Thanks, specially appointed forum volunteer. The person posting before me just posted his/her chat dialogue with those official techs and I'm on the phone right now with an EA tech. Using these forums to let others in the same boat know what the issues are, even if no one knows a fix, is a per fectly valid use of AHQ.
I've seen you and others with your special forum box post the same cocky responses, including the one where you berated some poster for not responding to you after 25 hours. "We can't help you, go away, we only use Windows computers". If all you do is play games, then go back to that instead of sitting on your high horse.
Ok, I did some digging and there seems to be a solution here:
http://answers.ea.com/t5/Miscellaneous-Issues/Mac-Edition-Max-Resolution-available-limited-to-1920-x-1440/m-p/1456984#U1456984
For me, I right clicked Simcity in the 'my games' section of Origin, then clicked 'game properties' and added the line -r:2650x1440 and clicked apply.
When I loaded the game first time after this it defaulted back to 1600x900.
I then set the resolution back to 2560x1440 in game which resulted in the black bars. However when I restarted the gem this time the resolution was at 2560x1440 and working fine! No black bars. Works in game too, not jus tthe menu. Seems like this is a fix.
Hope this helps anyone else with this issue.
Thanks to eadennis and eanils for the original links.
No thanks to goraththeelder.
