EA Games Use TransGaming's Cider; To Require Intel Macs

As first noted by AppleInsider, it appears that TransGaming's Cider development technology is fueling EA's return to the Mac.

Cider is a development technology that allows Windows game manufacturers to "wrap" their unmodified code in Cider, which translates the Windows API calls. From TransGaming's Cider FAQ:

Cider works by directly loading a Windows program into memory on an Intel Mac system and linking it to an optimized version of the Win32 APIs. TransGaming's Cider implements common multimedia Windows APIs such as Direct3D, DirectInput, DirectSound and many others by mapping them to Mac equivalents. This allows games to run with equivalent game play and performance but without the typical brute force porting effort typically required to bring games to Mac.

However, Cider is only compatible with Intel-based Macs, meaning that EA's releases will be likewise Intel-only as long as they rely on the technology.