Agree with you 100% there..
Hopefully with Apples new NVidia friendly attitude, & the upcoming release of Snow Leopard we will see a much needed change to this.
The truth is i know a lot of people who would make the switch, if only Apple would make more efforts with regards to gaming.
The conversation usually goes like so..

Q “Faster & more stable OS?”
A “Oh yeah much more streamlined”

Q “What about the hardware? It doesn’t look like much will fit in one of those”
A “Oh no they are just very well engineered, the small form factor is a testament to this there is no compromise over a bulky desktop from other manufacturers”

Q “How long will it last me?”
A “Depends what you plan on doing with it, but for everyday web browsing & other tasks they will last you a very long time, they have excellent resale value too”

Q “Sounds great!!! I’m sold.. Oh & it plays all the latest games too right?”
A “Ahh well no sorry there are a few popular games that get released on Mac but they are few & far between, you can use bootcamp & run windows though”

Q “Ah i see, thats okay i think i’ll just stick with a Windows PC, i mean if i have to change OS to play games i might as well get a system that just runs windows anyway right”

The truth is i believe Apple could be so much bigger if they could tap into this market..
It’s the lack of gaming on the Mac that is the deal cruncher for a LOT of people..

You’re right, they’re not true Mac games. They’re not native ports, they sort of exist – at least on OS X – between operating systems. In my experience haven’t really delivered on the performance front.

I’ll second that: go go Jobs!

First of all, thanks for the reply.

You are right about Cider wrapping up games but a game wrapped with Cider isn’t actually a genuine Mac game, is it? For me, whatever is not genuinely written for Mac is just an emulation. (Let Transgaming’s assassins come )

Yes, Core techs aren’t used by any other platform but they still are much more advanced than sound.dll (or whatever is used for sound things on a Windoze PC). And yes, they aren’t used by games yet but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used, right? They are a bit overkill for Windows Messenger or Mail.app as I use Boot Camp for gaming.

All I can say is: GO GO JOBS!

Cider does not emulate. It wraps games up, but there is no emulation. Transgaming would hunt you down and kill you for saying that!

Also, saying that all the Core technologies are industry class is a bit of an odd description. They’re not used on any other platform and not used by any games developers (other than ones for the Mac, and I couldn’t name one that uses them – but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist!).

And really, it doesn’t matter if Mac OS X uses the fastest, most reliable and powerful technologies around, as long as no one uses them! So you’re right on that front. Apple needs to take lead and at least attempt to coax developers to the platform.

Let’s see these fantastic technologies used!

First of all, Transgaming just basically “emulates” a Windoze game on a Mac so it isn’t actually a “Mac game”, it’s just a Windoze game with a Mac wrapper on it (the same s#&t in a different wrapper?)

Second, Mac OS X is a very powerfull OS, much more powerfull than Windoze. Mac OS X is built on strong foundations such as Core Image and Core Audio which are Industry-class and makes Mac OS X a very suitable OS for gaming. The only problem is that if Jobs doesn’t encourage and help developers (such as Valve or EA), the gaming on a Mac is a no-go.

Third, you pointed out a good point with DS and Wii gaming but you missed another point: DS is small and portable which makes it suitable for casual gaming (small-chat in my terms). No one is going to use a 24″ iMac to play Mario (such as me). Wii is just a revolutionary way to “game”, unlike any other platform. If Apple made something like “Mac Games Arcade”, it would only be a joke subject for Windoze users, possibly gamers (and in all possibility would be a joke subject for Mac users too, like me). A 24″ iMac with 2.33 GHz CPU and an Nvidia 7600 GPU would be a stupid overkill for playing “Bejeweled: Mac Edition”.

I read somewhere an article on Valve’s developers’ talks with Apple to bring Half-Life 2 to OS X. They stated that Apple has no though whatsoever of supporting gaming on OS X. As I recently installed Windoze through Boot Camp only to play Half-Life 2 (no joke) I was exposed to ugly GUI and a buggy OS. Why do I even use such a bad OS when I have one of the worlds most powerfull OS’s sitting in the right next partition of my HDD?

In my opinion, Jobs should really start encouraging developers to build for Mac, then and only then, Mac’s marketshare would skyrocket. Users like me use Boot Camp only to play games, otherwise I’m on OS X 24/7. Because of this dilemma, I am even considering purchasing a gaming computer solely for gaming purposes. When real gaming hits Macs, I am abandoning Windoze for good.

In my opinion, the current state of Mac gaming isn’t too bad: Both Feral and Transgaming are doing well in delivering a wide range of family friendly games, which cater to broad audiences. And the Indie scene is alive and kicking (Hothead, 2D Boy, Freeverse, etc.).

Of course, those are more “casual” and niche type of games, but I guess that’s exactly the target group Apple’s consumer machines are aimed for. They don’t have any interest in delivering high-end gamer hardware (or software) for the relatively small group of hardcore-gamers.

There’s a good reason the DS and Wii are so succesful: Casual, family gaming is simply a much bigger market. If Apple would introduce a “Mac Games Arcade” or “Steam”-like AppStore for the Mac, gaming could be much bigger on OS X, but I think it would be in a Nintendo-kind of way.

“Correct me if I’m wrong – but are not a lot of game publisher anyway moving towards gaming on consoles? At least there they still can earn money…So gaming on a PC is dead, gaming on a console is the future anyway.”

According to RPS, you’re wrong! Read this recent report:

“RPS: And so far you’ve been gathering data, including the Horizons report, a report for your members which states that PC gaming software accounts for $10bn worth of the gaming industry in 2007. NPD’s retail report puts the entire industry in 2007 at around $18bn. That means that PC games software is half the industry in cash terms? Is that correct?

Stude: It’s more than half. The NPD and other reports always include console hardware, and it was our approach with our Horizons reports to announce software and hardware separately. PC hardware is about $43bn, when you add that on top of PC gaming software it’s huge. We knew it was a big market – we know the subscription, casual, free-to-play people were out there, and we wanted to record that. What we didn’t like was a retail-focused report like the NPD one saying that the market was heading in a certain direction, when we knew otherwise. Retail, as a percent of the market, is only 30% of PC gaming software. NPD aren’t measuring the majority of PC gaming software sales.”

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/11/23/pcga-president-randy-stude-talks-methodology/

Remember that much of the talk in the press is from companies like Sony or Microsoft who want their consoles to be the future of gaming. You have to read between the lines.

Valve for instance have never claimed that PC gaming is dying and think it’s absolute balls that it could be dying! Just look at the popularity of Steam! Their innovative platform for games manages to prevent a huge amount of piracy, remain cost effective and is advancing the way gaming is played (Google Steam Cloud).

So gaming on a PC is dead, gaming on a console is the future anyway.

Now let’s see what consoles are out there: The conventional (hooked up to TV, etc) and mobile (PSP, Nintendo, iPhone, etc)

So I think Apple is not bad positioned, as the iPhone/iPod Touch seem to transform to gaming machines – it’s so easy to get them (just download them, no cartridges, memory cards, discs or so) and the market is huge. Apple is releasing hardware updates frequently (at least I hope so) – compared to a PSP, which basically has “stalled” and is already a bit out-dated…

It’s interesting that you mention that Microsoft don’t make money on games for Windows. To be honest, I don’t know if they do or don’t. But I’ll make an educated guess that having games on Windows provides benefits and sales, perhaps not directly, but more as a halo effect.