Craig Grannell - page 5

What it is: It’s Dan Gorlin’s Choplifter. With aliens! And a flying saucer!

Why it’s good: It’s Dan Gorlin’s Choplifter. With aliens! And a flying saucer!

…

Oh, all right, then—if that’s not enough for you, here’s why Saucelifter is great. It takes a fab classic arcade game (rescue groups of hostages from the enemy, avoiding your adversary’s vehicles and projectiles), subverts videogame conventions by having you piloting a UFO and saving alien buddies from nasty humans, and dresses the entire thing in beautiful vector-style graphics. Add a dollop of humor (“squishing of captives will desist immediately!” barks the tutorial if you land on hapless aliens) and beautifully calibrated tilt/multitouch controls and you have a minor iPhone classic, updating a 27-year-old gameplay concept that still appeals today.

Where to get it: Saucelifter’s available via the App Store, and there’s more information at the Saucelifter website. At the time of writing, the game’s on sale for just 99 cents—a bargain unless brilliantly updated Apple II classics make you cry.

What it is: A full-screen text editor.

Why it’s good: It’s easy to get distracted while writing, especially when a dozen other apps are fighting for attention. WriteRoom enables you to block out the clutter and just get on with the process of writing.

Although other apps offer a full-screen mode (such as the latest Pages and the impressive Scrivener), WriteRoom’s take remains the best, largely due to its configuration options. It starts out resembling a primitive green-text-on-black-background terminal, but you can amend colors for text, page, background and scroller, adjust fonts, and toggle statistics (such as live word count).

WriteRoom isn’t Word, but it’s not meant to be. It’s a tool for writers, to enable them to get on with writing. And, as such, WriteRoom comes highly recommended if you’re an author, writer or journalist.

Where to get it: WriteRoom costs $24.95 and is available from Hog Bay Software.

What it is: A multi-account Twitter client, available for iPhone and Mac OS X.

Why it’s good: Both versions of Tweetie succeed in marrying a usable UI with a strong feature set. Although Tweetie for iPhone and Tweetie for Mac share some aspects of design, both play to the strengths of the host platform. On iPhone, Tweetie makes the most of the touch display, and its efficient UI means there’s never any stuttering. On Mac, Tweetie has keyboard shortcuts for practically every action, and its sidebar deals with the thorny issue of multi-account UI without resorting to tabs. In both cases, the app is feature-rich, providing a great experience for most Twitter users. The 1.1 update also brings saved searches, Growl support, and a bunch of other tweaks and fixes.

Where to get it: Tweetie for iPhone is available on the App Store for $2.99. Tweetie for Mac is available from atebits.com. By default, Tweetie for Mac is supported by unobtrusive and surprisingly relevant ads, but you can make them optional by paying $19.95.

UPDATE: Reznor states on Twitter that the app has now been approved—unchanged.

Once again, the App Store is in the news for the wrong reason. We recently covered its bewildering rejection of the South Park app, but things really came to a head with Tweetie, which had an update booted because some App Store approval person found a rude word in that day’s Twitter trends.

Well, Apple’s at it again. Trent Reznor of NIN fame posts that the ‘nin: access’ app has been rejected on the grounds that it enables access to a podcast that has a song with a rude word in. As Reznor notes, using rather colorful language, Apple’s own Mail app lets through emails with rude words, and Safari can be used to access questionable content. But his app, which enables access to a podcast that can be streamed to the app, featuring the song The Downward Spiral, apparently enables access to external content that Apple thinks will warp fragile little minds.

It warms the cockles when we hear of games coming to the Mac, but a more recent addition is older than most. Qwak, released late last week, has a lengthy pedigree, having first appeared on the BBC Micro way back in 1989. Now, 20 years later, this indie production has made it to Mac OS X, and we tracked down the game’s developer, Jamie Woodhouse, to ask him about the conversion.

The original version of Qwak, running on a BBC Micro home computer.

Cult of Mac: What is Qwak?
Jamie Woodhouse: Qwak is a super-playable, cute, arcade coin-op-style puzzler/platformer. The current version is the fourth incarnation of the game—it was preceded by BBC Micro, Amiga, and Gameboy Advance versions.

