Ask TUAW: iMac Gaming, QuickTime broadcasting, flash drive encryption and more

In this round of Ask TUAW we have a questions about Windows vs. OS X gaming on an iMac, Adobe's Leopard compatibility, QuickTime broadcasting, flash drive encryption and more.

As always your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. And now onward!

Steven Asks

I've just taken ownership of my shiny, shiny new 24" iMac, and I'm hoping at long last to get back into a little gaming. What I'd like to know is in those situations where both a Mac version and a Windows version of a game exist, which should I buy? I'd rather stay in OSX and I'd like to support Mac gaming by buying Mac titles, but if I'm guaranteed better performance under Windows then it's a sacrifice worth making.

Though there will be exceptions, generally the OS X version of a cross-platform title will be slower than the Windows version. The reason for this is that most games are written for Windows, especially DirectX, and later ported to the Mac (and Open GL) oftentimes (as with some recent EA games) through Transgaming's Cider engine which can't help but slow things down a little bit. To see this in concrete terms see Bare Feat's testing comparing framerates on the newest iMacs between Vista, XP Pro, and OS X. The results speak for themselves as the Windows versions of Quake 4, Prey, Doom 3, and World of Warcraft all ran faster on the same machine than the OS X version (most often because of better drivers). Incidentally, the newest iMacs were actually disappointingly slower than the last generation.

On the other hand, some of the improvements aren't that significant and there's no questions that it's a pain to boot into Windows. But if you want every last bit of performance out of your machine it's generally going to be the Windows version.

Tom asks

I have Photoshop CS running on Tiger. Any reason it won't run properly under Leopard?

We posted on Adobe's support document (PDF link) a while back. The upshot, straight from the horse's mouth, is simply this:

"Q. Will older versions of Adobe creative software-such as Creative Suite 2 and Macromedia Studio 8 software-support Mac OS X Leopard?

A. While older Adobe applications may install and run on Mac OS X Leopard, they were designed, tested, and released to the public several years before this new operating system became available. You may, therefore, experience a variety of installation, stability, and reliability issues for which there is no resolution. Older versions of our creative software will not be updated to support Mac OS X Leopard."

Phil asks

I am in the video club at my school and we are currently trying to find a solution for streaming our morning announcements to the internet or local network. We have a server that is running OS X server 10.3.9 and the video is coming from a video mixer which is connected via Firewire 400 to an iMac that is connected to the server. The iMac is running 10.4.2.

While I can't confirm everything with regards to your particular equipment it sounds like what you need is QuickTime Broadcaster. It will allow you to send out H.264 streams at up to 640x480 and 30fps depending, of course, our your bandwidth.

Charlii asks

I have a problem I would like a solution to: I'm planning to use a mac with Front Row as a media center, and it would be great if I could play files my friends bring (on disc or USB memory) without having to quit FR or do some remote controlling. On a Windows machine, I would have solved this with a shortcut to the drive letters, but is there any way to make an alias to "any external mounts" in MacOS?

Well sure, just right-click on the external drive on your desktop and select "Make alias." Then drag that alias to your ~/Movies folder and you should be able to access it from within Front Row. Obviously, this will only work with Volumes that you've previously mounted. I am not aware of a way to get Front Row to recognize any arbitrary external drive you mount automatically.

Switcher asks

I have a 2GB flash drive that I carry on my keychain. How can I encypt its contents but still allow access to that data by either a Mac or a PC. Also, is there a good app on the mac that can sync changed files between the HDD on the computer and on my flash drive?

My sense is that you'd probably be best off with something like the Lexar JumpDrive Secure II, which apparently comes with cross-platform software for doing what you want. It's also possible that you might be able to do something with GnuPGP and Mac GNU Privacy Guard.

As far as syncing goes, my standard recommendation is ChronoSync.