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Quake First Person Shooters (Games)

Q3T on Mac First 259

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-I-gotta-find-a-powerbook dept.
Wyatt Earp wrote in to tell us that macnn.com is reporting that Q3T is coming out this weekend for Macs first, then Linux and finally Windows according to Zaphod's Plan. According to Carmacks's Plan OS X is nice but "MacOS still sucks."Update: 04/25 01:36 by J : It's gone live. Go swap them servers.
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Q3T on Mac First More

Q3T on Mac First

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  • It's good. Very good. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Spent the last 2 hours playing it on my G3/266. It's very nice. The graphics really do live up to the hype in my opinion. Playing over a DSL line is very nice (but 300-500 ping on the server they are running). When you put it into 32-bit graphics mode everything looks SOOOooo purty! The lens flares, blasts, explosions, etc, all look amazing. The game moves fast unless you've got 4 or 5 people in the same room all using Plasma Guns on each other -- then the frame rate drops a bit. I suppose it would run faster in 16-bit gfx mode, but I want those textures to look smooth like silk! Get it. It's very very cool. Although the 22 meg download is misleading -- you also need to get the 6.5 meg OpenGL files as well. But it's worth it: I can go to work on Monday and rub a certain persons' nose in the fact that I have Q3 and he hasn't even seen it yet.
  • Theres is Display Ghostscript, I got it from the gnome cvs by accident.

    It wasnt too fast, and was quite buggy when i tried it, a few months ago
  • Is there any place one can find an unbiased review of OSX? I've yet to hear anything yet asides from Mac evangelists praising it to the hilt (which I don't trust) or anti-mac people saying that it's a piece of shit (ditto). Is such a thing even possible?
  • I fully trust Carmack's opinion, but he's looking at the system from the point of gaming, and that's not all I'm interested in. I'm mainly interested in how it sizes up as a Unix. I want to know its technical merits. I'm kind of interested in the GUI also, but GUI appreciation is such a subjective thing that I don't think reading about is a worthwhile expense of time. I'm especially uninterested in marketing, though :)
  • I can't understand why companies run servers on Windows machines. Their pathetic little Serv-U FTP server falls on its ass whenever they announce an upgrade or a beta release. If you actually manage to log into the thing, watch how swiftly and gracefully the server manages a simple "ls" command. If it doesn't disconnect you for some inexplicable reason, or hang forever, and you're lucky enough to get a file listing from it, you're bound to get disconnected at some point in the immediate future anyway. I thought the only people that ran Win32 FTP sites were lame college students. I guess I was mistaken.

    Other than that, I have to give Id software props, though. Anyone that supports linux is cool. Just a word of advice: ditch the Windows FTP server.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • > I see no reason for X if you have a superior GUI already.

    Because X isn't a GUI. fvwm2 is a GUI. Enlightenment is a GUI. Windowmaker is a GUI. X is a graphics transport protocol. There's no reason the Mac GUI couldn't make use of X, keep all of its famed "ease of use", and be network-transparent, too.

    And that last is the real reason to have X. We're living in a networked world, and it's only going to become more so. In that world, the ability to sit in front of one machine and work with another as if it was right there is going to be increasingly valuable. Unix, between the power and easy remote use of its command shell and the network-transparency of X, has had this ability for many years. MacOS and Windows don't. As a result, MacOS and Windows are stuck in client-server or host-terminal relationships, rather than the much more powerful "one network, one computer" model Unix gets closer to with every increase in network bandwidth.
  • Do you seriously think linux has a larger userbase than Macs have?
    I will say this, though- it's likely that linux has a user base with significantly more Quake-running capacity, because that level of CPU power is really pretty significant, and the Mac userbase has a substantial weighting towards housewives, Joe Sixpack et all who don't neccessarily have a machine that's recent.
    I think linux users are to some extent more likely than average Mac users to have a machine recent enough to run Quake. This isn't at all the same thing as claiming the group (in general) is a bigger group.
    How would you like it if something came out for Linux first and then NT, and all the comments were 'Of course, it's that way because Linux is insignificant, so they get the bugs out with the small group and then move on to the real group, NT'?
    Sorry, it's just irritating. This is EXACTLY the same attitude that has most of the world considering Linux too geeky and insignificant to matter. All things matter, and Macs are not as small a group as you think (just as, in talking to Mac folks, I would say that Linux was not as small a group as they thought). OK?
  • Those lucky bastards will get Q3T first.

    Only the beta test, if i read correctly. The retail versions will be released simultaneously i believe.

    But then Carmack continues to say that Mac hardware is not as fast as Wintel.

    Depends on the hardware. A top-of-the-line G3 beats any Intel hardware I've seen, but a pIII 500 MHz can certainly smoke an iMac (albeit for three times the price).

    Then he says that he might consider MacOS X as his development machine. And last he says 'MacOS still suck'. And not a word about Linux, *sob*.

    MacOS X, according to the people I know who use it, is quite good as a development environment. Lots of nifty utilities and IDEs that are better than their Windows counterparts (and don't even exist for Linux). However, I've never used it myself, so I can't really say. I do all my programming in real-mode (16-bit) DOS...

    But my question is how close to UNIX is MacOS X?

    Well, the kernel is basically BSD, so it's quite similar. Think of it as a modifed BSD with a much better GUI than X11.

    Does it support X11 and UNIX98?

    Not sure about X11. It might, but why would you want it to, when the MacOS GUI is much better?

    As for UNIX98, it's not UNIX98 branded, to the best of my knowledge, but then again, neither is Linux or FreeBSD.

    How easy is it to port Linux/UNIX applications to it?

    Shouldn't be too hard, since the kernel is the same. Of course, if you want to port from X to the MacOS GUI, that could entail some work.
  • Where exactly are you going to find that top-of-the-line Ultrasparc or Alpha EV7 for $3000 again?

    Unsubstantiated comments such as "Apple is really shit" are completely worthless. I could say "Linux is shit," but that doesn't make any more sense than your rant did. If i said "Linux is shit because the only hardware OpenGL support is has is through Mesa which relies on proprietary closed-source 3dfx Glide drivers," then I'd make more sense.
  • Yes, all (new) G3s are shipped standard with a Rage 128, which is two generations newer technology than the Rage Pro Carmack was using in his comparison. The Rage 128 is comparable to a Voodoo2, so the Mac is more than good enough to run Quake3 quite nicely.

