Lot’s of people ask why 4oD (or Five’s CSI fest, or even the iPlayer) won’t work on a mac. Well it’s to do with DRM innit? However, if you’ve got an Intel Mac and a copy of Windows and a copy of Parallels then it’ll work just fine!
Actually I’m really impressed with Parallels, so much so that I installed the game that ate up the late night 90s for me, the only computer game I every truely got wrongly obsessive about, the only game that I spent ages designing custom levels for… Activision’s 1998 re-imagining of Battlezone. Oh God, I’m going to spend my evenings in a cramped dank tank on the surface of mars all over again…. shudder. But at least this time it’ll be on a nice shiny Mac.
Some of us can’t afford copies of Windows and Parallells.
No DRM for Macs indeed, Helix:
http://www.realnetworks.com/products/security/drm/specifications.html
Or how about offering Channel 4 created shows in some other way?
Or using iTunes. We currently don’t have TV shows on the UK iTunes, but if a major broadcaster got on board, I’m sure that would change.
Oh damn! Battlezone. Forgot about that one. One of *the* great games.
To see my response to Matthew’s comments, see 4oD on a mac part II.
How come BBC can do it with the iPlayer then?
because the bbc own all of their shows copyrights, distribution and theyve chosen to show them.
4od plays shows that they dont own thus the owners/ prod companies have chosen a certain encryption/copyright system (drm) which mac cannot operate.
will be months b4 a change, if any.
So Bill Gates wins again . . . . .
nothing to do with your article but, battlezone. What a brilliant game, hover tanks with stratigy and mining. the online game play was great eh?
You can run Windows on your Mac using VirtualBox [http://www.virtualbox.org/], a free, open-source alternative to VMWare or Parallels.
Stephen
Another example of people ignoring progress. Other major programmers do it. Macs are better and faster and get hardly any viruses. Pcs crash, get viruses and are slow. Why cater to an out dates and frankly laughable system and not a system which is the most used by the media and design companies in this country?!?! Just makes no sense.
It’s coming soon apparently.
see this
http://eyedropper.co.uk/2009/02/04/4od-on-a-mac-news/#comments