Apple News: They made $4bn profit

[KThunder]

Oh my, you had better watch what you say on this board, in front of the fanatical Amiga armada -- OK, not quite an armada. :-)

Actually since xp came out and now with 7 MS has a very decent os. MS slaggers are becoming more of a joke now. Especially ones that mispell MS like M$ or winblows or any of that childishness.

the "armada" is growing up and coming to terms with reality.

[KThunder]

I think it is funny when people talk about bloatware, and how programs are so much larger now.

Do you really think programs are actually that much larger? They really arent. I'll give you an example. Say you take a puzzle game from 1990 that takes say a meg of ram for the code and associated data and another meg with the graphics and sound. compressed that would fit on a 1.44 meg floppy right.

That is probably using vga 256 color 320x200 graphics and 22khz stereo audio loops. games on the BBS networks at the time were smaller and even more simple.

Nowadays practically identical game programming can use a gig or more of graphics data and hundreds of megs of mp3's.

And the horsepower and storage to do all that is out there and is very cheap.

programs today and 20 years ago are very similar but they are working with staggeringly different amounts of data in completely different environments. Our demands on the hardware has matched the increase in capabilities, so no it doesnt feel 100 times faster unless you are useing the same programs and data.

[KThunder]

Thats nonsense.  A "puzzle game" with over a gig of graphics data?

Alarm bells should be ringing.

Alarm bells? little dramatic don't you think? I'm not talking about a simple internet game but a really good installible puzzle game.

I have a majohng game from 2001 that has 326megs of back ground screens and another 100 megabytes for game graphics. All the background screens are 1280x1024 x 24bit and all the game graphics are 24 bit as well. And all the audio is stored as full songs for playback adding another 96 megs. The actual program itself is only a few megs.

That is a non hd 2d game from 2k1 on cd. Newer games use dvd background graphics and multiple mipmap level textures all in truecolor. I also have the Myst puzzle game which if memory serves requires a significant mount of space to install, all because of graphics and audio storage.
 
My point (obviously missed or ignored) is that hires truecolor graphics and even mp3 audio will make modern games look "bloated" even though they really aren't. And computer power is wasted if we only use 1990 storage and memory requirements in mind.

here is a modern puzzle game like I am talking about: Moraff's MahJongg 2009
http://www.softwarediversions.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=99

hmmm what are the system requirements on that?

Minimum System Requirements:
1.0GHz CPU, 512MB RAM, 38MB - 670MB Disk Space

OMG you expect me to splurge on a computer with a 1ghz cpu, half gig of ram, and up to 670MB of storage space for a Mahjongg Game?!?!  

Oh wait my cpu is more than twice that fast, I have 4 times more memory and 670MB won't make even a tiny dent in my hd.

And a I've played Moraff's Mahjongg and it is beautiful and fun.

[KThunder]

Most modern games also have a few hundred megabytes of video splashscreens to remind you of who developed the game, what middleware and codecs they licenced, who published the game, etc. every single time you launch it.  That is bloat.  Many also install other useless or redundant bits of software that take up space and cycles.  We really can do without the GFWL client, GameSpy Arcade, etc.

You may consider that to be bloat, but if you developed said middleware and it's splash screen is your only credit in the game you may think differently, in other words the developer may be required by the license to include spashscreens. And honestly 99% of the people out there don't care if a few hundred megs of their 500gig harddrive is "wasted" on a video (which may or may not look cool, ive seen some that look very cool).

As for the other stuff I agree to a point, but I have many games and have had zero problem with any of that. It is skippable, or uninstallable. The only one I don't like is steam but I don't usually buy games online so I don't use it the way it is intended.