Hello all. I recently switched over to mac and I was wondering if and how I can run the games from Good Old Games on it. Is there going to be any support for it in the future?
Also, what solution would be recommended. I don't really feel like booting into Bootcamp when I just want to play one of the game I got from here.

It was just an estimate, but regardless of the actual current percentage (which fluctuates practically monthly and will probably jump right back up after Win 7's release) Windows still holds a massive majority share of the market, compared to Mac's 7-10% and Linux's 2-5%. Even combined, those two are not worth the extra effort that would be required to support them.

This is the kind of thing that makes me ill. People who call Mac/Linux a "niche audience" don't understand that we want to play these amazing games too, using OS-native versions of DOSBox and/or ScummVM WITHOUT having to use any kind of Windows OS (which I flat refuse to put anywhere near my hard drive; virtualization or bust for me). Also, is the best-case estimate of 15% of computer users NOT using Windows insignificant? Absolutely not.
All I'm saying is give us something to stop our complaining (heck, it might help fix my stupid Descent II problem), and it is so much better than nothing.
Anyone who says that Macs are not gaming systems, well I can see that, as most Macs out here have a very poor graphics processor.
But, I want to point out that lots of companies (including Activision-Blizzard, Ubisoft, and even the dreaded Electronic Arts) have created Mac versions of most of their games.
Why would they do that if, like you say, the audience for this sort of thing is "niche"? Maybe the fact that they see another audience for their games and another revenue stream is the reason. But maybe it's because, instead of catering to one market exclusively, and everyone else is left to make something of it, they actually care about how many people play their games legitimately (a radical thought, I know).
Also, this is the perfect opportunity to get someone like Viggles (the Boxer developer, who is also on these forums) to create Boxer DMG files for most of the GOG.com library that is DOS-based that could be distributed at GOG.com! For me personally, Boxer is as close to a native-type application for DOS games as I've ever seen.
One other thing that comes into my mind: For most of the other games, maybe a *.app version is in order. Even if it means putting it inside a DMG file.
What GOG can do to avoid the inevitable "I downloaded the wrong version" complaints is this: when you click on the game inside My Account, there's the 2 options "Download using browser" and "Download using GOG.com Downloader", right? Well, here's a fix for this issue: "Download using browser (Windows)", "Download using GOG.com Downloader (Windows)", and the same thing for OS X and Linux, except that there's OS X or Linux inside the parentheses instead of Windows. In other words, GOG can set things up so that they can put different versions of the games up for download, whereas you can download the version of the game that is best for you and your OS. That way, nobody can complain that they downloaded the wrong version, because the distinction should be pretty clear to most of the literate world.
BJ

It is insignificant when you consider that gamers only make up an even smaller percentage of that 15%. That is what makes the "alt-os" gaming market a niche market and that is why it is not worth it for a small company like GOG to support it. Companies like EA and others can afford to spend some of their profits on porting and supporting Mac games, they might actually make a little extra profit on them, but they have much greater resources than someone like GOG has, they can afford to take the chance on Mac software.
With GOG, we are already talking about a niche market: old games. The market for these games on Windows has great potential, but lets face it, we aren't the majority of PC gamers here. Now look at Macs; assuming that not every Mac user is a gamer, just like not every PC user is a gamer, then only part of that 15% are gamers. Now, how many of those gamers are the kind who are interested in old games? Is it a niche within that population of gamers like it is with Windows, or is it a larger portion? Is it a smaller portion? Do you take the risk that it is a larger portion, invest the time and money into porting games over to Mac and getting them up on the site? What if you are wrong and it isn't a larger portion? Too many questions, too much uncertainty in a business venture that was somewhat of a risk to begin with. Not worth it for GOG at all.
Don't get me wrong, I'm on your side here. As a Linux user, I want all game companies to be OS agnostic, but I'm also a realist. I totally understand why game companies do what they do when it comes to supporting (or not supporting) the alternate OS crowd.

Yeah. Except that GOG could utilize their community to help them test out different configs on Mac & Linux. Hey, if GOG offered a Boxer package of Descent II in a DMG file courtesy of Viggles, then I'd download it just to make perfectly sure it actually worked!
BJ

Testing is only part of the process. They would still need to dedicate resources to producing and supporting those game packages, even if the community helped (assuming the publishers would even allow that). Those resources could be better spent on getting more Windows games on the service, producing (potentially) greater sales than a few already Mac compatible games ever could. We haven't even gotten into what would be involved in porting those non-Mac compatible games, there could be huge contract and license issues involved in that, not to mention sheer manpower that would be required to code and test the ports.
Like I said, I am on your side with this, but it is a pipe dream in the current OS environment.

