EpicSquirt: DirectX would be pretty much useless on the Mac since you’d never get driver support (Apple basically controls video drivers on the Mac) and you don’t have access to any of the infrastructure it depends on (Win32, DirectShow, etc.), and of course any games/apps would still need to be recompiled since Windows and Mac OS/Mac OS X don’t share an executable format.

On Linux an ‘official’ DirectX implementation might potentially be of use but still would suffer from most of the same issues as a Mac one: Basically no driver support, none of the infrastructure you need, and you’d need to recompile the game/application.

If you really want to be able to play Windows games on a mac or linux machine, the best things would be more commercial support behind efforts like Wine and WineD3D, along with Microsoft providing more detailed specifications for DirectX.

In all honesty though the biggest issue has nothing to do with Microsoft: 3D is pretty damn hard, and DirectX offers 3D plus a bunch of other stuff for games. Companies like NVIDIA and AMD still have trouble delivering rock-solid drivers for OpenGL/Direct3D, despite the fact that their entire business is built around it and they have near-direct control over both specifications. Intel is an even more tragic example since they practically own the consumer 3D market but consistently fail to deliver anything resembling good drivers.

Microsoft could invest dozens of man-years of engineering effort into a mac or linux Direct3D port and you’d probably still be unable to play most unmodified windows games.

Oh how I miss the edit button

I see I’m not the only one to pine for an edit button.

The thing you have to keep in mind is Apple basically has a monopoly on build quality and product design. Nobody else competes, at all. The new unibody aluminum macbooks are both aesthetically pleasing and very tough. No creaky plastic or loose joints.

@downsj: I don’t know how much experience you have with wine games, but usually it’s pretty much a waste of time. They run terribly, glitches like flies on a corpse, and development support is pretty poor. At least EA has people dedicated to making sure this client works.

Note that I have no particular allegiance to any operating system. I have a Windows PC dual booted with the Suse linux distro, and my laptop is dual booted with OS X and Windows XP (soon to be 7).

Anyway quote-wars aside, I downloaded the beta yesterday and I’m pretty impressed:

I’m running it on the base model MacBook, packing a 2.0 core2duo and nVidia 9400m. I got pretty solid framerate for the couple of hours I played, though I’m sure there are some areas that will make me suffer.

The only glitch I found (which might be a hardware problem at my end) was clicking on loot seemed fairly unresponsive at times. Other than that it was a smooth experience, and I’m seriously considering subbing.

The only reason I use Windows is for playing games. The world was so much better when game developers used DOS-extenders and Windows 3 was only something to laugh about.

Anyway, I don’t know what Gamebryo costs, but for the prices it costs they could offer a MacOS-target.

I wouldn’t use any game engine that doesn’t support atleast MacOS/OpenGL, just out of principle – no need to strengthen Microsoft’s position.

Yet, bloated mess or not, I’ve used both Mac and PC, and I’m sticking with the more robust and expandable PC platform, than the locked down proprietary and needlessly expensive Mac.