    So, basically, yes, there is a higher performance 3d solution for the Mac that you (and apparently Carmack) were unaware of.
  • When are you Mac guys going to get it?

    Interesting assumption. I'm not a Mac guy. My two computers are an Intel Pentium II 266 MHz and a WinChip C6 200 MHz.

    I just happen to agree that G3s are amazing processors.

    Why do you x86 zealots immediately jump to the assumption that anybody who says something good about the Mac must be a Mac zealot? I'm not even a Mac user, much less a Mac zealot.
  • Posted by Nr9:

    i have heard that the client version is completely different from the server other than BSD and mach roots, i think it has a different mach kernel
  • No, it hasn't.

    Only Mac OS X Server has been released. The client has yet to be shipped, and will differ from Server in significant ways.

    --
    Get your fresh, hot kernels right here [kernel.org]!

  • To a degree...I built a Celeron 300A machine, with an ABIT motherboard, and a Millenium II G200. No problem with hardware support, apart from 3-D.

    There are probably still more Macs around than Linux machines, but probably not by all that much.

    On actively used machines, Linux may already have the edge. That's not to knock the Mac; it's just that Linux is all the rage these days. Of the people I know who are active computer users (including non-geeks), probably a third to a half of them are planning to experiment with Linux in the not-too-distant future.

    I think there's a fairly simple explanation for this: Linux will run on the hardware they already have. They can't try MacOS without buying a new machine, if they currently have an x86 machine.

    Who knows what might have happened if Apple had turned themselves into a software company a few years back...

    --
    Get your fresh, hot kernels right here [kernel.org]!

  • No X and that is worse.

    Porting XFree86 and KDE to Darwin would make a nice project.

    TedC

  • Uhh, you must not have been here very long. You get 1 point by default if you are posting from an account instead of anonymously.

  • Rock on (Score:1)

    by demon ( 1039 )
    errrk? Q3Test has JUST been released, and so far, only for the Mac. (Linux next, then Windows.) I don't know what you're talking about, but you must be thinking of something else - Q3Test is NOT yet available for Windows.
  • 'Linux is no where near ready for "primetime" no matter what you people say.'

    But of course. Must be an illusion. Look, Quake 3: Arena will be released for Mac, Windows, Linux. At the same time, full-blown retail packages, advertisement and stuff. Linux is right there, in the middle, between Apple and Microsoft. Think about that.

    Oops, my mistake, I forgot: Troll can't think - only flame... ;-)
  • It just seems like yesterday that they released the original Quake and I was hooked. Now Quake 3 is coming along nicely.

    How time flies. Good work, Carmack, et al!
  • I don't think we'll be seeing LinuxPPC binaries any time soon. The reason: Glide hasn't been ported to LinuxPPC yet, so even though we have Mesa we don't have any hardware 3D acceleration.

    What ever happened to the Glide port anyway? I keep hearing about one in the works, but no information on the status.
  • Well, I still see a lot of anti-Mac FUD here, but at least he's toning down a bit. I'd be quite surprised, however, if he actually trook the time to properly optimize the Mac version of Quake3. Oh, and he seems to have been testing a Voodoo2 (or Voodoo3 even?) on the PC vs. a Rage Pro on a beige G3; you call that fair? Also, I like this bit about "No openGL Voodoo support on the Mac..." It's called Mesa, John. It's been out for years. Sure, Apple doesn't yet have 3Dfx GL support (I have yet to figure out why) but the Mac does.

    But hey, he's improving, at least. His anti-Mac rants aren't totally inaccurate anymore. And hell, he's giving Q3Test to Mac users first.
  • Then I could have Quake twice before all of the Windows people. :)

    ...assuming that they make a Linux/PPC binary.
    Unfortunately, such binaries tend to be a bit thin on the ground.
  • .. which means that in the eyes of a commercial
    company linux has a larger user base than Mac.

    We seem to be getting somewhere...

  • Hmmm... (Score:1)

    by Utter ( 4264 )
    Actually, Carmack is not spreading FUD and he never has. It's just that some Mac Evangelists can't take critizism.

    And if the Mesa GL is the same as on Linux, I wish you luck in getting the same performance as 3dfx GL.

  • Rock on (Score:1)

    by Utter ( 4264 )
    Yes, the teasing of the Windows lusers has begun.
    I love it. Yes! Yes! Some days are better than others.

    OK, maybe I'll invite them for a quick look at my superior Linux system running Q3 Test.

  • Hmmm... (Score:1)

    by Utter ( 4264 )
    Don't think so. For Q2 they used the 3dfx minigl. As stated above, the Q3 demands more features so maybe they must use Mesa for Linux. Goosh, my PPro 200 will crawl.

    Guess I have to buy a new one. ;-)
    A machine with Mac OS X and Linux would be awesome, but that will be too expensive for me. A PII 450 is more what my budget allows me.
  • Those lucky bastards will get Q3T first. But then Carmack continues to say that Mac hardware is not as fast as Wintel. Then he says that he might consider MacOS X as his development machine. And last he says 'MacOS still suck'. And not a word about Linux, *sob*.

    But my question is how close to UNIX is MacOS X? Does it support X11 and UNIX98? How easy is it to port Linux/UNIX applications to it?

    Can somebody enlighten me, maybe with an URL?

  • Thanks.
    Here's the information that I found about it:

    A. Mac OS X Server is built on UNIX technologies, implementing most of the POSIX APIs,
    which makes it easy to port UNIX applications, particularly those from a BSD heritage. The
    main exception is applications with a graphical user interface, because Mac OS X Server
    doesn't include the X Window System UI toolkits. Mac OS X Server is built around a graphical
    interface, unlike traditional UNIX systems that rely on the command line. However, Mac OS X
    Server cannot be called a UNIX operating system, as it does not fully comply with the POSIX
    and X/OPEN specifications required for use of the UNIX trademark.
    ------------
    No big deal that it can't call itself UNIX. Linux can't either. ;-) No X and that is worse.
  • Does it support X11 and UNIX98?

    Not sure about X11. It might, but why would you want it to, when the MacOS GUI is much better?

    Possibly because there are lots of X11 apps out there that could be ported a lot easier if you didn't have to remake the GUI?
    /El Niño

  • While there's a downside to the "why" this is going Mac and Linux first, this is still overall a good thing for platform diversity. I'll be waiting in line to buy mine.

