Mac gamers have faster computers, fatter Internet connections... and more microphones... than Windows users

Yep, I believe so, apparently the Mac Pro's chassis is very user-friendly for upgrades.

The problem is that the Mac Pro is Apple's only "real" desktop computer, and it's very expensive since it uses Xeons. I believe there would be demand for a non-pro desktop "Mac" based on the Core i5/i7 with some affordable and up-to-date graphics cards for it.

Yeah, you can replace parts in the Mac Pros with standard parts, but I don't know how good driver support is.

I still have no idea why your friend would say Macs have 'superior graphics capability' since they use the same parts as Windows PCs. In fact, for the price, I'd argue that Windows PCs have super graphics capability in any situation, but especially in gaming since developers mostly optimize for Windows/DirectX these days.

I find the article itself to be very odd though. Of course newer Macs (since the x86 era) are going to have better specs than older Windows PCs.

The "superior graphics capabilities" comment from Sebastian's friend may not have been referring to hardware at all, but rather, the Mac platform's traditional association with creative industries.

The Hackintosh scene may, in fact, have brought a point of interest to Mac gaming: because people now want to get OS X running on whatever PC hardware they're able to scrounge together, great strides have been made towards making more video cards compatible with OS X. My machine (which started its life as another guy's Compaq tower) now has a nice cheap-but-capable 1GB GeForce 9500 GT which plays my Orange Box titles quite nicely on either OS. I'm sure that tricks similar to what Hackintoshers use could be (or are already?) employed to upgrade Mac Pros with better PC video cards.

I certainly hope that eventually, with enough pressure, Apple will finally give in and introduce an upgradable mid-end Mac. When you think about it, the only things most people ever upgrade in their PCs (as long as their power supply is sufficient) are the hard drive, RAM, video card, and *maybe* the CPU. (I repeat: most people, not the small elite group of bleeding-edge hardware fanatics.) Apple could, with this in mind, work out a hardware design that simplifies these few upgrades and safely keeps everything else out of the way, just how they like it.

Perhaps Valve's ongoing efforts to advance Mac gaming on the software end may provide the Steam pressure (groan) necessary to lift Apple off their asses and put them to work serving those of their users who want to do fun things outside of GarageBand.

@Richard:

As the American credit crisis and meltdown showed, ability to spend money has little correlation with being rich. In fact, more often than not they are inversely related.

So it's likely more accurate to say that Mac owners are poorer, because they bought Macs.

Yeah...what? Did you mean to post this on a different page, maybe? Your comment could easily apply to quite a few of Seb's posts, but this particular one wasn't like that at all — I almost had to double-check who wrote it. :P Anyone who asserts that Apple isn't ridiculously behind the times in their selection of graphics hardware is deluding themselves, regardless of whether they also appreciate the things Apple does right. Apple has simply never cared about games (until recently, and even then only on iOS), and that's reflected in their computers.