The object of Qwak is to make your way through the game’s 70 levels, spread across six visually unique worlds, collecting fruit, gems, and power-ups as you go. On each level, you collect all the golden keys, and then calmly make your way to the exit door! Simple, huh? But look out for baddies (you can throw eggs at them) and raining spikes of death as you go!

You can play alone, or with a friend. In two-player mode, you can co-operate and work as a team, or be more aggressive, throwing eggs at each other, leaving your teammate at the mercy of the baddies. Some levels feature secret areas that require a good portion of problem-solving skills to get to, pulling levers, collecting coloured keys, and opening gates in just the right order.

Qwak for the Commodore Amiga ramped up the quality of the graphics and depth in the gameplay.

What inspired the original game, and why did you create it? Why have you regularly ported Qwak to various platforms over the years?
I love making the kind of game that I personally like to play. With Qwak, I guess the combination of skill, puzzles, and problem-solving are what I like. I always thought Qwak was a cool game concept, and something I could improve on and take to the next level. So that’s my excuse for repeatedly making the same game over and over!

Reaction to this latest version of Qwak has been really good. Though most people say it’s not easy, it’s not so hard as to put people off—it’s often described as being ‘challenging’ with ‘one more go’ appeal. In today’s gaming climate, games seem a lot more sedate and easy, and so I guess Qwak’s at the ‘challenging’ end of the spectrum! That’s a good thing though, I hope!

Why did you decide to create a Mac version of Qwak and how did you go about doing so?
Quite a few people asked about a Mac version. I had all the source and assets for the game, so figured it wouldn’t be a big job to port from PC to Mac. It was quite painless in fact—only four weeks from getting my lovely Mac mini to finished product. That was the first time I ever had or used a Mac, and I have to say I’m getting along quite well with Macs so far. So, yeah, in terms of hardware, I just got a Mac mini, and used the official Apple development environment (IDE), Xcode.

The Mac OS X conversion is a fast-paced two-player action game.

What are your future plans regarding games? Any plans for an iPhone Qwak?
I’m certainly going to have a play with the iPhone development tools and SDK—they’re already installed on my Mac. Unsure if I’ll do an iPhone version of Qwak, although I am very tempted. I can certainly see myself making more games for the Mac, and will do something for iPhone too, I’m sure.

What advice do you have for anyone considering porting a PC indie game to the Mac?
The main thing, early on, is to make sure you have a network of support. This can be other game developer friends, or game development communities and online forums such as idevgames.com and indiegamer.com. Most people making indie games are quite passionate about that they’re doing and are always happy to give advice. Other than that, dive in and give it a go—the Apple documentation for developers is generally quite good, and the development tools are free.

Later levels of Qwak are stacked full of features and foes, and you need quick reactions to survive.

Qwak is available for £12.99 (about $19) from qwak.co.uk; the same site also hosts a free demo that you can download.

What it is: An iPhone conversion of Dave Theurer’s then-terrifying missile defense game. By tapping on the screen, you launch missiles from your silos, protecting six cities. When they’re all gone, the game chillingly displays ‘The End’ rather than the usual ‘game over’ message.

Why it’s good: 1980s arcade games were based around immediacy and playability and are therefore potentially perfectly suited to iPhone. In the case of Missile Command, the original’s trackball controls have been replaced with far more immediate touch controls. While this makes the game easier in the short term, it can also lead to rapidly wasting your arsenal—and every missile counts when you get to the frenetic later levels.

Purists might balk at the dodgy fonts (c’mon, Atari, get out an update that ditches the comic lettering and uses the brutal type of the original), and the bundled ‘modern’ version offers nothing over the original (and in many ways looks uglier), but for five bucks, this is old-school gaming at its finest.

Where to get it: Missile Command is available on the App Store, and is at the time of writing being sold for $4.99. For more on Missile Command itself, see the surprisingly accurate Wikipedia article.

What it is: A tool for accessing ‘fresh’ items on your Mac—recently used/saved documents/folders are placed in the Fresh Files zone, and user-defined files you deem ‘fresh’ can be dragged to the shelf-like Cooler. Fresh also provides tagging functionality.

Why it’s good: Initially, this app might nonplus. After all, it effectively duplicates functionality found elsewhere in Mac OS X. However, in a surprisingly short amount of time, Fresh worms its way into your workflow, due to providing a simple and central location for fresh items.

