Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff Works dot com. Hey there, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor here at How Stuff Works. With me as
Speaker 1: always is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, everyone, and
Speaker 1: today we're gonna talk about some old school gaming or
Speaker 1: new school, depending on how you look at it. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: those of us who grew up in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: you remember the arcade games that used to be so popular.
Speaker 1: Now they're still there, but nobody goes, well, there are
Speaker 1: very few arcades left. The ones that I go to
Speaker 1: or I've been to, I've mostly had racing games or
Speaker 1: Dance Dance Revolution, Yeah, Dance Dance Revolution, racing games, and
Speaker 1: gun games. And then there's that cow, right, yeah, the cow. Yeah. Anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: so we were talking about the kinds of games that
Speaker 1: we like to play, and you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: us have a soft spot in our hearts for those
Speaker 1: old arcades style games like the pac Man's and the
Speaker 1: Donkey Kong's and Elevator Action. Yeah, that was my favorite
Speaker 1: game make fun of Elevator Action. I'm not making fun
Speaker 1: of Elevator Action. I'm just not an Elevator Action devotee. Well,
Speaker 1: no one can be perfect. But the thing is, you can't,
Speaker 1: you know, play those games. It's really easy. You can't
Speaker 1: just go down to your seven eleven or you know,
Speaker 1: Circle K or whatever you happen to have handy and dumb,
Speaker 1: you know, to seventy five and in the machine and
Speaker 1: play all night like or and and you know, there
Speaker 1: there are a few places where you can maybe go
Speaker 1: to say an auction, and there are places that will
Speaker 1: auction off old arcade games. Have actually have a friend
Speaker 1: who used to go to these all the time. There
Speaker 1: was one that would come to Atlanta two or three
Speaker 1: times a year and they would set up all the
Speaker 1: games and you could go and you could play them
Speaker 1: for a little while and if if you liked one,
Speaker 1: you could bid on it and if you won, you
Speaker 1: took it home that night. He had two or three
Speaker 1: different cabinets in the basement of his house. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are antique game stores too. You look around and
Speaker 1: and try to find him, you know, make your basement
Speaker 1: like in uh, silver spoons and a couple of day games,
Speaker 1: tinball machines, um, pachinko, you know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have that Leam song stuck in my head
Speaker 1: all day now I have one anyway. Um. The thing
Speaker 1: is a lot of those, uh, a lot of those games.
Speaker 1: You know, if you don't have the wherewithal to purchase
Speaker 1: one yourself, you're kind of out of luck. Um. And
Speaker 1: a lot of those manufacturers are, you know, in dire straits,
Speaker 1: have been bought out by other people, have discontinued their
Speaker 1: operating existence. Speak. Yeah, they've been absorbed into other companies
Speaker 1: to the point where there's no real no, there's there's
Speaker 1: nothing left of the original entity. I mean, hey, you
Speaker 1: could even take Atari, which was you know, ubiquitous in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties arcade um, and you know they've died
Speaker 1: and been resurrected. They're completely different company. Yeah and actually yeah,
Speaker 1: and and also we should point out that a lot
Speaker 1: of these arcade games, the game itself was hardwired into
Speaker 1: the hardware the of the gaming system. So it seems
Speaker 1: it seems kind of weird now when you think about
Speaker 1: popping a DVD in your computer to play a game,
Speaker 1: you know, well, you could play thousands of games on
Speaker 1: your computer. Well not so with these things. They were
Speaker 1: wired to play one game in one game only, right,
Speaker 1: So that concerned a group of people who really wanted
Speaker 1: to find a way to um preserve these games, these
Speaker 1: games that otherwise, if the hardware fails, the games die,
Speaker 1: we lose them forever. And uh, that's kind of where
Speaker 1: name kind of came out of, which stands for multiple
Speaker 1: arcade machine emulator. That's true. Now name is for educational
Speaker 1: and preservation purposes, all right, this this the purpose of
Speaker 1: this is not to give people an opportunity to play
Speaker 1: the games they loved. It's to create a system that
Speaker 1: will play these these games, uh, in order to preserve them,
Speaker 1: so that say, sometime in the future, uh, somewhat, the
Speaker 1: the rightful owner of this game could come back and say,
Speaker 1: you know, we want to build another machine that's just
Speaker 1: like the one we built twenty years ago, but we
Speaker 1: don't have any of the existing hardware anymore. Um, we
Speaker 1: don't know how to build it the way it was
Speaker 1: built originally. We would have to reinvent it if we
Speaker 1: were to build it again. Well, Maine kind of preserves
Speaker 1: these things, and it's almost like a museum in a way. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's meant to to keep things so that we we
Speaker 1: don't lose them. That's it. And as the creators themselves
Speaker 1: say that, you know, just being able to play the
Speaker 1: games again, that's a nice side effect. It's purely you know, coincident.
