[Nobody]

Hire some more editors or get better ones. There used to be this thing called pride in the quality of your work. Now it's just whining about how demanding others are.
Oh, and by the way, the guy's English teacher probably proofed more papers in a week than you do articles in a month, so just burn that strawman.

[Peter Cohen]

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Cider IS a game porter. They port the game to WINE on OS X.

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You've got it backwards. In fact, Cider isn't a game porting technology at all. And WINE isn't involved, at least not directly.
Cider indeed has its ancestry in WINE, but that's a pretty long time ago in development years. But more to the point, Cider is essentially a "wrapper" around a Windows game that will let that game run on the PC. The work that TransGaming is doing is optimizing Cider to run well for that game.
So, instead of porting the game, TransGaming is instead optimizing the translation environment needed to get the game working on the Mac.
It may sound like a semantic quibble on a superficial level, but actually it's a profound difference: With Cider, TransGaming doesn't need the game's full source code -- just the bits and pieces it might have to tweak here and there to get the game to work on the Mac, such as InstallShield directories and the like. The rest of the game runs as it ordinarily would in a Windows environment.
That's radically different than the porting model, which requires programmers to go deep into the game's actual source code and change code that won't work on the Mac -- such as DirectX calls for 3D and audio, for example -- into something that the Mac can understand.
And that, in turn, is why Cider promises to deliver games faster to the Mac than they'd be able to otherwise. It may turn a Mac project around in a matter of days or weeks rather than months, or (as in some recent cases) a year or longer.

[Chris Breen]

Let's see, you want Macworld to hire more editors and, from past posts, you object to advertising on these web pages. So that boils down to greater expenditures and less income.
Lemme guess, economics isn't one of your strong suits.
It's like this: Like it or not, there are different production standards for the Web. For print you have copy editors, a managing editor, an art department, and other support staff. For the Web you don't have many of these luxuries -- particularly for "get it out now" pieces such as blogs and news -- because providing them is not cost effective. Major pieces certainly pass before a number of eyes but even they don't get the full print treatment. It's just not practical.
You can rail all you like about standards and what should be, but the cold hard reality of Web work is that it's done quickly and cheaply. Feel free to peruse the online work of the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, and a host of other news sites for breaking stories. You'll find grammatical and spelling errors. On a later second pass they'll be corrected, much as they are here.

[Wondercow]

Does anyone review these articles before they are published? There are at least 2 major grammatical mistakes in this article that my college english instructor would have failed me for!
Would he have failed you for ending your sentence in a preposition? Would he have deducted marks for for using a numeral unnecessarily? What would have happened had you failed to capitalise the word 'English' (or the name of any other language) in your papers?

[Wondercow]

I didn't realize we had so many members of the Grammar Police on these forums. I would rather read the grammar errors then the complaints about them.
/forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif
And that is exactly what you did! You read the grammar errors, then you read the complaints. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[lantzn]

Just wondering...wouldn't this give many employees of the current Mac game conversion companies (like Asypr) the opportunity to go to work for the many PC game companies who might want to use this software to make Mac versions and need well trained people familar with the Mac platform? Wouldn't this open up a lot more opportunities for these people and others interested in game for the Mac? Or, would it be easier for these PC companies to just train their PC game developers to do the Mac versions using this software? Hopefully the prior would be the case.

[Peter Cohen]

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Just wondering...wouldn't this give many employees of the current Mac game conversion companies (like Asypr) the opportunity to go to work for the many PC game companies who might want to use this software to make Mac versions and need well trained people familar with the Mac platform?

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If Cider works as TransGaming promises, I think what's more likely to happen is that Aspyr and the other companies that publish Mac game conversions would use it to facilitate faster versions of Mac game titles.
It must be an appealing idea for them -- rather than having to wrangle source code all the time, just deal with a translation layer instead, and, for the most part, provide the same user experience for the Mac user. Most games don't emphasize a "Mac-like" experience anyway, they're their own interface. Feral has take steps to make their games more Mac like, but Aspyr and others have stuck to the original formula, by and large.
I emphasize the "if Cider works," too. And specifically, if it works at least as well as a native Mac game conversion does. That's a damn big if, if you ask me.
If.