Primarily, It’s great having system-wide configurable access to recent items (you can decide which file types or locations should be ignored by Fresh, and remove single items from its zones), and being able to bring up Fresh to find recent downloads or saved files seems far more natural than rooting around in Finder.

The Cooler proves handy—it’s a more convenient and useful shelf than the Dock. Also, Fresh’s tagging is robust, and the method it employs enables you to do tag searches via Spotlight, meaning you’re not restricted to Fresh’s Tag Search window. And as with any top system add-on, Fresh is stable, usable, and gets out of your way when it’s not needed.

Where to get it: Fresh requires Mac OS X 10.5.5 or later, and costs $9. It’s available from Ironic Software.

What it is: A real-time Risk, set in space. You conquer planets by sending a percentage of your ships (from one or multiple planets) to attack, and each planet under your control builds more ships to replenish your forces. Strategy lies in securing larger planets, which have faster production, and also determining where to station your forces for protection or counter-attacks in multi-player games.

Why it’s good: Although having similarities with Risk and even games like Civilisation, Galcon is fast. Games can be over in a matter of seconds, thereby making it a perfect pick-up-and-play title. Visually and aurally, it’s great, and a number of single-player modes and levels enable you to ‘train’ yourself in the Galcon ways.

Galcon also has an online mode, enabling you to play ‘live’ against up to three opponents. The gameplay varies slightly from easier single-player games, since you don’t see how many ships are guarding each planet. Therefore, gameplay becomes a combination of Risk, bluff elements of poker (in luring opponents into a false sense of security, or leaving large planets almost bereft of forces, to put more into attack) and a Mexican stand-off, with matches often ending in a frantic arcade-like orgy of destruction.

If being brutally honest, there does appear to be a certain technique to winning multiplayer matches, and a lot of success is down to whether you get a good starting position in the randomly defined maps. However, given the cost of the application, and the sheer fun to be had (in both multiplayer and single-player modes), it’s a definite favorite, and we urge you to check it out.

Where to get it: Galcon’s available on the App Store, and is at the time of writing on sale for $2.99. There’s also a free lite version with the ‘Classic’ mission. More information about the game, along with forums and sign-up for the online mode, can be found on the Galcon website.

The Mac’s not exactly drowning in great Twitter clients, and especially not in multi-account ones. (EventBox kinda rocks as a social networks aggregation tool, but it supports only one Twitter account.) Oddly, the App Store has a whole bunch of such apps, the best of which is Tweetie.

Occasionally, cut-down versions of apps make their way from the desktop to mobile, but Tweetie’s taken the opposite journey, starting out on iPhone and arriving on the desktop a few hours ago.

First impressions are that the competition has just been largely obliterated in one fell swoop (or at least given a severely tweaked nose). Tweetie’s UI is mostly gorgeous, the app is utterly stable, and it’s also very usable. There are some issues relating to the interface: the inability to scroll via page up/down (although Space/Command+Space does the same job), overly large icons to the left, the too-small ‘new tweet’ button and the entire lack of a refresh button. Also, there aren’t any saved searches at present. However, despite these shortcomings (which, for me, are niggles rather than deal-breakers), it still to my mind betters the likes of Blogo and Twitterific, and is likely to take up a permanent place in my Applications folder.

Check the app out for yourself via the unlimited, ad-supported demo, available from atebits. You can also register for $14.95 until May 4, whereupon the price goes up by five bucks.

Cult of Mac Twitter feeds

For those who’d like to follow Cult of Mac and its contributors on Twitter, check out the following feeds:
– Cult of Mac updates: @cultofmac
– Leander: @lkahney
– Me (Craig): @craiggrannell and @iphonetiny (for mini iPhone app reviews)
– Lonnie: @lonnielazar
– Pete: @morepete

What it is: A hot-key manager, enabling you to define system-wide shortcuts for launching applications, opening folders, and performing other Mac actions.