Speaker 1: Don't exactly play these games. And in the software itself,
Speaker 1: which is open source and free, there is no game code.
Speaker 1: So if you download MAM for your computer, you have
Speaker 1: downloaded MAME for your computer, and you can get a
Speaker 1: copy for PC, Mac and lenox. I believe. But you know,
Speaker 1: you may be going, Okay, I don't get what all
Speaker 1: the fuss is about. Why were you talking about these
Speaker 1: old games? Well, Maine doesn't have any in there. What's
Speaker 1: up with that? Right? Okay, so there are no games
Speaker 1: that come with Maine is just an emulator, which means
Speaker 1: it emulates the the abilities of various arcade machines. Now
Speaker 1: that's where the multiple comes from as well, the multiple
Speaker 1: arcade machine emulator. Not all arcade machines worked exactly the
Speaker 1: same way. In fact, they were all very quirky and all.
Speaker 1: You know, if games from one manufacturer may work in
Speaker 1: a completely different way than from another manufacturer. Sometimes games
Speaker 1: from the same manufacturer worked in very odd ways, so
Speaker 1: you had to have an emulator that could emulate all
Speaker 1: of these different machine means in order for you to
Speaker 1: to run this these programs. So if it doesn't come
Speaker 1: with any of these games, where do you get the games?
Speaker 1: The games themselves are on ROM images and read only memory,
Speaker 1: right exactly. ROM stands for read only memory. And why
Speaker 1: is it read only? Well, it's because these are games.
Speaker 1: They're not designed to change. Uh, it wasn't. This wasn't
Speaker 1: something that that the game designers wanted people to to
Speaker 1: go in and tweak settings on. This is really meant
Speaker 1: to just be a game, that's it. There's no need
Speaker 1: for it to be random access. There's no read only memories.
Speaker 1: All you needed and they weren't gonna put anything else
Speaker 1: in there, right, especially if you had, say, Centipede, which
Speaker 1: used a trackball and a shoot button fire button, and
Speaker 1: you wanted to throw something else in there, like Defender,
Speaker 1: which had a joystick and lots of fire buttons and
Speaker 1: thrust in hyperspace and all other stuff, and you couldn't.
Speaker 1: You couldn't do that. You'd have to read wire the
Speaker 1: whole darn thing, exactly. So these ROMs. Now, these were
Speaker 1: usually hardwired into the the hardware of the arcade machine.
Speaker 1: Usually it's on a chip, although it could also be
Speaker 1: on a disk or tape. Um those were used in
Speaker 1: some games, but not many. A laser disc in one
Speaker 1: case or two cases. Really yep, and you're referring to
Speaker 1: a dragon's layer in Space Ace with Don Bluth animation.
Speaker 1: You're dead on there. But let it's it's that's exactly correct.
Speaker 1: So you have these files that are on these other systems.
Speaker 1: Now what what mame? What the main folks in the
Speaker 1: ROM folks have done. They've managed to pull that information
Speaker 1: off and make an image of it. Um, it's an image,
Speaker 1: is It's essentially it's a copy, is really what it
Speaker 1: comes down to. And uh, some places host these copies. Uh,
Speaker 1: not as a museum necessarily, but as a way from
Speaker 1: able to get hold of them. And if you have
Speaker 1: the MAME emulator, uh, and it supports that particular game.
Speaker 1: If you have the ROM and the emulator together, you
Speaker 1: can play the old classic arcade game on your computer. Right,
Speaker 1: And if you actually own the chip rams, then you're
Speaker 1: doing it legally exactly if you Yeah, if you don't
Speaker 1: have the guts of the machine. Right, so if you
Speaker 1: do not legitimately own a copy of that machine already,
Speaker 1: you are essentially stealing. And um, you might say, well,
Speaker 1: these machines are very old, surely they're not bound by
Speaker 1: copyright law, and you would be wrong because none of
Speaker 1: these have dropped out of copyright, right, they're not abandoned ware.
