Disclaimer: I'm responding to Lightfoot's points here... if you're not interested in this subject matter, or if you go all MEGO http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/m/f/What-Is-MEGO.htm when you encounter more than 140 characters of text at a time, please do us all a favor and close this thread now.
I'm absolutely not taking up a Mac vs. PC debate here, but I gotta ask you for more info Lighfoot, because two of your assertions are new to me.
I know only a little about WINE and have been dabbling with it (recently, for running Windows apps in Linux). On what do you base your claim that "many" modern Mac games are essentially the PC versions running on Mac via WINE? On the face of it that doesn't make a lot of sense... for one thing, if it worked the way you suggest, there'd be the extra CPU overhead you describe: a publisher knowingly handicapping the performance of their software title (or increasing it's minimum system requirements) simply to avoid actually porting it to MacOS seems somewhat unlikely to me. I'm not saying that software companies don't use emulation tools and virtual machine programs when porting a software title from one OS to another (they probably do in some cases) but I suspect that the finished result (the Mac OS version of a software title) is essentially running "native." Given that modern Macs (those made over the past decade and beyond) have essentially the same exact hardware as PCs (same CPUs, graphics cards, etc...) there'd seem to be little reason to utilize WINE to release the finished end-product (for-sale) Mac version of a Windows title, especially games, where performance is crucial to the user experience. At least that's how it seems to make sense to me, though of course I'll gladly read anything you point me to that says "many" Mac games are actually running under WINE (btw, what does "many" mean? most? more than half? what?).
I'm not sure I could guess exactly how many titles, and it might have changed in the last few years, but I know that when my main computer was a Mac (up until 2013), many of the games I had were using a "cider wrapper".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransGaming_TechnologiesIt was something new for Intel Macs, because it wasn't as possible with PPC Macs. I'll have to turn on my Mac mini and check some of the games I have installed from Steam there. They seem like Mac apps, but if you open them up (view contents or something on the contextual menu), there are either a lot of .exe files inside, or sometimes even a Windows-like system location imitation (with a "C:" folder and then the other folders the game needs all in the correct folders).
I can't really post links, so I'll have to post some of the news posts about Cider based games.
from June 11, 2007, on AppleInsider
"EA's new Mac games will demand Intel-based systems"
Presenting as part of the opening keynote address at Apple's annual developers conference on Monday, EA co-founder Bing Gordon announced his firm would soon begin releasing Mac games simultaneously alongside their Windows equivalents. But in the short time allotted to the executive, some of the underlying details and requirements of those games were not widely publicized.
For instance, each of the new Mac games announced thus far will be converted using TransGaming's Cider engine, which — unlike direct reprogramming efforts — wraps a layer around the game's original code. The interpreter translates all of the normally Windows-only system calls made by a game (including DirectX and Win32) to Mac calls with a minimal overhead.
Doing so not only cuts down on development time, the company says, but also guarantees equal support as multiplayer games, patches, and other features will always be shared between Mac and Windows versions. All of these have been chronic difficulties for games in the past, as developers had to convert code both to a new OS and a new processor architecture at the same time.
This may come at a high price for some users, however. TransGaming's technology normally only works with Intel-based Macs, leaving owners of older PowerPC systems without the ability to play any of the titles even if faster computers (such as late-model PowerMac G5s) would theoretically have the performance to run the games in a PowerPC-native form.
This was in 2007, so maybe this was a fad. If you go to many games on Steam, the Mac version will have much higher requirements, sometimes 2-4x the RAM requirement, need twice as much HD space, and a video card a generation or two newer.
from September 18, 2012, on MacRumors
"Guild Wars 2 Arrives on Mac With Beta Client Release", a comment from a reader-
I know it's Cider and all but it's the same for other ”demanding” games that exists for both OS X and Windows (i.e. Starcraft 2, Borderlands etc.). Performance is much better in Windows, especially if the graphic details settings are cranked up (shaders) and if it's a complex scene that's being viewed. It's fine if your character is walking around in a tent or something, but for a game to be enjoyable I want it to be smooth in more or less all situations.
Incidentally, I skimmed the Wikipedia article about WINE to see if I could find anything to support your claims... I couldn't. Though I did find text that differentiates WINE from traditional emulators and (on the surface) it would seem to contradict the consequence of your WINE assertion, even if it were routinely used as you suggest. This is the relevant bit of text from the Wiki:[/color]
I'm not sure I understand. At least on Macs, WINE is kind of an app that runs in the system (called "x.app" or something). If I played something through Bootcamp, and then through x, the Bootcamp version would run much faster. Many times better even. If it's emulation or not is debatable, but at least in my experience, on Macs the programs through it will run much more slowly.
Secondly, I'd also ask to see something that supports your assertion that "most Macs use laptop parts." To be sure, just like PC manufacturers, Apple uses "laptop" parts to make laptops and to make smaller-form-factor computers like Mac Minis. However, to the best of my knowledge, the CPUs and GPUs inside the regular Apple desktop computers are generally the same ones used in comparable PCs
Aside from the Mac Pro (which is super-custom), Apple doesn't make desktops anymore. The video cards used in the current iMac have an "M" at the end of the model number. They typically use laptop video cards, and lower power processors meant for laptops, even in the iMacs. They haven't always been that way, but it's been true for a while. They generally have the Mac mini and iMac use similar parts as their laptops. The cheapest iMac even uses Intel's Iris Pro integrated video meant for laptops.
Finally, let me say that having been using Linux for a couple years now as my primary OS after having been a "Mac guy" for literally more than a quarter century, let me point out that in reality, there are very few Mac software titles that are available in Linux... nothing like the "80%" you suggest is possible/likely via WINE... in fact, even counting popular third-party programs such as web browsers, I'd suspect the percentage of apps that are available in Linux that were sourced from/same as those for Mac to be less than half the number you suggest, perhaps a lot less than half.
I thought I said that maybe 80% of the games for Mac on Steam were also for Linux. Even the Half-Life games are for both Mac and Linux on there.
I also was a Mac guy before, but I switched partly because of how few hardware options were available, and how-non upgradable they were. They are about 80% similar. I've thought about using Linux before (probably Xubuntu or Crunchbang or Mint XCFE), but I think I'm going to keep with Windows for now.