Subject: Re: Thoughts on the Gabe Newell 's Mac comments. 2007-10-05 - By Alexei Svitkine
Back
> From my perspective (just personally, not-representing-my-employer,
> etc.), I can see huge dividends for OpenGL patches separate from OS
> updates. When we find an OpenGL bug, even if the fix is a simple
> one-liner for Apple to implement, it has to wait for the next OS
> update. If the OS has end-of-lifed, then there's no vehicle for the
> fix at all. Just as one concrete example, there was a problem
> introduced with the 10.3.9 update affecting Warcraft III on GF2MX,
> and that was never fixed because there were no future 10.3 updates.
> We had to tell users to downgrade to 10.3.8 or upgrade to Tiger to
> solve it (it was fixed early on in 10.4's lifespan, shortly after
> 10.4.0). Of course there is no official way to downgrade to 10.3.8
> other than a reinstall, which is difficult for everyone involved.
> If OpenGL wasn't tied to OS updates, we could have just told the
> 10.3 users to run Software Update and the next driver release would
> have fixed it.
Actually, I don't see anything stopping Apple from delivering an
update on top of 10.3.9 - such as "OpenGL Compatibility Update" -
they've done things like this before (to other components like
QuickTime, as well as the security fixes), and shipped them to older
systems such as 10.3.9.
The real problem I see, is the lack of Apple's commitment to game
developers. If Apple were serious about games, it would receive a bug
report from John Stiles or someone else representing Blizzard, which
would say "this is a big issue for our product", and it would react.
It would do what's necessary to fix the bug (within reason), and
release an update. The fact that they haven't done this just shows
Apple's attitude towards game development that Gabe Newell was
talking about.
-Alexei Svitkine
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