Speaker 1: These are all viable. So in theory, if you go
Speaker 1: and steal a copy of an Atari game, then then
Speaker 1: you could get you could theoretically be prosecuted for it. Now,
Speaker 1: are they actually gonna track you down? I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not the r I A A or
Speaker 1: the m P A A. They're not. They haven't been
Speaker 1: as strict, but that especially the publishers who are who
Speaker 1: have completely gone out of business, they really haven't gone
Speaker 1: after people for trying to do that. And some of
Speaker 1: the game creators have even gone ahead and released their
Speaker 1: copyright hold and allowed people to go ahead and take
Speaker 1: copies of their games. No, granted, the titles of these
Speaker 1: games aren't necessarily like you know, show stoppers, like I
Speaker 1: don't know, I've never played Circus. Oh well you know,
Speaker 1: but still you can get those copies legitimately because there's
Speaker 1: there's no longer a hold and they're part of the
Speaker 1: public domain. In fact, Name hosts them on its site, right,
Speaker 1: but not the thousands and thousands of other arcade games
Speaker 1: that might be found elsewhere, right those Name does not host. Uh.
Speaker 1: It does not endorse the downloading of ROMs. That's not
Speaker 1: the purpose of the emulator, as they've said over and over,
Speaker 1: And people who do go and download these ROMs may
Speaker 1: find out that not all of them work the way
Speaker 1: they had hoped they would. Part of that is that
Speaker 1: the emulator is constantly evolving. So if if you read
Speaker 1: that the emulator supports a game, that doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: it's gonna play exactly the way it played in the
Speaker 1: arcade on your machine. It means that the emulator successfully
Speaker 1: copies what the machine does. But maybe note at the
Speaker 1: same speed, some of these games can come across as
Speaker 1: very slow, and it might be a little different experience
Speaker 1: playing a game that was supposed to have been played
Speaker 1: with a joystick when you don't have a joystick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you were just using the keyboard, for example, that
Speaker 1: might slow things down. Depending on the settings you have
Speaker 1: on your emulator. Some of the emulators look because name
Speaker 1: is really a back end function. It's a command line function,
Speaker 1: which means it's you know, you have to type in
Speaker 1: commands to get to run programs. But people have created
Speaker 1: front end versions that have a user interface, make it
Speaker 1: like a graphic user interface, to make it easier to
Speaker 1: to navigate the main system and to play ROMs on it. Um.
Speaker 1: But all of that takes up processing power. So by
Speaker 1: the time your game is actually running, a lot of
Speaker 1: your computers processing powers already dedicated to just running the emulator,
Speaker 1: and the game itself may suffer as a consequence. I
Speaker 1: I played a uh a RAM, an emulator version of
Speaker 1: I want to say it was Ghouls and Ghosts. Do
Speaker 1: you know that game very well? A little bitty guy
Speaker 1: in armor running around firing at monsters and anyway, I
Speaker 1: tried playing it on a friends machine, uh a friend
Speaker 1: friends machine, not my machine, and uh it was really slow,
Speaker 1: like it just it was. It was practically unplayable. Other
Speaker 1: games ran all right, but that one in particular, not
Speaker 1: so much. So. Just because you can get hold of
Speaker 1: the emulator and the RAMS doesn't necessarily mean that you're
Speaker 1: gonna get the same experience you would at an arcade
Speaker 1: now that's true. Um. Even uh, there have been some
Speaker 1: people who have gone so far as to assemble their
Speaker 1: own arcade cabinet with a custom built screen essentially a
Speaker 1: TV and a PC that they use only for that.
Speaker 1: And it's um, you can actually buy these machines and
Speaker 1: you know, they've got the full arcade layout with all
Speaker 1: the different fire buttons and joysticks and track balls and
Speaker 1: things that you can use. And some people, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: have their own multi arcade machine emulator using name or
Speaker 1: other software to to power it. Um, and you can
Speaker 1: theoretically set all this stuff up. Of course, you know,
Speaker 1: if the authorities found in your house, they might be upset. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do know someone who actually has one of these
Speaker 1: where it was his his wish to set up an
Speaker 1: arcade machine that had all these rooms in it and
Speaker 1: then you could just select whichever game you wanted from
Speaker 1: a little simple user interface, try and hide the fact
Speaker 1: that it's a computer at all. You know, the the
Speaker 1: interface made it look like it was just an arcade
Speaker 1: selection thing and you could, you know, scroll down the
Speaker 1: different titles, pick the one you wanted, it would start playing,
Speaker 1: and uh, and he had pretty much weeded out any
Speaker 1: of the games that would not run smoothly through the emulator.
