imac posts

The app store tool for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch mobile devices have been hugely successful, especially for both small and big game developers who can publish their titles directly to consumers. Can Apple do the same thing for their iMacs, MacBooks and Mac desktops? We are about to find out as Apple has announced it will launch the Mac App Store on January 6.

Like the app store for the Apple mobile products, the Mac App Store will have a variety of software to purchase and/or download and that will include games. Developers can set their own prices, can release free apps with no additional costs and keep 70 percent of the game's revenues for themselves. The big question: Will the Mac App Store be a big rival to services like Steam, Direct2Drive and others in the Mac game digital download business?

Okay, no, not quite, but no collection of hideous headline puns that juicy escapes us. The news from Nvidia's neck of the woods is that the Green Eyeball Gang has gotten a bit cozier with both Dell and Apple this week.

For gamers, this certainly doesn't suck on either front, especially since there's a rather tasty bit in the Dell-centric press release that says, "the Dell Studio XPS 13 eliminates the typical notebook compromise between performance and battery life by offering two GeForce GPUs to give users the option of running one GPU for longer battery life, or combining both for greater performance."

SLI? On MY laptop?

To quote the great Federation philosopher J.L. Picard, "Make it so." (h/t to one of my WoW guildies, from whom that line was shamelessly appropriated). Admittedly, the benchmark figures cited (Futuremark and, the not-precisely-cutting-edge 3Dmark06) are a little bit cherry-picked (they're anything but apples-to-apples). Light snark aside, there's certainly no shortage of interest in having a potent but portable rig, especially if your budget dictates that you're going to have to choose either a desktop, or a desktop replacement.