This weekMacworldhas sport a multi - part serial on run Windows on your Intel - free-base Mac entitle Four style to Windows , covering Boot Camp , Parallels Desktop , VMWare Fusion , and CrossOver for Mac . There ’s another Mac - to - Windows applied science that merits a credit — TransGaming ’s Cider technology .

In all comeliness , a direct comparison to these other technologies is n’t appropriate as Cider is n’t something you’re able to go out to a stock and purchase or download from a Web site . But it is serving to convey Windows software to Mac OS X — specifically , games — and it does so only because Macs made the transposition to Intel processors , just like these other tool .

TransGaming ’s Cider is essentially a translation layer applied science that sits in between the Windows game and the Mac OS X. When the Windows game cook a request of the computer to draw a traffic circle on the screen , for example , Cider makes certain it ’s codification that Mac OS X understand . It ’s not a one - size - fits - all technology ; TransGaming and the game developer need to do some work to check that that Cider work well in the Mac OS X environment — but it ’s a essentially unlike process than the way Mac game conversions have been ( and are still ) made , which requires a author code level conversion — a raft of very labor - intensive work that can take a lot of time .

The Cider process puzzle out a lot faster than emulation does , and it ’s not just theoretical . It ’s already been used to take a few games to the Mac . Freeverse usher in the technology earlier this twelvemonth with its sacking of Heroes of Might and Magic V , and more recently GameTap release its very first Mac offering , Myst Online : Uru Live . CCP game is using Cider to produce a Macintosh version of EVE Online , a massively multiplayer role playing game sic in kayoed space ( think of a giant , 3 - five hundred multiplayer variation of Escape Velocity ) .

What ’s more , TransGaming is seduce inroads to exhibit more graphically intensive PC game on the Mac using Cider . The fellowship struck a deal with Nvidia to enable Cider to use high - level shaders develop using Nvidia ’s CgFX framework . CgFX render in - roads to diagrammatically intensive game that might not otherwise run at all in Mac OS X.

Cider ’s related to Cedega , a similar standalone translation layer technology TransGaming has made for Linux . And Cedega is a upstage relative of WINE , the same open - source engineering science used by CodeWeavers in itsCrossOver software system . The divergence is that TransGaming is wholly focussed on making games range well .

Cider ’s future on the Mac mostly depends on how effective TransGaming is at commercialise the engineering science to game publishing house who do n’t have their hooking into the Mac market already . Although the early exertion TransGaming has made have been with companies that are releasing Mac conversion after the Windows game ships , TransGaming ’s Leslie Townes Hope is to see same - day , same - boxful releases .

If that can be manage effectively , it could really change the facial expression of Mac gaming . No longer would Mac gamers have to wait months — sometimes a class or long — for conversions of their favourite game . They could have a bun in the oven Mac games to ship at or about the same time as their PC counterparts .

The folks at TransGaming assure me there will be a bunch of other announcements surround cyder this year , as well , so we ’re only warming up with it .