RCaeroguy

My Feedback: (4)

Am I correct in assuming there are no simulators made for us Macintosh users? I hate Windoze but this is one, and only one, case where I need a Windoze machine.

MHawker

My Feedback: (16)

I looked high and low for a Mac sim, but could not find one. I ended up getting the Real Flight to run on my girlfriends PC.

Depending on your finances, it may be worth buying a separate PC. Find a cheap PII or something. I've noticed a big improvement in my flying thanks to the sim. I consider myself a beginner, so if you're experienced, I'm not sure it'd be worth buying another computer.

Mike

Billy Hell

My Feedback: (2)

The only thing you can do is buy X-plane. It's great. It has an RC plane and you could design your own if your in to that. I wound up at a job with a bitcin pc and use FMS. It really taught me a lot and got my confidence back up after a bad crash.

sideshow

My Feedback: (11)

I think we are screwed. I was thinking of trying G2 running on Virtual PC now that it FINALLY uses USB, but from everything I have read it won't work. I'll still never get a PC!

Bob

RCaeroguy

My Feedback: (4)

I hate to say this because I hate PCs and Windoze so much but I just got FMS and a cable for my transmitter. I'm going to install it over at my sisters on her Dell. I'll never own one but she does.

MikeL

My Feedback: (3)

I picked up a cheap Dell a while back to use with the sim. I'd do it again, with the exception of not getting a Dell. Worst service I've ever seen from a brand name computer co.

VPC doesn't cut it for sims even on high-end hardware because of the intense 3d work. With a little luck someone might notice there's a segment of the market waiting to be served.

visioneer_one

My Feedback: (506)

Just buy a cheap PC. If you have any tech=nical savvy keep an eye out for closeouts from some of the big chain stores - sometimes yuo can snag some serious bargains. For example - my Realflight/gaming machine is a Compaq (are they HPaq now?) Presario 5888. 700 mHz Athlon, 128MB RAM, 27GB HD, DVD & CD-RW. I picked up two of them from a computer retailer back in Utah as 'returned' items for $150 a throw. (They retailed for just under $2K!) Gave one to my brother as a (belated) college present and kept the other one. Swapped out the POS Voodoo3 video card and she runs RFG2 smooth as can be. Bwahahahahaha.

(How? Q distributors had a policy whereby they did not accept returns of any Q consumer-class gear after 30 days for any reason. Once the machines are in the dealer's hands they are stuck with them. Apparently the manager of that particular computer store never learned the axiom "your first loss is your best loss" as they had about ten of them.)

I shoulda bought four.

m.gramling

My Feedback: (8)

I have been waiting for a Mac Sim as well for over 4 years. I email Real Flight about 4 months ago. I asked them when or if they were ever going to make a version of it for a Mac. They replied that they have NO plans in the future to make a version for a Mac.

So they wait continues. If anybody ever gets one working on a Mac, please email, I would love to have a flight sim.

I have flown real flight a couple of times. I really like it. I would buy a Mac version as soon as I heard about it. I know most people have a PC or clone. But I think Real flight and alot of other software companys are missing a lot of revenue by not venturing out to the Mac side of the world.

Elwood

My Feedback: (2)

RealFlight has a very small market (RC Pilots who want to learn and play on a computer). Now, I think that the Mac has about 2 to 3% of home computer sales. If I were them, I would not put the money into porting the system to Mac (keeping in mind that they developed to Microsoft DirectX in the first place). It would be too expensive, and the cost would be so high per user that you could get a used car for it.

I sympathize. Maybe they should port it to Linux. That way, PC users could use it, and Macs that run OSX will have a chance as well. Now we have raised the market share to about 5%. What will the future bring? I think that you will see Linux gain more market share over the next 5 years, and it will out-pace Apple. When corporations are ready to put forth the up-front money to train their users on Linux, you will see even more share go to Linux in the home.

m.gramling

My Feedback: (8)

I am a Mac ownerat home, and use PC's at work. So I know how to use both. I used a PC since they started in the home in the late 80's or ealy 90's. Used a PC at home until lightening struck it before I got married. Now that I am married wife wife wanted a Mac 3 years ago, my wife only knows a Mac she has never driven a PC. Shes a elementary teacher. I tried to persuade her not to buy a Mac. I mean I begged her not to get a Mac.

