I will be honest and truthful and say for a mobile device on batteries, I'm very impressed as what the iPhone and iPad can do gaming wise.
However I will also state, and I think we all should be honest, that at the moment, Apple are bringing the games DOWN to what their hardware can do, as opposed to making Hardware so great that gaming is being pushed UP to take advantage of Apples industry leading performance.
In your first paragraph you talk about Apple's mobile products, which is where Apple will be putting most of their effort in the foreseeable future. To have successful portable products, having a long time between charges is highly important. The old brute force methods of throwing power and RAM at the gaming performance problem can not be part of the design mindset. Game designers know this and are becoming much better at coding for portable games, but they are not quite there yet. Meanwhile Apple is working to find ways to build in performance and not increase power draw.
THIS is the future as Apple sees it, and their acceptance in the broad general market shows that they are on the right track.
When Apple release GTX580 beating desktops, and/or Xbox360 / PS3 beating gaming devices, I will happily bow down to them being the greatest in graphics.
NOW you have switched to talking about desktop and console gaming computers. THIS is a whole different area. First off, it's a tiny segment of the whole computer market. It's big, but not nearly as huge as what Apple is aiming for with their products.
In a nutshell, Apple's strategy is to capture the mobile device market as completely as they can. They are being highly successful at that strategy from iPods to iPhones, to iPads, to Laptops.
Meanwhile they are growing rapidly in the iMac desktop and tower market due primarily to the halo effect of their success in the portable arena. They are doing this even while the desktop and tower markets are shrinking overall. Can you see why Apple will not be putting a lot of effort into this segment?
But right now, they are trailing by miles due to years of neglect as they just did not have products that could compete, and their one semi attempt at a console got nowhere.
Note: I would LOVE LOVE LOVE Apple to turn this around.
You are right. Apple did not have products that could compete in the desktop and console markets. This was primarily due to game developers not interested in writing games for Intel chips and PowerPC chips. Since the installed base for Intel-based computers was more then a order-of-magnitude larger than the installed base of Macs. Apple was never going to enjoy being a suitable gaming platform until they switched to Intel CPUs.
Once Apple made the switch, they have come a long way towards being an acceptable gaming computer, but they have no desire or plans to go after the high end of this market... it's just not that profitable or large. Remember AlienWare? They had the best gaming computer, IMO, and they had to sell themselves to another company to stay alive.
As for the console market, it's crowded with established competitors and will likely see one squeezed out. Not the kind of market that Apple or anyone else should want to jump into.
They need to ditch the "Laptops on a Stand" design of the iMac for starters, but I feel they never will as they have decided they won't compete and they cannot compete in this sector of the market.
I addressed this above. As for the "Laptops on a Stand" design, it's such a bad design that the largest computer company, HP, as well as others, have copied it.
Console wise, I'm not sure they could compete against a 360 or a PS3. Let's say Apple against a PS4 or a Xbox720
Nope, can't see that happening either.
I address this above. Apple doesn't want to be in this arena. It's small and the competition is deadly.
The low power/trimmed down, casual gamers games, seems to be the only area they are going for.
Once more you are correct. There are many many times more gamers that want a short diversion while they have a few minutes away from home, then those who want to spend thousands on an immersive game experience that requires a larger block of time. "Portability with games optional" trumps "wired to the wall and game-focused" all the way to the bank.
But Again, I would LOVE Apple to turn this around and take high end graphics seriously in their future products.
The high-end gamer is not on Apple's radar at the moment and likely never will be unless a way is found to address hi-end graphics on a portable device without impacting battery life.
I know you'd like Apple to chase this rainbow, but they won't, there's no pot of gold at the end.