    It's good that John has come around on Apple (notice I did not say "...MacOS"), and especially the future of the platform, MacOS X. I couldn't imagine ANY game programmer saying nice things about gaming under the ever-changing, four-year late "Cairo" oops I mean Windows 2K (Linux is gonna KILL Wintel for games when all PC's are force-preloaded with that flying pig).

    There's sucky things about the MacOS, and I can draw upon time spent behind Wintel, Linux, BeOS, Solaris, and my old reliable GEM/Atari ST system. I have a list of complaints with each platform.. just I'm most comfortable with the Mac list which consistently gets shorter every day.. :-D

    I think I'm gonna take a day out of work when I get my hands on Quake...
  • Lately, the media has taken to quoting Slashdot posts, which I take as evidence the media usually know nothing about the subject they report (or else they would have caught on YEARS before and we'd see quotes from USENET as well).

    Anyways, my point of this message is a full 50% of the posts don't even make a 1, how disappointing. I don't see how ANYONE, except the most closed minded of folk, could find something wong with this story. iD software is helping Apple only in the sense that they are shining a painful light on the problems with the OS. Some people will never be satisfied anyways, because the OS is tied to the hardware, it's not fully open source, or they're jealous it has more than a "man page" for help. :-D

    I'm sure none of these people are listening anyways,but until something like Linux is all things to all people, people are going to want computers like the Mac (and Windows, although I've known people who just bought a PC without "trying anything else" :(

    I'm somewhat reminded of the local Operation rescue folk... they speaking up for what they believe in (shudder), but they do nothing constructive. I've never seen one of those dirtbags sign up as a Big Brother/Sister or foster parent, but they're more than ready to throw eggs, write down license plates or take pictures and put them on the web. Do something constructive, like reverse-engineer QuickTime for Linux. :-D

    I never thought I'd support Slashdot censoring I mean moderating posts. *sigh*

  • Oops! :) Somehow my filtering got reset to 1. Normally I keep it at 0 to not miss AC posts.

    There was a lot of useless platform bashing however. :-/
  • The thing is, how many gamers have that "top of the line" machine? Most current gamers (Win) don't have a P3 and Voodoo3 card.
    As a Mac gamer to Winhozed gamers: HA! ;-)

    It's nice to see Carmack considering OS X for his development. He's been saying that for a long time. It's obvious (to me) that he doesn't care much for development on NT (duh!). I know he has a bunch of SGI boxes he uses as well. How close is OS X to UNIX? Well, the kernal is basically BSD, if that helps any....
  • iirc, the MiniGL (which gets better performance in exchange for only supporting a fraction of the total OpenGL calls) for 3dfx isn't enough for what carmack wants for q3a, so the benifits of win3dfxGL over mesa aren't that great when both have full(er) GL support.
  • For the first time in a really long time I actually wish I had a Mac. Maybe a nice G3 laptop the dual booted MacOS and Linux...

    Then I could have Quake twice before all of the Windows people. :)

  • Rock on (Score:1)

    by aphr0 ( 7423 )
    They are releasing Linux and Mac first because there's a dearth of users for those platforms. That just makes my day :-)
  • http://www.apple.com/macosx/
    it uses bsd with a mach kernel

  • X on Mac (Score:1)

    by SEE ( 7681 )
    OTOH, with the source for the lower layers of Darwin and several flavors of xfree86-on-PPC-unix running around, a port of X should be a relatively simple project (compared, say, to the OS/2 port, which dealt with an OS very unlike Unix and had to rely on official documentation instead of being able to look at OS code).

    -----------------
    ObQuake: Is that the new simulation of surviving the Big One in L.A.?

    No? What's it like, then?

    What's Doom?

    Oh. I didn't like Wolfenstein all that much. Who in the world wants to play a real-time shooting game, when you can go down to the shooting range and empty a real 9mm?

    Movielike action? Don't you have any imagination? Bet you even prefered Baldur's Gate to ADVENT, didn't ya?

  • Yeah, but they're releasing Mac First. That just makes me Sick. heh.

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • > No big deal that it can't call itself UNIX. Linux can't either. ;-) No X and that is worse.

    No, but Linux can call itself POSIX. It's even been certified to that effect now. And the X/Open standard doesn't mean it doesn't have X11 -- X/Open is the organization that owns the Unix trademark (now initial-cap only, I believe) and certifies systems (for an exhorbitant fee) as Unix compliant. The latest spec is Unix 98, and I don't know of any implementations that are fully compliant with it.

    That's the lovely thing about standards. So many to choose from.
  • I've heard of forward thinking but this is ridiculous. Q3 is being ported for MacOS 8, not MacOS X. MacOS 8 does not now nor will it ever have the features that will be added Real Soon Now. iMacs do not currently ship with OS X. Not surprisingly, as Carmack has a product to ship for the installed base, not the one that will ship Real Soon Now, he bashes what he has to work with now.
  • The "driver" is the X-server. And there's no reason why you can't just "drop in" an X-server for your card once someone writes one. And I don't see how this is hurting our vendor support. Our main problem with 3d support is that the card makers don't think we're a large enough market to worry about. The more games start showing up on linux, the more they will change their tune ...
  • For an extra $460, I could do the following to the Dell:

    • Put in a good vide card ( such as a TNT ) $100- extra
    • Double the size of the HD ( maybe another $100- or so )
    • Double the memory ... maybe another $100-
    You get the idea. Of course, if the extra $460 went the other way, you could have an U2W SCSI machine. Oh, btw, bundled monitors are ridiculously cheap with the Dell machines, and their monitors are pretty good ( the AG grille monitors are basically Sonys with a different sticker )

    ABout the X-window system: the "remote control" thing is used *very often* in network environments. It might not sound important to the home user who just uses dialup connections, but if your machine is on a T1 network, the "remote-ability" of the Xwindow system is extremely useful.

    -- Donovan

  • On a somewhat unrelated (but highly amusing) topic, Disruptor's plan update [planetquake.com] mentions that a messageboard experiment that failed...
    "It worked fine under a light load, but once people started pounding on it, the entire system slowed to a crawl and it took about a minute to process the CGI http requests, resulting in a really bad cascading effect of backed up processes. Lesson learned: WinCGI (using VB6 to create CGI's) just doesn't cut it under a heavy load. Each CGI process consumed about 4 megs of memory due to the VB6 overhead. Gross and completely unnacceptable. (hardware: Dual P2-333 w/512 megs of RAM, NT4 SP4)"
    HA! This machine failed with a TEST msgboard?? Hell, isn't /. still running on a single CPU PII450 w/ 512 MB? MOST impressive, NT/WinCGI! *sigh...* You just gotta wonder sometimes...
  • lets just say that currently under wine linux
    beats win32 on speed/stability.
    why? linux is better at running windows then windows even in its alpha-pre stable restarting wine every 15 minutes state.


    id like to see how the mac holds up. too bad the
    only thing i own from apple is a old mac IIfx
    that doesnt have a mouse or keyboard and a odd scsi interface which has prevented the m68k and *bsd camps from adding it to the list of ports.

