On a recent journey to the Apple store–my wife was shopping, so I decided to take advantage of the free Internet–I realized that I really found the iMac to be a fantastic machine. And, as I was sitting there enjoying the computer, I realized that I could see myself owning one of these. Except, one thing kept going through my head. Would BioWare release The Old Republic on the Mac or would they just release it on Windows?

Because I had little knowledge on it–and still don’t–I asked one of the Apple employees. “Is there a growing market for gaming on Macs?” He was unable to give me an answer. So, I went and did a little research to determine if TOR would ever be made available for the Mac OS. I have an opinion, but first, let me flesh it out a bit.

To begin with, in 2009, Apple sold 3.9 million Mac machines during the holiday season. This includes the laptops as well as the desktops, but it poses an interesting point. More people are looking at the Mac as an alternative–albeit, an expensive one–to a Windows run PC. If people can wrap their heads around how expensive it is, chances are, people are going to choose a Mac. Is it a superior product? Many would say so; I can’t.

The Mac market share is growing. It’s growing slowly, but there are more people using Macs each year which should suggest something to gaming developers: more people who like to play games are still moving over to Mac. If these developers want to profit off them, they need to make their games compatible with the Mac OS.

But, it then leaves a question. Linux is slowly growing as well–much slower than Mac OS and Windows. So, should the gaming community make the games work on Linux as well? That’s the conundrum. No. Linux is such a tiny market share–not even two percent–that it doesn’t constitute making the games work for them.

The next big of information that suggests TOR might be coming to the Mac is a short bit of questioning at E3. James Ohlen, when asked about TOR coming to the Mac, said, “Um, currently I can’t talk about Mac… can’t talk about that. The only thing I can say is we’re coming out on the PC.” Thanks, AskAJedi, for the transcript.

Does anyone else see the hesitation? Why hesitate? Just say no.

Here’s my opinion on the whole thing. BioWare is going to release it on Mac. Whether it is released right when the game is available, though, is still a toss up. Here’s why. Chances are, EA is breathing down BioWare’s neck to get this game earning money. So, if it is too difficult to port the game over to Mac, EA will tell BioWare to hold off.

The reason James Ohlen can’t say anything about Mac is because they haven’t determined whether they are going to port it over at release or at a later time. There’s no reason not to, but they just need to determine if they can do it by release date.

I say they should. I want the game, but for my Mac brethren, I’d like for them to be able to play the game without having to reboot in Windows. Release the game in Mac. The market share is growing. More users want it over a PC. And if it means another 5% of users for BioWare, that’s the difference between a lot of potential profit.