I'm just putting these ideas out there every couple years in hopes that one day ScummVM becomes a first-class citizen on many platforms. I fully expect some people to reject the idea. So ScummVM has the advantage in that area having control over more aspects of the interpretation than DOSBox which is simply a single-platform emulator.
Of course, DOSBox will never be capable of fixing the bugs that existed in the original interpreters, games with dithered graphics have little chance of looking better unless the DOSBox team adds such an option, alternate platform versions will never work in DOSBox.
The latest 1.0 alpha already shows that it is a first-class Mac app by having proper menus, a proper preferences window, package support (a way to encapsulate a bunch of related files into a single file) allowing the user to launch the game from the Finder or Spotlight, allows the emulation window to be resized to arbitrary sizes (something I've been hoping that ScummVM would get for a long, long time). For people that don't know, Boxer is a DOSBox front-end for the Mac. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced the ScummVM team is ready to do this.Ä«oxer seems to be the shining example of what could be done to improve ScummVM on the Mac. And while I would love to contribute to the interface front-end, it would require a departure from the "one-interface for all platform" ideology and embrace platform specific APIs. I know that the most common reply in this thread will be something to the tune of "ScummVM is opensource.if you want to see something happen, do it yourself." I understand this there seems to be a tight leash around what is not strictly engine code. I'm presenting this as constructive criticism and not some insult to ScummVM, the ScummVM team or its fans. But I do believe that now that support for many of the most popular 80s and early 90s games exist, some front-end love is in order. ScummVM's engines are top notch and, honestly, I think that's the most important. While I really much love the ScummVM project and how far it's progressed, there's something I very much hate about it: the interface.