TransGaming today released the “Cider” portability engine for Intel-based Macs, offering game developers and publishers the ability to deploy Windows-based games on new Macs quickly and easily, without the need for traditional arduous porting.
This sounds interesting, but “Cider” uses a Windows compatibility library to allow this to work. I wonder what the performance hit, if any, will be. This could be the answer to bringing more AAA games to the Mac on a more resonable schedule.
Update: As I suspected, there will be a performance hit for “porting” Windows games to the Mac using Cider. As MacSlash reports:
The company claims that, performance-wise, “the average user won’t be able to discern any difference,” but does confess that “users are bound to see 10 to 15 percent lower frame rates than they would in a truly native game.”
MacSlash also says that Cider uses the open source WINE project as a basis for their magic.  I wonder how many companies are going to jump on this “free” code to come out with their own products.