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Madden and the iMac: a story of woe
Mac | Life wasn't content to just read about Madden 08 on the Mac-- they tried to actually run it. And for all of us Mac gamers out there, I'm sorry to say the experience didn't go well.Now, we already knew that neither Madden nor Tiger Woods would run on any Mac with the GMA950 graphics processors in it, so the Mac mini and the MacBook were already out of the question. The screenshot above came from an iMac, though. Clearly the text is bungled up beyond readability. The same problem appeared in the menus for the game, and even during play-- the scoreboard had overlapping graphics problems as well. Unbelievable. Did they (or Transgaming, whose Cider technology was supposed to be how EA ported these games) have their QA team play this thing even once on a Mac? This is what Apple was showing off at WWDC?For their part, EA blames Apple's drivers, and says a driver update is coming "later this month" (M|L wisely suggests that means Leopard). Poor form, EA. Not that we expected much (EA games are often plagued with release problems, on any platform), but this is not how you bring gaming back to the Mac.
Blu-ray disc coatings starting to rot?
A thread over at the AVS Forums has highlighted a potential problem with the coating of Blu-ray discs, described by many as "disc rot" due to the mould-like spots that have made several owner's Blu-ray discs unplayable. The five page thread has reports from dozens of forum members, many of them discovering spots which can't be rubbed off on Blu-ray versions of "The Prestige." It's impossible to judge how widespread the problem is from a single forum thread, although it's not unheard of to see a product recall after a problem is discovered by users on a forum. It's also worth noting that for every user that has reported the spots, there's one or more people with discs that have no problem. If you've encountered the same issue, your best policy is to try and get a refund / replacement disc from the place where you originally bought it from. If enough people are reporting a problem, then retailers will be a much stronger voice than a bunch of consumers sounding off in the echo chamber that is "the internet."
