Alex Watson
Apple’s platforms are riding high at the moment, but the signs are that Microsoft and Google are playing nice with developers to catch up.
In the last Mac to the Future, I wrote excitedly about games developer Valve coming to the Mac. Writing this column a couple of weeks later, I’m still excited (especially as I’ve just signed up for the beta of the Mac version of its Steam service). In part, this is because it’s great to see Valve’s games coming to an ever bigger audience, but I’m also convinced Valve’s move shines an interesting light on the future trajectories of Apple and its two major rivals, namely Microsoft and Google. At the heart of it are two trends that have done much to shape the fortunes of these three companies: the strength of their respective platforms and how they treat developers.
Valve’s move to the Mac is very different from the last big games developer to announce it was returning to Mac OS X. That was Electronic Arts, one of the world’s biggest publishers of video games, and its commercial clout earned its COO a space on stage alongside Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the WWDC 2007 keynote. Their mutual bonhomie fizzled out very quickly, though; EA’s games for the Mac were a classic piece of opportunism. As Macs had started using the same x86 CPUs as the PCs for which its Windows games were developed, EA figured out you could use a compatibility layer to get the Mac to run the Windows code. The only problem was this resulted in unoptimised games that typically ran slowly, and while the core code was shared between PC and Mac, to the user, and Mac OS X, the Mac games were Mac apps, which meant they needed support from the developers in terms of specific Mac patches. They didn’t always get this and EA’s enthusiasm for the Mac has faded.
The difference with Valve is that it has re-written the engine that powers its games – called Source – to work with OpenGL, an API Mac OS X supports to allow programmers to create 3D graphics. When Valve built Source, it primarily used Microsoft’s Direct3D, a key component of DirectX, the API that’s used by games in Windows (along with the DirectX derivatives that the Xbox 360 uses). By taking the native approach, Valve is showing the patience and attention to detail that characterises its work, and I’d expect its Mac venture to be more successful than EA’s.
Microsoft has regularly revised DirectX since its inception in 1995, adding new features and exerting a very firm guiding hand on the development of ATI and Nvidia’s graphics chips, which, in order to run the latest games at maximum settings, need to execute Microsoft’s wishes. DirectX 10, which was introduced with Windows Vista, was largely a failure, struggling to attract game developers. And while DirectX 11 (launched with Windows 7, but backwardly compatible with Vista) has fared better, it’s interesting that while Valve is happy to focus on OpenGL development, it’s largely – at least as far as can be judged from information in the public domain – neglected DirectX development: for Windows, Source is still a DirectX 9.0c engine.
Valve previously worked with OpenGL to bring Source to the PlayStation 3, but was openly critical of Sony’s console, and tended to farm out development work to third parties, and to limit their support for PS3 versions of their games. The fact that they’re exploring OpenGL now is indicative of the strength of Apple’s platform – because it’s not just Macs that use OpenGL; the iPhone and iPad use a subset of OpenGL called OpenGL ES. I wonder if Valve’s primary target is really Mac computers, or if getting Source and Steam (its game download and sales service) to work on Mac OS X is a way of gaining experience. Valve doesn’t produce many games, and it tends to be very invested in those it does, with a long-term plan for support, expansions and additions over a number of years. So I wouldn’t expect it to start releasing 99p throwaway iPhone titles. But a multiplayer iPad game, for £15 or so, possibly targeting a second-generation, faster iPad in a year or two’s time? Far more feasible.
That said, while it’s the iPhone and iPad part of Apple’s business that’s experiencing incredible growth rates, Mac sales aren’t doing badly, particularly at the premium end of the market. Given that gamers tend to be high-spending computer consumers, it does make sense to be on the platform that’s increasingly dominating that part of the market.
Valve’s move lays bare the fact that Microsoft’s empire is under assault on multiple fronts – from Apple’s computers at the high end, and from the company’s smart decision to create and expand a mobile platform that shares DNA with its computers.
Then again, if you want to talk about a platform, it’s equally possible to say that Microsoft will come back very strongly in the second part of the year thanks to the fact it’s finally getting its act together in terms of its mobile OS, with Windows Phone 7. I had the chance to use the developer hardware at the South by Southwest (SXSW) show in March, and it’s terrific, and highly original in terms of UI design. SXSW is attended by a lot of web developers and programmers, and Microsoft was keen to push how much the phone is related to the PC and the Xbox, to the point that its graphics chip supports DirectX 9 and you can program for it using the same programming environments you can use for Windows and the Xbox. These are well-developed and well-regarded tools. According to one iPhone developer I spoke to at the show, in comparison, Apple’s iPhone and iPad tools are ’15 years behind in terms of features’, such as code testing.
Even more enticingly for developers, according to Microsoft, when it comes to games, you’ll be able to re-use between 80% and 90% of your application code from PC to Xbox to Phone 7. Users of Phone 7 devices will be able to log into their Xbox Live accounts on the go, and Microsoft has raised the possibility of cross-platform gaming (although it’s worth pointing out PC-to-Xbox 360 cross-platform gaming has completely fizzled out). Still, it’s clear that Microsoft is going for the platform sell in a big way.
The penny has dropped for Google, too, which has announced that Chrome OS, its stripped-down, netbook and mobile Internet device operating system, will feature built-in support for Adobe Flash, the plug-in with which Apple has effectively gone to war by excluding it from the iPhone and iPad.
The strength of Apple’s platform is, I would say, largely derived from its popularity with customers – Apple is selling tens of millions of iPods and iPhones – and so, of course, developers want to be able to sell apps and games to those people. Microsoft and Google are struggling to create products that are as attractive, or have as significant an audience. The weakness of Apple’s approach is its high-handed treatment of developers. The locked-down nature of the App Store has been much discussed, and I think it will continue to be contentious (and rightly so), especially as the amount of money at stake rises. Games are a good example: the more complex they are, the longer and more costly their development – and yet Apple can instantly kill an app if it so chooses to, something that will make big developers nervous, especially if they feel there’s no recourse for them.
There are those who think the App Store is a single issue, whereas it’s really a good example of the way Apple tends to treat developers in general – they aren’t partners (the term Microsoft uses), they’re clients and Apple itself directs the system. It’s impossible to imagine Microsoft being as antagonistic towards a major software developer as Apple is being to Adobe over Flash. Ultimately, while developers will follow the customers, they operate in a pressured environment where they will welcome a helping hand, and both Microsoft and Google are increasingly keen to offer that to them.
