Second Life Greets Increasing Numbers of Mac Faithful

By ETHAN THERIAN
SecondLIFE Magazine

Second Life's profile in the Macintosh user community was boosted on June 17th, when it was featured by Peter Cohen, "Game Room" columnist for Macworld Magazine and MacCentral writer, on his weekly segment on popular Macintosh Internet radio show Your Mac Life.

Cohen declared the recent beta-test release of Second Life for the Mac OS X operating system as "really damn cool," and described Second Life as "a cross between the Sims and a Massively Multiplayer Online Game, but it’s not as lame as I make it sound."

Cohen went on to describe Second Life as an "attempt at creating a virtual civilization" and "virtual reality without some of the heady trappings... such as headsets or data gloves." Cohen claimed to have become familiar with the product during a tour given to the columnist by Phillip Rosedale (aka Phillip Linden).

The mention on Your Mac Life arguably marks an increase for the world’s profile in the Macintosh community. Your Mac Life, hosted and produced by Shawn King, boasts the highest listenership among broadcasts aimed at Macintosh enthusiasts, averaging around 1,700 to 2,000 listeners to the live show and 160,000 listens via the archive per month. These listener figures do not include subscriptions to the program purchased through online audiobook and programming distributor Audible.com, which offers the program as well.

Since announcing the preliminary beta-test version, marked version 1.2, in December of last year, there has been a steady increase in the presence of Macintosh users immigrating to the Second Life community. One indicator of this growth is the new Mac Lover group, founded by Phoenix Linden -- a development made possible both by the release of the Macintosh client, and the increasing number of residents who have come to the shores of Second Life via the Macintosh platform.

The increasing numbers of Macintosh users to Second Life, as well as Second Life’s mention in Your Mac Life, coincides with a large influx of new residents sparked by recent high-profile mentions on CNN, C-Net and Slashdot, as well as the announcement by online world There that the company would discontinue further development.

Second Life requires the Mac OS X "Panther" operating system for Macintosh. Apple currently claims a user base of 25 million people for the Macintosh platform, of which over 10 million users currently has OS X installed.