Mac Reviews

Back in 2005, I reviewed the iCub, the first “digital lifestyle” product from French audiophile company Focal-JMlab. It was a unique product with excellent performance and great design. Its biggest drawback, for many people, was that it was too general in its focus: Rather than a dedicated iPod or computer speaker system, it was a subwoofer, an amplifier, and a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) in a compact package that you could use in many configurations. The price—$750 without satellite speakers—also put it out of reach of many consumers.

Focal’s follow-up to the iCub is the $599 Focal XS, and while it’s still not inexpensive, it’s nevertheless a more affordable and a more focused product, offering a Mac-centric design along with features specifically designed for iPods and computers.

iMac inspired
It’s obvious that the XS’s design was inspired by the look of Apple’s current iMac. The two satellite speakers each feature a weighted base finished in glossy black; an angled, brushed-metal stand that echoes those on the iMac and Apple’s Cinema Displays; and a black enclosure with aluminum trim and a black-mesh grille. Similarly, the subwoofer enclosure is matte black with aluminum trim and a glossy-black face. Taken as a whole, the XS is one of the more attractive computer or iPod speaker systems I’ve seen, and few look as good next to Apple’s current hardware.

Each of the XS’s satellites, derived from Focal’s Solo6 monitors, is 4.75 inches tall, 3.6 inches wide, and 3.4 inches deep and hosts a 3-inch midrange driver and a 0.75-inch tweeter. (Including the stand, the total height of each satellite is 12.8 inches.) The satellites connect to the subwoofer via 5.5-foot, thick, cloth-covered cables.

The right-hand satellite’s base features an iPod dock using Apple’s Universal design; eight dock adapters are included for older iPods. (Newer iPods and both iPhone models ship with their own dock adapters.) Although the system isn’t officially “Made for iPhone,” in my testing both iPhone models worked well except for audible interference when the original iPhone accessed the EDGE network.

In front of the dock cradle are power and volume buttons, and on the back of the base are an auxiliary-input minijack (for connecting another analog source), a USB port, and a Sync/Audio switch (more on the latter two features below). Although a white, backlit ring around the power button blinks when you change the volume, there’s no visible volume level. Also missing is a headphone jack.

The XS’s subwoofer is fairly compact at just 10.2 inches tall, 9.1 inches wide, and 13.75 inches deep (16 inches deep if you include the necessary clearance for cables in the back). It hosts a 6.5-inch speaker driver, as well as a 70-Watt amplifier for the sub, two 30-Watt amps (one for each satellite), and a DAC—a Burr Brown model, for the audio geeks out there—for converting your computer’s USB audio to an analog signal. On the back of the sub are the two speaker connectors, a power-cable jack, a power switch, and a dial for setting the subwoofer level.

Simple setup
The XS is easy to set up. Each of the two speaker cables fits into only one of the two jacks on the subwoofer, so you can’t accidentally mix up the left and right channels. Focal includes the necessary USB cable for connecting your computer to the system; once you do, you just go to the Sound pane of System Preferences and select FOCAL XS in the Output screen. (Your Mac’s volume buttons control the level of audio going from your computer to the XS.) Focal also includes a stereo miniplug cable for connecting another audio source; for example, a TV or another media player.

As with most iPod speaker systems, you simply put your player in the dock cradle and press play to listen. However, because the XS connects to your computer via USB, the dock cradle can also be used to sync your iPod with iTunes. And unlike many other speaker systems that include a data connection, the XS provides a way for you to decide whether your docked iPod should play music or sync: the aforementioned Sync/Audio switch. When the switch is set to Audio, you can listen to your iPod’s music; when set to Sync, your iPod goes into sync mode and shows up in iTunes on your Mac. (If you’re using the XS as a computer speaker, Sync mode automatically switches your Mac’s audio output to the Mac’s own speaker; once you shift back to Audio mode, your Mac’s audio automatically switches back to the XS.) In either mode, Sync or Audio, your iPod is charged while in the dock cradle.

This Sync/Audio switch is a useful feature that too few systems provide; you don’t even have to remove your iPod from the cradle when changing modes. However, the feature would have been even more convenient if the switch were located in the front or on the top of the speaker base; I found the switch to be awkward to reach given its placement on the back of the base.

