An upside of the transition was the sudden prominence of the Hackintosh, a standard PC running Mac OS X (versions 10.4 and up) though technically not allowed under Apple's EULA, Hackintoshing opens up a lot of flexibility that Apple doesn't offer on the low end, and there's even a book out there on how to do it. It also used a different, more sophisticated BIOS called EFI in place of the outdated IBM PC BIOS that PCs were stuck with until Microsoft updated Windows Vista and 7. This made porting easier, but still not a piece of cake the MacOS still uses different APIs, such as OpenGL, note As with many other Unix-based or Unix-like operating systems, such as Linux, which primarily uses the Mesa implementation Quartz Extreme and Core Audio, in place of Microsoft's DirectX. other than what was already available for MacOS). In 2006, the Mac went to the same 80x86 CPU as the IBM Personal Computer, even allowing it to run Windows without the need for an x86 emulator, and thus the vast majority of computer games (i.e. Things took a startling change in the mid-2000s. And as the 'wintel' platform caught up with the Mac's technical sophistication, porting became more difficult and fewer were willing. The Mac hardware went from the 68k Central Processing Unit family to the PowerPC, and macOS went from Classic to X note (pronounced 'ten' it's a Roman numeral, not an Xtreme Kool Letter), but it remained a system of third-party ports from those who were willing. Still another Mac debut, Cyan's HyperCard-based Myst, went on to reign as the all-time best-selling PC game for nearly a decade. Other major developers included Ambrosia ( Escape Velocity) and Casady & Greene ( Crystal Quest, Glider). Halo: Combat Evolved would've been their next Mac title, but Microsoft bought them out and turned it into a launch title for the Xbox. In the 1990s, Bungie gave Mac users a reason to be proud with Marathon and Myth. ICOM Simulations created the first fully mouse-driven Adventure Game in Déjà Vu, followed by Shadowgate and two other 'MacVentures'. Silicon Beach's Enchanted Scepters and Dark Castle demonstrated the Mac's mouse-based input and multimedia capabilities, respectively.

Several companies stepped forward to fill the gap. After the launch, games were ported over from other systems, but there were only a few unique titles. So the only games developed for it prior to its release in January 1984 were a 600-byte 15 Puzzle and a real-time board game by an Apple programmer that went intentionally underpromoted. The Mac was a revolutionary computer, with its Xerox Alto-inspired graphical user interface note though Mac OS X made it so modern Macs have a terminal feature to provide text-based functions other UNIX-based operating systems have, and Apple marketing executives were worried that it would be seen as a toy.

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