So, this is the first post from my new MacBook Pro… interesting, huh? Not that much different, I guess. Anyway, just trying to figure out what to do, since I don’t really have any Mac software… but the web is universal, I guess!?
Well, I never expected that I’d get to celebrate Father’s Day for real this year, but I did… Georgia Jane arrived three weeks early, which I’d consdier right on time. On Friday, June 16, 2006, at 6:35pm, in Vancouver, BC, baby Georgia was born healthy and crying. Elizabeth was incredibly strong; we went to the hospital at 8:30am when the first contractions started, and 10 hours later our beautiful baby girl was born. Elizabeth didn’t take a drop of pain relief medication. She did take a generous helping of doula, though… Katie, our doula, rubbed Elizabeth’s back literally every second of labor (she even ate a Snickers with one hand while rubbing with the other — her only food during the 10 hours). She was incredibly supportive. All of the doctors and nurses were incredibly impressed with both her and Elizabeth.
So, I may be a bit out of the loop for the next couple of weeks… so far, though, it’s been so much easier than we expected… too easy! Georgia slept for 7 hours straight today! And she hasn’t cried for more than a few seconds at a time since she was born. We even got some sleep last night… of course, I’ve probably now jinxed it and will not get any sleep this evening! 
Okay, so I’ve gone and done it… I’ve drunk the kool-aid. I just ordered a MacBook Pro. Fully decked out with all of the extras Apple would give me. This is my birthday present to myself (and I guess, maybe a pre-emptive father’s day gift as well?). And my family was kind enough to chip in on it as well… which may end up covering the $600! in Canadian sales tax… Glad I got a 17% discount through EA employee purchasing. I knew giant corporations were good for something!
I decided to go with the 100GB harddrive instead of the 120GB harddrive because I could get the 100GB at 7200rpm. My current laptop, a Dell Precision M60, has a 7200rpm harddrive and it makes all the difference when compiling software (the disk is by far the biggest bottleneck — so much so that the latest build machines have 1GB+ solid-state, i.e. flash memory, harddrives that they use for their working sets; ramdisk anyone?).
I always thought my M60 was a honkin big laptop. Of course, if you look at the “desktop replacement” laptops it looks quite portable, but compared to the low-powered “business user” laptop it’s quite fat and heavy (around 7.4 lbs.). The MacBook Pro weighs in at 6.8 lbs. (with optical drive and battery), so it’ll be a bit lighter… but it’s actually bigger! I always thought that my M60 was a 17″ laptop, but referring to the specs on Dell’s website (which are customized based on my laptop’s serial #, a very handy support feature), the M60 is a 15.4″ laptop, which is the smaller MacBook Pro. So, I’m actually getting a “bigger” laptop, though it’s actually a half-inch thinner, lighter weight, and just about a half-inch to an inch longer and wider. I hope it at least feels a bit more portable since it’ll be thinner and lighter.
So, the display is bigger, 17″ compared to my M60’s 15.4″. But the resolution is lower. The MacBook Pro is 1680×1050 native at 17″, while the M60 is 1920×1200 native at 15.4″. To normalize all of that, you can factor the “number of pixels per diagonal inch,” which gives you 116 for the MacBook Pro and 147 for the M60. Some would say that the M60 has a “better” screen, and it technically does if you’re just looking at it. But, if you’re having to read it, I can quite confidently say I’m looking forward to the “lower” resolution MacBook Pro. The M60 just hurts my eyes… and I’m probably not the only one, as the the M70 that came out shortly after the M60 (and replaced it, AFAIK) maxed out at 1680×1050 even though it had an upgraded video card (nVIDIA Go700 FX vs. nVIDIA Go1000 FX).
I was definitely on the fence about this purchase… I knew a traditional PC laptop would give me more performance bang for the buck, particularly since most of my heavy lifting apps would be running on Windows XP. Obviously, BootCamp made this a harder decision because it meant I could run Windows XP on basically any laptop on the market, but I could run MacOS on only one. It was the MacOS part that persuaded me, though…
I’ve never been anti-Mac by any stretch of the imagination… but I’ve always used Windows because of games, game development, and in general it’s just what I grew up with and knew. I’m experienced enough with computers to keep Windows XP running without problems, unlike (apparently) the unwashed masses who seem to junk their Windows installations trivially. But, I’m more concerned with getting stuff done than farting around with my OS (which is why I’ve dodged Linux since college — of course, most of the apps I use regularly don’t run on Linux anywho). But browsing the Apple website last night changed my mind…
Several key features won the day for the MacBook Pro:
BootCamp is pretty obvious. I realized I would not be happy without Windows XP. I’ve got a ton of games for Windows. I’ve got a ton of software for Windows (Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects, Visual Studio). And a huge majority of people who would ever use any software/games I created would be using Windows. Sure, most of the software I use has MacOS versions, but they aren’t free. So BootCamp, like I said, makes the MacBook a possibility. And, as I understand it, Windows runs pretty nicely on the MacBook Pro, comparable (and sometimes ahead of) Wintel laptops with similar hardware.
