Sunday, August 29, 2010

#21, The Ultimate Geek Guide to NYC

I love New York! I know it probably sounds kinda corny or cliche but it's true. I was there from Aug 21st to 29th (with a 2-day excursion to Boston in the middle). It wasn't my first time in NYC and I had done some of the typical tourist things, so when thinking about my plans I said to myself that I should check out some "other" sides of the city. After all, the "city that never sleeps" has something to offer for anyone. I read some of the travel guides online but found most of them very "touristy". Being kind of a geek (and proud of that :-) I wanted to see things that would particularly interest me, like techie stuff, games, comics, etc. So I looked for that type of info online and tried to collect them and make my own geeky itinerary. And I ended up with The Ultimate Geek Guide to NYC (or at least the version 0.9 of it).

You may ask what's that got to do with the PC User in the Mac World. Short answer: nothing. A little longer answer: it'll mention Apple store! But the real answer is that I wanted to diversify the blog and make it more than just a comparison list of features. It's a conversation and I'm not going to limit it as long as it stays within the general topic of information technology and culture.

One quick point: NYC includes five boroughs: Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. But when people say "the city" they mean Manhattan and that's what I'm talking about here. One night I went to a German-style pub/restaurant in Brooklyn (in a recently popular area called Williamsburg), and that was my only off-Manhattan experience (and of course trips to Boston and Newark airport in New Jersey).

Anyway, here is what I have to say to fellow geeks going to NYC:

NYC is the model for Gotham City. The head offices for DC and Marvel comics are there and many comic artists call it home. In a way it's one of the best places on earth for comic lovers. And the comics are the origin of many other interactive and non-interactive types of art and entertainment, including of course video games. So that's where I started. You will find plenty of places in NYC to explore if you like comics. I'm going to mention only a few that I visited and are probably the best in town.

* Forbidden Planet on Broadway and 13th Street is one of the most famous ones. It is a rather fancy place with all sort of collectibles, T-shirts and toys, and new publications. You may not find many old and non-mainstream stuff there, though. Still it's a must see.

* Midtown Comics on 200 West 40th, just off 7th Avenue and close to Times Square is probably the biggest comic shop in NYC. It has a very good collection of all sort of stuff (even some "adult" titles), also toys and collectibles on two floors. Since everybody visiting NYC should and will go to Times Square, a trip to MC is easy and necessary. They have other branches too but I didn't go.

* Jim Hanley’s Universe on 33rd Street, across from the Empire State Building is a less-known but worth-visiting place, especially if you are looking for older items, but not toys and collectibles. For the pervert in you, the adult section will be interesting as well ;-)

* Time Machine on 207 West 14th Street (14th & 7th Avenue) is the place for older comics, both buying and trading.

* St. Marks Comics on 11 St. Mark’s Place in the East Village (between 2nd and 3rd Avenue) is a small and typical comic shop but you should go there because it is in the heart of East Village and that is the place to go if you want to have fun! St. Mark's Place is basically East 8th Street east of 3rd Avenue. The neighbourhood used to be for junkies in the old days, but it's the party place right now. It still has a hippie funky atmosphere that makes it different from West Village, another party place but more traditional and typical North American, and of course fancier. I like East Village more but West Village is cool too

* Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art located on the fourth floor at 594 Broadway, between Houston and Prince Streets is a rather unknown gem. It's small but has a good set of examples from comics to comic strips and New Yorker style cartoons. Absolute must see!


After comics, the next category of places to check out is game-related.

* Nintendo Store at Rockefeller Plaza is the obvious first. From life-size game characters to collection of old Nintendo consoles, you'll find a lot to see. You may buy some T-shirts too. I did!

* Video Games New York on 206 E. 6th Street, off Cooper Square and close to St. Mark's Place, is another small but great place. Another reason why you should go to East Village. You will find all sort of old hardware and games in this little place, sure to make you feel good and a little nostalgic.

* Dave & Buster’s, 234 West 42nd Street (between 7th and 8th Avenue), is a pub by Times Square right in the middle of theatres. It has a big game section and supposedly not bad food (I didn't try). After seeing a show or film, you can go there, eat and drink, and play some games.

* GameStop is probably the biggest chain of game stores in NYC. They are everywhere and nothing special about them!