Speaker 1: So uh but yeah, he set it up that way,
Speaker 1: and he had an old arcade cabinet that he bought
Speaker 1: it one of these auctions and uh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you can. I can go over to his place and
Speaker 1: and play some MS pac Man as I am want
Speaker 1: to do. Don't laugh. I love Miss pac Man. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: not at all. Um, she's saucy. You know. One of
Speaker 1: the things that's interesting too is um and this really
Speaker 1: goes back to what the main inventors intended. UM. If
Speaker 1: you try out different realms, you can find out you
Speaker 1: could try games different persons of the same game that
Speaker 1: were originally intended for different markets, and they're slightly different
Speaker 1: from one another. It's and it's you know, you look
Speaker 1: at it from a uh the standpoint of an archive
Speaker 1: and you go, okay, well, that's really cool that this
Speaker 1: You know that you get a chance to see what
Speaker 1: people in the other part of the world. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we're playing at the same time it was it was
Speaker 1: playing in the United States. Yeah. Yeah, you can get
Speaker 1: a feel for the cultural differences. Like if you play
Speaker 1: the same version, same game, but different versions different regional
Speaker 1: versions of the game. Um, you can definitely see some
Speaker 1: interesting differences, and uh um they're even there. And of
Speaker 1: course there are there's a whole host of games that
Speaker 1: were only available in other countries and that you may
Speaker 1: never have had a chance to see unless you had actually,
Speaker 1: you know, traveled around the world in the eighties. Lots
Speaker 1: and lots of Japanese games for example, that um, otherwise
Speaker 1: you would you would never necessarily encounter because they were
Speaker 1: never imported into the United States. And uh and main
Speaker 1: supports more than three thousand nine unique games. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a pretty impressive list. And that was back that
Speaker 1: was when they last updated, which was sometime in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, so it maybe even more now. That's that's true, um,
Speaker 1: and I should point out to that it's not just
Speaker 1: games from the eighties. There are other you know, more
Speaker 1: modern games nives and uh double zeros, except you know,
Speaker 1: I imagine some of those really rely on their sophisticated
Speaker 1: hardware and things that you know, those giant floora games
Speaker 1: with the surfboards and the not the cow not the cow. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what Plett's referring to is a a cow arcade
Speaker 1: game that I encountered once upon a time. It was
Speaker 1: a milking game and the control was a set of
Speaker 1: utters that would light up and you had to pull
Speaker 1: the lit utter. It was like a Rhythm slash Simon game.
Speaker 1: I just had to explain it because I don't want
Speaker 1: to have to answer those emails. Well, you know what,
Speaker 1: I think that's fascinating though. It's just that's one of
Speaker 1: the cool things about the arcade game that you don't
Speaker 1: get from playing a game on your PC is uh,
Speaker 1: stuff like that that has the specialized hardware and you
Speaker 1: get to to do this have this completely different experience
Speaker 1: and you would you know, just you know, the wee
Speaker 1: is fun, but it's it's not the same. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: also something about having the cabinet, um, you know, because
Speaker 1: you could there's no reason why you have to build
Speaker 1: a cat I mean, there's there's no requirement. You could
Speaker 1: just have a television on a stand and you could
Speaker 1: have regular joysticks or whatever hooked up to it and
Speaker 1: you could play it that way. Um. But the reason
Speaker 1: for the cabinet is really to recreate that sort of
Speaker 1: arcade experience from the eighties. And so we're really talking
Speaker 1: a lot about people who are pretty much our age
Speaker 1: who remember that, you know, as a kid going to
Speaker 1: the arcade and uh and standing in line so that
Speaker 1: you could have your turn at Street Fighter too and
Speaker 1: take on the reigning champ or whatever it was that
Speaker 1: was your favorite. No, actually, I go back before Street
Speaker 1: Fighter two. So so I'm thinking more along the lines
Speaker 1: of I can't wait for that guy to stop playing
Speaker 1: Galagha because I really want to play um or Donkey
Speaker 1: Kong Jr. There was another good Food Fight classic anyway,
Speaker 1: enough memory Lane, so to speak. Um. So yeah, that's uh,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much it for Maine. But there are other
Speaker 1: emulators out there. It's not just main is not the
Speaker 1: only player in town, and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: them for various machines, that's true, you know. Actually, speaking
Speaker 1: of the Wei um, you have the ability to uh buy,
Speaker 1: we wear and and let you play games from the
Speaker 1: Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo, even the Sega Genesis UM
Speaker 1: and a lot of the games that got poored it over,
Speaker 1: the classic Arcade games are available on that and uh
Speaker 1: what at the Xbox Xbox three sixty the arcade version,
Speaker 1: you know, and got some of those classics. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: these these machines have emulators built into them that allow
Speaker 1: you to play these games, and uh and and legally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are other illegal ones as well. Um, I can
Speaker 1: say that I have seen a Dreamcast emulator for the
Speaker 1: Nintendo and the Supernintendo. Uh, i've i've I can tell
Speaker 1: you that maybe half the games on each disc work properly,
Speaker 1: but not Super punch Out, which was the only one
Speaker 1: I really wanted, I mean, my friend really wanted. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, so there are emulators that people make,
Speaker 1: you know, the hackers make essentially for various consoles that
Speaker 1: allow you to play the games from other consoles. Uh.
