Courtesy of OSWeekly.com

Continued...

The PowerPC architecture of the Macintosh has been a major roadblock for companies who may have expressed some interest in porting their titles because it requires them to compile their code in a completely different way. However, now that Intel is beginning to be the power behind the Macintosh platform, developers are realizing that the architecture is familiar to them, and an abundance of future possibilities await all of us.

Apple's Boot Camp has been a taste of things to come. By using it, you can run Windows on your Mac, and everything performs just like normal. Sure, you may be required to boot from OS X to Windows and vice versa, but the power that this dual solution gives you makes the minor inconvenience completely worth it. Users have been installing and running their favorite applications and games with great success, and this has helped to quiet the hatemongers.

Boot Camp is a great start, but the latest news from TransGaming Technologies has been even more encouraging for gamers. With their product Cider, PC games won't just be for Windows anymore. Cider is basically a portability engine that allows Windows games to be run on Intel Macs (sorry, PowerPC) without any modification to the code. Unlike some of the other portability/emulation products, the user will never have to deal with Cider since it's a product intended for the game developers. When they're ready to ship a new title, they can release the Windows version as normal, and then take that code, wrap it up in Cider, and release an OS X version at the same time without any extra development costs or time.

The Mac gaming market may be small right now, but that's only because something like this hasn't been around until recently. Assuming Cider works as well as it's intended to; this could be a major breakthrough for gaming on the Mac. The concept of not having to boot into Windows to play a game is a welcome development, and I can't wait to see where this goes. I'm sure plenty of gamers are now starting to seriously eye those Intel Macs that they've been coveting for some time.