Apple seems to be making a very serious effort to bolster its gaming side. We reported a couple of days ago that Electronic Arts is currently in talks with the Cupertino-based company for possible EA games for the iPhone. Even before that, announcements from TransGaming and nVidia pointed towards bringing high-end games to the Mac.

Today, an article on MacNN reports that the company is reportedly recruiting students from the Savannah College of Art and Design to work as advanced graphics artists. According to the MacNN article, students report receiving an e-mail from a recruiter looking for game developers for Apple to create "high quality 3D and 2D art for games."

No further specifics were revealed regarding for which platform the games will be released on.

Gaming on a Mac? Why, yes. According to TransGaming and nVidia, that's exactly what they're planning to do. In a recent press release, TransGaming announced that they will be teaming up with nVidia to bring top-tier video games to the Intel-based Macintosh platform using the former's Cider portability engine in conjunction with the latter's CgFX graphics system.

If you're a gamer who just happens to have a Mac, this is kind of like a match made in heaven. TransGaming's Cider technology effectively eliminates the time and expense of porting Windows games to the Mac. Today's video games deliver immersive graphics and gameplay using high-level shader language (HLSL) technologies pioneered by nVidia.

Through this collaboration, Cider can now run high-level shaders created for Microsoft's Direct3D platform using the nVdia CgFX framework. To accomplish this, both companies have worked together to improve Cg in several areas, ranging from Effect (.fx) file compatibility through to performance, resulting in the ability to release more high-end games on the Mac with Cider.

No word yet on what games could possibly make their way to the Mac, but we're expecting some pretty big names to start joining the bandwagon.

  

Streaming television is a growing market that features industry giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Sony vying for a place right in your living room. But all the hype has left you stumped: the Apple TV has come out and you're wondering if you should change plans on purchasing a brand new Mac Mini with a cheaper, more dedicated Apple TV.

Well, it's really about what you think is right for you. Cost aside, the Apple TV and the Mac Mini are not in the same product category. The Apple TV is an appliance, while the Mac Mini is a compact computer. The compact and sleek Apple TV box shovels video from your computer to your television, while the slightly larger Mac Mini can run a full instance of Mac OS X, allowing you to view movie content encoded in DivX, XviD and VIDEO_TS.

The Apple TV can play anything an iPod can, though it does not fully support 5.1 surround sound. A Mac Mini has 20 GB more of hard drive space, 256 MB more of system memory, three more USB ports, a Firewire port, and room for a decent DVD-writer. The Apple TV does have NVidia-powered video compared to the Mini's Intel integrated feature, and does sport the 802.11n wireless connectivity, making streaming large files smoother.

Aside from all the technical specifications, you might also want to consider that the Apple TV is pretty easy to use. A user-friendly GUI menu and intuitive interface can get you streaming television in no-time. But some people have discovered that the HD capability of the Apple TV is slightly so-so, having problems keeping up the proper frame rate while streaming HD TV in some cases. The Mac Mini, being a computer, requires maintenance, though it is more useful in other things such as serving as a backup file storage.

An Apple TV or a Mac Mini? It's a tough one, but you could probably do with either. On a personal note, you couldn't go wrong with a Mac Mini, if you can afford it.

With all the news of Dell laptops blowing up, you can't help but wonder if Dell is going to get back up from all the problems it's facing this year.

Well, this isn't the news that's going to turn the tide of bad press they're getting. In fact, it doesn't look good for Dell on both the laptop AND desktop side of the business.

In an Associated Press review on Yahoo by Robert Weston, the Mac Pro defeated a Dell desktop PC with similar specs on both price and functionality.

According to the review, there is more than a $900 difference between a low-end Mac Pro and a Dell Precision 490 with identical configurations, and the difference in price gets even better for Apple with more upgrades.

Borrowing a high-end Mac Pro with a pair of 3 gigahertz processors, an Nvidia Quadro FX 4500 graphics card with 512 megabytes of video memory and four 500 gig hard drives and 4 gigs of system memory, Weston compared the Mac Pro setup to a Dell Precision 690 with the same specs. The result? $7449 vs $8534 in Apple's favor.

