Reviews - page 164

An intrepid software developer has published a thorough memoir that details many reasons why Apple is so far ahead of the field in the mobile applications game, and why Blackberry, Palm and Android will have a hard time catching up any time soon.

Marcus Watkins found himself developing an application for his mobile phone in much the same way that countless other developers undoubtedly realized their inspirations: he was minding his own business when he realized one day his life would improve if his phone could do something that, at the point of his epiphany, it couldn’t.

He did his research, found out there wasn’t an application to meet his needs, realized the size of the potential market for his app in the many millions of people with his phone – a good percentage of whom might find his application useful – and he went to work.

Unfortunately (perhaps) for Watkins, his phone is a Blackberry, but fortunately (for Blackberry users) he persevered, and his story shows just how far behind Apple the other smartphone makers are as the device category enters its third year in existence.

There’s plenty of naysayers pooh poohing the iPhone 3G S. It’s a minor upgrade, they say. Not worth the money, especially for 3G owners.

But after buying one on Friday morning and playing with it all day, I can say with 100% certainty that that’s complete and utter rubbish.

The 3G S is a major step up from the iPhone 3G, worth every penny. Sell the car; sell the house; sell the kids: you must have this phone.

The full review after the jump, plus plenty of test photos and video shot in sunny San Francisco.

It may take Microsoft three tries to get things right, but the same is also sometimes true of Apple.

The iPhone 3.0 OS — a free update available on Wednesday for all iPhone owners — is a good example. Finally the iPhone has several must-have features it previously lacked, especially tethering, making the 3.0 software an essential upgrade.

But the real pleasure is in the details. The 3.0 software includes a bunch of tweaks and small improvements that makes the iPhone experience extremely slick and polished. It seems silly, but I got as big a kick out of UI tweaks in the iPod interface as show-stoppers like cut-and-paste.

Still, overall, the iPhone 3.0 OS turns the iPhone from a nifty gadget into a real computing device. The iPhone is now truly a pocket Mac for the twenty-first century.

Last fall I bought a 13-inch unibody MacBook, and I fell in love. For the last seven months I’ve been head-over-heels with the machine. But now there’s a new love in my life: a brand new 13-inch MacBook Pro, which is shaping up to be the perfect laptop.

Released last week, Apple’s MacBook Pro 13″ is an amazing machine. It’s priced as a starter, but it’s now truly a “Pro” laptop. It’s worthy of real work. It adds many of the “Pro” features previously reserved for its higher-end siblings, but costs hundreds of dollars less.

It now has an awesome, all-day battery; a bright, energy-sipping screen; and a backlit keyboard. Firewire is back, and there’s an indispensible SD Card slot. And yet it starts at just $1,200. For a computer of this quality and power, that’s a steal.

Full review after the jump, including real-world benchmarks and tons of pics.

What it is: Kind of a ‘Sims lite’, set on a primitive island. Canned animations and environment changes can be triggered by touch-screen and motion gestures.

Why it’s good: To be honest, the first time Pocket God ended up on my iPhone, I didn’t think I’d play it much. It had charm, but after ten minutes I was done. However, the Bolt Creative team has now provided a staggering 17 updates to the toy, from new animations to fun minigames. Given that the game is only a buck and updates are free, it’s so far cost just over five cents per revision, and it’s safe to say that many of the updates have provided more than a buck’s worth of entertainment, let alone a nickle’s worth.

Where to get it: Pocket God costs $0.99 on App Store. If you decide to download, don’t read the instructions—just explore and find out what you can do with the island and its inhabitants. The game’s much more fun as a voyage of discovery than something to rush through in a few idle moments.

The first round of Palm Pre reviews are in — and they are generally very positive. The iPhone has a real contender, especially if the Pre comes to Verizon in a few months — a good smartphone on a good network.

The big three gadget reviewers — Walt Mossberg, David Pogue and Ed Baig — all give the Pre very positive reviews, with a few reservations.

Pogue is the most excited. “One of the world’s best phones,” Pogue says in his enthusiastic New York Times review. Pogue is very positive about the Pre, saying it’s a worthy iPhone contender, despite noting drawbacks like the lack of apps and poor battery life.

Ed Baig of USA Today also gives the Pre a thumbs up, but also notes the lack of apps and battery life. Nonetheless, he says the Pre “stacks up well against Apple’s blockbuster device, and in some ways even surpasses it… Palm has delivered a device that will keep it in the game and give it a chance to star in it.”

The big granddady of reviewers, the Wall Street Journal‘s Walt Mossberg, is the most measured, giving a positive review but saying Palm has some catching up to do, especially if the gen-3 iPhone is announced next week.

“The Pre is a smart, sophisticated product that will have particular appeal for those who want a physical keyboard,” says Mossberg. “It is thoughtfully designed, works well and could give the iPhone and BlackBerry strong competition — but only if it fixes its app store and can attract third-party developers.”

In April, I got terribly excited about Flight Control, an air traffic control arcade-oriented ‘management’ game. The premise is simple: drag aircraft to landing areas. The reality is an intense arcade game where game over is a blink of an eye away.