Speaker 1: Manufacturers don't like that, you know, for the simple reason
Speaker 1: that they would much prefer you go out and buy
Speaker 1: any other console. Yeah. Yeah, but in in cases where
Speaker 1: the console is already dead and you want to be
Speaker 1: able to play those old games, yeah, they can make
Speaker 1: it a little extra money by making that available. Yeah,
Speaker 1: making it like if they if they follow if they
Speaker 1: followed Nintendo's lead, then they can totally make money off
Speaker 1: of that. Now, granted they're they're all these rights issues
Speaker 1: for all those old games. No, Nintendo, it's a little easier,
Speaker 1: But for other game companies that refer the reliant very heavily.
Speaker 1: On third party games, it gets a lot more complicated.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you can make that available legally, people
Speaker 1: will go out and they'll buy them. Um. Otherwise, people
Speaker 1: kind of it's it's wrong to feel like you have
Speaker 1: this sort of justified um sense of ownership over these
Speaker 1: games because you don't. You really, you don't have any
Speaker 1: ownership of these games. There's no reason why you should
Speaker 1: be able to get hold of them. Just because you
Speaker 1: can say like, well they're not available any other anywhere else.
Speaker 1: That's not justification for going out and stealing them. Uh.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people kind of ignore that
Speaker 1: because they're like, well, I really want to play this
Speaker 1: game and there's no other way for me to do it,
Speaker 1: And the companies had a business, why do they care?
Speaker 1: They probably still do care, yes, but the writer of
Speaker 1: that game probably cares. I mean some of the writers
Speaker 1: they don't. They they just want their game to be played.
Speaker 1: But those are the ones who released the ROMs for
Speaker 1: public consumption. And in that case that's fine. But otherwise
Speaker 1: it's you know, better to stay on the sunnyside of
Speaker 1: the street. I guess, well, that's a good discussion there. Um.
Speaker 1: You know what that brings us to listener mail? Disconnect
Speaker 1: with um. Good luck. So today's listener mail comes from
Speaker 1: Brendan Davey from Washington. I don't know how to say
Speaker 1: the name of your town, Brendan, so I'm not even
Speaker 1: gonna bother alright, alright, And he says, I'm looking into
Speaker 1: buying a computer. I would like to know whether the
Speaker 1: Windows operating system is better than the mac OS? Can
Speaker 1: you compare these? Also? I heard that some max can
Speaker 1: use both operating systems? Is this true? Thanks? So we're
Speaker 1: gonna have a macp C throwdown, all right, Mr Mac
Speaker 1: convinced me that Mac OS is better than Windows. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the advantages of having the Macintosh operating system
Speaker 1: UM is that it is more resistant to viruses. This
Speaker 1: is true, or at least fewer viruses exist for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's that's part of the problem with being less
Speaker 1: uh popular, if you will, is that a lot of
Speaker 1: the crackers U take shots at the big guys and
Speaker 1: uh leave the little guys alone. So the Lenox and
Speaker 1: mac crowd just don't see the viruses and trojans and
Speaker 1: all the other malware out there in the same volume
Speaker 1: that Windows people do and mac os also poor. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of really really useful software. UM. So if
Speaker 1: you do a lot of media editing, for example, the
Speaker 1: Max software is great stuff. I mean there's tons and
Speaker 1: tons of stuff out there for video editing, audio editing.
