Upcoming 10.5.2 Leopard update has World Of Warcraft support
The next update to Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard, number 10.5.2, is rumored to have support for World of Warcraft. Anyone who has ever gamed on a Mac knows that this is a big deal. World of Warcraft worked great for us running Tiger on an eMac with some updated hardware, but hasn’t worked well since upgrading to Leopard.
So what was the issue with World of Warcraft on the Leopard release? It had driver problems – severe driver problems – that have been driving its users crazy. The problem seems to only affect Leopard installations on PowerPC Macs, not Intel Macs, which is why the eMac was having the issue and not the MacBook.
Apple’s update is supposed to repair over 76 massive issues with the Leopard release, among them internet connectivity issues plaguing nearly 3/4 of new Leopard installs. Adding the World of Warcraft fix to the list is a good PR move on Apple’s part in a series of months with flagging reviews on service and quality since Leopard released.
Many Apple users accuse Apple of releasing a beta version of their software and not waiting to fix all of the bugs before releasing a true alpha release. Apple denies the accusations, but users can’t deny that as pretty and useful as Leopard is, you shouldn’t have this many bugs in any final release.
This is especially true of the World of Warcraft bug – there aren’t enough games for Apple as it is, and what games there are often aren’t as good as PC games. To lose compatibility with one of the only major compatible games? A serious no no in marketing their product. This fix can’t arrive too soon.
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January 29th, 2008
“Many Apple users accuse Apple of releasing a beta version of their software and not waiting to fix all of the bugs in it and releasing a true alpha release”
oh my! a bit of editing this piece could use.
a true alpha release would mean releasing software that hasn’t had much testing at all!
Alpha is the stage that comes before beta testing, A Final Candidate if what would come after.
Petty, but as a tech blog, might want to fix that.
January 29th, 2008
I believe in time you will see even more games available for the Mac. Naturally, some of the newer games won’t be compatible with certain Mac’s because the system isn’t powerful enough to handle the graphics.
When I decided to purchase a Mac in 2006 I looked for something that I could use for gaming. That left MacBooks out of the running. I believe it uses shared RAM? Not too many gamers are going to even look at that type of system. The system didn’t seem to support the games that would interest me also I wanted portability.
I went with the 17†MacBook Pro. Years ago I faced a similar issue with an older Windows PC as much as I wanted to play some games I couldn’t because my system wasn’t powerful enough.
As for myself I’ve found plenty of games that I can play on my MacBook Pro. I play Unreal Tournament, Sacrifice, Quake 4, Giants, Ghost Recon, and I’m waiting for Gears of War to be released.
Admittedly, I don’t get to play the games as much as I would like, but it’s nice to take a break and become immersed in gaming even if it’s only a few hours a month. I play on the Xbox 360 and on my MBP.
February 1st, 2008
Thanks for the heads up Michael. Somehow I posted my rough draft post and not the final copy. I deleted the rough draft and put in the final version I had written. I must have been channeling Apple when I released my own alpha of my article – hee.
March 30th, 2008
Apparently Sacrifice is supposed to work with Mac OS X Leopard. Though it won’t work on my ibook G4(1.42Ghz, 1.5Gb RAM). Anybody got a clue why that is. I’m desperately trying to make it work, as I hold dear memories of this inconventional game.
Thanks alot guys
November 2nd, 2008
Lick it