question about the Mac App Store and software/games on the iMac

[bobright]

I am a complete Mac noob and am going to finally make the switch from PC....having had the iPhone for years since its launch and now my entire music collection on iTunes, along with the smooth iOS it's made it a no brainer.

Now obviously for the iPhone/iPad I know there is an App Store. I see now looking into Macs there is also a Mac App Store. I am curious are all the great recommended software and games mainly all purchased here? Are software/games recommended purchasing physically instead (as in actual discs)?

Does a stock base 27" model even have enough power to run a game like COD4 smoothly? I'm not getting a Mac for GAMING but it'd be nice to run some games with no hiccups.

I'm sorry for all the questions but I'm clueless on all this so any insight would be appreciated!

 

[rkaufmann87]

I am a complete Mac noob and am going to finally make the switch from PC....having had the iPhone for years since its launch and now my entire music collection on iTunes, along with the smooth iOS it's made it a no brainer.

Now obviously for the iPhone/iPad I know there is an App Store. I see now looking into Macs there is also a Mac App Store. I am curious are all the great recommended software and games mainly all purchased here? Are software/games recommended purchasing physically instead (as in actual discs)?

Does a stock base 27" model even have enough power to run a game like COD4 smoothly? I'm not getting a Mac for GAMING but it'd be nice to run some games with no hiccups.

I'm sorry for all the questions but I'm clueless on all this so any insight would be appreciated!

I would recommend looking over Apple's OS X web page. This will have information about the Mac App Store, when you purchase from the MAS you download the apps, no physical media is sent. Also OS X and IOS are 2 seperate operating systems so a game purchased for OS X will not run on a IOS device and vice versa.

As far as the power I am not a gamer however I would recommend the most advanced system you can afford to optomize the experience. If gaming is the primary appliction you also may want to consider installing MS Windows (Win 7) on the iMac using Boot Camp, Windows machines tend to be better gaming platforms than Macs. If games are not that critical then sure the base i5 machine will be fine.

BTW, I'd also recommend waiting a week or two as Apple is having a press conference 10/24 and it's possible they will anounce new iMacs.

 

[leman]

I am a complete Mac noob and am going to finally make the switch from PC....having had the iPhone for years since its launch and now my entire music collection on iTunes, along with the smooth iOS it's made it a no brainer.

Now obviously for the iPhone/iPad I know there is an App Store. I see now looking into Macs there is also a Mac App Store. I am curious are all the great recommended software and games mainly all purchased here? Are software/games recommended purchasing physically instead (as in actual discs)?

Does a stock base 27" model even have enough power to run a game like COD4 smoothly? I'm not getting a Mac for GAMING but it'd be nice to run some games with no hiccups.

I'm sorry for all the questions but I'm clueless on all this so any insight would be appreciated!

You can buy apps/games on App Store, you can buy them on Steam (games), you can buy them in the store or any other way which is offered by the developer. I haven't seen an actual disk in over a year, and I am really glad about it

I am not sure about COD4, but isn't it a five year old game now? Even an integrated graphics should run it nowadays. As for the base iMac, it has a rather high resolution but only a mid-range GPU, so playing modern games on native could be a problem. Anyway, you should wait until the next week, rumour has it that a new iMac with new gen of CPU and GPU is coming.