Speaker 1: Max are great for that. Um. In fact, I prefer
Speaker 1: using Max two PCs whenever I'm doing any kind of
Speaker 1: media editing. It can even be adapted. Since it runs
Speaker 1: on the BSD, which is a form of Unix UM,
Speaker 1: it can actually be adapted to run other Unix based applications.
Speaker 1: It's a little tricky, it involves some emulation, UM, but
Speaker 1: but it can be used to run Linux and other
Speaker 1: Unix based applications UM when you need to do that,
Speaker 1: which gives you a broader base of of applications to
Speaker 1: draw from. Because one of the big complaints, like, for example,
Speaker 1: my father has Mac versus PC. He says, well, you know,
Speaker 1: the Mac just doesn't have the same level of software, right. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing is that Windows does support a huge
Speaker 1: library of software. I'm the lions share really, So if
Speaker 1: you're like a gamer, Windows is the way to go
Speaker 1: because that's where most of your games are going to
Speaker 1: come from. Now, there's some great games in the MAX.
Speaker 1: So Mac lovers don't write to me and say that
Speaker 1: I'm a Mac hater. I'm not. I own a Mac. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's just it depends on what you want to
Speaker 1: use it for. So if you're a big gamer, I
Speaker 1: would say say you want Windows. But you did ask
Speaker 1: that you had heard that some MAX can use both
Speaker 1: operating systems. That's true, That's absolutely true. Um. If your
Speaker 1: Mac has an Intel based processor, and that's essentially anything
Speaker 1: released in the last couple of years or so that
Speaker 1: two and a half years, UM, then you should be
Speaker 1: able to run Windows and even Linux or other forms
Speaker 1: of Unix on there that will run on an Intel processor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can get a program called boot camp that allows
Speaker 1: you to have both Windows and the Mac operating system
Speaker 1: running on your machine. You choose when you boot up
Speaker 1: your machine which one you want to run, and then
Speaker 1: you just go from there. So let's say you've got
Speaker 1: a Windows program you want to run, Well, then you
Speaker 1: can boot into Windows and run it, and then you
Speaker 1: can quit booted back up into Mac if you want to.
Speaker 1: Actually speaking of emulation and of doing that, UM, there
Speaker 1: are there are at least three options that I know
Speaker 1: of that will allow you to run Windows or Linux
Speaker 1: on your desktop at the same time as you were
Speaker 1: running your Mac os. Holy free holies. There's parallels Desktop
Speaker 1: vm Ware's Fusion. And there's an even a free open
Speaker 1: source version or application called UM virtual Box from Sun
Speaker 1: and it will allow you to run the other OS
Speaker 1: in a Mac window. So you can be if you say,
Speaker 1: I'm done with my project in Mac, I want to
Speaker 1: play this game that's only on Windows. You can boot
Speaker 1: up virtual Box UM and you know, launch Windows and
Speaker 1: start playing that game. Now you have to partition your
Speaker 1: hard drive. Boot Camp is an Apple native application that
Speaker 1: will that actually comes with the OS UM, but that
Speaker 1: requires you to reboot your computer into Windows. You have
Speaker 1: to own a copy of Windows obviously. Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Linux is one thing, it's free.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, if you want a copy of
Speaker 1: Windows legally, but you need to buy you know, a
Speaker 1: boot disc and do that and partition your hard drive
Speaker 1: with bootcamp. Yeah, so so it is possible. Um And
Speaker 1: uh so if you if you just cannot decide on
Speaker 1: between one or the other, then you could get a
Speaker 1: new Mac and and do that. Just keep in mind
Speaker 1: that this does mean you have to partition your hard drive,
Speaker 1: so you're not gonna have the same amount of hard
Speaker 1: drive space per operating system. Um. And uh you know otherwise, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, pick whatever suits your needs the most. If
Speaker 1: you're gonna do a lot of media editing, I suggest
Speaker 1: the mac Os if you're gonna play a lot of
Speaker 1: games Windows. Really, if if you're just going to be
Speaker 1: surfing the web, check an email, writing something up in
Speaker 1: the word processor, building websites, you don't really have to have.
Speaker 1: It really doesn't matter which one you either one because right, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're both good operating systems. It ends up being
Speaker 1: more a matter of personal preference at this point, especially
Speaker 1: since they've been growing together in the past ten fifteen years.
Speaker 1: If you look at Windows seven and you look at
Speaker 1: mac Os ten, they're very similar. Yeah, they really are. Well.
Speaker 1: We hope that answers your question, Brittan, And if any
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