Not only that, but there is a large amount of easy customizability. As Weston notes, "It comes with two optical drive bays, four PCI Express expansion slots and four hard drive bays. The computer also can handle up to 16 gigabytes of system memory." The changing of hard drives is also a breeze with the Mac Pro - just pull out a tray, take out one drive, stick another one in, and push it back! No cables and a ton of ports for different uses makes it versatile, with the ease of use only making it more enticing.

Dell has a lot of catching up to do, or they may just get completely decimated by the competition. First, they have to stop their products from blowing up, then they have improve their tech and their pricing scheme. Then they have to pray for a bigger miracle. Let's hope something good happens for Dell soon, before the final nail gets driven into their coffin.

Speaking of nails and coffins... You may want to know that the Mac Pro can just as easily run Windows as a Mac OS. Another point to Apple.

I remember debating, about a decade ago, the sensitive issue of "x86 versus PowerPC performance" with my fellow nerds while dealing with dandruff.

So look at where we are now. I still have dandruff, but the Apple Mac Pro is getting a whopper of a processor that promises to send professional desktop consumers to high heaven on fluffy clouds of cheddar (for the Apple noobs, the "cheddar" joke refers to the "cheesegrater-like appearance" of the Mac Pro casing - look at the picture above).

The Mac Pros are getting 64-bit dual-core Xeon Woodcrest processors. With 4MB L2 cache (for the non-technical, that just means the processor has a lot of built-in space to do extra things). Top speed? 3GHz. For those Appletons not familiar with the Xeon, the Xeon series of microprocessors are Intel's server-class PC microprocessors. They are usually used for multiple-processor PCs. And now, for multiprocessor Macs, because Apple is putting two (that's 2) of those Xeon beauties in each Mac Pro.

This new Mac Pro definitely promises to be better than the G5. While this is more or less what was previously anticipated, the details about the cheesy insides are just yummy: it has room for four (that's 4) internal HDDs, although the basic Mac Pro will "only" have a 250GB HDD. And 1GB RAM. And the NVIDIA GeForce 256MB 7300GT. And a 16x SuperDrive. That sounds about right for a powerful office server.

Not good enough you say? Can't grate the cheese you say? Well, you can opt for up to 16GB of RAM and up to 2TB of disk space (for noobs who don't know what a "TB" is, let me just say that one "TB" or terabyte is roughly one trillion bytes, one million megabytes, or one thousand GB). Now that's some serious cheese.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I'm now waiting for the Mac Pro to get the quad-core processor so I can calculate the meaning of life. And yes, I'm still dealing with dandruff.

Industry analysts at American Technology Research think Apple's next-gen iPod could be be capable of playing 3D video games after they believe NVIDIA signed a deal with the company. "Based on our analysis, we believe Nvidia is designed into the next-generation vPod socket at the expense of Broadcom," said Satya Chillara. "We believe the Nvidia chip adds 3D graphics functionality in addition to all of the existing features (such as H.264) that Broadcom supported with the existing iPod."

While the video gaming iPod is still very much a mystery with very little solid information about the device, this could explain why Apple has reportedly been looking to hire game developers. However, analysts also believe the videogaming iPod won't be released until the next major iPod update. Meaning don't hold your breath.

All Mac, PC, and Linux users have a new combat game to look forward to - Battlefront's DropTeam. We have given you the details about this sci-fi tactical game back in May and have reported about its release early in June, as well. If you're still apprehensive about giving this game a space in your computer, then maybe you'd like to try out this new demo that Battlefront has just released.

Replacing the old public test demo they released back in June, the Multiplayer Demo for DropTeam includes new game enhancements and updates. Although the single player is disabled and only one scenario is playable, this DropTeam demo is still fully-functional. The included scenario promises to be an exciting one as well - "Raid" will take you to Hopewell, an inhabitable moon that orbits the radioactive Hell The Scorch.

Since this is just a demo, there are known issues you need to deal with in playing DropTeam for now. Battlefront says:

Alt-Tabbing out and back in of a game in progress can result in various corrupted graphics and as such is not recommended. SoundBlaster X-Fi users, the most recent OpenAL Beta drivers can result in a "Busted App" error message upon exit of game if "SB X-Fi Audio [DF8C" is selected as the in game sound driver. To prevent this error, leave the sound driver set to either "Generic Software" or "Generic Hardware".