    Anyone know of a Xserver for mac os 6.x?
  • This says nothing about when Quake 3 will come out, just that q3test is coming out for macs, then linux, then windows. It's just a beta thing. You start out with a small group (macs) so you can find the big bugs, move to a bigger one (linux) so you can find the medium sized bugs and then onto the big group (windows) so you can get all the teeny tiny bugs out. Very logical. If they started out with windows, they'd have a hard time sorting through all the bug reports, matching similar ones, etc.
  • Please don't call X 'X-windows'. Its not. You can call it X, X11, X Window System, ect. Once you start calling it X-windows you start to think of it as a GUI. It is not and thinking of it that way forgets its power. And thinking of KDE or GNOME as a windowmanager forgets their power also. X is more or less a system to let graphical programs to interact on a UNIX system albiet network or not. If you run a window manager or only a simple xterm does not matter. If it pleases you, you could call your xterm your GUI. KDE or GNOME are just systems and programs to free the window managers from having to provide 'ease of use' settings or the like. They also expand upon the power of X in some ways.

    The problem of whether or not macos X will be able to run an X server goes around the point. Windows NT can also run an X terminal. And you can load all of your great window managers or desktop environments inside that. But why would you want to run a X server the equivalent of twice with the second one being the only one that can actually do anything that X is designed for? The GUI for MacOS X should have been seperated into seperate window manager and desktop environment pieces and run under X. If this would have been done the 'equivalent' GUI for MacOS X would have been more powerful by an order of magnitude. But of course this would have allowed any person who has an X server to run an equivalent MacOS X system-like GUI at any computer he wanted as long as he could connect. Windows NT could have done the same thing. But then again who would be making the money writing the seperate slower buggy (X has been thoroughly tested) software to do the same thing in a more restrained environment. Its a poor decision, as I doubt Apple will be the one making the money from that.
  • Frankly, I don't know what everyone is complaining about - when it comes to certain things, like audio/multimedia development, the MacOS *still* can't be beat.



    The MacOS has nothing special in it that allows multimedia to work better or worse. Other software does that that you buy from someone else other than Apple most of the time. I don't see how you can complement the OS on that. If you are saying that its a better OS for audio development, maybe. I don't have much experience in music. A better OS in 2-d development? Nah, Macs and Windows are fairly balanced (Linux has gimp, but thats still coming along... a little more powerful that Photoshop in some areas like scripting and a little less in others). A better OS in 3-d development. Bah! What do you think the SGI's running IRIX are for?



    The Mac is great for doing things *OTHER* than coding. I use the OS that enables me to write music (in my case) intuitively and without even thinking about the fact that I'm using a computer. Try *that* with Windows or your bloated open source wares.



    And when you are writing music, you are not effectively coding? How does the OS affect your damn intuition. Why is it that you right brain people always claim intuition and because of that you no longer need to have ANY sort of justification. Is it that clear in your heads that you can't share it with the rest of us? Try this for once, 'rationalization'. If you don't want to think you are using a computer, then use a piece of paper. All the greats of music did it, why not you. Or is your intuition helped by the damn rational and mechanical electrical computer?


    Bloated open source wares? Bah! I doubt you've ever even used Linux. I can boot a fully operational system WITH network support with a single floppy. How bloated can that be?



    *CAUTION*
    Now, call me a Mac-Nazi, but I honestly don't get this whole anti-Apple thing. As soon as anyone makes a comment in support of them (it seems), someone has to go and say its "pro-mac propaganda." You big bullies... all of you.



    It SHOULD be obvious. You are holding up your technically inferior OS and claiming it is better because YOU do your work on it. Its not anti-Apple. Its anti-crap computer software.



    I'm thrilled that id is releasing Quake3 for Mac... We've put up with this second-hand shit for too long. And as far as Carmack is concerned, more power to him. He's just trying to help, I suppose.


    What do you find more valuable: an OS in and of itself, or the PRODUCT which arises from it? You have to admit, people are still doing great things with the supposedly inferior Mac.

    It is inferior and there is no doubt about that. You may say that you have a stunning 400 Mhz G3 that flattens a Pentium II. It doesn't change the fact that its an apple. I could run my Linux system on an Ultrasparc and then we'd see how your G3 would compete. Or perhaps you might want to compare the G4 to the Alpha EV7 coming out. Apple is really shit, hardware and software, as is Intel and Microsoft shit too. But you can't claim that Linux is bloated shit as you did above. Its also nice that even though intel is shit, there are alternatives for Linux, including Macs.
  • Hmm, I'm pretty sure it was a G3/300 vs a P2 400. I know the PII was a hundred megahertz faster (or at least, that's what they say) than the G3. I remember doing a little news blurb on my web site about that article... and yes, PC World did it as well. Or was it PC MAgazine? One of the two.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I see it on their FTP server but it's totally bogged down... Anyone mirroring it??
  • You can see an announcement of a secure-HTTP plugin for OmniWeb at http://www.omnigroup. com/MailArchive/OmniWeb-l/1999/0185.html [omnigroup.com].

    And the keyboard commands might seem weird, but you can certainly do everything from the keyboard - because the keyboard commands are exactly the same as Lynx. :-)

    (Or at least a very early version of Lynx from several years ago - I don't think we've checked to make sure it still corresponds any time lately.)

  • My understanding was that the Blue Box (MacOS subsystem) really wasn't officially supported under OS X Server. One reason for this is that they have not merged the networking yet, which means you need two IP addresses, one each for Blue and Yellow.

    It would also be difficult to see how VirtualPC would be able to work under OS/X at all because all of the hardware is virtualized in the Blue Box. (Virtual PC appears to talk directly to the SCSI and Network hardware using emulated drivers.) I think this is why there's been talk of a "Red Box", which would provide emulation services under OS X.
    --
  • It's actually more similar to the comparison between OS/2 and Win3.1.