Why it’s good: For many Mac users, there comes a time when stashing regularly used apps and documents in the Dock no longer cuts it. Spark enables you to define keyboard shortcuts to access these things instead, meaning you don’t have to lift your hands from the keyboard to launch a new app. By defining a personal system (such as Control+Option+letter for apps/Control+Shift+letter for folders), you can set certain modifiers to apply to certain types of item, adding a key letter from an item’s name as a mental trigger. Advanced actions enable you to take things further (turning the trigger into a toggle, launching an app and hiding others, and so on), and shortcuts are also available for iTunes controls (such as rating tracks) and system functions.

In use, Spark is stable, set-up is simple and flexible, and after a week’s use the shortcuts you define become second nature, burned into your muscle memory. In fact, new Macs feel naked without Spark.

Where to get it: Spark requires Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later, and is free. It’s available from Shadow Lab—and please bung them a few bucks as a donation if you use Spark regularly.

What it was: Zenji was released by Activision in 1984, tasking you, as a rolling face, with turning each level’s maze green. This was done by rotating maze sections and avoiding the patrolling flames. The simple gameplay was engrossing, and, like many puzzle games, it’s stood the test of time.

What we’d like to see: Retro games are steadily making their way on to iPhone, and it’s a perfect platform for classic ‘pick up and play’ titles. Zenji’s simplicity and immediacy could make it a hit on the platform, and the simple controls could easily be replicated on iPhone via various means (swipe or tilt to move, twist or virtual button presses to rotate).

What it is: A fast-paced arcade puzzler based around the concept of ‘blendable’ planets. Planets of different colors appear, and multi-touch controls enable you to pull them apart or merge them, in order to match their sizes with ‘squeesars’, which cause an inserted planet to vanish in a puff of stardust. Further complication is added by infrequent visits from vortexes and various bonus items.

Why it’s good: With more match-three games and word-based puzzle clones on the App Store than you can shake a stick at, Eliss comes as a breath of fresh air. The concept hasn’t been smashed into iPhone with a hammer—instead, the game is clearly designed for Apple’s device. The multi-touch controls are a revelation—probably the best example we’ve seen (hint: play with your device flat on a table, and be prepared to use ‘spare’ fingers to hold planets in place while manipulating others)—and the delicate audio and vibrant retro graphics add to the mix.

Some critics claim Eliss is too tough, but perseverance is key. Eliss pays tribute to arcade games of old not just in its visuals, but also in offering a genuine challenge and varying approaches to completing its 20 levels.

Where to get it: Eliss is available on the App Store, and is at the time of writing $3.99. More information, along with a gameplay video, can be found on the Eliss website.

What it is: A PDF manager—think iPhoto for PDF, but with superior tagging, and no weakness for mucking about with file locations.

Why it’s good: Along with being absurdly fast (our copy was ready to rock on a Mac with several thousand PDFs after about two seconds), Yep automatically creates tag keywords based on document locations, and, unlike iLife apps, doesn’t copy documents into its own database—it just leaves them wherever you’ve stored them. User-defined tags and smart collections enable you to rapidly create virtual dynamic groups of PDFs based on your own criteria, and since metadata is written to each file, searches can be performed in Spotlight. The ‘Tracking Locations’ sidebar enables you to navigate in a Finder-like way, but filters the main view to display previews of PDFs in the current folder and nested ones. Also, the succinct manual’s dead good and should get you going if you find the interface a wee bit bewildering to start with.

Where to get it: Yep is available from Ironic Software, costs $34, and requires Mac OS X 10.4.10 or later.

What they are: Utilities for iPhone. Weightbot is a weight tracker that enables you to input your weight (in US, UK or SI units), whereupon it reveals your BMI and also tracks your weight over time, automatically graphing it. Convertbot is a conversion tool for things like speed, currency and length.

Why they’re good: Neither of these apps is unique in its field, but what Tapbots have done is create utilities that make the mundane a little bit fun. Suitably mechanical sound effects pepper the apps as tasks are done, and the interfaces are beautiful and tactile. Also, in taking a unique path regarding UI, these apps are more usable than most. Weightbot is a shining example of an interface suited to iPhone—it’s perfectly intuitive, making fine use of the touchscreen and accelerometer (for example, turn your iPhone sideways to see graphs). Both apps are also stable and affordable.

Where to get them: Both apps are available from the App Store (Weightbot, Convertbot). At the time of writing, Weightbot is priced at $1.99 and Convertbot is $0.99.

