter than yours.

It just makes you look like an argumentative twat, because when it boils down to it, no matter what valid points you make, if someone likes what they have they probably aren't going to change it.

I'm not going to start using Windows again regardless of whatever valid points you make because I prefer OS X, which is a fact that doesn't need to be debated because it's personal opinion.

[Linktri]

Imagine if Microsoft built PCs and made it so you couldn't run windows on anything but microsoft PCs.

Yeah its fucking retarded. And so are mac users.

Microsoft doesn't manufacture desktops or laptops that I'm aware of. No such thing as a "Microsoft PC".

[Blabj]

Imagine a world where there are no hypothetical questions.

[Linktri]

To the OP: If you're going to buy a Mac only to play FFXI, you're a retard. Don't go and blow $1,000 to $3,000 on a system to play a game that's almost 10 years old. Go to Best Buy and pick up a bargain basement dual core at about $200 - $300 and upgrade the video card for $80. Personally, I'd get an ATI if I were you. I upgraded to an nVidia at first and ran into nothing but trouble. I don't know if it's still an issue but I'm pretty soured on nVidia.

As soon as someone says "Mac" or "Apple", the Microsoft fanboys pop up and start running their sucks. I use both systems at home. I use my PC running Vista for FFXI and some of my school. I use my Mac for everything else. A Mac will run Windows on Boot Camp just fine. It's free and since the Macs are Intel based now, there's much more hardware compatibility too. It's damn hard to find something that won't run on a Mac at this point. A major selling point for most PC to Mac converts is the support. MS support fucking sucks. So does HP support and Dell (Dell owns Alienware, by the way) support. Apple's is pretty spot on. One of the major benefits to PCs is that there's a LOT of online support on the Interwebs. If you have a brain you should be able to fix most PC problems yourself with minimal effort. If something goes wrong on your Mac and you're not Mac saavy, you're pretty fucked and you'll have to take it in for repair. It's hard to fuck a Mac up though.

TL;DR: If you have the money to burn and you're going to use it for more than gaming, get the Mac. If you want to avoid breaking the bank, stay PC.

[Blabj]

Or buy a Dell and put OSx86 on it. Best of both worlds!

[fndragon]

Parallels 4 will work fine with the newer Macbooks. My Macbook Pro is 3 years old and has the occasional hiccup in rendering, but it plays just fine. For non-FFXI games (Left4Dead in particular), Parallels isn't so great, but what you can also do is this:

1) Set up boot camp on a partition - install Windows, FFXI, games
2) Install Parallels
3) Set Parallels to use the Boot Camp partition to run from. That way you can play FFXI natively or through parallels, depending on whether or not you want to run other Mac applications at the same time.

[Spider-Dan]

First Mac "OS X" OS was released back in 2001 and with their current pace, "OS X" serie is expected to end in 2019~.

XP was released the same year, and you have no problem dismissing upgrades for that OS right now. At what point does the OS become "old enough" that it's silly to call an upgrade an upgrade, exactly?

By your logic, Mac OS X 10.9 in 2017~ will just be a service pack to the first OS X OS released back in 2001, an eighteen year old OS.

You mean like how you just said that SP3 was "just a service pack" to XP, a seven year old OS (at the time)?

You're arguing over straight semantics. There is no inherent difference in significance between the terms "point upgrade" and "service pack".

I just find it hypocritical when Apple fans talk about OS pricing, when Apple is at least as bad as MS when it comes to that. If Apple were in MS's position, they'd be just as bad as MS has been (see: iPhone).

[Hosom]

Since I spy the inner apple-fanboy at work, let me make another ignorant statement from the past:

...cause yeah, as a Mac user, do I even have to point out MacOS9?
(Unless you've already forgotten about it.)

Actually, I've only ever used a Mac when recording/editing stuff while playing my Sax in a friend/local instructor's home studio. I didn't use it extensively, but it was pretty smooth.