Laptops always suck in the video card department, at least compared to their desktop cousins. They usually lag by a year, certainly at the same price point, and even then they’re usually clocked lower to be friendlier to battery life and heat sinks. My M60 had the fastest laptop video card you could get at the time… though within six months it fell behind rapidly as they introduced “laptops” that had PCI express cards (some even with desktop cards). The ATI X1600 appears to be pretty good. It’s not the fastest thing ATI has (they now have the X1800), but it’s at least on par with my desktop card (GeForce 6600GT, I think), so the desktop won’t necessarily have a leg-up on the laptop when it comes to gaming.
The webcam built into the bevel above the LCD is brilliant. I’m not sure if Apple did it first (and I don’t really care), but it’s a good idea and leads to much more natural webcam use (something I’m just now starting to leverage for communicating back home to the parents). I’ve heard really good things about Apple’s iSight cameras and video chat software, so I’m looking forward to playing with it.
And finally, the real deal winner for me was the iLife ‘06 package. I think Apple could make a killing if they ported this to Windows and opened it up to a wider market. It seems like a perfectly adapted, though reasonably comprehensive, yet still simple suite of software that hits the “creative” generation right smack in the middle of the head. It’s to the creative, web-savy individual what the MS Office suite is to the pragmatic, business-savy individual. I’m really looking forward to GarageBand (I always enjoyed Acid on Windows). To be honest, I don’t know how someone couldn’t read through the iLife promotional material and not feel inspired to use it and do something. In fact, my brother (coincidentally) e-mailed me this very morning and told me that he had just picked up a new Mac Mini. He urged me to run out and grab a Mac because of how amazing MacOS X felt (he still has an IBM Thinkpad with Windows XP that he enjoys). What really got me was this quote…
What can I say about OS X/Apple machines that hasn’t already been said. Best looking, most elegant and seamless OS on the planet. I’m serious, Troy. This thing rocks. iLife rocks. I’m actually getting back into my creative mode after a much too long hiautus (music, design, etc). It feels good.
If that doesn’t make you want to run out and buy a Mac I don’t know what will.
So, yeah, I’ve drunk the kool-aid, and it hasn’t even arrived yet. The Apple Store tells me it’ll be next week at the earliest before it ships (then it 4 or 5 days after that before I get it). Looks like it’ll arrive right about the time someone else is scheduled to arrive… looks like this may be the best birthday ever! 
Something I’ve found difficult to reconcile lately is a sneaking suspicion that interactivity is not a source of emotion, in games or in real life. Rather, emotional responses come from reflection on past actions or anticipation of future actions, but action itself does not seem to spur emotion.
You may think I’m splitting hairs, but think about the most basic emotional response, fight-or-flight, one that is fairly universal in the animal kingdom. This is the basis for most “violence” oriented games (and action movies). The literal rush of adrenaline that underpins fight-or-flight is not a byproduct of actually fighting or flighting, rather it’s triggered by the anticipation of having to do either. Surprise is an emotional response that basically results from the fight-or-flight mechanism having to catch up with an action that’s already occured.
Sex, well, it’s even more basic and instinctive than fight-or-flight (or at least equal). As has often been stated, anticipation of sex contributes as much or more than the actual physical act itself to the emotional response. Sure, sexual “interaction” has plenty of rewards built-in that go hand-in-hand with the participants’ actions — (god that sounds dry and academic) — but most of the instantaneous ones are mechanical in nature and not necessarily emotionally driven. In other words, thinking about sex elicits the emotional response, having sex elicits the physical response.
That’s where movies (and most non-interactive art) have the leg up on games: they’re all reflection or anticipation, all the time. Because the audience does not have to actively make decisions they get to switch into a continual alternating cycle of reflection and anticipation. Those are the fundamental components of drama.
Games, on the other hand, necessitate breaking the reflection/anticipation cycle by needing to insert interaction at some point. The drama doesn’t come from the interaction itself, but rather from the bookends of the interaction: either reflecting on the actions you took (or their results), or anticipating the actions you (or others) will take (or their results). This is why drama is almost universally seen in only the cutscenes, or more broadly, the narritive parts of games; it’s the point where the game formally reflects on or anticipates past or future actions.
Of course, drama does occur at the meta level of the game. As a player, you have a train of thought and awareness that runs parallel to your avatar in the game. While the avatar is acting out mechanically in the game world, even as you actively control those actions, you are passively “experiencing” the game as would a non-participant. In other words, game players simultaneously participate in and act as audience for their games.
The misguided pursuit is the idea that we can create game mechanics or interactivity that is emotional. The common wisdom is that “innovation” will provide this one day. Of course, while most focus on innovation as new mechanics, I’ve previously made it clear that I don’t think our mechanics are necessarily the failure. It’s not the interaction that will spur the emotional response, it’s what the player does before and after that ineraction that will bring about the tears and laughs.
In other words, the reason most games have no significant emotional quality is the same reason that a bad movie lacks emotional quality: poorly developed or unsympathetic characters, poor pacing, stilted acting, etc… The reason games get away with it and movies do not is because movies rely on drama as a defining element, whereas games rely on interaction as a defining element. Emotions are just icing on the cake, like good photography or special effects in a movie.
So, in response to this recent post on game girl advance (Sex Games Should Make You Feel Sexy… Right?), I’d argue that we shouldn’t be worried about whether or not the mechanics in a sex game become unsexy. Honestly, the mechanics in real sex is pretty unsexy. The emotional response, the “sexy” feeling, comes from the context surrounding the mechanics, the anticipation of the act, and the reflection on the act the next morning.