Cult of Mac

Every couple of years, Square-Enix dusts off the first couple of games of the Final Fantasy series, gives them a vigorous spit polish and then throws them on the gaming handheld du jour. So if you haven’t played Final Fantasy I or II on the original NES, PSP, PlayStation, GBA, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, ad infinitim… good news! You can now pick up both Final Fantasy I and FInal Fantasy II are now available over on the App Store.

The original Final Fantasy game includes five bonus dungeons, as well as the Soul of Chaos and Labyrinth of Time extras added to some of the more recent ports of the game. As for Final Fantasy II, you also get five bonus dungeons, as well as the Soul of Rebirth and Arcane Labyrinth packs.

These classic RPGs will keep you busy for dozens of hours, so from that perspective, $9 is a steal… but I’ve never personally felt that the first couple of Final Fantasy games aged particularly well, and while the new sprite work is undeniably attractive, the gameplay and story in the games seem more like an archeological curiosity of modern gaming than anything I’d want to revisit. So I’ll hold on to my $18 for now… but wake me up when Square-Enix gets around to porting Final Fantasy VI to iPhone OS, would you?

Two main news items came from Apple’s annual shareholder meeting held Thursday: CEO Steve Jobs wants to hang onto the company’s $25 billion in cash for “big and bold” future investments and the firm borne of the desktop computer now considers itself a “mobile devices company.”

“This is not something we’re ordaining from the top. This is something our customers are saying with their dollars,” Jobs said, according to Reuters. Apple could get half of its revenue from the iPhone by 2011, an analyst said Thursday. However, Jobs stressed there are no plans to scuttle Apple’s line of desktop computers.

It’s time for our weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac.

This time, we review Wivi Band Free, Thomson Reuters News Pro, Sjoelen, Lucky Day!, Lexulous, Pudge, Mr. Driller, Flick Kick Field Goal, Whac-a-Mole, geoFighter, SpringFling, and Fare City.

APP OF THE WEEK
Reuters: Fast, reliable news app. Not the prettiest/nicest, but probably the best all-rounder on the App Store. 4/5 Free https://is.gd/8qT8i

Wivi Band Free: Virtual trumpet, oddly controlled by mic and touchscreen piano keyboard. OK, but no Ocarina. 2/5 Free https://is.gd/8qRWs

Sjoelen: Mild-mannered flick-based take on Dutch shufflepuck variant. Always good for a quick game. 3/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/8qZOe

Lucky Day!: Overpriced Magic 8-Ball variant starring a gormless panda. 1/5 $1.99 https://is.gd/906U0

Lexulous: Borderline competent and overpriced client for accessing the popular online Scrabble clone. 2/5 $3.99 https://is.gd/907ht

Pudge: Cute one-thumb iCopter-style game starring a Pixar-like cartoon fish. Best in class + has 2-player mode. 3/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/907GK

Mr. Driller: Decent port of the jolly, fast-paced digging game, marred slightly by lack of D-pad precision. 4/5 $1.99 https://is.gd/94JYD

Flick Kick Field Goal: Four flick-based kick challenges. Nice graphics & better than Paper Toss. 3/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/94LOY

Whac-a-Mole: Whacky Valentines: Reasonable fairground whack-a-mole with amusing retro-style mini-games. 2/5 Free https://is.gd/94MoL

geoFighter: Yet another dual-thumb Robotron rip-off. Colourful, but unremarkable, bog-standard stuff. 2/5 $1.99 https://is.gd/94MQ3

SpringFling: Vertical platformer with drag controls to fling spring hero upwards. Let down by reliance on luck. 2/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/94NiR

Fare City: Decent line-drawing take on Crazy Taxi. Two very different maps & nicely presented. Gets tough fast. 3/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/94Pvo

A barrage of games this week, some of which are good fun, including Mr Driller, the one-thumb iCopter vs Finding Nemo that is Pudge, Crazy-Taxi-meets-Flight Control Fare City, and Flick Kick Field Goal, one of the more successful flick-based games for Apple handhelds.

However, the Reuters news app is app of the week. It’s not the prettiest or the nicest news app, but it’s fast and has a good range of coverage. Localisation options for the USA, UK, Canada and India are also a nice touch.

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Steve Wozniak hasn’t given up his desire to appear in the spotlight: after hamming it up on “Dancing with the Stars,” he’s going to show his adorable mug at a Roller Derby event on March 6 in San Francisco.