Some of the other geeky stores you need to check out are:

* Apple Store in Upper West Side, 1981 Broadway (at West 67th Street) and the one midtown on 5th Avenue (at East 58th). The glass cube is the big attraction obviously, so the downtown location is less recommended as it's just an Apple Store. I recommend the 5th Avenue location as it is just south of Central Park which itself is a must see (even if you have seen it, the park is a great hang-out place).

* The Wired Store on 15 West 18th Street (in Soho) is supposed to be a great place for all sort of electronic gadgets. Unfortunately it was closed when I went there. It's in Soho which is another great neighbourhood you must check out. South of Houston Street downtown, it used to be a low-class artzy area but now is full of fancy boutiques and stores and so expensive that young artists cannot afford it.

* Evolution Nature is a really cool store in Soho, 120 Spring Street, full of "evolution-themed" items, from fossils to skulls. If you like Darwin and make fun of Intelligent Design theory, you gotta go there :-)

* Hayden Planetarium in Rose Centre for Earth and Space, Central Park West at 81st Street, is another great place you should go. No need to say what you should expect to see there! It is part of the same complex as American Museum of Natural History with all the dinosaurs! Check them out both but expect a long line of kids in tourist seasons.

* Robot Village on 252 West 81 Street was another interesting store for electronics (and robots) but it's out of business now :-(

* If you can manage to go to Boston while staying in NYC, check out the MIT Museum. Boston is 3-4 hours from NYC by bus or train. It's a beautiful city with a rich history and an amazing mix of old and new architecture. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is in Cambridge, part of Greater Boston and separated from the City of Boston by Charles River. MIT Museum is not big but has a nice collection of research done in MIT, such as robotics and holography (the ones that were the main exhibitions when I visited).


Last but not least, here are some less geeky and more traditional places that even a geek want to see:

* Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), 11 West 53rd Street (between 6th and 7th Avenue), is the number one art museum you need to go, if you want to learn about modern art. Be sure to check out MOMA Design Store, across the street or in Soho, for amazing products with great modern design, from kitchenware to lamps, etc.

* Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Avenue (at 89th Street), also has a focus on modern art and includes more recent and less famous works by contemporary artists.

* Metropolitan Museum probably doesn't need any introduction as every visitor to NYC is likely to have it on the itinerary. It has examples of artworks from almost any civilization that ever existed!

* Carnegie Hall, on 7th Avenue and West 56th Street, has high-class musical performances if you are into that kind of stuff.

* Max Brenner is probably the best chocolate shop in NYC (now is full restaurant). It is located at 841 Broadway (between 13th St & 14th St) in Union Square area. Try going there in the afternoons or other less-busy times as it can be very crowded.


This was my preliminary version of the Ultimate Geek Guide to NYC. Hopefully I can make it better soon. To make this post a little more related to the whole PC-Mac discussion, I'd like to add one thing: I really don't like iPhoto which is a very inconvenient photo gallery software with the annoying need to import/export files and lack of ability to structure your albums. On a second thought, I'd like to add another thing: My MBP screwed up some of my photos. I attached my USB card reader and it wasn't detected. I disconnected it and got a message saying I'd better eject first! Well there was nothing to eject. To make things worse, I checked my photos and many of them were damaged (I know they were ok because I had checked them on the camera before).

Well, it's enough for this week. Stay tuned for more.

I'LL BE BACK!

Monday, August 23, 2010

#20

I'm in NYC.

I'LL BE BACK !

Sunday, August 15, 2010

#19

Nothing to post this week.

I'LL BE BACK!

Sunday, August 8, 2010

#18, Customization

Let me start by telling you what was the reason behind the topic for this week. First, when I discussed the games for Mac last week, I mentioned the lack of choices for graphics card and we had some discussions on Facebook about that and also audio devices. Second reason was related to Centretown Movies Outdoor Film Festival (centretownmovies.org) that I help organize. Last Friday was our first night this year. Our DVD player failed. I brought my Linux laptop and it couldn't play the encrypted DVD (later I installed VLC and got rid of Totem player which didn't work well even after I installed the decryption stuff). I tried to use my MacBookPro but I had forgotten my DisplayPort-to-VGA adaptor and couldn't connect to the projector. Together, these made me think about the whole issue of customization for hardware and software on Mac. But before I go ahead, that night we borrowed a Windows laptop and showed our film, and the next day when I had the adaptor I couldn't get my MBP to detect the projector and so used the Windows on my MBP to show the movie!