Boy am I glad that we got one anyway. I do a lot of desktop publishing. I think appleworks kicks microsoft office's or works butt. I wish more companys made software for a Mac. And most of the time its more expensive. (I bought Rainbow 6 for Mac, I paid 49.95 for it when next to it a PC version was 14.95 That is the only downfall for owning a Mac. Lack of software.

I think most people don't go w/ a Mac is because of lack of software support by softwarecompany's. Apple comes out with new technology and then everybody copies it to use it on a PC. Can we say USB, and Lazer Mouse, Firewire, Imove (Home Digital Video editing) and many more.

MikeL

My Feedback: (3)

The market share figures are deceiving. Apple's probably got somewhere around 5% of the total US market. Keep in mind that that includes PCs used in businesses. Odds are Apple's share of the home market is larger than 5% due to that.

That's not quite so. A person would have to put a Linux distribution on their Mac, and they'd have to create PPC binaries of the Linux x86 version. You can't run Linux applications natively in OS X.

Linux won't likely grow beyond it's current uses. It'll never compete in the home market due to its nature, and it'll continue to be relegated to server status in business use.

Apple does make great stuff. I do PC support at work, and it's nice to come home to something that works just as it should. I replaced my G3 Powerbook with one of the G4s a week ago, and I've never used a better computer. Apple keeps impressing me.

Elwood

My Feedback: (2)

I wear many hats in computers (PC's, AS/400's, Main Frame, AIX, networking etc), most of it on the business side. I have supported 2 Macs for a marketing firm, and found it to be easy to use when I got used to it. I would not consider it for myself, however. I think the hardware is very expensive.

Mandrake Linux has a PPC distribution for Macs. I was also under the impression that OSX was FreeBSD and a command line interface to the Unix kernel was available. I could be very wrong on this, I admit.

Just think of this... Would the Mac be more successful if it ran X86? Since it is easier to use, and the price would be on a par with X86 computers, what would their market share be? For the home, I would say, well, a lot more than it is.

As for Linux in the home market, I have used it for 4 years. With a few minutes of training my wife was able to use it quite well (she is not into technology). It has advanced a lot since then. Now it is very easy for the home user to install and run. Mandrake is great for the home user, IMHO. I think as it matures, and it will, you will see it more on the corporate desktop and in colleges. This is the road to the home user. If there was an RC sim for Linux, I would run it too.

MikeL

My Feedback: (3)

No, you're correct in that. It's using a modified Mach kernel.

Apple had System 7 running on unmodified x86 hardware in the early 90s. That project was killed off because of internal politics. Rumors of OS X running on Intel have been around since the purchase of NeXT (who really bought who? ).

The problem is that Apple is a hardware company that just happens to be one of the very best software out there. Their business model is built entirely upon selling comparatively high-margin hardware. The outstanding software they create is used to drive sales. Apple has made some very, very smart accquistions in the past couple of years to solidify that synergy of software and hardware that they offer.

If the proprietary hardware business declines uncontrollably, they'll transition to x86 just as NeXT did. Whether they'll survive the transition (NeXT didn't) is the question.

Perhaps. I think it depends largely on the outcome of the MS court case against the states. If Microsoft goes unchecked they'll do everything they can to cripple GPL/open-source software.

Back to the issue of sims, I wonder if Knifeedge (or GP) has contacted any of the major Mac porting firms about doing a port. They've got good tools for dealing with the DirectX issues, and the sim is mostly a physics engine to begin with. It would likely be simple (ie, cheap) compared to most games done today. Now that the USB interface is out, there aren't any hardware issues. Apple has been shipping suitably powerful machines for quite some time. I might have to fire off an email or two.

Elwood

My Feedback: (2)

I say fire off the e-mails. Perhaps it would lead to to Mac community getting a quality product.

w.pasman

Indeed, really bad there is no mac flight simulator! I think a sim is essential if you're flying helicopter. Two years ago I bought a PC laptop with good 3D card *only* to run a simulator. At that time this was the top of the line machine as the standard laptops did not have 3D cards and would not run my sim at 60Hz. It has a large HD which is deemed to remain nearly empty! The only other application I tried was a macintosh emulator (so that I would have a fallback if my mac fails) but unfortunately mac emulators only support up to OS8.1.....