    The Win16 subsystem in NT (WOW - Windows on Windows) works by mapping Win16 and DOS API calls to the Win32 equivalent. Thus Win16 programs get Preemptive MT and Memory Protection under NT. I think this is similar to how WINE works - by mapping Win* calls to the Unix/X equivs.

    MacOS X runs the MacOS subsystem (Blue Box) by virtualizing the hardware and "booting" the authentic MacOS. Thus, no modern features between MacOS programs, although the Blue Box probably couldn't take down the OS. Similar to how OS/2 ran DOS and Win16 programs.

    The announced Carbon subsystem (subset of MacOS APIs) will work in a manner similar to WOW, if I understand correctly.


    --

  • Don't forget that 99% of the game market is running Windows 9x and MacOS, which means no SMP support in the OS. Adding SMP support for the 1% running Linux or NT might not have been worth the cost.
    --

  • I had a IIfx for a long time. There have been X servers for the mac for a long time (from Apple and others), so an old version should run OK on System 6.08.

    You could also install A/UX (Apple 68K Unix) on that machine, which includes an XServer. (But using it precludes using the MacOS interface.)
    --

  • Maybe it does, but Mac SMP hardware is pretty damn obscure and expensive (9500/MP and Daystar Clones only as far as I know.).

    Of that 1% running NT or Linux, how many actually have SMP machines?
    --
  • The point which almost everyone misses about memory protection for MacOS 8.x is that it would throw out backwards compatibility completely

    Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't apple do just that when they went from a 800x0 architecture to the PPC?

    brett

  • No, that is not what he said.

    They are releasing the Mac port first because there is a smaller userbase. This lets them track global bugs easier than a Windows release would. It is easier to go through 1000 bug reports than 100000. They then fix all these bugs and release the windows version.

  • I don't see any confusion. Everyone is talking about Q3T: Q3 Test.
  • Why is it not fair to compare a Voodoo3 on PC to Rage Pro on G3? The statement he made is that the highest end performance 3D you can get on a mac is lower than the highest end performance 3D available on pc. That is exactly what he said. Is there some higher performance 3d solution for tha mac that we're unaware of?
  • Is the Rage Pro 3D used on Macs the same chipset as the Rage 128 in PCs? Cuz if so, the performance on a Rage128 is comparable to a TNT, which is also very similar to a voodoo2 (depending on the exact demands of the app), and it's especially fast in 32bit color.
  • "He can code though, which (belive me) is the only reason this man still has a job!"

    That, and the fact that he owns the company.
  • Do you trust Carmack's beliefs, as a developer, geek, and genius?

    He evidently likes the NeXTStep environment, and sees MacOSX/Server as a very good thing. He seems to think the performance is fine, it's graphical capabilities good, and the OS itself not a hindrance.

    Honestly, I believe it will be a better OS than MacOS. That's easy to believe, right?

    I also think it will be better than Win9x, on it's Unix heritage. User Interface is always a preference thing, so as always, YMMV, but I've always liked the MacUI over the WinUI anyhow.

    I also think it will be better than WinNT, thought it may be very close, because of it's Unix heritage and because of it's descendence from NeXTStep. Ditto as above on the UI.

    Did you want to compare it to Linux?
    It may very well suffer on several accounts, as it is a product of a closed source development cycle, but then again it is a Unix. It's look and feel and UI will be much more mature and advanced than Linux's, but again tastes vary, so that may not matter. It has access to more hardware than Linux right now, though that may be changing soon with everyone jumping on the Linux bandwagon.

    Unless Apple screws up horrendously, in marketing(they do have the VW Beetle guy on their side, however), MacOSX should be a big hit this year, as compared to WinNT5/Win2k. It is also quite a bit more mature than Linux in many(not all) ways, and best of all, it's designed to pass the Mom test too.

    AS
  • My usage of the term 'closed source development' is intended to reflect the fact that Apple's MacOSX did not nor does not use the massively distributed parallel development and debugging model that is, for example, Linux. It may be based off of open source products and in the future will be open source, but right now the MacOSX is definitely been closed source development

    AS
  • Well, this is a message to those who have Macs and are lucky enough to have played the test.

    How is it? Does it live up to hype? Anyone grabbing screenshots to show us particularly neat and cool things? Any reviews or something?

    I hope this little post manages to be seen through all the noise in this channel.

    Sigh

    AS

  • It's good. (Score:3)

    by Coretti ( 17558 ) on Sunday April 25, 1999 @12:01AM (#1918326) Homepage
    Well, I can say that for a test, it lives up to its name.

    Q3T contains two maps, one indoors and one sort of in space. There's no single player mode for the Test, so really you have to hop on a id server. Which isn't a bad thing - I got to frag Tim Willits a few times. :)

    The maps look good, although I was getting a sub-par frame rate - the system requirements are through the roof for this one. Also, I was using generic GL drivers (despite what was said elsewhere, there is NO SOFTWARE RENDERING FOR Q3. Must be GL compatable.), so that probably had a lot to do with it.

    The networking would've been fine but the server was on the same machine as the FTP server, so everyone's ping was at about 500. Still, it played alright.

    It's looking good, outside the astronomical system requirements.
  • What he tried to do was set one processor to make OpenGL calls and the other to handle the rest of the game (networking, physics etc).

    He did get something like a 15-20% speed improvement, but both processors were so bogged down communicating that it wasn't practical.

    Now, if everybody had quad processor boxes, you could have one processor do the OpenGL calls, one processor to handle the rest of the game, one for overhead the the last to keep your network going. :)
  • I will say this, though- it's likely that linux has a user base with significantly more Quake-running capacity, because that level of CPU power is really pretty significant

    I would think it would be just the opposite because Unix can get so much more out of the hardware than any other operating system. i.e. a 486 Linux box I use regularly is about as responsive as an old 601 PowerMac with sys 8.1.

    I'm thinking about getting some older PC's (say 120 mhz) at some point and installing Linux and FreeBSD on them.
  • I know he ment 8.x, but you are right, he should have made it clear. The part that I objected to was the putting down of Apples hardware seemingly to keep Windows PC users from going ape shit.
  • id also probably has a decent guesstimate of how many downloads of the test for each os too. (they can look at the download rates for the linux ports for quake2 and the mac sales for quake.

    A large part of the discrepancy is due to Mac users feeling shafted by getting charged $50 for a year old game. All the data files are identical, so they could have gotten them from a PC friend (or just bought the PC version), download the Mac demo, enter the regiserted code, and save themselves $30.
  • AFAIK it is already possible to kill the GUI and use X Windows under OSXS, you'd just have to do it yourself as Apple doesn't inlcude it on the CD's.

