For those living under Sandro's helmet, the Mac OSX gaming scene was rocked recently with the announcement of Cider, a cross-platform "wrapper" from Transgaming Technologies that will allow PC games to run seamlessly under OSX after only a few hours or days of tweaking. Cider is licensed using a revenue-sharing arrangement with producers like Ubi or EA, who can then release a hybrid game disk containing both PC and OSX versions.

VP of Freeverse Colin Smith confirmed that Cider won't have any effect on the OSX port of HOMMV as it is already well underway and still on target for a 2006 release. More details are available on the HOMMV for OSX! website.

However, the long term implications of Cider and other recently announced virtualization software like Parallels Desktop for Mac and CodeWeavers' Crossover are significant. Gamers who have traditionally ignored OSX for its lack of entertainment options might want to pause and consider that they can now run the same great PC games under an OS that is virus and malware free. And unlike earlier virtualization software, these programs are able to access the native Intel hardware in all new Apple machines, meaning there is little to no performance hit and no code emulation. Of course, Apple's own BootCamp already allows gamers to partition their Mac into a dual-boot machine that runs WindowsXP just as normally as on any PC. In fact, you can buy Apple hardware and run nothing on it but WindowsXP if you really want.

While no games have yet been released under Cider, we are promised that primary publishers are interested in entering the Mac market. Parallels and Crossover are still in beta testing, but users in the discussion forums at InsideMacGames report success running such titles as Half-Life.