Woz will be on hand when the Bay City Bombers Roller Derby team takes on Thunder at the Kezar Pavilion in Golden Gate Park. Tickets for the “family friendly evening” are $5-$10, organizers expect a sell out.

“Steve Woniak has been a Bomber fan for a few decades,” said team owner Tim Patten. “He will be the official game starter at the event.”

(Too bad they spelled his name wrong on the flyer.)

No idea whether the “official game starter” means he’ll be taking an initial spin on the banked track, but we really, really hope so.

Via iPad Frenzy

With limited space on the home screen of my iPhone, only the best apps get any real estate. Well, Apple’s Camera app has had its spot officially usurped by Camera Genius ($1.99). And for good reason.

Published by CodeGoo, Camera Genius is full of extra camera features that leave you wondering, why didn’t Apple think of these? Notable favorites include digital zoom, six different line guides, a timed shutter, and most useful, a feature dubbed “Big Button” that turns your entire screen into a shutter button―super useful when you’re trying to take a self portrait with your friends or significant other. Other cool features include a burst mode, sound activated shutter, and anti-shake.

The Boxee beta is finally available for Apple TV.

Boxee is Apple TV done right. It’s a great, Net-connected, “social” media player that allows you to play video from all over the Web as well as files from file-sharing networks. It streams content from sites like Netflix, Pandora and Last.fm, and makes it easy to get entertainment recommendations from friends. It transforms the Apple TV into a truly-useful internet video device.

The beta adds a much-improved that’s easier to navigate. Boxee on Apple TV was previously available only as an early alpha version. The latest beta was released in January but was unavailable for Apple TV users — until now.

A group of Boxee users have updated the ATV-Usb creator to install the Boxee Beta.

Users who already have Boxee Alpha installed on their AppleTV can simply update Launcher and then update Boxee to install the beta, no patchstick needed.

Link to announcement on Boxee blog.

Take a screenshot tour of the Boxee beta after the jump.

We start off with a deal on Apple’s 1TB Time Capsule. The 802.11n base station includes a hard drive and is designed for laptop users looking to use Time Machine. Just $270. Next up: is a refurbished 160GB Apple TV from the Apple Store for just $189. We round out our top trio with a pair of Apple’s in-ear headphones.

Along the way, we check out software for Macs and iPhones, including “Robot Rampage”, part of the latest batch of App Store price drops. As always, details on these and many other bargains can be found on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

The iTunes store is pulling off and putting on sexy apps faster than you can stuff a dollar bill in a g-string.
Case in point: the Hooter’s girls are back in bikinis to “clean” your iPhone screen. Hooters Calendar Screen Wash was quietly reinstated Feb. 24 and is now back on sale. The $0.99 app is for a +17 audience, though it doesn’t seem to be any more prurient or wholesome than some of the babes-in-bikini apps that were yanked over sexual content. Another five Hooters-related apps, from several different app makers, also appear to have been reinstated.

No one seems more surprised than the creators, On the Go Girls, who remarked on the company blog:
“Wow! Surprising! We are shocked!  Our Hooters Calendar Sexy Screen Wash was restored to the App Store last night 2am PST.”

No-name bikini apps still seem to be AWOL from the iTunes store, which makes me wonder whether it’s more a question of brand-name franchises like Playboy and Sports Illustrated flaunting their stuff than one of women complaining about them.

Ever wondered what your mouse pointer actually does all day? Ever wanted to have a way of tracking where it goes while you work, and exporting that information as a map of your daily mousings?

If you have, you need IOGraph.

It’s simple, it’s free, it’s fun, and it’s brilliant: it watches your mouse movements for as long as you want it to, tracking the times when the pointer is moving rapidly and the times it spends standing still in one place.

It plots all this on a view of your computer’s desktop, showing the movements as fine lines and the stationary periods as enlarged blobs.

You can choose to have your map on a plain white background, or superimposed over a screenshot of your desktop. If you search Flickr for “iograph”, you’ll find a few people who’ve made some great images with it. Co-creator Anatoly Zenkov has some cool images made with IOGraph in his photostream.

(Via Styledeficit.)

Remember the cool 3D effects in ‘Avatar’ and wishing you could see more? Well, maybe you can with a pair of sunglasses the maker touts as similar to walking around with a 67-inch screen resting on your nose. Add the ability to pipe in video from your iPhone and you’ve got the Vuzix Wrap 920.

The $350 sunglasses work with 2D and 3D video formats, are NTSC and PAL compatible, and work for six hours on two AA alkaline batteries. The glasses, which weigh less than three ounces, include two high-resolution 640 x 480 LCD displays with a 60Hz progressive scan update rate.