    If you can't, I would expect a commercial or free OS version would be available soon.

    I'm also hoping that OSXS supports virtual consols and desktops.
  • Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't apple do just that when they went from a 800x0 architecture to the PPC?

    Actually it was the 68k line, not the 808x's from Intel. And PowerPC machines have 100% compatibiltiy with programs made for 68k processors; in fact, its probably the most sucecessful technology transition, ever.
  • ow, I don't know about a PIII with programs written to take advantage of the new instructions.

    A Mac magazine and (I belive) PC world did some testing with P3 enhanced Photoshop filters and the G3 (400) still whumped the P3 (500).
  • What makes me laugh is that Carmack says a 400Mhz G3 = 400Mhz P2, as far as CPU is concerned.

    Using Spec for benchmarking Mac's and PC's is as bad as Bytemarks. I hope that wasn't what he was using.
  • "There is no reason why the GIMP developers, or another team couldn't port GIMP to Mac OS X either, except for perhaps their pride."

    Not their pride, most of them would have no reason to, because they won't be using OS X. That doesn't mean someone else won't port it though.

  • Why does being based on something that is 30-years old automatically make something bad. Look at those horrible bicycles, they're over a hundred years old. The plane's over 90-years old.

  • And how many 400Mhz G3s do you think are you there? Bet you didn't think about that.

    What makes me laugh is that Carmack says a 400Mhz G3 = 400Mhz P2, as far as CPU is concerned. That goes against Steve Jobs' propaganda that a 300Mhz G3 = 400Mhz P2.
  • Oh yes, and most serious gamers on PC DO have a P2-400 and TNT/Rage128, which just as good as the best G3 out there.
  • You're right, but not only does it go against the propaganda, it goes against the facts (which are not as rosy as Steve Jobs says, either). The PowerPC chip is a true RISC chip, and for certain applications, it will absolutely destroy ANY Pentium or variant. The 400MHz G3 RIPS through RC5, for instance. It all depends on the application, but in general, a G3 will beat a PII MHz for MHz. Now, I don't know about a PIII with programs written to take advantage of the new instructions. That changes the playing field a lot. The PIII probably comes into parity with the G3, which is why it would be accurate to say that a 500MHz PIII beats a 400MHz G3. But of course, the G4 comes out soon, which should reverse the tables again...
  • Yes, and what I've heard is that Mac OS X is, in fact, 99.9% POSIX compliant. Apple made the decision not to spend the money on certification because it would have raised cost to the customers on dubious justification.
  • AC posts start at 0. That's why you see so many of the comments as being moderated down. Only 3 comments in this discussion have gone below 0.
  • My god!!! You mean you actually read the article first instead of just coming to the message board and spewing OS-War crap?

    You are to be commended.

    But is it Mac -> Linux -> Win because of install base, or varying hardware? Is Linux bigger than Mac already? On the desktop, I mean?

    I thought they were doing it the way they are because the Macs have a fairly homogenous hardware setup (and a smaller install base). Linux is next, because it has all those different motherboard/processor + card combos to sift through when fixing bugs, then Wind'oh!s because (this is the point Microlackies don't get) all the companies write drivers for them from the get-go, so anything that works with Intel is available to them. That would make it a nightmare for initial bugtracking, I'd think. :P

    Seems like a really sensible release scheme to me, too. I would assume once the bugs get hammered out, all the final releases would be boxed and shipped at the same time.

    --
  • This isn't the game or even the demo. This is a beta test only. They are only fishing for bugs with this release.

    The demo and the final game release will obviously come out on all 3 simultaneously.

    The only reason they're releasing to mac, linux, and win in that order is that they want to start with a smaller number of users to control the volume of bug reports.
  • He wasn't whining about 3dfx (not the lower case d) implementations. He was whining about the lack of OpenGL drivers on the Mac platform for 3dfx hardware.

    And as far as Spec95 vs Bytemark, I'll never ever accept that a 233 MHz iMac beats a 400 MHz PII. That's just garbage. And when he was referring to speed, he was talking about the speed he got from his own benchmarks with the game he made.

    The Rage Pro, on a gaming level, is a load of garbage. My old Voodoo1 has a better 3D feature list.

    He says that MacOS's problems have gone away with OS X. But OS X isn't out. OS X _Server_ is out. That's not for everyone. That's not for Mac gamers. So as far as OS X goes, it's not here.

    Finally, as far as his equivalent machines go, consider the price of a loaded G3 vs a P2-400. The prices don't even compare, the G3 is priced way out there.

    After a rant that long, I think it's fairly obvious that the Mac isn't quite the greatest gaming platform out there. Old Mac's can't do it (Rage Pro), upgraded old Mac's can't do it (no 3dfx OpenGL driver). The new Macs, while nice, are overpriced compared to their equivalent Wintel box. And finally, OS X is still not here (what a shame though, that Win98 is the gaming platform of choice for 9x boxes).
  • >Carmack a genius? Can this guy do anything other than castles and nazis?

    Are you just dumb or what? As far as pute technical programming merit, this man IS a genius. If you've ever heard him lecture at game development conferences, you'd see it for yourself.

    Until then, grow the hell up.
  • Who needs mature opening salvos? (;

    Seriously though, I think you're giving the man too little credit. It's easy enough to say 'Yeah, if you give me eternity, I'll do better..' when there ARE people in the industry who've been there just as long. So why aren't there more genius' (is that the plural of genius? hmm).

    And honestly, if you'd care to redifine a certain genre of gaming (in this case, first person shooters) every few years, be my guest. Until then, I'd like you to do more then FUD the man.

    And as for the greatest, that's still Brian Hook. But only because he's outspoken.
  • Uh...GL slower on Linux? NO way. On my Voodoo2 I get something like 5-6 fps faster on Linux than on Windows....using the MiniGL from Q2 of course. If I was using the MesaGL Linux vs full ICD Windows, I'm pretty sure MesaGL would whoop on 3dfx's ICD.
  • Is this new version a "MacOS X-Server"? Like an X-server for mac? Or is it just X meaning ten? I get confused.

    owen
  • It's fun to see how many people actually respond to a troll this blatant...Let's conserve bandwidth, people.
  • Carmack dicussed the problems in detail a while back. You can read about it here [bluesnews.com].
  • stalker@foo:~$ finger johnc@idsoftware.com
    [idsoftware.com]
    Welcome to id Software's Finger Service V1.5!

