My Week At Apple
This past week, Apple held a "Games Summit" on their campus in Cupertino and invited a bunch of game developers to join in. They provided a bunch of sessions, tips and access to engineers to help us optimize our games. They also gave us some NDA-level peeks at upcoming stuff which we could prepare for in the gaming space.
The thing I took away from all this that I can share is this: the guys at Apple who put this together really, really care about games on the Mac. "We" (Mac game companies in general) got some feedback about previous issues that we were able to change a few things inside Apple that will benefit gamers, and there's nothing better than getting feedback like that.
While I was there, I managed to apply a few optimizations to Breakthrough that helped some - particularly on G5s, and I was able to prepare a few other apps for upcoming changes from Apple that'll allow them to "rock". What I liked most about this event was that it was more or less all substance - it wasn't a "rah-rah" conference about how games on the Mac kick ass, it was a quantifiable and invaluable amount of help, provided by Apple.
Comments
I was curious how it went. I was chatting with another developer who attended. Apparently, "everyone" was there and having a good time. I can't wait for those NDA-level things go public. Always curious what they come up with to help up gaming on Macs.
Posted by: a2daj | February 9, 2004 11:57 AM
Wondering when will the NDA expire? :)
Posted by: Adam Betts | February 9, 2004 06:40 PM
I was told it would become public in some form within a few weeks.
Posted by: Brad Oliver | February 10, 2004 02:35 AM
It would be great if the info from this (and other) kitchens was put out there for developers that couldn't attend. Sure, having access to documents, source-code, maybe some streaming sessions, etc isn't the same as the sort of hands-on experience you get at these things, but it's better than nothing. (There's been some requests on the mac-game-dev list along these lines already)
I'm sure the guys at Apple wouldn't complain about more people being aware of what they are doing either.
Anyhow, sounds like a good time was had by all :)
Posted by: ben b | February 10, 2004 11:33 AM