I'm a windows/Ubuntu user, and I do prefer those operating systems (in a perfect world where I get my way and all games run in Linux perfectly, I'd prefer Ubuntu the most)

[Isiolia]

You're arguing over straight semantics. There is no inherent difference in significance between the terms "point upgrade" and "service pack".

Actually, there is a difference, though it really does come down to naming convention.

When you're talking a Windows service pack, you're looking at a bunch of existing updates rolled into one big package. There's usually some new stuff there too, but a lot of it is taking the smaller updates from the past months/years and rolling them into a single bundle.

Apple does point upgrades for each release of their OS as well, through Software Update, which are pretty much the same level changes. IE, you have 10.5.4, 10.5.5, 10.5.6, and so on. We're currently on 10.5.7, with 10.5.8 in testing for release. Those "point upgrades" are the comparable updates to Windows Update/Service Pack updates. They're free, from Software Update, in the same fashion as the MS ones.

The thing Apple does that MS doesn't really is actually stick with a version number, and logically progress through it. Hence the secondary "big cat" development names, which are more marketable, but are really no different from "95, XP, Vista" or whatever other names MS chooses to use.

Consider, Windows 2000 was Windows NT 5.0. Windows XP was Windows NT 5.1. 5.2 was several versions, including Server 2003, Home Server, and 64-bit edition.
Windows Vista and Server 2008 are NT 6.0, and Windows 7 and Server 2008R2 are NT 6.1.
Technically, Windows 95 was also Windows 4.0 (4.000.950, A, B, and C if you want to be fussy), Windows 98 was 4.100.1998, and 4.100.2222A, and ME's last version is 4.90.3000.

There's quite a few "point upgrade" with Windows as well. All of which you'd have to pay for.

The difference is that Apple advertises the actual version number, where MS stopped doing that a long time ago.

[MrBubbles]

I've been running FFXI using Boot Camp Beta that was released back in...2007 I think, never had a problem. The only issue is if you have a laptop, the battery drains a bit fast in Windows mode, but not sure when you'd be playing FFXI with no plugs nearby.

[Valor]

I am not an apple fanboy and I have owned many kinds of PCs. However, the best machine I've ever played ffxi on so far is my macbook pro. I run windows xp pro through bootcamp and it is outstanding. I can run three characters at once with no problems if I need to and it will even run Autodesk Inventor very well (despite the mssql backend for xp). I use the mac side for everything else. I surf the internet at ease knowing that I don't have to worry about spyware or a random virus just because I get caught up in a drunken pornado. I keep a backup of the big things for windows so if I ever DO get a virus, I just wipe the partition and start over while still having a working laptop. Yes, the hardware in the apple is comparable to any other laptop on the market, but you do get better customer service and support.

For example, I recently bought a dell mini 10 netbook to play around with and ordered it a specific way. When it arrived, it wasn't as advertised and had some issues with it. Dell customer support told me I would have to pay 15% to return something that was non-functional and their screwup. They spent 2 hours on the phone arguing about 50 dollars.

A year before this point, my house was flooded by Hurricane Ike. In the process, my custom ordered 3000 dollar macbook pro got some water damage and started behaving quirky. I went into the apple store to find out what I could do about it, and the most amazing thing happened. They took my broken one and gave me a brand new one. I was in an out in 15 minutes. Apple has many things that I don't like (secretive marketing, iPhone, etc), but in the end, they have the best customer support on the most reliable computers I've ever owned.

I currently have a macbook pro I play on (2.6 dual core, 4GB, etc), a regular macbook my gf uses for school, and a mac mini from before there were even intel processors. (Mac mini was flood damaged, too and still works). In addition, though, I have several traditional desktop machines that barely ever get turned on.

Quick summary: Buy the apple and never look back. It's worth every penny in the long run.

[Gwylan]

Any of you guys use parser? I'm running FFXI through bootcamp on my iMac. I can't get any parsers to work... Tried changing memloc # in Direct parser and the program still doesn't work. And also if I wanna to run FFXI through parallel, can I still use windower plugins and any parser programs?

Help please!