Today CCP Games and TransGaming Partner announce to Bring EVE Online to new platforms, being Linux and Mac. By the end of this year it should be possible to play Eve on a Mac, finally!
On linux it was already possible through Cedega or a well configured WINE, but now nothing extra will be needed.

The press release:

Reykjavík, Iceland, Toronto, Canada – September 11, 2007 – CCP Games, one of the world’s largest independent game developers, today announced a partnership with TransGaming Inc. (TSX-V: TNG) , a leading developer of software portability products for the electronic entertainment industry. The strategic relationship will enable CCP to deliver its popular massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), EVE Online, with Linux and Macintosh platforms later this year.

TransGaming provides technology and expertise to deploy games across a range of platforms without the need for redevelopment and still maintaining the high quality of gameplay and allowing users of different platforms to play in the same perpetual online universe. As a result of this partnership, CCP will be able to expand the reach of its Sci-fi MMOG to new groups around the world.

As an element of the partnership, EVE Online and TransGaming will share quality assurance as well as technical support responsibilities but TransGaming will lead partnership and OEM opportunities for the Linux version of EVE Online. The two companies will work hand-in-hand to ensure all releases go smoothly, creating a transparent integration of the original EVE Online code with each platform.

TransGaming first introduced Linux users to EVE Online through Cedega, a software product that allows Windows games to run on the Linux operating system completely transparently and seamlessly. It was the popularity of this solution that indicated the strong demand for further integration between CCP Games and TransGaming. Later this year, EVE Online will be released for Linux with Cedega directly integrated into the game and on Mac through TransGaming’s Cider portability engine.

“We’re pleased to extend our relationship with TransGaming, as the company’s expertise allows us to deliver the most innovative MMOG to more platforms,” said Halldor Fannar, CTO of CCP Games. “By integrating TransGaming’s excellent technology, we are able to keep our laser-focus on evolving EVE Online, while simultaneously expanding the EVE universe to even more players.”

“EVE Online has always ranked highly with our Linux users and there is significant demand for it among other platforms, including the rapidly growing Mac base,” said Vikas Gupta, CEO of TransGaming Technologies. “As EVE takes place within a single-server persistent universe, it’s vital that the game is identical in every way across different platforms. This challenge is what makes the partnership with CCP both important and rewarding.”

EVE Online is available for download now at www.eve-online.com.

The migration from Windows to OSX is going rather well. Everything works the way I like and sometimes even better. Or not?

A huge advantage of OSX is the fact you can open up a terminal screen and have the full power of linux commands. You can ‘grep’ yourself through logfiles or quickly edit some configs … pause … NOT! (Thx to Borat for this joke). Ok, the power is there, but Apple must be thinking:

SCREW YOU DUTCH PEOPLE, we’ll only give pipe and backslash keys to the qwerty users … that for being dutch. But because you have the best chocolate we’ll give you an easy accessible @ symbol on the topleft, 16 functions buttons and some other buttons even we don’t know the function of. Should you have any troubles you can always press the ‘HELP’ button that we have included on your keyboard. Ok we admit, it doesn’t really help you for you keyboard problems … but hey … what other keyboards have a help button?

After a long websearch (yes this took me more than 5 minutes to find) I found out that shift + alt is the solution!
Shift + alt + / gives me a nice \ (no DO NOT use the / on the keypad, that would be the-to-easy-way)
Shift + alt + L give me the much wanted | symbol (and I do hope this is the pipe symbol and not just some vertical line)

So we Azerty users are not left in the cold, only in the dark if it comes to information! Oh by the way Apple, thanks for including an easy accessible £ button, we really needed that since they introduced the … (goddamned where did they put that euro symbol???)