What it is: A menu extra that provides at-a-glance statistics relating to CPU usage, memory, drives, your network, drive temperatures, fans, Bluetooth and date & time. Stats are shown in the menu bar, and each item’s menu provides further information.

Why it’s good: It’s fast and it’s stable, plus, unlike many similar applications on the Mac, it’s free. Set-up is absurdly simple, done via a System Preferences pane (although, iStat menu guys, being able to open configs directly from each menu would be a nice idea). The crowning glory is the Date & Time module. It enables you to show the time and date simultaneously in the menu bar, and the item’s menu provides a simple calendar and optional world clock. All three of these things are available as individual shareware via other companies, but here they’re all integrated, well implemented and free.

Where to get it: iStat menus is available from the iSlayer website, and even if you only use the Date & Time module it’s worth a look. Note that if you use the app very regularly, a small donation will help iSlayer work on future verisons.

What it is: A simplified air-traffic control game. You drag paths for aircraft to direct them to designated landing zones. The number of aircraft on-screen rapidly increases, making it harder to avoid a collision. One collision and the game ends.

Why it’s good: It’s an original concept, perfectly suited to the iPhone touchscreen, and utterly compelling. At first, it seems like the game will be a breeze, but the difficulty curve is steep, and after only 20 or so landings, you’ll find the screen full of aircraft to deal with. The game also has a great sense of humor in its presentation (including twee aircraft ‘muzak’), and, for those moments where it all gets a bit much, a handy pause button. Like Tetris, it’s a simple game that you’ll return to regularly.

Where to get it: Flight Control’s available on the App Store, and is at the time of writing on sale for $0.99. More information about the game can be found on the Flight Control website.

I grew up with 1980s home-computer gaming: Atari, Commodore, Spectrum, Amstrad. In the UK, we had, comparatively speaking, no money (yuppies aside), and, rather than being lucky enough to follow our disk-happy American chums, had to make do with cassettes. Inevitably, with tapes being cheap, publishers soon realised that affordable games were very saleable games, regardless of quality. Eventually, the number of £1.99 and £2.99 games being churned out was astonishing, as was the ever-diminishing amount of time it would take full-price releases to show up on budget labels.

Towards the end of the 1980s, it got to the point where almost no-one bought full-price games in the UK, because everyone would just wait for a price-drop. Watching apps on the App Store brings back these memories, and so perhaps it was inevitable that the other bastion of 1980s software—the compilation—would at some point make its way to the App Store.

On March 9, the 5 Fingers Games Bundle appeared, mashing together BurnBall, Chopper, Up There, Sneezies and Blackbeard’s Assault. Time will tell if this process works in the present day. It certainly has the potential to give exposure to poor-selling but quality games. However, compilations were the other thing that broke 1980s gaming in the UK, since almost every half-decent game ended up on a compilation eventually. I’m hoping people will continue to buy and support indie devs, rather than wait for a now seemingly inevitable price-drop or compilation entry that will ultimately lead to cheaper entry points and fewer development resources.

The opening spread of a large iPhone gaming feature in Retro Gamer 61.

In the UK at least, the balance is starting to tip regarding iPod touch and iPhone games. Edge magazine interviewed  Greg Joswiak (Apple VP for iPod/iPhone product marketing) recently, but, more importantly, gave Rolando a double-page spread in the magazine.

Edge is notorious for being one of the few British magazines that actually understands how a rating system should work, and avoids placating publishers, instead scoring games as they deserve. Rolando got a ‘7’, which in Edge’s book is pretty good, especially when you consider games are rated against all the competition. (The general conclusion was the game is good when compared to anything, but a current standout on the platform.)

More astonishing, though, is the current issue of Retro Gamer. This magazine concentrates solely on classic gaming, interviewing the likes of Eugene Jarvis, Toru Iwatani and Yu Suzuki, seeing how old games came to be. This month, ten pages of the magazine are given over to iPhone, exploring how the system is becoming a favourite for indie devs who have a fascination with classic gaming.

