Spore Hates your Macbook
September 7, 2008 · Print This Article
I was just talking with a friend of mine, who was really, really excited about spore. He even got a new computer to play it, just a year ago.
The thing is, my friend got a macbook, and if you have a macbook made earlier than late 2007, no Spore for you.
The problem is that until late 2007, Apple was making Macbooks with the GMA 950 graphics card embedded, after which it was upgraded to the GMA X3100. Spore explicitly does not support the GMA 950. I told you that you should have bought a PC. None of the Macbook Pro line have this issue.
That said, I think this is more a Maxis fail than an Apple fail. They’ve got like, 4 video cards guys, you couldn’t support one that was brand new in the system less than a year ago? Fail, and fail hard.
[Update] If you run Windows XP in Boot Camp, however, it runs fine. This seems to just be an issue with the GMA 950 on OS X. Isn’t that interesting.
[Update]: xkcd brings up a solution for Mac Owners:
[...] put this down to being “unfortunate.” According to this GhostRazor story, Spore will only run on MacBooks made [...]
[...] to be the bearer of bad news, but if your MacBook is equipped with an Intel GMA 950 graphics chipset then you’re SOL. If you’re unsure then go to “About This Mac” and trickle down to the [...]
[...] 950. I told you that you should have bought a PC. None of the Macbook Pro line have this issue. Spore Hates your Macbook : Ghost Razor [...]
How is it a Maxis fail if Apple can’t put a decent video card and some drivers together?
Because the same card works in windows?
[...] - although this could add up to $200 to the price of the game if you don’t own it already. Spore Hates your Macbook [GhostRazor - thanks to Angus McQuarrie for the [...]
Speaking as someone who dual boots and has Spore - it’s an Apple problem. The OS X drivers for the Intel 950 cap the shared RAM at 64 megabytes for the video card, while the Windows drivers cap it at 220-ish megabytes (which is a weird number).
i think you can actaully get it to work. you have to edit some plist files in the bundle. i had to do it to get creature creator to work. do a google search for spore .plist edit or somthing of the like.
[...] like Mac is starting to look out for its gamers….little by little. Over at Ghost Razor is the tale of one unfortunate Mac owner who just wanted to play Spore but was met with an ugly [...]
That sucks hard. But thank you for this blog. This was exactly the info I needed.
I don’t think it’s so much of an Apple problem as it is a Cider problem. The technology EA Games uses to wrap its PC games in to release them for Mac OS X is FAR from optimized. In fact, it downright sucks. If SPORE runs just fine in Windows, why can’t it run just fine being ported with the Windows APIs in Mac OS X? Because Cider isn’t up to snuff yet. It’s a pretty piss poor treatment from TransGaming if you ask me. Even on an awesome Mac rig (high end iMac or Mac Pro), the game is going to run better in Windows than it will in Mac OS X on the same hardware, and that’s just down to Cider.
run it under Parallels 4 with graphics memory set to 128Mb and it works like a dream (yes, on a 13.3″ MB with Intel GMA 950 - go try it)
Hi. Good site.
That’s funny. I have a MacBook (Leopard 10.5.6) with the GMA 950 chipset, and my 15-year old son has been playing Spore for something like a week with no issues. He even says that it performs better than on our brand new Windows Vista laptop with some Nvidia card.
I just bought Spore, unaware of these problems, and it works fine until I go to the creature builder. I can’t see what I’m building. Everything else is ok - I can even see the creature in the paint section of the builder, but I have no idea where I’m putting parts or what shape the creature is or what side I’m looking at as I build it. I’m sad - it appears that I’ve just wasted $50!
This isn’t true. I bought my macbook in 2007, and it runs fine with Spore. Check out my spore page if you must (Darragh08)
I’d look up on your info before bashing a good game.