Have you guys seen Boxer? Amazing stuff. Qbix you should be proud of your bastard offspring.
GOG should give that guy a job.

Even if 15% of computer users are Mac/Linux, how many of those are gamers? Out of the gamers how many of those won't install windows to play games? Out of Mac/Linux gamers that won't install windows to game, how many of those will actually purchase the games?
Every Mac user that I personally know runs windows to play games.
It just doesn't make fiscal sense for a small company like GOG to bother trying to support such a small subset of a small set of people to begin with.
In fact I'd say it doesn't make sense for any company to do it. If zero game companies supported Mac it might push Apple into doing it themselves, and you'd be better off in the long run. Oh wait they already did with bootcamp.

Honestly, does Apple even want to be known as building gaming machines? If a machine doesn't fit into Steve Jobs pre-conceived notions on what a mac user wants, it won't get built. Why couldn't they incorporate DirectX into their OS? It's just as much of a standard as OpenGL. Of course this is the same company that has such anal restrictions on their OS.

Even if Jobs wanted to include DX, he couldn't, its a Windows API, not a MacOS/BSD API. Mac just doesn't speak the same "language" as DirectX, so it will never work on a Mac as is. Not to mention, it is doubtful that Microsoft would even allow DX on a Mac, especially since they would have to dedicate time and money to coding a Mac version of it.

no matter how nice they are, gog is a company, and therefore exists to make money. their business model happens to hinge on amazing customer service and a friendly attitude, but their purpose is still to turn a profit.
if mac users were a large enough share of the market to be profitable, gog would support them. those are the facts. you can complain all you want about how mac users deserve the same experience, and that may be true, but it won't change the situation.
bjwanlund: when you chose to buy a mac, you must have known that you would be less able to game on it, unless you were very out of tech knowledge. that's one of the trade-offs with buying a mac, and complaining about it is a case of having your cake and wanting to eat it to. i would love for my pc to crash less and be less prone to viruses, but i wouldn't trade the gaming ability and open-endedness of windows for that. i made those things my priorities and you chose yours a long time ago. don't complain about your choice as though it were gog's fault.

I don't own a Mac so I can't speak for that segment. Just wondering how well Wine on Intel Mac works. I mostly play my GOG games on Wine on Ubuntu, and they work great.
More info on Wine on MacOSX.

I don't know, MS has made plenty of software for the Mac. If Apple wanted to find a way to include DX in OSX, I'm sure MS would be ok to get the royalities.
But a thing I wanted to add, is people really shouldn't complain about the shortage of games available to play on Macs. Apple could get support from developers if they encouraged them (i.e. spend money). Look at MS. They have always felt that gaming is an important part of pc's. They have their own gaming software division, developed DX and even created their own gaming console. Sure you can play games on your iphone, but that really doesn't help out OSX gamers.

MS has made token software for Mac and with the exception of IE (which they no longer make for Mac), only software they can directly sell to consumers, like Office. DirectX is not something they could get away with selling to consumers and it is therefore not something they could make money off of porting to Mac, so why would they ever do it?
You are absolutely right, Apple could (and should) make the effort to get games on their system, but they don't. This is where the Linux world and Mac world diverge. Despite the fact that there are far fewer Linux user than Mac users, the open source community has dedicated a lot of time to games. Most of those games are not up to the AAA quality we get on Windows, but the effort is actually being made.
There was a rumor a while back that Apple was looking to buy all or a portion of EA, but it either turned out to be false or just fizzled. While Apple should get into the gaming market, perhaps by buying into an existing publisher/developer, they need to start a little bit smaller than EA.

I completely agree! Viggles would be PERFECT to set up all the necessary stuff regarding Mac support using his application, Boxer (at least for the DOSBox titles, anyway). And he can do the same job (providing great customer support) for GOG.com!
I think GOG should at least look at buying Boxer and bringing him onboard.
BJ

Frankly, with Wine and dosbox, mac users have as good a chance (if not better) as windows users of running old games.
I have a dozen old windows 95, 98 games here that i can't run on XP/Vista, but which apparently run fine on Wine. I'm seriously considering installing a linux dual boot + wine simply to allow me to play old 3d games... which just seems dumb.
There needs to be a Wine for windows XP/Vista... i heard there kind of is, but it seems like a real pain to set up.
As for mac users (and personally i feel that complaining about not having games support macs is like complaining that the CD player i bought doesn't make toast), why can't they just run the GOG exe package in Wine to install it?