The point is that when newsstand mags—and especially niche publications like Retro Gamer—start covering iPhone gaming in this manner, it’s surely knocking on the door of mainstream. That said, such coverage can still prove controversial, and there was a barrage of complaints regarding ‘legitimacy’ on Retro Gamer’s forum—some centring around the relevance of Apple’s device in a retro magazine, but many arguing that it’s not a de-facto gaming platform at all. Long-time readers of Cult of Mac will know that this was a view that I once held, something I intended to address in a feature on this site sometime over the next couple of weeks.

Evil Panda says: See me inside Tweetie. I like Tweetie. Apple, stop being stupid, or Evil Panda will get you.

UPDATE: All’s now well in the land of Tweetie. Apple relented and, in double-quick time, posted Tweetie 1.3 to the App Store today. However, this episode highlights that if you’re going to censor things, you really have to censor the ‘right’ ones, and also have some consistently enforced guidelines to work towards. And so Evil Panda is sated for now, but he’s still watching, Apple.

I recently moaned about the App Store on my blog, Revert to Saved, when the South Park app rejection debacle highlighted Apple’s inconsistency regarding application approval. (Short version: South Park app gets rejected for “potentially offensive” content, despite entire South Park episiodes being for sale on iTunes and therefore watchable on an iPhone.)

Today, however, things took a turn for the crazy. Tweetie, an iPhone Twitter client—in fact, the very best and top-selling iPhone Twitter client—just got its latest update rejected. The reason is so staggeringly bonkers that I’m hoping it’s an early April Fool jape. Apple rejected it, according to the developer, because there was an offensive word in the Twitter trends list, which Tweetie provides access to. No, really.

This is so astonishingly stupid that I am still reeling that Apple could be so dumb. Are apps now supposed to police the entire internet? Does Safari filter out rude words? Is Apple suddenly going to wrench Tweetie and every other Twitter client from the App Store? For that matter, maybe Apple should remove the likes of WriteRoom, because, hey, I can write the word “fuck” in it, and I might offend myself.

Sort out your App Store approval process, Apple, because you’re looking stupider by the second. And while competition is currently non-existent, it certainly won’t be that way for long.

The BBC’s coverage of the Mac’s 25th has in some cases left something to be desired, the nadir being a bizarre video showing a Microsoft employee battling with an original Mac and comparing it against her Windows laptop. Ex-Macworld UK head honcho Simon Jary rightly pulled said video apart on his PC Advisor blog, although he didn’t note how, amusingly, the Mac boots much faster than the PC, despite MSN tech editor Jane Douglas cunningly refraining from giving the Mac its system disk until the PC’s been whirring away for a good few seconds.

Presumably wanting to avoid the same level of oddness, BBC Radio Five Live’s Pods and Blogs scoured the internet, looking for a Mac expert to chat to. Failing that, they ended up with me (Oho! You self-deprecating Brit, you!–Ed.), and I spent a happy 20 minutes talking to the extremely personable Jamillah Knowles about all things Mac.

As is always the case, the interview itself was knifed somewhat (due to it being nearly as long as the entire podcast was supposed to be), but there’s still a reasonable chunk left. Importantly, the Mac doesn’t come off looking too bad, although I do wonder what Jamillah’s co-presenter is going on about regarding how rubbish Macs used to be for getting online. (I’ve never had such a problem.)

Anyway, the podcast is at https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/pods/, and the Mac bit’s at the 14-minute mark.

Well, there we have it: Phil Schiller’s delivered Apple’s final Macworld keynote while Jobs recuperates, and since Apple didn’t present a new iMac for $5, an iPhone the size of a window (and another the size of an SD card) and world peace, we can be sure its stock price will plummet accordingly.

If you took the sensible approach and didn’t have crazy expectations, this wasn’t a bad keynote, although it’s hardly going to go down as a particularly memorable one, which is a shame since it’s Apple’s last. Some of the new features in iLife ’09 (facial recognition in iPhoto, improved interface components in iMovie) and iWork ’09 look pretty good (although the full-screen view on Pages won’t wrench me away from WriteRoom any time soon), the online iWork demo seemed decent enough, and the 17″ MacBook Pro even throws pros a bone by offering a matte option. (Note, though, how the 24″ display you can hook it up to is glossy-only! Clearly, someone at Apple has a warped sense of humour, and I’ll bet it’s Mr. Jobs.)