At least with this iPhone you don’t have to worry about managing or forgetting its cookies.  A Japanese bakery called Green Gables whips up these handmade smart cookies — the “camera” on the back is an especially nice touch — but fortunately they spared us the glossy black frosting and made them out of what looks like gingerbread instead.

If you’re looking for a more slavish copy to sink your teeth into, there are other options.

Since its inception, Google’s Android operating system seemed aimed at guys. Now we have more proof in the form of an AdMob survey showing Android men outnumber iPhone women 73 percent to 53 percent.

Some 43 percent of iPhone users are female, compared to just 27 percent of Android-based phone owners, AdMob said Thursday. The survey found not only a gender split, but also an age gap between the two smartphone platforms.

When or if Apple will unveil a refreshed MacBook Pro line is the latest parlor game among Apple owners. Along with watching for unreleased Intel procesors and checking Best Buy’s inventory, fans may have to wait until March or April for a new MacBook Pro, one analyst is suggesting.

A new MacBook Pro could be unveiled in late March, the end of the current quarter, or in April, when the next quarter begins, says Kaufman Brothers analyst Shaw Wu. Wu bases his claim on low inventories of the MacBook.

Thoughts is a desktop notebook app for Mac OS X, designed to look and behave like a real world paper notebook or journal.

When you open the app you see a shelf where all your notebooks are stored. Notebooks open in a separate window and come complete with a turning-page visual effect.

The basic layout of every note page is the same; there are title and date fields at the top. The main note editing space has a nice-looking toolbar at the bottom where you can access all the formatting controls you’re likely to need.

Apple appears to be investigating ways to do away with the iMac’s keyboard, replacing it with a touchscreen that should detect shapes, such as a key. Harkening back to the days when letters were sealed with insignias to prove the sender’s identity, the Cupertino, Calif. company would use “signets” for security-related tasks.

The shape-detecting technology, first outlined in a 2004 patent, then updated Oct. 30, 2009, permits “improved techniques to allow different authorization levels” on computer networks.

When researching a recent article for TechRadar, about great iPhone games that should be ported to iPad, I asked a few devs about their plans for the platform. Most remained tight-lipped, but Reto Senn was happy to spill a few beans regarding Orbital, an absurdly addictive one-thumb orb-destruction game that’s currently my favourite iPhone app, and which was seen demoed on iPad at Apple’s recent press event.

“It was a surprise for us that Orbital appeared on the iPad and was playable at the press event. We didn’t know about this beforehand,” says Reto. “We’ve looked into the possibilities [for iPad] and we’ve decided to create an iPad-specific release, dubbed Orbital HD. The new version will have pin-sharp textures so the game takes advantage of the higher resolution screen. We’re also re-designing the user interface, because the bezel, larger screen and weight of the device will have users hold the iPad in a different position to iPhone, in order to play Orbital.”

In terms of gameplay, Reto reveals that although gameplay will stay the same “so highscores will be comparable with the iPhone version,” there are plans in the works to add some unique features to Orbital HD: “We’re designing a two-player mode so it can be played like a table-top arcade game. Multiplayer is one of our favourite features of Orbital and the iPad is the perfect device for that kind of gameplay—with its large screen it’s like a portable table-top arcade game.”

For more on Orbital, visit www.orbital-game.com. The iPhone version’s available for $1.99 on the App Store and has twice received our ‘app of the week’ award.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNqVvIbroRA

The iPhone, initially a sideline to Apple’s main Mac sales, could account for up to half of the Cupertino, Calif. firm’s revenue by 2011, according to an analyst. The company is on track to sell 45 to 50 million handsets next year, more than double the 20.7 million iPhones sold in fiscal 2009.

Toni Sacconaghi, analyst with Bernstein Research, in a note to investors, said the iPhone could become 45 percent to 50 percent of Apple’s revenue, up from 30 percent in 2009. The analyst forecasts iPhone sales will reach 40 million to 50 million units in fiscal 2011, a dramatic increase from 20.7 million sold in 2009. The company should report sales of 8.7 million for the first fiscal quarter of 2010, he adds.

Philip Elmer-Dewitt of Fortune has a mole at the Apple shareholders’ meeting today. Not much to report, other than that Steve is in good spirits and cracking jokes, but there is one piece of pretty huge news: Apple is planning to open 25 stores in China, signs that the company sees a lot of untapped growth potential in Asia, where it currently has a retail presence in Japan and one store in Beijing so far. The iPhone launch has been regarded as disappointing in China, but this could good go some way to changing things.

