Today, I believe, is the moment that we will one day look back upon and say, “That was the day that Apple started caring about games again.” Mark it in your calendars, folks. August 17th, 2010. For it was on this day, that Apple released an OS update named thusly: “Snow Leopard Graphics Update”.
Support Article HT4286 lists the following fixes (emphasis mine):
Addresses frame rate issues occurring in Portal and Team Fortress 2 by Valve, on iMac (Late 2009 and Mid 2010), Mac mini (Early 2009 and Mid 2010), Mac Pro (Early 2009), MacBook (Early 2009 and Mid 2010) and MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010) or MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2010) models.
Resolves an issue that could cause Aperture 3, or StarCraft II by Blizzard, to unexpectedly quit or become unresponsive.
Resolves an image corruption issue that may occur when disconnecting and reconnecting external displays while the system is running.
Portal? Team Fortress 2? Starcraft II? It’s like a dream, only it’s really happening…
Apple has had a long history of ignoring games, gamers, and game developers. (Except for this game, Alice. That was cool.) In the 90′s, it seemed that while every kind of game was being released for the PC, only a select few games were available on Mac. When they were available, often months (or years!) later, they were heralded as demonstrating the equality between Macs and PC’s. But high profile games were far and few between. The dagger in the heart of Mac gaming was most definitely the purchase of Bungie by Microsoft, and the discontinuation of further development of Halo for the Mac. Slowly, by the turn of the century (ie. 2001) most major publishers abandoned the Mac platform. That was then.
This is now, and there are two major driving forces here*, whose games are mentioned as specifically those for which this graphics update addresses. Valve, and Blizzard. To give Blizzard credit, they have always released their games on Mac and PC simultaneously, day one. Warcraft, the original Starcraft, Diablo I and II, World of Warcraft, were all available on Macs. Valve announced that they would be bringing Steam and all their own titles over to the Mac, and they delivered earlier this year, giving Portal on the Mac away for free, and bringing Team Fortress 2, and other big titles like Half Life and Counter Strike: Source to the Mac. Mac gaming is picking up some major developer support these days.
The timing of this update is significant. Only three weeks after StarCraft II was released, the graphics patch is out. While it may not seem that fast, for Apple, three weeks is pretty quick indeed. For Apple to devote resources to a graphics driver fix, and to release only that fix in a timely manner, is something of a change of heart for Apple, and as far as I can tell, is without precedent.
However, all is not perfect. Graphics performance on the Mac is still a sore point. Given the same GPU, running a game in Mac vs. running the same in Windows will often result in lower framerates on the Mac side. Whether the issue lies with the drivers (Apple develops their own graphics card drivers, while the manufacturer develops the drivers for Windows), or with the coding of the game, or inefficiencies within the OS itself, Macs don’t always perform as well as they could, or should.
In addition, Mac users are starved for choice when it comes to graphics cards. For example, there is only one graphics card update currently available for the Mac Pro; you can either have a stock ATI Radeon HD 5770, or upgrade to a Radeon HD 5870. There are no third party graphics cards to buy after the fact either, so you’re limited to what Apple makes. You can’t just buy any graphics card you like and stick it in.
Issues aside, today’s Snow Leopard Graphics Update indicates a change inside Apple. Maybe they’re playing StarCraft II during lunch break (not likely). Maybe Team Fortress 2 is a mandatory team building exercise? Whatever the reason, it’s a welcome change. Hopefully it will be indicative of better things to come. Now if we could only get some driving games and sports games on the Mac, I’d be set! 
*Well, three if you factor in that the reason this whole process started was probably Apple’s decision to shift from PowerPC to Intel CPUs, and the resultant increase in speed. Gaming PC’s are pretty high performance machines, and while not all games require top of the line performance, it certainly doesn’t hurt. A current generation stock Mac will generally best the minimum requirements for most games.
