I've discussed Mac gaming before on Mac Planet (October 9, 2009 'Gaming on a Mac? Why so hard?'. It's the one area where Mac can users can justifiably feel well and truly miffed at being users of a platform with small market share.

Although millions of people around the world use Macs, many, many millions more use Windows. In a way, Apple's inability or refusal to engage with gamers – or, more importantly, with game developers (apart from with the iPhone/touch OS) – has conceded the territory to Windows and the consoles.

Microsoft even launched its own console, the Xbox, which proved smart. Although I do feel the choice of the hot-running G5 processor was asking for trouble. Also, the Xbox's rather maverick choice of processor forced developers to add an entirely new and different console platform to their release schedule.

If Microsoft had put Intel chips into the Xbox, PC games would have been fine for it, although Microsoft could then have been accused of actually building its own computers … so I guess that's the logic behind it.

Unlike Apple with its longstanding Apple OS, Microsoft was then singularly successful at getting game developers onboard for Xbox.

Well, Xbox graphics are great. Which begs the other oft-posed question of: why are Apple video cards so middle of the road, yet so pricey compared to those available for PCs? Even when they're the same (virtually) models from the same vendors? This remains a mystery.

However, Apple's Intel processor and the Boot Camp phenomenon of allowing Windows apps to run on Macs was probably the most serious threat to Mac gaming aspirations and yeah, that came straight from Apple.

That's one way of looking at it. The other way to look at it is that virtualisation means Mac users have access to all those PC game titles. But once again, talk about conceding the space to Microsoft's OS.

Not that you have to actually install Windows on your Mac, although many have. (No, I never have.) With Apple's free Boot Camp, you have to install Windows and choose which system to boot at startup, and restart to change. But third party solutions you can buy, like Parallels Workstation and VMWare's Fusion, don't require a reboot. These solutions appreciate lots of RAM.