JoeEkaitis
07-27-2011, 05:46 AM
I like to practice playing video poker at www.ledgames.com (http://www.ledgames.com), but all of their online demo versions are written in Adobe Shockwave, that on-again-off-again plug-in.
Shockwave plays great on Windows, but not so hot on a Mac, and frankly, I don't think it's the hardware. I have yet to get to the local Apple store and test the "If Apple doesn't like you, they slow you down" theory on their fastest multi-core hyperthreading demo rig. My MacBook Pro runs a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, not the latest and the greatest, but it's a screaming banshee when it runs Windows 7 via Boot Camp and everything that runs within Windows, shades of one magazine's dubbing the MacBook Pro "the best Windows laptop we ever tested".
If I boot up OS X Lion (and Snow Leopard and Leopard before that), Adobe Shockwave player (64-bit) crawls, whether it's running in Mozilla Firefox or Apple Safari (both in 64-bit mode). Even the ol' "run everything in 32-bit" trick doesn't help.
Now, one might ask "So? Adobe's trying to kill off Shockwave Player and make everyone use Flash. . . Well, OK, except the iPad." Mebbe so, but they DID release 64-bit versions for Windows and Mac browsers and continue to release updates and upgrades, so there's still life in it.
Here's the strange part:
When you run Windows as a virtual machine inside of Mac OS X and play Shockwave games, it's almost indistinguishable from playing in Windows. I use VirtualBox (FREE! www.virtualbox.org (http://www.virtualbox.org)!) to run Windows XP as a guest OS so I can play the games at full speed. I also did a test run with Windows 7 64-bit inside of VirtualBox and got the same results. It's only an observation and you can draw your own conclusions but no matter HOW it runs in Windows, Shockwave plays better than it does on a Mac.
I'll report back after I visit the local Apple Store and see if they'll let me throw a few hands of non-wagering video poker. . . strictly for research, you understand.
Shockwave plays great on Windows, but not so hot on a Mac, and frankly, I don't think it's the hardware. I have yet to get to the local Apple store and test the "If Apple doesn't like you, they slow you down" theory on their fastest multi-core hyperthreading demo rig. My MacBook Pro runs a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, not the latest and the greatest, but it's a screaming banshee when it runs Windows 7 via Boot Camp and everything that runs within Windows, shades of one magazine's dubbing the MacBook Pro "the best Windows laptop we ever tested".
If I boot up OS X Lion (and Snow Leopard and Leopard before that), Adobe Shockwave player (64-bit) crawls, whether it's running in Mozilla Firefox or Apple Safari (both in 64-bit mode). Even the ol' "run everything in 32-bit" trick doesn't help.
Now, one might ask "So? Adobe's trying to kill off Shockwave Player and make everyone use Flash. . . Well, OK, except the iPad." Mebbe so, but they DID release 64-bit versions for Windows and Mac browsers and continue to release updates and upgrades, so there's still life in it.
Here's the strange part:
When you run Windows as a virtual machine inside of Mac OS X and play Shockwave games, it's almost indistinguishable from playing in Windows. I use VirtualBox (FREE! www.virtualbox.org (http://www.virtualbox.org)!) to run Windows XP as a guest OS so I can play the games at full speed. I also did a test run with Windows 7 64-bit inside of VirtualBox and got the same results. It's only an observation and you can draw your own conclusions but no matter HOW it runs in Windows, Shockwave plays better than it does on a Mac.
I'll report back after I visit the local Apple Store and see if they'll let me throw a few hands of non-wagering video poker. . . strictly for research, you understand.