write forNext Gen , Aaron Ruby opinesthat Apple may be prepping a TV game cabinet competitor in the kind of the video interface that Steve Jobs previewed at an event in San Francisco . If you recall , the yet - to - ship , temporarily - appoint iTV promise to wirelessly stream film , euphony , and other medium single file from a electronic computer to a connected TV bent . But Ruby thinks it will do much , much more :
I mean Ruby ’s totally off base , and here ’s why .
His hypothesis is build off speculation that Apple will incorporateIEEE 802.11n wireless networkinginto the iTV — something Apple ’s not ready to substantiate . ( Jobs inscrutably referred to iTV ’s networking technology as “ 802.11 ” networking during his presentation , which has lead to all the dead reckoning . ) What ’s more , Disney honcho Bob Iger assure meeter of a recent Goldman Sachs confab in New York thatiTV will have a small tough saucer driving . This , combined witha recent patent Apple filed for a new handheld electronic machine , adds up to the possibleness of the iTV as a secret plan console , at least in Ruby ’s mind .
I ’ve expend the last two days forming a point - by - point rebuttal on technical grounds why I think iTV , or whatever Apple will call it when it ships next year , is n’t cash in one’s chips to be Apple ’s answer to a secret plan console . Each fourth dimension I wrote , I come to a certain breaker point where I just had to stop type and say to myself , “ This is n’t ripe . ”
This was unremarkably followed by me laughing to myself . The thought is so totally from outer space , I could n’t even figure out why I gave it enough thought to mould a rebutter .
I finally figured out what was wrong : It ’s not that iTV wo n’t be a plot console or an interface to let Mac users play games on their estimator at all — that much is as obviously obvious as the nose on your human face , even if Ruby wants to delude his readers into thinking a twist being bill as a way to watch digital downloads is a “ trojan apple . ”
It ’s Apple itself that take in the finis problematic .
Apple is so far off from being able to nail with Sony , Microsoft or Nintendo as a games developer , the bare idea is beyond ludicrous . It ’s absolute fantasy .
These are party that enthrone millions of dollars annually into developing technology and evangelizing that engineering science to plot developer . Apple ’s efforts , by comparison , are little more than a teardrop in the sea .
Apple certainly employs a games partnership developer relations coach — he ’s a squeamish guy wire , a comparatively newfangled hire who replace someone who recently left Cupertino to search greener grass inRedmond , Wash. I met the young guy cable in August at the Worldwide Developers Conference . And Apple has long had a section of its developer Web situation commit to game engineering . Apple even offers an areaon its vane sitefor consumer interested in Mac gambling , though the page is inhume so deep , it ’s basically impossible to come up unless you know where to reckon .
Apple ’s core focus — the thrust of its development of Mac OS X and Mac computer hardware — isn’t on gambling at all . play is a out of bounds issue for Apple . Some of the technology Apple ’s been work on is sure good for games , however .
As the integral operating organization gets more dependent onOpenGL graphicsfor essence visual effects and range processing , plot functioning is getting good . Apple has taken strides like multithreaded OpenGL — a technology that right now is only uncommitted to drug user of Mac Pros and young Intel Core 2 couplet - based Macs , but is n’t currently supported in any shipping game .
Apple ’s conduct stewardship ofOpenAL , a positional audio recording standard that some games apply for 3 - D sound — as long as you ’re using an audio add-in from M - Audio or an port like theGriffin FireWave .
But make no fault — improvements to OpenGL would n’t have been made if they did n’t suit Apple ’s wide agendum : take in Mac OS X a better platform for digital subject matter creation .
And beyond those examples , Apple ’s done valued little to foster much interest in making Mac OS X a premier game development platform . Ask any developer who has actually spent time coding a Macintosh plot , and they ’ll secern you that for the most part , they ’re result on their own . There is n’t a howling amount of developer support within Apple for game makers . And outside of a few scoop here and there on the Internet , there is n’t exactly a thriving residential district of Mac secret plan developer , either .
Whatever iTV turn out to be , I ’m sure it ’ll be great . But I do n’t think it ’ll replace the Wii , Xbox 360 , or PlayStation 3 on any gamer ’s indirect request leaning .