[Steve_S]

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I'm not a big gamer, so I'm just wondering why a console machine wouldn't suffice?

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That question has been asked for years. In earlier generations of consoles, the difference between the consoles and PCs were huge in terms of quality. The graphics were substandard and the game environments (maps, levels, etc.) were smaller due to memory limitations, etc. Admittedly, that's not so much an issue anymore and your starting to see a decline in PC gaming as a result, not just on the Mac. However, there are still niche gaming genres where there is still a big difference. For example, consoles are targeted for arcade like gaming. The more complex simulations, like real flight simulators, still aren't available on the consoles. The consoles do have titles with planes, the gameplay is arcade like and not designed to model realistic flight models, etc. Other reasons have to do with preferences of gaming devices. Some prefer keyboard and mouse to a game controller. When a game is ported either from console to PC or the other way around, there is some changes made to accommodate these devices. You could use a keyboard and mouse on a console, but if the game was designed for a game controller, it won't feel right. The opposite is true on the PC with a game controller.
Steve

[IVIIVIi4ck3y27]

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I myself am contemplating dropping a grand or so on a PC, solely for gaming.

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I'm not a big gamer, so I'm just wondering why a console machine wouldn't suffice?

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Why?
Sims. Most console games are just that, games... kinda' arcadish in majority, and very limited based on what the company gives you. Most PC simulations, such as auto racing, aren't the type of sort of thing you can do very well on a console. Most console games for auto racing are treated more arcadish (esp. since few actually buy wheels for their consoles and most console wheels aren't much better than the cheap PC wheels) and the self-limiting firepower of these consoles that are designed to be entrenched in usage for x # of years limits the amount of gamut the featureset these machines can hold.
With consoles getting more and more expensive, they're breaching into PC territory (and even surpassing... you can get a Dell for $300 that'll play some games reasonably well... with XBox 360 in that range, and PS 3 aimed at the $800 realm... all I can say is, ouch!), and still not providing the customization in gaming that a hardcore racing enthusiast yearns for. You can't skin your own race car, you can't make mods using programs like ZModeler to make new 3D models of tracks and cars to further the gaming experience. You're tied to what you're given. While I can agree that games like Gran Turismo and others are great attempts at simulation on a console, and do reasonably well, they only appeal to those that are into their more mainstream demographic and are typically still driven in majority by people who use the standard gamepad with them. Start pricing a good TSW2 or Ecci wheel... you'll see the your hardcore racing gamers will often spend into the $1,000+ range to build a high quality rig purposeful to gaming alone. These are the same hardcore types that you'll find even well into the lower rungs of motorsport. The types that some of these fans crave... you're going to find you're left out in the cold unless you make the models, tracks, and paintwork yourselves and spend hours on end niggling over physics files as a mod'er with the goal of getting the cars as close to real as the gaming engines they work with will allow.
So mods would be another major reason, and that goes from gaming mods for FPS and role-playing to stuff like Grand Theft Auto that almost have legendary levels of additions made by their mod communities, straight on to short track oval racing and some forms of formula road racing and sports car racing that isn't high on the spectre compared to NASCAR and F1 from an international perspective, but has their very hardcore and rabid fanbases that wished they were paid the attention that other forms are.
The ability to run Image Space Incorporated's rFactor using something like this has me quite intrigued. I would love to either see this work and work reasonably well, or see ISI pair up with Aspyr or another Mac game port company and get a "compatible" version of this that not only works on the Mac, but can communicate with PC's. I'd love to be able to run some of the mods this game has on my Mac, and love to be able to run some LAN racing on my Mac and the PC I hope to eventually build to run it as well. Granted, currently I'm on a PowerPC Mac, but the future is Intel, and I wouldn't doubt if I'm not on an Intel Mac in the next year or so. My lack of a modern PC likely won't wait that long, but it'd be nice to have both in my arsenal and not have to use Boot Camp that often, if at all.