Speaking of those "bigger" problems with the iMac, it'll be interesting to see if Apple will address any of them at the Electronic Entertainment Expo next week-- and if so, how. E3, some of you may know, is the largest show for video and computer games and related fun stuff; Apple, and Apple products, haven't had much of a presence at the show in recent years, much to the chagrin of those of us who know that the real key to expanding a platform into the consumer market is to get some serious game support on that platform. So while we're thrilled to read at MacCentral that Apple's planning on taking the wraps off the iMac-- and its gaming plans for the Mac platform in the consumer space-- at next week's show, there are questions about the iMac that we're not sure Apple can answer. At least, not acceptably.

Granted, the iMac stands poised to make a huge push into the home market this fall; in fact, we're hard-pressed to think of any Mac that's had such consumer appeal in the history of the platform. It's cheap. It's pretty. It's definitely fast enough to run just about any of today's games at terrific speeds. Its USB ports guarantee that a wide range of joysticks and other gaming devices will be available. And Apple is planning on bundling several games with the iMac to sweeten the deal. That's all well and good. In fact, that's all great, and should help retain the programmers already making Mac games, while persuading a few PC-only game development houses to reconsider doing Mac versions of their software.

But there's a fairly serious problem with the iMac when it comes to games: it doesn't have any PCI slots. That means that you can't stick in a 3D accelerator, like a Power3D running a 3Dfx VooDoo chip, which makes games like Myth and Quake run faster and look about a gazillion times better. As for the 3D acceleration that is built into the iMac, well, it's substandard, to say the least-- most games will probably run faster in software rendering on the iMac's speedy G3 chip. But these days, serious gamers require something better, like a VooDoo, or at least a Rage Pro chipset (which is now built into all other G3 Powermacs). Don't get us wrong-- the iMac rocks, and we fully plan to buy one. But again, here we are looking at the dark patch through the silver lining. Hey, we don't mean to be downers, but these are our real concerns, you know?