Now let's see what exactly I mean by customization. Simply said, it is the user's ability to change hardware and software features. Customization comes with choices and flexibility, and usually goes against simplicity as it can cause different ways of doing things and a more complex experience. Being able to customize, i.e. changing your computer from its default factory setting, also can affect the stability and performance as the system is no longer optimized for a certain configuration known to the manufacturer and OS designer. PCs were originally made by IBM. At that time, IBM PC was kinda like Mac computers because everything was designed (or at least put together) by the same company. But IBM clones changed everything so PCs became very different. This meant cheaper and more customizable hardware and software but at the same time less reliable and stable. This trend has continued to this day, although with some changes.

Macs claim to be very easy to use and stable. To some degrees, this is correct. If the hardware is good enough for what you want to do, and you do typical stuff the way Apple people have in mind, then things are pretty straight-forward. But when you get to changing things, you'll see the problems. PCs on the other hand were on the other side of the spectrum. You could change any hardware component and OS was more customizable, from installing drivers to changing system settings. But that made them harder to work with. Both systems have tried to get closer to a middle ground. Macs allow you to have some limited hardware options and do let you configure your computers (especially if you are a little geeky and can use Unix-based text commands at a terminal window), and Windows is trying to become more friendly by "guessing" things for you. A simple example of this trend in Windows can be seen by comparing Windows Explorer from XP to Win7. It used to have the options of customizing toolbar, and all sort of folder options. Now it sets them based on the types of files in the folder which can be good for less techie users but I find annoying as I like to customize them the way I want.

Anyway, here is a quick look at hardware and software customization issues for Mac and OSX.


Hardware
========

There is really not much to say about this, as it's pretty clear. Some things to note are:

1- You have very limited choices for hardware component. This has become less of a problem considering that Apple is using high-end components like NVIDIA graphics and fast HDDs, but still you face problems such as need for a professional graphics card or audio system, updating your removable disk drive or other parts when new technology comes, adding/changing RAM modules, and CPU upgrade.

2- It is difficult, if not impossible, to use specialized hardware like Analog-to-Digital or other peripheral cards unless designed specifically for Mac.

3- The video out is DisplayPort (not VGA or even DVI or HDMI) and you need an adaptor to connect to common monitors and projectors. Apple claims that this is because VGA is an old standard and DisplayPort is much better. What they don't talk about is "what if you don't want it?" Nobody else seems to be using it, even DVI and HDMI are not that popular yet, and you are stuck with no ability to change.


Software
========

It is true that you can customize a lot of things on a Mac. If you go to System Preferences, you'll see a lot of options. There are also good amount of tricks to change things that are not directly visible there. Here are a few good websites that discuss such tricks:

Apple: Mac101
MacWorld: Customize your Mac
MacGeekery: Customization
Custom Mac

Does this mean OSX is customizable enough, or customizable without much difficulty? No. Here are some things I don't like about OSX when it comes to system configuration:

* My most disliked part of OSX, the Finder. There is not enough customization for the way you view your files and folders. If you go to Get Info for a file, you can set some options like Icon and Showing Extension for that file or files of the same type. But not much more. Things like customizing toolbar and adding/removing the separate tree view pane don't exist. Folder Options are non-existent or hard to set.

* System sounds have more restricted options compared to Windows that allows you to set all the sounds even with your own audio files.

* Display details are hard to change. Advanced settings on Windows, especially the control panel provided by hardware manufacturer, allow you to control much more such as colour setting, 3D parameters, etc.

* Firewall and internet settings are limited in System Preferences, for example allowing or denying access for specific programs.

* Disk Utility doesn't seem to have tools like defragmentation and optimization.

* Last but not least, as we can expect, there is no Device Manager as we have in Windows that allows you to control your devices at low level.

On the other hand, the Unix-based nature of OSX allows you to use typical text commands at terminal to control a lot of things but I haven't really tried that yet. So there are more to say.

I'LL BE BACK!

Sunday, August 1, 2010

#17, Myths about Macs & Games

Last week StarCraft 2, the latest RTS game from Blizzard, was released. I naturally bought it and installed it on both Windows and OSX. I said "naturally" because I teach game design and am quite passionate about game technology. I think what we call "video game" is the foundation of a lot of other things in near future, including storytelling, education, simulation, and of course entertainment. I try to get people, particularly my students, interested in games and how they can be designed better and be used for various purposes. My academic research is mostly about how to make games more intelligent and immersive. But as much as I like to read about games and try new ones, I have to admit I'm not a big game player myself. I used to play more but these days I usually play a new game only enough to know what's new in it. That's one of the reasons I like game nights. I get to see levels that I usually don't explore myself!

