The Mac line from Apple has been on an absolute tear the last five years. Since the introduction of Apple Silicon, there isn't anything on the market quite like it. Apple laptops are able to outperform and outlast most of their competitors, even being able to rival the need for a traditional desktop. Meanwhile, Mac desktops now pack chips with an unbelievable amount of power in the size of a tissue box (Mac Pro excluded). It has never been better to be a Mac user, and the performance has never been so fruitful. However, Apple just cannot—and sometimes acts like it will not—let Mac be a gaming platform. Apple could take a major bite out of Windows' market share but, for some reason, chooses not to.
The gaming problem is something that has plagued Apple for a long time. Windows became the de facto place to play video games. This is a combination of a lot of things, but simply put, the combination of technologies like DirectX and the much higher market share made it a no-brainer to develop for Windows PCs. The Mac really became a forgotten platform for games, with Apple even seeming to be fine with that—always pushing the Mac as a creative device, not as much as a game console.
Windows since then has pretty much made itself a monopoly in the game market (besides consoles) because a game developed for Windows can't run on Mac without being ported or developed with both systems in mind. However, Valve has come to save the day...
Back in 2022, when the Steam Deck launched running Linux, you would have thought it impossible for the Steam Deck to play anything. Thankfully, Valve in their wisdom was ready, because in 2018 they launched Proton: a compatibility layer to play Windows games on Linux. Because of this software, almost any Windows game (that doesn't have anti-cheat) can be played on Linux, and the best part is Valve open-sourced this software. Anyone on any Linux distribution can use this software to play their games.
Windows in recent years has been slipping, though. People just do not like the operating system. Windows 11 has not been seen as incredibly favorable, especially since it made a bunch of systems obsolete instantly if they didn't have a TPM 2.0 chip. Windows also has just been slipping as a "good faith" operating system, with problems such as forced ads, telemetry, and a general lack of polish that has seen people, for the first time in a long time, seriously consider leaving the platform.
With the Mac basically at the highest point it’s been probably since the early 2000s, the users are almost ripe for the plucking. But one fatal flaw persists: you can't game on Macs. There are some games that do run on Mac, but compared to Windows, it is almost a pleasant surprise if you find a game that does. Apple needs to develop its own version of Proton. They kind of did with their Game Porting Toolkit, which was able to play Windows games on Mac, but that was meant as a developer tool, not a consumer technology. The worst part is that Mac can run Wine—the software Proton is based on. With some tweaks, Proton could run on Mac since it is a Unix-like operating system, just like Linux.
But Apple seems to have no interest in this. I get the impression that they don't want to be seen trying to run Windows software. They want native Apple software. To them, it looks like an admission of some kind. I think this is the wrong way to look at it entirely. Game development is a massive undertaking. Moving games around platforms "willy nilly" isn't something that can just be done. But translating games to run has been shown to work wonders. Also, a lot of games aren't in active development or are basically dormant as they lie. They aren't going to come to Mac because no one is there to even do that work.
If Apple would seize this opportunity, one of the biggest reasons to use Windows would disappear immediately. On top of that, this doesn't have to just apply to games; it can also apply to any kind of software (like CAD, for instance). With Macs being incredibly powerful and the modern PC market really suffering from the RAM shortage and the Nvidia 5000 series underperforming expectations, I would imagine Apple could get a 10% boost in desktop market share.
The ball is in your court, Apple. Take the shot.