The full version of DropTeam will see single player skirmish games, single player campaign games, and 21 scenarios. DropTeam Multiplayer demo will require the following minimum requirements:

* Geforce4/Radeon 9600 64MB VRAM class video or better
* 512 MB system RAM

For WINDOWS
* Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003
* Pentium III 800MHz or better
* Catalyst 6.2 or higher drivers for ATI users
* Forceware 81.98 or higher for nVidia users
* OpenGL 1.5 or better for other video cards

For MAC
* OS X Tiger 10.4.5 or higher
* G4 1.2 GHz or higher

For LINUX
* GLIBC version 2.3.4 or higher
* X Windows with working OpenGL acceleration
* ALSA audio

Download: [DropTeam Multiplayer Demo for Mac and PC]

Skyrocket 1.1.1 is a free screensaver developed by Nick Zitzmann. It not only features explosive firework displays in 3D but also comes bundled with sound effects. Available in English and French, Skyrocket 1.1.1  changelog  includes:

• Audio now works on PPC Macs.
• The new minimum OS version is 10.3.9, because the PPC version of Skyrocket is now compiled against a static version of OpenAL.

Skyrocket 1.1.1 requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later
• ATI Rage 128 video card or later
• ATI Radeon 9000 video card or later, or nVidia GeForce 4 video card or later

Download: [Skyrocket 1.1.1]

Call of Duty 2 is a worthy follow up to 2003's critically acclaimed Call of Duty. Developed by Infinity Ward along with Pi Studios and published by Activision, this game received a near-perfect review from the media and gamers alike.

You can play the game in Single Player mode and become either Private Vasili Ivanovich Koslov of the Red Army, Sergeant John Davis of the British Army, Tank Commander David Welsh also from the British Army or Corporal Bill Taylor of the US Army. Playing the game in Multiplayer mode, you can choose to be part of the American, Soviet, British or German forces.

A single-player demo has now been released by macgamefiles that features the mission entitled, The End of the Beginning, that takes place in November 6, 1942 in El Daba, Egypt. You are ordered to eliminate the German artillery crews at the docks as a member of the British infantry.

System Requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.3.9
• 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5/Intel chipset
• 512 MB RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 or ATI Radeon 9600 or higher
• 64 MB VRam
• Supported Video cards: NVIDIA GeForce 5200, 6600, 6800, 7800 ATI Radeon 9600, 9650, 9700, 9800, X600, X800, X850, X

Download: [Call of Duty 2 Demo 1.0]

If brand new Apples are way, way, way out of your pocketbook's league, you may want to consider these refurbished MacBooks and iMac G5s that come with much lighter price tags:

• 1.83GHz MacBook Pro notebook with 512MB of memory for $1,599 (21% off )
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• 2.16GHz MacBook Pro 1GB of memory for $2,199 (22% off)
• iMac G5 systems with SuperDrives includes 17-inch 2GHz iMac with a 128MB ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card ) for $949 (save $550)
• 17-inch 1.9GHz iMac with 128MB DDR ATI Radeon X600 Pro graphics card for $999 ($300 discount)
• 20-inch 1.8GHz iMac with a 64MB DDR NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra graphics card for $1,099 (save $800)
• 20-inch 2.0GHz iMac with 512MB of memory, a 250GB SATA hard drive, and a 128MB DDR ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card for $1,249 (save $550)
• 20-inch 2.1GHz iMac with 512MB of memory, a 250GB SATA hard drive, and a 128MB DDR ATI Radeon X600 XT graphics card for $1,299 ($400 savings)

Also available:

• Intel Core Duo iMacs with SuperDrives which includes 17-inch 1.83GHz Intel iMac with 512MB of memory, a 60GB SATA hard drive, and a 128MB GDDR3 ATI Radeon X1600 graphics card for $1,099 ($200 less)
• 20-inch 2.0GHz Intel iMac with 512MB of memory, a 250GB SATA hard drive, and a 128MB GDDR3 ATI Radeon X1600 graphics card for $1,399 (save $300).