> Desktop Macs (iMacs and Mac Pros) are much more difficult to upgrade than Linux/Windows desktops
'Much more difficult' is an exaggeration for Mac Pros. The biggest issue for gaming is the GPU. With Mountain Lion, you have seamless support for 600-series NVIDIA cards using NVIDIA's own drivers (I use a GTX 670 at home in my recently built Hackintosh). The bigger issue from a game developer's point of view is that the OpenGL implementation on OS X is still a mess, though it's been slowly getting better, partly from pushback from developers like Valve.
I know the guys doing the Linux work at Valve personally. They've been doing a ton of work with vendors in the process of getting their games to run well on different GPUs. Right now NVIDIA and Intel have the best Linux support. Hopefully AMD/ATI will catch up if Valve's Steam push creates enough momentum.
Almost all the issues with gaming on OS X and Linux are chicken-and-egg problems that will resolve themselves if there is ever enough anti-Windows momentum to warrant the sufficient vendor work.
'Much more difficult' is an exaggeration for Mac Pros. The biggest issue for gaming is the GPU. With Mountain Lion, you have seamless support for 600-series NVIDIA cards using NVIDIA's own drivers (I use a GTX 670 at home in my recently built Hackintosh). The bigger issue from a game developer's point of view is that the OpenGL implementation on OS X is still a mess, though it's been slowly getting better, partly from pushback from developers like Valve.
I know the guys doing the Linux work at Valve personally. They've been doing a ton of work with vendors in the process of getting their games to run well on different GPUs. Right now NVIDIA and Intel have the best Linux support. Hopefully AMD/ATI will catch up if Valve's Steam push creates enough momentum.
Almost all the issues with gaming on OS X and Linux are chicken-and-egg problems that will resolve themselves if there is ever enough anti-Windows momentum to warrant the sufficient vendor work.