As a couple of you astute readers have noticed (thanks!), Madden NFL '08 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour '08 are now available on the Apple Store, just a little over a month after they were released for PC and consoles last August. A month isn't too bad for Mac ports-- at least the football season is still going on.

I haven't played this year's Madden yet, but I can wholeheartedly vouch for Tiger Woods-- I've been playing the Xbox 360 version of it, and it is some good (if sometimes very difficult, read: frustrating) golf. If you do pick up either game, however, make sure to check your innards first-- neither game will work on Intel's GMA950 graphics processors, found in the MacBook and the Mac mini. If you're boasting a MacBook Pro, a Mac Pro, or a new iMac, you're in the clear, as they use higher end video cards.

So there's what EA's got. id, you're next.

Mad props to my parents for keeping our basement an Apple museum! Aside from a pristine Apple //c (with monochrome monitor), vintage Apple ][ ,and Mac SE/30 (with a color monitor card) they kept most if not all of our Mac and Apple programming books from my youth. A few games even survived, although my addiction to Wasteland forced my dad to ship several of the more fun games to my French cousins. So I took some quick pics and made a vintage Apple books and software gallery. Enjoy the trip down memory lane-- and if any of the authors of these books are around, let us know in the comments.

Some of my favorites:

• Chipwits - one of my favorite edutainment titles ever (and the original authors are trying to bring it back)
• Jeeves - before he hit the web he was your personal assistant
• Adventure Construction Set - taught me a lot about game design
• Using HyperCard - oh how I miss HyperCard
• The Elementary Apple - notable because of the binding, which was really useful when trying to type in programs
• The Halley Project - who didn't freak out when they heard their Apple start talking?
  

For some reason my copy of Racter is MIA.

As many of you pointed out over the weekend (thanks, everybody!), EA must be big fans of TUAW-- we called them out on Thursday for not catering to the Mac as they'd promised, and on Friday they dropped a press release that the exact four games we'd called MIA were now available in the Apple Store (and sure enough, they are). As our good friends over at Joystiq noted, EA also promises that those games will also be available in brick-and-mortar Apple stores by the end of August, with Tiger and Madden coming later this year.

So: redemption, or too little too late? Either way, I doubt EA cares. While it's nice that they're reading, and clearly the announcement of the release shows they're interested in keeping their word (at least a few weeks after they promised to keep it, anyway), I really think that releasing these games will only tell EA what they already knew: Mac owners don't buy their games. Be serious: how many of you readers are really going to hit the link above and buy Battlefield 2142 right now? I didn't think so.

But that doesn't mean that EA's right to ditch us completely, either. If you were a Madden fan, and showed up to Gamestop to buy '08 with a choice of two options: PC or Mac, which one would you take? The Mac version, obviously. Unfortunately, the Madden Mac version isn't coming out until the season is half over, so no one actually had that choice last Tuesday.

Bottom line: it's nice that EA put these games in the Apple store (eventually), but we're still getting leftovers. You can't offer us games months or years after they come out, and then claim the fact they don't sell well is the reason why no one wants them.

LC Angell over at iLounge has discovered that EA plans to release four new iPod games this year. He links to this SeekingAlpha transcript of EA's recent Q4 07 Financials conference call.

In the transcript, EA's Warren C Jenson actually mentions five games intended for cellular handsets including one, Sims Bowling, specifically for the iPod--perhaps he meant iPhone? The other four for cellular handsets are ESPN Fishing, Harry Potter, Sims Bowling, and Bejeweled Multiplayer.

As of now you can buy EA's Sudoku, Tetris, Mini Golf, Mahjong, and Royal Solitaire at the iTunes store for five bucks each. These games work on the 5G and 5.5G video iPods.

If you're not getting enough of the gaming experience by, you know, actually playing games, you can now load up your iPod with tracks from your favorite Electronic Arts games like Def Jam Icon, SSX 3, Need for Speed Underground 2 and Burnout: Dominator. Because apparently you can never have enough game soundtrack in your life. Okay, I admit it. I have absolutely no clue why anyone would ever want to listen to an EA soundtrack or why they would buy one for their iPod. But if this is the music for you (and, frankly, who am I to judge), the tracks are now available for purchase on iTunes. (At least they are for US iTunes users. Europeans will have to wait a while before joining in on this unique cultural experience.) Pop by the EA Trax site for more details.

Rawk on, Madden NFL 2007!