I feel like Apple has the opposite attitude of Microsoft's towards 3p apps in general, not just games. Mac updates will constantly break apps at least minor ways, sometimes major (like 32-bit removal).
Microsoft's reluctance to break things comes from commercial entities being a big source of licenses both for desktops and backend servers. If some poorly maintained mission-critical app doesn't run on Windows 11 because it hasn't had a recompile in a decade, that means a Global 2000 company isn't able to update their workforce.
Apple considers it a partnership with developers, even if that partnership in reality is rather one-sided. If you stop maintaining your software you aren't holding up your end of the partnership. For instance, ignoring six years worth of deprecation warnings about 32 bit software going away, or seven years (and running) warnings about OpenGL support, or still shipping only Intel binaries four years after M1 launched.
But this is not how games are supported, except for subscription games like MMOs or crazy edge case labors-of-love like Starcraft. Fixes are going to be driven by a chance at new revenue, like updating to support HiDPI displays properly as part of a major DLC update. Afterthought ports (especially third party ones) like a Windows title to the Mac are even more limited in terms of ongoing support - and are often like-for-like limits to 32 bit intel only because the original developers never tried to write portable code.
Gamers don't need to worry about "how games are supported" as along as they work. You can run many old games in Wine even though original developers stopped supporting them decades ago. Putting hurdles in the way of that is the opposite of supporting though and that's where Apple is causing a problem. This applies to refusal to support Vulkan as well as stuff like gutting 32-bit and OpenGL.
Sometimes it works, but the performance is worse. Like back when I had an Intel Mac, csgo was fine on Boot Camp but had noticeable input lag in macOS, and iirc under Wine it had less input lag but stuttered more. It'd be unplayable if I cared about winning, but I didn't care.
It seems that way. For a long time, what Apple didn’t use or specifically wanted on their platforms didn’t get a lot of thought.
Most game engines haven’t figured out resolutions and DPI scaling for windowed full-screen games in macOS and for a long time, it didn’t seem like there were many guidelines (bare minimum) or support from Apple.
Third party is just not as important as first party to Apple, I think. Which is ironic for a company that has succeeded tremendously off the backs of 3p devs on iOS. But perhaps it’s a different strategy for each product line. And it’s probably been a good strategy to focus on certain areas and not others for them.
It’s not all bad, you can definitely port games to Macs with some effort. If it was only worth it, it would be fantastic.
Though I’ll say, I think there is a niche for casual games with excellent graphics on Macs now. This niche could be worth a lot of money by the end of the decade, just like casual mobile games.