Inside Apple’s Shareholder Meeting (Apple 2.0)

AT&T’s 3G service may be widely reviled, new data from PC World in collaboration with wireless analysis firm Novarum indicates that not only has Ma Bell done a lot over the course of the last year to shore up thew weaknesses in its network, but that in most cities it’s one of the fastest and most reliable networks around.

A joke so obvious that the humor-bereft Mad TV joke-writing bullpen thought it up two years ago? Sure. Moreover, there’s better reasons to think Apple’s choice of the iPad moniker is a terrible branding mistake.

Even so, you might consider dropping $40 on this iMaxi Apple iPad Case being sold by the Atwoodian Etsy outfit Hip Handmaids… if only because, as a device touched by God, it may very well suffer from the occasional stigmata.

Apple’s update to its professional photography application, Aperture 3, was met with excitement by OS X shutterbugs when it was unceremoniously released on February 16th, but since then, complaints that the program will suck up pretty much all of the free space on your hard drive during the library upgrade process have been widespread.

A new Aperture 3 patch addresses some of the issues that users have been having with the program, including fixes for:

• Upgrading libraries from earlier versions of Aperture
• Importing libraries from iPhoto
• Importing photos directly from a camera
• Memory usage when processing heavily-retouched photos
• Face recognition processing

Unfortunately, though, Apple is still warning that Aperture 3 may eat up your entire hard drive during the upgrade process, claiming that users experiencing problems need to temporarily shift their library to a different hard drive with more space. Since I’ve talked to some people who’ve seen terrabyte drives fill up completely during the Aperture 3 upgrade process, this isn’t entirely welcome news.

Gamers looking for a solid digital delivery platform on the Mac are notoriously hard up. Actually, scratch that: Mac gamers are notoriously hard up.

The good news here, then, is that recent betas of Valve Software’s popular Steam delivery system contain files that strongly hint that the “App Store for Windows Games” service is coming to OS X. These files are a new “osx.menu” file and graphics for Mac window buttons.

The bad news, unfortunately, is it’s not likely to make much difference: one of the reasons Steam is so great on Windows is because it has tens of thousands of games available for it. The library on the Mac is far more paltry, and OS X gamers are simply better off using Steam through Boot Camp to play the latest games than waiting two to four years for a company to maybe get around to releasing a sloppy OS X port of a game the PC world has already forgotten about.

Steam’s a great service, so I don’t doubt it’ll be useful… but publishers aren’t getting any more serious about OS X as a gaming platform. If you’re not on iPhone OS, Apple gaming is just pretty much dead. The best can be said about this development is that it may indicate that Valve is interested in porting its own games to OS X, all of which require Steam in order to run. Team Fortress 2 or Portal on the Mac is a pretty thought, but hardly likely to revolutionize anything.

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

Remember Casey Neistat? He and his brother caused a stir back in 2003 with The iPod’s Dirty Secret, a viral video about the iPod’s irreplaceable battery.

Now he’s got a really nice, artful little film about Chatroulette, a web app tha lets you videoconference with random strangers all over the world (hence the roulette). Check it out. It’s well 5.57 minutes of your time.

Reminds me of CU-SeeMe, especially the perverts.

Via Waxy.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gebf8X69tE0

When sinewy-armed Germans Austrians put on some Rammstein, begin to use the word “dude” with abandon and then take a drill to a Powerbook, you just know schiß is about to get extreme.

So what the heck is this? A couple of mean-looking Teutons hack apart a PowerBook and instead of making it into a flame spitting metal dragon or perhaps a battle axe with a special funnel to allow disemboweling juices to sluice out of the handle, they make the wussiest snowboard ever.

It’s just very disappointing. Germany Austria has a long, sometimes ignominious maker’s history of repurposing old metal into some of the most awesome death machines around. These guys, on the other hand, ruin a perfectly good PowerBook, turn it into a snowboard, take it to the slopes and end up displaying all the equilibrium and fluid grace of a toddler pushed off the top of an icy hill while balanced precariously atop a garbage pail lid.

Update: The original post said these guys were German. I, a Berliner, apologize for the inexcusable mistake.

[via Macenstein]

Sure, Apple stuffs the iPhone full of perfectly functional apps before they hit stockrooms. Ok, more-or-less functional. Look, who are we kidding here: Many of the iPhone’s native apps are about as functional as a box of matches; sure, I can get a fire started with it (maybe) — but if I really want to set something ablaze, I’d rather have a butane torch. Or a flamethrower.