    Name: John Carmack
    Email: johnc@idsoftware.com
    Description: Programmer
    Project: Quake Arena
    Last Updated: 04/24/1999 01:34:03 (Central Standard Time)
    ------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------

    4/24/99
    -------
    We are finally closing in on the first release of Q3test.

    As you have probably heard by now, the first release in going to be the mac
    version, probably followed by the linux version, and only then the
    windows version.

    Some of you are busy getting all bent out of shape about this.

    We want to get a lot of people playing with the test to find bugs and
    offer well thought out suggestions, but there are classes of bugs and
    suggestions that emerge in each order of magnitude of exposed testers.


    If a given bug is going to show up when a thousand people have looked
    at it, but we had released it to a hundred thousand people, then we are
    going to have a lot of duplication to wade through.

    The mac testers will find some obvious problems.
    We will fix them.
    The later releases will be better.

    Even if we had the windows distribution ready to go right now, I would
    still seriously consider releasing one of the mac or linux versions first
    because it will make our tracking a lot easier.

    The holdup on the windows side are the issues with updated driver
    distribution. The game itself doesn't have any holdups.

    We could do a windows release for just, say, voodoo2 owners and get some
    of the benefit of a controlled release, but it wouldn't really work out,
    because everyone would figure out that it can be made to (almost) work
    on lots of other cards by tweaking some values. That type of feedback
    would not be useful, because we KNOW that there are problems with most
    of the current drivers. We have been working with all of the vendors
    for the past year to get them all straightened out.

    Glsetup is going to be slick -- just run it and it will Do The Right Thing
    for your video configuration.

    We hope it will be done soon, but there are factors out of our direct
    control involved.

    Don't be spiteful. This is just the beginning of the testing and
    release process.


    One conspiracy theory suggests that Apple is somehow getting us to do this.

    What we have "gotten" from Apple is a few development machines. No
    cash payoff. No bundling deal. No marketing contract.

    I am looking at this long term. I want to see OS X become a top notch
    platform for graphics development. I think highly of the NEXTSTEP heritage
    and I might move my development from NT if it turns out well. There is a
    lot of groundwork that needs to be laid with apple for this to happen,
    and my working on the mac right now is part of that. Plus a lot of
    complaining to various apple engineers and executives. :-)

    To be clear:

    At this time, there is no mac that is as fast for gaming (or just
    about anything, actually) as a pentium III with a top of the line 3D card.
    Period. I have been misquoted by some mac evangelists as saying otherwise.

    The new (blue and white) G3 systems are very good systems in many ways, and
    make a perfectly good gaming platform. However, a high end wintel machine
    just has more horsepower on both the CPU and the 3D card.

    A 400 mhz G3 performs about the same as a 400 mhz PII if they aren't fill
    rate limited, where the faster cards on the PC will give about a 25%
    advantage. A 500 mhz PIII with an appropriate card in 30% faster than
    the best mac you can buy.

    The multi colored iMacs, old G3 desktops, and powerbooks can play Quake3,
    but the RagePro 3D acceleration defines the absolute bottom end of our
    supported platforms. A serious gamer will not be satisfied with it.

    Voodoo cards are not currently supported by the OpenGL driver, which is
    very unfortunate because many serious mac gamers own voodoo cards. I
    hope Apple and 3dfx will be able to correct this soon, but I certainly
    understand Apple's prioritization -- obviously, good support for the OEM
    video options is of primary importance.

    The voodoo performance will still lag the windows platform by some amount,
    but some strides have been made in that area recently, so I expect good
    performance,

    Gaming is not a reason to buy a mac, but Apple is taking steps so that
    it may not be a reason to avoid a mac if you have other reasons for wanting
    one.

    MacOS still sucks.


  • KDE isn't a window manager.
    KDE is a desktop environment that has a default window manager (unlike Gnome) called kwm.

    Just my 2 cents :)
  • Originality != genius. Id creates these types of games because they LIKE them. So do we, apparently. Ask anyone in the industry their opinion of Carmack and you'll get the exact same response. The guy is incredibly talented at optimizing code (look at the amount of STUFF in the original quake and look at what kind of hardware it ran on).
  • You should check out 8.6, which is about to be released. Apple's doing a good job of making MacOS 8 pretty damn good, actually, even with all the shitty legacy code lying around. I love Macs but I agree that MacOS is pretty bad, in terms of the lowlevel stuff.. But 8.5 and 8.6 are really quite good.
  • There seems to be a great problem for some of you to make a difference between MacOS X Server that is available now and MacOS X that is planed to replace MacOS (and maybe the Server also) then it is released.

    Everybody knows ordinary MacOS sux, apple realised this a long time ago and started a project called Copland, but failed after several(6 i think) years of slow development and bought NeXT instead. So MacOS has in reality been cancelled a long time ago, and now it is being developed just as a bridge to MacOS X that will totally replace it(I know apple don't say it this way, but thats what will happend).

    As to MacOS X Server, it is quite good, but not good enough to replace MacOS, the interface is not as clean as MacOS and the "emulation" of MacOS appz is done by a separate application. MacOS X will fix all this and also add a new API to make the transition from Mac to MacOS X easy -- carbon.

    Maybe not 100% correct but essensially what will happened...

  • But is it Mac -> Linux -> Win because of install base, or varying hardware? Is Linux bigger than Mac already? On the desktop, I mean?

    i imagine that the number of linux users who will be interested/have-machines-capable of running the test is greater than the number of mac users falling into that category. (this isnt a slam on mac.)
    id also probably has a decent guesstimate of how many downloads of the test for each os too. (they can look at the download rates for the linux ports for quake2 and the mac sales for quake...though i'm sure the mac number would need to be adjusted upwards considering the increase in sales from the imac)
    probably your other guess is a good one too...i would think it'd be easier to find non-hardware specific bugs in the apple version.

    Seems like a really sensible release scheme to me, too. I would assume once the bugs get hammered out, all the final releases would be boxed and shipped at the same time.

    every reference i can recall from anyone at id stated that all 3 versions would be released simultaneously.

  • Mac OS X Server has BSD at its heart, but it also has a modified Mach 2.5 kernel and a whole bunch of NeXT conventions sitting over it. The most obvious differences from *nix to me are the directories which are named differently (my user directories are in /Local/Users/), and the tendency to call root 'Administrator'. Most of the important directories are named with capitals. The system was clearly designed to be navigated primarily through the GUI.