Recently, I’d heard rumors of updates. But with the original game such a fantastic, simple and polished production, there was the worry that it’d be ruined under a pile of new features. That worry went away on playing Flight Control 1.2, which keeps the original’s gameplay intact but introduces two new airfields and new craft.

The beachside resort is the first new airfield, adding water landings to the mix. Initially, this seems little different to the original game, but the number of craft ramps up rapidly and the revised landing layout is tougher than the original’s.

The real star, though, is the intense and absurdly tricky aircraft carrier level. Military jets move just a tad faster than anything else, and you’re soon not only juggling that, but also a surprising twist when you realise what happens to landing areas on a moving ocean… Frankly, we’ll be shocked to see 10,000+ landing scores on this map for some time to come.

Overall, this is a triumphant update—a classic iPhone game made even better. The fact that it’s still under a dollar [App Store link], for a game that betters most other handheld titles out there, just goes to show what great value Apple’s platform can be for gamers.

TIPS: If you’ve any tips for dealing with the new airfields and getting high scores, please post in the comments below.

What it is: A wee utility for downloading web-page grabs.

Why it’s good: Web Snapper enables you to save unbroken grabs of a website in a variety of formats, exactly as they appear in your browser. This beats direct printing to PDF from the likes of Safari, which rarely retains styling, and Web Snapper also betters its rivals, due to its excellent interface. (That said, if you’re counting the pennies, take a look at donationware effort Paparazzi!, which offers broadly similar functionality.)

Where to get it: Web Snapper is available from the Tasty Apps website, and is priced $14.99.

The first question that should leap to mind is: “Why on earth is CoM reviewing Windows?” Frankly, for many professionals, we have no choice. Many of us have to use Windows software in the course of our jobs, or at a minimum use web applications that require that bane to open standards developers everywhere: Internet Explorer.

There’s no easy way to do this, so lets just rip off the band-aid and see if there’s a scab underneath.

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.

What it is: Star Walk is the official mobile astronomy guide for the International Year of Astronomy (IYA 2009), a $5 app for iPhone and iPod Touch that makes enjoyment of the celestial universe easier and possibly more enjoyable than anything outside a professional telescope.

Vito Technology, developers of the app, recently updated this popular title with improved existing features and several new functions. The new version (1.5) has even more striking graphics, enhanced speed, more images and a greater depth of information than the release version, which has already spent more than 4 months in the Top 25 paid apps of iTunes’ App Store.

Why it’s cool: Star Walk not only gives you a reliable guide to the present night sky based on your current location, it lets you change perspectives to locations thousands of miles away. It can also take you back in time to look at different events (such as eclipses) in the sky on specific dates; view lunar phases and learn about the discovery of constellations’ images and the reason for their shape. Use the super cool ‘infra-red’ night mode for easy outdoor stargazing without adding your device’s bright lighting to the ambient environment.

The new version has been improved with more stars and constellations to look at, with better and more precise images, more reliability and more speed.

The app makes stunning use of the iPhone accelerometer to change your perspective or point of view with just a swipe of the screen and provides zooming capabilities to allow you to travel in to deep space to find out the state of our knowledge of the outer universe.

New Features in the current version include:

♦ constellations on & off setting
♦ sounds on & off setting – but don’t turn them off; they are way cool!
♦ magnitude selection (allows you to show only stars with chosen brightness)
♦ spatio-temporal bookmarks – must admit to still learning about this one
♦ pictures of all constellations (from 10 upgraded to 110)

I’ve been playing with Star Walk for a couple weeks now and it’s definitely become a favorite app to use for stargazing as well as to show off some of my iPhone’s capabilities to friends and curious strangers.

Where to get it: $5 at the App Store.

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: Think social media is a kick in the pants? Big twitter and Facebook fan, are you? Well, you may want to consider upping your game with Foursquare, a newish social media app/game for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Foursquare feeds the social, yet competitive spirit in users, who leverage the location-aware functionality of Apple’s mobile devices to let friends and others on the network know where they go, what they do and what they dig in 12 major US metropolitan areas (so far).

Why it’s good: The built-in gaming aspect of Foursquare lets users earn points for checking in at different places around the city and giving tips on what makes those places so cool (get the curry duck at Thep Phanom, for example). By hitting different spots and making combinations of recommendations, players can unlock “badges” and become a “Mayor” of their city.

By keeping up with and adding friends, users get to leverage the collective knowledge about a city into lists of cool things they have done and cool things they want to do.

Users can check in by logging on to accounts through a mobile browser, directly from within the app itself or by texting their location from a mobile phone.

Whare to get it: Foursquare is free and available for download now at the App Store.

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 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.

Phonesuit’s MiLi Power Pack will free you — in style — from the tyranny of needing to recharge your iPhone every night, or after say, every five hours of serious use.

The casual iPhone user probably doesn’t need a MiLi Power Pack, which, at $80 is a not-insignificant investment in extra power, especially if one tends to be in the habit of recharging the device overnight on a daily basis.

However, power users, who have adopted the iPhone as their primary telephone, or who spend a lot of time using it to surf the web, pull up Google maps, send lots of email, are into serious gaming, use it as a constant music player, or take and edit lots of photographs — those users will love having a MiLi Power Pack on hand.

Read on to find out why.