There was one somewhat worrying aspect to the keynote, however, and that’s the way in which Apple was playing catch-up in the key area of music. Incredibly, the iTunes portion of the keynote was saved for Apple’s usual showstopping ‘last thing’. What we got: Apple canning its pricing structure to offer tiered pricing (boo!), but providing DRM-free tracks (hurrah!). In other words, it’s now the labels that have Apple by the short and curlies, finally forcing the Cupertino giant’s hand.

Being able to buy via cellular networks via iPhone is a nice touch, though, and could become a key differentiator in the long run, although that tiny slice of Apple won’t be enough to tempt me back from Amazon and Play.com just yet.

Minus a million points, though, for not getting Tony Bennett to sing out the keynote with: We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when, but I’m sure we’ll meet again some sunny day!

(Oh, and it’s now business as usual if you’re in the UK: with Sterling getting a kicking, Apple’s now seriously hedging its bets. The $169 Mac Box Set translates to a whopping £149 in the UK—I was hoping for £135, but then I’ve decided to be an optimistic sort this year.)

Over in the Cult of Mac’s new design post’s comments, we’ve had some pointers regarding what certain readers don’t want to see on the site, in terms of content. Since that article’s about the site’s design, I figured maybe we should have a comments thread dedicated to Cult of Mac’s content.

So, here it is. Please let us know what you like about the site’s content and what you don’t like. What would you like to see more of? What would you like to see ground into the dirt? Where possible, please be constructive in both praise and criticism, rather than just typing “you guys are rubbush” and laughing maniacally in front of your Mac. Shortly before noting the typo, obviously.

As you’ve probably noticed (assuming you’ve been here before), Cult of Mac today got a new paint job. We’ve made a bunch of changes, most of which are designed to make the site simpler to use and the information within easier to access.

Having found that about 90% of Cult of Mac’s readers are using displays 1200px or wider, we’ve widened the site, to provide more space for content, [update]and then put it back the way it was, because lots of people complained. The simpler, cleaner layout means less wasted space and more focus for the articles, along with the ability for us to more easily add components. And the new navigation should make it easier for you to stream the content you’re most interested in. We’ve also rehoused the ‘top stories’ to the sidebar, meaning they’re accessible from all pages.

Over the coming months, further changes and upgrades will be made to the site, but please use the comments section of this post to tell us what you’d like to see. What do you like and not like about the site? How can we improve Cult of Mac and make it the Mac site for you?

If you’ve not heard of James Thomson, he’s the chap behind advanced launcher DragThing and high-powered Mac calculator app PCalc. Seeing as iPhone’s calculator is a bit lacking, Thomson created PCalc for iPhone (which you can buy by clicking here), pictured above, and sales were swift.

However, on his blog, Thomson reported yesterday that PCalc 1.1 almost vanished without a trace. The reason? Apple had changed the way applications were displayed on the App Store, listing them by original release date rather than the date of the most recent update. Consequently, PCalc 1.1 languished on the last page of the Utilities section, since it was released very early on in the App Store’s history. Sales of the update, unsurprisingly, weren’t exactly speedy.

At the time of writing, PCalc now sits on page 4 of the Utilities section, with Thomson having manually changed the ‘Availability Date’ in iTunes Connect. “So, is this behaviour a bug, a loophole, or how it’s actually supposed to work?,” asks Thomson, noting that those who aren’t aware of this undocumented ‘trick’ are effectively being penalized in the listings.

This episode raises obvious questions. Is there a general misunderstanding regarding how application updates should be dated for their position in the ‘release date’ sort order? Or is Apple already sick of developers trying to regularly bump their apps to the top of the pile via tiny incremental updates, and therefore made changes that caught the likes of PCalc in the blast?

We very much hope the former is the case. It would be terrible if the ‘Availability Date’ fix is a loophole that Apple’s going to close. After all, if you’ve spent lots of time working on an application, what incentive do you have to fix bugs and add features if your creation will forever sit abandoned and forgotten, dozens of clicks away from the front door?

A while back, I compared BBEdit 9 and Coda 1.5, testing the old warhorse against its young competition. However, while quick overviews are all very well, the only way to find out whether applications are any good is under real-world conditions, so I spent 30 days working with BBEdit, to see if it still doesn’t suck. Find out more after the break…