Another nice feature is that all three possible audio sources—iPod, USB, and auxiliary—are mixed together, so you don’t have to swap cables or flip switches whenever you want to listen to a different source. It also means you can hear your computer’s alerts and other audio while listening to your iPod. However, in my testing, audio from a docked iPod drowned out my Mac’s audio—set to full volume—when both were playing. (iPod audio level cannot be adjusted, as the XS gets line-level audio from the iPod’s dock-connector port.)

Xcellent Sound
You’d hope that a $600 iPod speaker system would sound good, and the XS doesn’t disappoint in this category, performing more like a small home stereo than a set of “computer” speakers. Audio is balanced, with very good—and quite neutral—treble detail and midrange, as well as solid bass response down to around 70Hz. (There’s a slight dip in response between 120Hz and 100Hz, which I’m assuming to be roughly the system’s crossover frequency—where the audio signal is split between the satellites and the subwoofer.) At lower volumes, the bass isn’t especially powerful, but it’s tight and balanced with the rest of the audio spectrum. At louder volumes, however, you’ll want to set the subwoofer’s bass level carefully, based on your listening area, to avoid boominess. There are no other tone controls.

Stereo separation and imaging are likewise excellent, in part due to the ability to put up to 11 feet of space between the left and right satellites. And unlike many of the larger iPod/computer speakers I’ve tested, the XS sounds very good both from across the room and while sitting at your desk. Overall, it’s one of the best-performing iPod/computer speaker systems I’ve tested.

It’s also worth noting that the XS is designed to be relatively green: When in standby mode, it uses less than 2W of power.

On the other hand, the included remote is quite basic, including only power, volume, play/pause, back, and forward functions, and using “bubble”-style buttons that provide little tactile feedback. While I liked the internal magnet that’s just strong enough to let you store the remote on either satellite stand, I found the remote’s infrared signal to be on the weak side: The remote worked adequately from across a room, but if I moved too far to the left or right of the sensor (located on the front of the right-hand satellite’s base), reception suffered.

Macworld’s buying advice
The XS costs quite a bit more than most iPod/computer speakers out there, but it’s an excellent aesthetic match for Apple’s current hardware; provides some of the best audio you’ll get from a set of computer speakers; and, by letting you listen to your Mac’s digital-audio signal, your iPod or iPhone, and another audio source, is also very versatile. If you’d like something that looks and sounds great at your desk or from across the room, this is an impressive system. Indeed, it’s one of our favorite iPod accessories of 2008.

[via Macworld]

Hardware Ipod, speaker

TypeIt4Me expands your abbreviations as you type, and works in all applications, not just one. It also lets you define meaningful abbreviations, so you can type them naturally, as part of your writing, without memorizing - or reaching for - obscure ctrl-cmd-xyz combinations.

Born in 1989, TypeIt4Me is still a teenager youthful 20 in human years, yet old & mature in Mac years.

No matter how much you type, I’ll save you wear and tear on those wrists & fingers.

• Never type your full name or email signature again;

• Never hunt around for that standard contract clause;

• Type a short abbreviation and have it expand to a word, a phrase, even several pages worth of text (with pictures, too);

• Trigger AppleScripts with your abbreviations instead of reaching for a menu or pressing obscure keyboard combinations.

Anytime you enter text in your Mac by typing it at the keyboard, TypeIt4Me can help you do it faster and more accurately. First you define a number of abbreviations and the full text entries that they represent, then you watch the Mac expand them on the fly even as you continue typing.

New in version 4.1:

TypeIt4Me 4.1 provides one new feature: a filter field just under the list of clippings in the system prefs panel:

Typing text in it will filter the list of abbreviations to show only those which include the typed text in either the abbreviation or the clipping.

For example:

Gives me:

System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.4 or later

System Support:
PPC/Intel

$27.00 Shareware

For more information, visit:
http://ettoresoftware.com/EttoreSoftware/About_TypeIt4Me.hl

[via AppleLink]

Software utilities

Geneforge 5: Overthrow is the final installment in Spiderweb Software’s Geneforge saga, a series of fantasy-themed role-playing games. The Geneforge saga features enriched story lines, open-ended gameplay, and multiple endings, but lacks graphical sophistication or a quality soundtrack. With Geneforge 5, the developers have crafted a strong ending note to the series, but the game’s main problem is also its main selling point: it looks and plays like a game released 15 years ago.

