Is There Any Truth to the Apple Console Rumors?

[RyaNtheSlayA]

My god if I have to buy another "i" product again I am going to kill myself. I don't care either way if they make a console but I am tired of this new-age hippie bullshit with lowercase i's and everything looking sleek and exactly the same. That shit was cool ten years ago but everything is just starting to look bland and uninspiring to me now.

Because beige was a whole lot better.

[pepharytheworm]

My god if I have to buy another "i" product again I am going to kill myself. I don't care either way if they make a console but I am tired of this new-age hippie bullshit with lowercase i's and everything looking sleek and exactly the same. That shit was cool ten years ago but everything is just starting to look bland and uninspiring to me now.

Because beige was a whole lot better.

Beige? I want to see wood grain electronics again.

[o.pwuaioc]

That actually sounds really cool. My only issues are the lack of physical games and the price tag.

This thing has been brought up a few times before on this forum that I'm surprised it's not a familiar name by now. Regardless, it's not Apple, but Android.

[isiolia]

Talk all the shit you want now, but in the 90's, Macs were loaded with games. Including the best versions of many id and Maxis games. Also Mac's were home to the greatest FPS ever made, Marathon Durandal.

Ehhh, not really. There were some games that were Mac-first, a handful that were Mac-only...but Macs still had a relatively small number of releases. It really wasn't much different than how it is now. Keep in mind I bought my first Mac in '96, and had friends whose families only had them through pretty much the entire 90s. I bought games for the thing, kept up with releases, all that.

In retrospect, it might seem like there was a lot - at the time, month to month, good releases were pretty sparse. Plus, often the Mac release was handed off to another company to port (well, many still are). It sometimes did result in extra features...but also long delays and performance issues.

Marathon 2: Durandal and Marathon Infinity were released for WIndows as well anyway. Greatest FPS ever? Nah. Notable though, sure. Marathon 2 was the first FPS I played multiplayer though - friend's family had a Phonenet Appletalk network set up, we played that and Bolo (the Mac tank game, not the arcade game). First network gaming experience for me.

All that said, Myst was Mac-first and certainly impacted gaming a lot in the 90s (for better or worse).


On topic... were Apple to release a "console" my expectation would be more an enhanced Apple TV that could play iOS games. Not something that'd compete with the 360/PS3.

[CRTGAMER]

My god if I have to buy another "i" product again I am going to kill myself. I don't care either way if they make a console but I am tired of this new-age hippie bullshit with lowercase i's and everything looking sleek and exactly the same. That shit was cool ten years ago but everything is just starting to look bland and uninspiring to me now.

Because beige was a whole lot better.

The original iMac was cool, I blog with a G3 CRT. I use both OSX and OS9 to play ALL the Retro games. I mean USB and firewire without any driver issues for a 1998 computer. Even the keyboard on the ancient iMacs have a couple extra USB ports, easily accessed for popping in a USB flash drive.

However, I don't get the newer i systems though. Overpriced, no keyboard built in and an operating system of a cell phone.

iMac G3 - All the great stuff, easily accessed thru a side panel, not buried in the back.

[Marriott_Guy]

Here's an interesting article about the rumors surrounding a modern Apple console. Apparently, it was in the works, but has been cancelled: http://www.videogameconsolelibrary.com/pg00-iPlay.htm

I spent a great deal of time researching the supposed iPlay prior to writing that page. As stated in my article, this may just have simply been a concept driven by Apple\console enthusiasts.

Hopefully you found it a good read as well as informative (as much as it could be).

[Hobie-wan]

Beige? I want to see wood grain electronics again.

Obviously there have been the occasional wood mods like Christoph's AES and some cool PC cases, but now you mention it I haven't really seen late 70s early 80s style casemods of things that blend wood with silver and black.

[Balasubbie]

Apple could very easily do what Microsoft did with the Xbox. Release a -for any reasonably sized company- massive financially losing piece of hardware as a sacrifice to establishing a brand. How many billions did Microsoft piss away getting the brand up and running? Look where they are now. 2nd in a generation beyond the once all-conquering Sony. Unlike Microsoft, Apple's install base actually doesn't resent their existence. Not yet, at least.

[isiolia]

Apple could very easily do what Microsoft did with the Xbox. Release a -for any reasonably sized company- massive financially losing piece of hardware as a sacrifice to establishing a brand. How many billions did Microsoft piss away getting the brand up and running? Look where they are now. 2nd in a generation beyond the once all-conquering Sony. Unlike Microsoft, Apple's install base actually doesn't resent their existence. Not yet, at least.

The problem with that concept is that while Apple has the war chest necessary, they have it due to selling products with very high margins. There's also very little reason for them to do it - the point in putting out a platform like that is to make money on licensing fees/etc. Apple already makes a ton of money off of the App Store.

Consider how/why iOS devices are popular for gaming too - they about with light, casual friendly, and most of all cheap games.

Little or nothing that Apple has done in the past 20+ years indicates that they'd be a good company to have a full-on console come out of.

[noiseredux]

The original iMac was cool, I blog with a G3 CRT. I use both OSX and OS9 to play ALL the Retro games. I mean USB and firewire without any driver issues for a 1998 computer. Even the keyboard on the ancient iMacs have a couple extra USB ports, easily accessed for popping in a USB flash drive.

However, I don't get the newer i systems though. Overpriced, no keyboard built in and an operating system of a cell phone.

iMac G3 - All the great stuff, easily accessed thru a side panel, not buried in the back.

actually an iMac G3 is the only Apple computer I ever owned. I had one around 2006 that a friend gave me as a hand-me-down gift. Unfortunately, when we moved to another apartment I just didn't have room to keep two computers set up, so I got rid of it. But I agree, this model was by far the coolest. It looked great, and was extremely functional and well designed physically. For a brief moment in time I thought I might switch to Mac's because of this damn thing, and very strongly considered getting a Mac Mini when my PC of that era finally died in 2008. But yeah. No.