A visitor of this site might know a lot about Apple's
history. Apple's video game history is not that well known.
Steve Jobs and Wozniak worked in the 70s at Atari and
designed 1976's megahit Breakout. When Atari didn't want to
invest in their home computer they started their own
company: Apple. When the Apple II became a succes, many
games followed, especially in the educational sector.
The Mac was always targeted at the business market,
although introduced in a playful way by the legendary
1984-campaign. Games were developed though, mainly ports of
succesful PC-games, like Railroad Tycoon. Because there
weren't that many commercial developers of Apple-games. the
shareware scene thrived. Apple did support specific
MacGames though, es
pecially after the introduction of the iMac in 1997. The
iMac symbolised the new focus of the company on the
consumer market.
Steve Jobs announced in 1999 that he thought about entering
the console market. Halo, Bungie's then-new game would be
the killer-app. Bungie had been one of the most important
Mac-developers for years. Microsoft bought Bungie however.
Some MacFreaks think this was to tease Apple. In reality
though, they did it probably to develop more games for the
X-Box. Halo didn't appear on the Mac until 2003.