Livin’ La iMac Loca!

So I got this thing because it’s screen is beautiful and it’s all in one design appealed to me. Plus the idea of 24" dual multimon was too sexy to pass up. To wit:

command center!

Wrestling Vista Ultimate x64 onto the thing was a hideous chore compounded by the fact that while bootcamp will get the thing on the iMac, you’re on your own for sound and video drivers. Everything else, even the webcam, is supported. So after a day of modifying .inf files I had the thing up and running.

And it is wicked fast.

I’ve been poring over some PC games I meant to catch up on or that I missed. Specifically Homeworld2 and being able to run Counterstrike: Source at 1920×1080 with everything cranked to high. Gears of War for Windows runs extremely well on the 512 meg Nvidia 8800 GS, even in a window which is how I like to run my games.

Multimon is glorious with two 24 inch screens but I’m starting to realize just what Mac fans have been seeing with the glossy screens. Once you have a huge bright glossy screen in front of you, looking at a matte finish screen is awful. It looks like you need to clean the screen. So I’m considering moving the secondary matte finish viewsonic to another use somewhere and switch to a glossy screen.

I’ve not forced myself to stick with OSX for everyday tasks just yet, I’m going to start doing that Monday and will report here.

But I can say the iMac is highly Stepto approved.

Livin’ La iMac Loca!

So I got this thing because it’s screen is beautiful and it’s all in one design appealed to me. Plus the idea of 24" dual multimon was too sexy to pass up. To wit:

command center!

Wrestling Vista Ultimate x64 onto the thing was a hideous chore compounded by the fact that while bootcamp will get the thing on the iMac, you’re on your own for sound and video drivers. Everything else, even the webcam, is supported. So after a day of modifying .inf files I had the thing up and running.

And it is wicked fast.

I’ve been poring over some PC games I meant to catch up on or that I missed. Specifically Homeworld2 and being able to run Counterstrike: Source at 1920×1080 with everything cranked to high. Gears of War for Windows runs extremely well on the 512 meg Nvidia 8800 GS, even in a window which is how I like to run my games.

Multimon is glorious with two 24 inch screens but I’m starting to realize just what Mac fans have been seeing with the glossy screens. Once you have a huge bright glossy screen in front of you, looking at a matte finish screen is awful. It looks like you need to clean the screen. So I’m considering moving the secondary matte finish viewsonic to another use somewhere and switch to a glossy screen.

I’ve not forced myself to stick with OSX for everyday tasks just yet, I’m going to start doing that Monday and will report here.

But I can say the iMac is highly Stepto approved.

So Apparently We Made Some Sort of Announcement Today?

Just about the only bad thing about being a hardcore gamer/entertainment freak and working at Xbox is the fact that you get exposed to TOTALLY AMAZING JAW DROPPING AWESOME SHIT that is top secret.

We’ve had the new Xbox UI, content deals, and progress on the top tier titles in the works for months now, and EVERY DAY has been TORTURE having to keep it secret.

I can’t stress this enough, you walk into a meeting, get shown something that you think is the coolest thing ever (like install to hard drive or the avatars or what have you) and then you can’t even tell your wife. For months.

It’s basically like you get to have sex with Angelina Jolie, however you want, as often as you want, but you can’t tell anyone. And if someone asks you have to look all blank and go "Really, I have no idea what you are talking about."

So today was totally cathartic for me. You guys are going to love what we’ve got cooking. The teams are all on notice: shit is public now. You guys are expecting every ounce of goodness we announced today.

This fall, for the first time in video game console history, the next generation takes place inside the present generation. No new console required. You guys are going to totally dig the changes to Xbox LIVE and the stuff we’re planning.

The plan.

I’ve been assured by the Mac-erati that my experience was just one with bad support, and that I should restore to default and use the power of the tubes to solve the x64 Vista install, as many of them are happily running it.

So the plan now is to get Vista64 on (to answer other people’s questions I need native Windows for Gaming and do not plan to use OSX more than 50% of the time) alongside OSX.

Then I will embark on a bold experiment of forcing myself to use OSX for all mainstream tasks (not gaming) and then I will write something up on my impressions on it. I’m actually looking forward to doing that as I have not really messed with the Mac OS since the version 9 days.

[EDIT: Apparently my problem was I needed to download the most recent version of bootcamp that supports x64. Which, you know, IS THE KIND OF ANSWER I WOULD EXPECT SUPPORT TO GIVE ME. Ah well will try it tonight.]