iPhone, iPod, iGame…on my Mac

Let me go ahead and preface this article: I am the Apple guy. No, not that “B movie actor” who is in the commercials, but the guy you know from the water cooler that constantly talks about how much better his Mac is. And yes, I have the Apple sticker on my Prius. Laugh it up. Go ahead, enjoy your moment in the sun. I’ve heard all the arguments: “You can’t use Mac for business,” and my personal favorite, “There are no games for Macs.” So when rumors recently surfaced on ZDnet.com about Apple’s future in gaming, I was, shall we say, more than a little ecstatic.

Historically, Apple has shied away from the game market—and game developers have in turn avoided Macs like the plague—with the notable exception of Blizzard. Apple, for its part, has concentrated its software efforts on applications like iLife; whereas game developers see little profit in porting their games onto a platform that has less than a 22% share of the U.S. market. However, it now seems that Apple could be making a push in the right direction.

Apple recently announced a revitalized iMac line. There are two hardware improvements in the new model of note: the overclocked 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR3 memory. Increased processing speed and a significant leap in graphical prowess seem odd for a machine that does not play games.

Could it be that these components are an attempt at appeasing the often-beleaguered game developers? Add these hardware improvements to the release of the Boot Camp software, which allows Intel-based Macs to run Windows, and what do you get? Gaming on my iMac. I’ll be downloading Kanye West’s Champion on iTunes tonight. Believe it, PC fanboys: Apple has finally stepped up. Oh, and if you need more proof: I think I see Battlefield: 2142 in that picture.