GDC 2008: Of Apples and PCs

One of things I noticed at GDC 2008 was the intensely high Mac to PC user ratio. Almost everyone I saw presenting had brought a laptop, either to run a Powerpoint presentation or to demo their work, and with the exception of the Square Enix people, everyone was using a MacBookPro or a Powerbook. People taking notes at GDC, I'd say the audience of Mac users was about 75 percent. If I saw a laptop, it was usually a Mac. Now, the reason I find this somewhat surprising is that the platform targeted for most computer games, is in fact the PC, by a somewhat large margin. The hardcore Mac game market is mostly dominated by World of Warcraft, and includes a small selection of triple-A titles ported over from the PC. For games, the PC market has shrunken down, while most of the games now are being released for the console. I have been to many GDCs, but I've never seen such a high percentage of Macs being used before.

Part of this, I credit to the affluence of being a game developer; being in the industry and being able to attend the GDC means you have a certain amount of cash -- during the breaks in the sessions, I saw plenty of PSPs and DS Lites, as well as iPhones. I believe that there are several factors in effect here: the iPod halo effect is definitely present; these are folks who probably would have never considered a pre-intel Mac (my ancient Titanium G4 Powerbook was definitely the Methuselah at the conference), but also coming in play is that for programmers who are not working in the Microsoft .NET architecture, the Mac is an overall better programming platform -- UNIX support is standard, and if you need Windows, there are enough ways (VMWare, BootCamp) to install Windows on a Mac with minimal effort, whereas installing Windows and Linux (or using Cygwin) is simply a daunting task. Couple this with the the MacBook Pro's capable gaming performance (for a laptop), and you have an ideal portable notebook for a developer.

I did not see a lot of MacBooks here, nor did I spot in this gathering of developers a single MacBook Air. I did see an black eeePC, and someone from EA had an OLPC. Most laptops seen were in the 13-15 inch range, I did not see any 17 inch laptops, although I did see one XPS Dell laptop being used by an attendee during lunch. Keep in mind that not everyone here brought a laptop; presumably, most of the work they do is on a desktop computer in the office, most likely running some variant of Windows.

I believe we are just starting to see the shift away from Windows in laptops; I suspect that within a few years time, with the withering of the computer as a gaming platform, the choice of computers will largely be based on the preference of the user.