Anyway, with that background one of my main concerns when starting to use a Mac was to see how good it was for playing games. If you are like me and have anything to do with Macs and games, you've probably heard two important things, or maybe I should say myths:

1- Macs and OSX are not powerful or graphically optimized enough to run high-end 3D games
2- There are very few games (especially among popular titles) available for Mac users

Until a short while ago, I did believe in both these myths. I no longer do. Well, not entirely.


(1) Game Performance

It cannot be denied that Macs have never been the ideal gaming platform. So there is some reality in that myth. There are different reasons for this performance problem, among them I'm sure are (a) inferior development tools and APIs, and (b) graphic cards that may not be ideal for 3D games. There is an interesting fact about Macs: Users are limited to certain hardware choices. There are some advantages to this such as relatively high-quality (but expensive) hardware, and an operating system that is optimized for the known hardware. Windows on the other hand is written for "unknown" hardware. This makes it less optimized and more unstable, but gives the users the chance to upgrade to high-end components such as better graphic cards.

Having mentioned those reasons, I have to say that probably the major reason for lower 3D graphics performance on Macs is the drivers. OpenGL is the core 3D technology on Mac and OpenGL drivers for Mac are less optimized than OpenGL and Direct3D drivers on Windows. See this review for some interesting comparisons that show Windows and even Ubuntu can outperform OSX in 3D graphics:
* Phoronix Graphics Comparison

So does this mean the myth #1 is correct? Maybe it was at some point but it's not anymore (lower performance doesn't mean unacceptable performance), or at least it's changing in favour of Macs. There are a few things causing this change:
1- Better hardware on newer Macs
2- Better OpenGL drivers and support as for example mentioned here:
ArsTechnica: Apple Moves to Improve OpenGL
3- Game developers efforts motivated by growing market, for example the release of Steam for Mac.

My own experience of playing Half-Life 2 and StarCraft 2 on Mac (both Windows and OSX) was generally positive. I did notice lower FPS but nothing too annoying. Here are some user reports confirming my observations:
* EveryMac
* ArsTechnica
* MacRumors: Windows Games On Mac
* MacRumors: Native Mac Games

One interesting point to consider is running Windows version of the games on Mac (using Bootcamp) as opposed to running native Mac version. As expected, the performance can be a little better on Windows in terms of quality and FPS, although better stability is being reported for Mac versions which goes back to general stability of OS due to its optimized nature for a known hardware. Here is another good article:
* ArsTechnica: Gaming Performance and Stability

So what's the verdict? As I said, I no longer think that Macs are too weak for high-end 3D games and apps. The myth is less true for hardware and closer to truth for native Mac software, but certainly not true, and in both cases the situation is improving in favour of Macs.

(2) Available Games

Many Windows users think that Mac games are limited to casual games like 2D puzzles, etc. This myth is completely wrong. There is no denying the fact that Windows gamers have a wider selection of games, but many popular 3D titles have Mac versions. Developers like Blizzard and Valve seem to be committed to releasing Mac version of their games, and we can be sure that the growing number of Mac users will mean more Mac games. Here are a couple of good sites to check out for Mac games:
* http://www.apple.com/games/
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_games
* http://www.insidemacgames.com

And here is a very short list of some popular games that have Mac versions:
Age of Empires 1-3
Age of Mythology
BioShock
Black & White 1-2
Call of Duty 1-4
Civilization 3-4
Command and Conquer: Generals
Counter-Strike
Darwinia
Diablo and Diablo 2
Dragon Age: Origins
EVE Online
EverQuest
Fallout and Fallout 2
Guitar Hero (Aerosmith and Legends of Rock)
Half-life (series)
Halo: Combat Evolved
Harry Potter (some titles from the series)
Left 4 Dead
Max Payne
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
Myst (some titles from the series)
Need for Speed: Carbon
Portal
Prince of Persia (2008 and some others)
Quake (series)
SimCity (series)
Sims (series)
StarCraft and StarCraft 2
Star Wars (various games)
Monkey Island (series)
Team Fortress 2
Tomb Raider: Anniversary
Toy Story 3
TRON 2
Unreal Tournament (series)
World of Goo
World of Warcraft


I'LL BE BACK!