    The OS does not include an X Server, as it uses its own Graphics scheme (currently based around Display Postscript, though that will change by the end of the year). It would be really nice if there was an X server. If you happen to be running the i386 distribution of Rhapsody DR2, you can download one from ftp.next.peak.org. Unfortunately for me, there is not currently one availiable for the PPC AFAIK. Sigh.

    As for porting, anything that doesn't use X should not be a big problem. Directory stucturing is slightly different, and most of the differences are linked to look the same. With the help of a freely-downloadable patch, I was able to compile ssh to run within minutes (Well, there was a problem with install, which stopped it from installing sshd, so I had to figure that out, and manually copy that, but otherwise...). Hope some of that was useful.

  • Regarding MacOSX (Score:4)

    by puppybane ( 120218 ) on Saturday April 24, 1999 @12:17PM (#1918372) Homepage
    Well, I can try. First, I would like to note that I am a Mac User, but I really like the power/stability of Unix. However, here is my attempt at a fair review of the OS I have been using constantly for about a week now (note: if Apple tells you 2-4 weeks for delivery, expect delivery on the 28th day :} ) I may put up a longer, more detailed one later, when I put off some assignment or another.

    The installation was a snap, even on my non-supported PowerBook G3. Everything installed properly and once it was properly configured, the computer booted up in less than half the time it takes my MacOS partition to boot up. Before I configured it, it kept trying to get my network info off a system called NetInfo, which I had never heard of until this came out. I could be wrong, but it seems a bit silly to automatically try to get information from a scheme used by an OS which came out a month ago. But it was easy to switch over to bootP, and I have seen instructions on how to use DHCP.

    Since I started up, for the past week, I have only had the OS crash twice--both times involved Apple's Blue Box, usually when I tried to exit it. Users of VM ware may have experienced similar things (I know my roommate has). Of course, one week is not a very long amount of time for testing.

    It took me a bit to get used to the UI. IMHO, it has a ways to go, but it is very functional. It does have a problem with ignoring some of my settings, like Icon view instead of NeXT columns. Once I got past trying to convince it to remember that setting, and decided I actually liked the columns view better anyway, I was able to move on.

    Moving files and directories around can be a bit strange. Sometimes, it lets you move it, other times, you copy it, and sometimes it defaults to linking. All of these can be overridden with modifier keys, and I imagine that the defaults have to do with partitioning/permissions, but it was confusing, and irritating when I tried to move a large file, and it copied it instead. Of course, all of this can also be done with the command line.

    I keep hearing that this OS is very fast on other computers, but currently I have not seen it. I suspect that it doesn't like sharing the HD with a 2gig Mac partition, and I think it wants more than 64MB of RAM. I plan on ordering a 128MB SIMM, so we'll see if that helps. The biggest speed problems are all in loading software, and opening menus. I often get the feeling that I'm not expected to use the Apple menu, because it takes a second to open until it is either cached, or placed in physical memory. Or maybe my G3 266 just can't handle the load...

    Configuring users is where I was really happy. Permissions, shell settings, passwords, whether or not the user should be able to log in remotely--all can be done from within network manager. The only thing which makes it strange is the obvious design slant toward people running a network. I am not, so many of the settings just aren't useful to me. Others probably have other opinions (inevitably). It seems easy to set up a network with, though it is focussed at Macintosh style network schemes (NetBooting and NetInfo). I'd like to try NetBoot, but I think my campus network admins would not appreciate the bandwidth it is supposed to take (Apple recommends a 100 baseT ethernet connection). Any user can open the Network Administration panel, but in order to change anything, one has to authenticate. So configuration is easy.

    Once I got the system set up (this took me a total of maybe an hour, from the beginning of installation), I went to download some more software (games & stuff), by checking out Stepwise.com, and moving to ftp.peak.next.org. There isn't all that much there right now, but I am confident that things will swiftly be ported over. As it is, I got myself a handful of games (at one point, I would like to try to run Windows on Virtual PC on the BlueBox, and try to play some PC games...)

    As a mac user, I was most pleased by the availiability of Quake2 for MacOS X Server, which OmniGroup ported a while back. OmniGroup also makes the only (AFAIK) web browser for OS X Server. Actually, this was the biggest problem, and one of the 2 reasons I am currently booted into MacOS. While their webbrowser is execellent, it is still beta, and missing a very important feature for me--secure http. I need that to sign up for my classes for next semester, and to check my account. It also means I can't log in to the Apple Developer web-site. However, I will note that I think OmniWeb is one of the nicest browsers out there, with a very nice interface. They do things a bit differently than Netscape, though, which caused me some confusion at first (pressing the down arrow goes down the list of all the hyperlinks on the page. You could navigate the whole page with arrow keys and return, but I expected it to just scroll down.

    The other reason I'm back on Mac is because even dimmed, my Powerbook's monitor throws off enough light to see well in my room at night, and OS X Server does not support certain controls on the Powerbook. There is no sleep mode, there is no power management, and I cant dim the display so there is no backlighting. The biggest part of that is that I have to log out and shutdown before I take the Powerbook anywhere, or it will overheat with it's top shut. But that's why Apple doesn't support the Powerbooks with OS X Server (OS X most likely will).


    The next thing I did was to look for the much-vaunted developer stuff--Interface Builder and Project Builder. These, along with the API, where and are the reason there are still devoted NeXT developers out there. I couldn't find them, because Apple put them on the CD labelled WebObjects for Developers. But I found them, and now I understand why NeXT had their following. Those tools are amazing. I know very little about the API (I haven't had time yet), but Project builder is one of the nicest development environments I've seen. Users of Microsoft's Visual development suites will find it familiar, since MS based those on Interface Builder and Project Builder. Every function call/declaration is availiable for viewing with a few clicks, and if you ever scroll by, and see a function that you don't know the meaning of (even/especially Yellow Box functions), you can just open the find panel with a click, paste in the name, and tell it to find the definition, or all references to the function. If it is a Yellow Box function, it will also list a little book next to the declaration, clicking on which takes you to an html file (opened inside Project builder) which explains the use of that function. Apple also includes help files on using the tools.

    All in all, I'm happy with my purchase (of course, I got it for $99 through Apple Developer Connection) I hope other developers start to port things over. I would like to take a crack at getting one of the PPC X Servers running on this thing. Anyway, being as it is day, and I'm done checking my student account, I will go boot back into it now.

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