[MW Forums]

Id Software co-founder John Carmack said that Apple isn't supportive of the iPhone as a game development platform, and confesses to arguing with Steve Jobs about it. more

[Tidewind]

To John Carmack, I have this to say: bite me. A year does not pass without some article of quoting John Carmack whining about this or that with Apple. He's never satisfied. Apple can never do enough for him. Yes, he's done amazing things with game development. But his attitude is terrible. I have never read one grateful comment from him about Apple or the Mac, and I never will. And now he has turned his spittle toward the iPhone. It's evidence that success has made John Carmack arrogant.
It's sad that someone so ungrateful can get press coverage.

[Winski]

John Carmack has always been a whiny little bitch when it comes to Apple. If Apple doesn't bow down to the Mighty Carmack, he gets in a huff. Someone needs to remind Carmack that he's making GAMES! He's not doing anything earth shattering. If you or he or I can't play Doom on our iPhones, who cares?!?!?! Geez!

[dbater]

I have only one question.... why do we have to play games on everything, can't a phone be used for talking?

[lkrupp]

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John Carmack has always been a whiny little bitch when it comes to Apple. If Apple doesn't bow down to the Mighty Carmack, he gets in a huff. Someone needs to remind Carmack that he's making GAMES! He's not doing anything earth shattering. If you or he or I can't play Doom on our iPhones, who cares?!?!?! Geez!

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Yep, Carmack is the 'sugar water' salesman that Jobs once chided John Sculley about when Sculley was CEO of PepsiCo. Games are not about changing the world and Jobs knows that. Not to say it wouldn't be nice if games were plentiful for OS X. It would help sales somewhat. But games just aren't high on Jobs' priority list and never have been. Remember it's Jobs' priority list that matters, no one else's. Just ask the ones who have been whining for years for a headless mini-tower (God forbid such an animal could be called a Mac. Hideous!)
/forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

[Xaqtly]

I disagree with some of you guys. Carmack's attitude notwithstanding, he's right about at least one thing - Apple doesn't care about gaming. This is something Apple needs to correct. Gaming is absolutely massive these days, and Apple is quite literally hurting themselves by not putting any effort into making Macs (and the iPhone) more gamer-friendly.
As an iPhone owner, I would love to have some decent games on it. I would also love to play a game like Crysis in OS X, but that will never happen because Apple doesn't care about gaming. If they were to put some effort into working with developers and making some hardware that's more gamer-centric, making gaming-related improvements to OpenGL, things like that - it could only help Apple.
As it is, Blizzard has to literally ride Apple to make changes to OpenGl in order for WoW to run better. It's like pulling teeth, Apple just has no interest in gaming, which quite frankly is ignorant and short-sighted of them.

[Agnitio]

I don't know I'm a gamer, and I'm studying video games and new media at my university and doesn't this go hand in hand with what Gabe Newell said about Apple not working with Valve? (It's certainly not exactly the same, but I think Apple needs to support games on the mac more)
I had a discussion with Peter Cohen about Newell's comments while he sees it as extortion from Valve whereas I just see it as Valve asking for more support on the game development side but all in all, I think that Apple should put games higher on their priority list. I think it's an amazing medium and could have a huge impact if Apple let it.

[Peter Cohen]

Say what you will about John Carmack. He's one of the very few people in the game market that has Steve Jobs' attention, so what he says about Apple goes a lot further than, say, your opinions of him, for example. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[wbrock0011]

Well, you can just install windows on your intel mac and bootup in windows to play your games, or vmware, etc
Everyone forgets that Apple isn't a huge company, they don't have unlimited programmers...they still have to prioritize. And even if games were better supported, PC's are currently much better at it anyway, so anyone really serious about gaming would probably just get a PC, and anyone with serious work to do that requires a mac will get a mac.
I do understand Carmacks frustration though, because he obviously wants to develop for the mac and he's trying to get apple to be more supportive...what's wrong with that?

[zarmanto]

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Say what you will about John Carmack. He's one of the very few people in the game market that has Steve Jobs' attention...

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... but if the final result of the interactions between Carmack and Jobs is only staunch disagreement (as Carmack seems to suggest here) then I'd have to say that there is a big difference between having Jobs' attention, and influencing Jobs' decision process.

[palane]

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Everyone forgets that Apple isn't a huge company, they don't have unlimited programmers...they still have to prioritize. And even if games were better supported, PC's are currently much better at it anyway, so anyone really serious about gaming would probably just get a PC, and anyone with serious work to do that requires a mac will get a mac.

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Given that Apple's sales and market cap are through the roof, I don't think the argument that Apple's too small holds too much water. I believe it's a matter of Apple's (well, Jobs') priorities. I also have to note that this thread is about the iPhone/iTouch and so installation of Windows is a non-starter. [I honestly don't know if the mobile version of Windows will run on an ARM processor.]
It's interesting that this discussion dates from the WWDC and Apple has subsequently announced that there will be an SDK for the iPhone and iTouch. So, perhaps Carmack does influence Apple.
BB

[Xaqtly]

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Well, you can just install windows on your intel mac and bootup in windows to play your games, or vmware, etc

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That's why I specifically said I want to play Crysis in OS X. I don't care about Windows, I don't want to run Windows, I have no need to run Windows. But I would like to play games on my Mac, and I'm not the only one.

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Everyone forgets that Apple isn't a huge company, they don't have unlimited programmers...they still have to prioritize. And even if games were better supported, PC's are currently much better at it anyway, so anyone really serious about gaming would probably just get a PC

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That's a terrible argument. Apple should not pay more attention to the gaming side of computing because PCs are currently better at it? Isn't that Carmack's entire point, that he would like Apple to get better at it? We would like Apple to become more gamer-friendly because we would like to play games in OS X. Gaming is big business, Apple should not be ignoring it or dismissing it, both for our sake and their own.

[jstephe]

With any luck Apple will upgrade the Processor on Apple TV V2.0 and allow game creation, and support game makers.

[lookmark]

I'm with Carmack on this one. He's right: Apple is pretty casual about games, and it's clear that developing games for the iPod is a very closed process.
OS X Mobile has the potential to be very, very different. Here's hoping the upcoming iPhone SDK changes the story.