The Geneforge saga revolves around the rise and fall of an extremely powerful race of magicians known as Shapers who have the power to create sentient beings to do their bidding. The earlier games in the series deal with the subsequent rebellion as some of the sentient beings were pissed off about the whole being-controlled-by-the-Shapers thing. Geneforge 5 allows you to play as part of the rebellion or an ally of the Shapers. Through your journey, you’ll work with different sects, go on quests, choose sides, as well as learn close-combat, magic, and creature-creating abilities.

Geneforge 5 reminds me of Blizzard’s Diablo series, which divides characters into different class types, features a distant third person isometric perspective, and also tasks the character with hoarding lots of dropped loot in their pursuit of some goal. Of course, holding certain items will encumber you in combat, so you also have to choose what loot you grab carefully.

Real-time adventure mode switches to turn-based combat mode when you encounter enemies, something that happens constantly unless you opt to avoid them. The combat uses a classic system involving items, spells, and creations as your tools of destruction. In a repetitive pattern, you’ll encounter the same poorly animated worms and troll-like creatures in the various dungeons you explore. The AI in the game is challenging and you’ll want to quicksave often because you’ll likely die several times the first time through an area.

The game allows you to use diplomacy and stealth in certain situations, but as any RPG-fan will tell you, the easiest way to gain experience is to level up through combat and quests. That means you’ll get used to seeing that same firebolt animation hundreds of times in a given session playing Geneforge 5.

Various maps let you see which of the dozens of areas you’ve visited in the game’s progress, and a green outline denotes if you’ve cleared an area. The journal feature is also helpful to keep track of your quests, and the item, spell, and weapon menus are easy to use.

Since the mythology of Geneforge is built around the magical Shapers, when selecting a class you’ll want to pick something that has strong shaping abilities. But the Shaper creatures aren’t particularly innovative in terms of gameplay—the pets that you create are similar to ones you’d find in other RPGs. So despite all the in-game text about evolving creatures and perfecting control, the shaped creatures look and feel worn. “Evolving” your creatures involves maxing out their stats as you gain experience, much like you would enhance your spells and weapons. Their appearance, actions, and use don’t alter save on a superficial level. Your “shaping” skills are limited to cookie-cutter creatures like dinosaurs and trolls, and then watch them change color as they get stronger.

I’m new to the Geneforge series, and the story and gameplay took a while for me to get into, as my character kept on going in an out of amnesia and my guide didn’t speak in complete sentences (which was intended to convey she too was just waking up from control by the Shapers). There are multiple paths, sects, and ways to solve a problem and the lack of a linear plot may turn off some players. Simply, there are so many plots, subplots, and characters to keep track of that only dedicated RPG fans won’t be turned off. While the lack of graphical sophistication lends the game to an old school feel, the monotonous environments and unidentifiable characters make it hard to feel attachment to the world. There is plenty of text to get through to get the full experience, so the game feels sluggish coming out of the gates, but rewards players who stick with it.

The game will take you many hours to play, and that’s only with one character. With nine classes, differing sects that open up different maps, and dozens of endings, the complete experience requires an investment not in hours, but days.

Macworld’s buying advice You have to give Spiderweb credit—the Geneforge series goes toe-to-toe with bigger publishers and humbly, but adeptly delivers quality gameplay and story. At $28, it won’t cost you much to check out. The hint book costs an additional $7 through Spiderweb’s online store, which is quite helpful for some of the more difficult puzzles and if you want to learn how to unlock some of the different endings. Geneforge 5: Overthrow is definitely a niche game, and therefore hard to recommend to a wide audience. If you enjoy deep, long RPGs with a complex storyline and love old-school turn-based combat then Geneforge 5 will make you nostalgically satisfied, like watching an old 80s movie would. If you’re a casual gamer, not an RPG fan, or don’t have several days to invest to understanding the Shaper society, then you’ve probably stopped reading this review paragraphs ago.
[via Macworld]

Software games

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Here I presents you 8 twitter applications for Mac OS X based on popularity, downloads and ratings on MacUpdate, Version Tracker and i use this

Twitterrific ($14.95)

Twitterrific is a fun application that lets you both read and publish posts or “tweets” to the Twitter community website. The application’s user interface is clean, concise and designed to take up a minimum of real estate on your Mac’s desktop.

TwitterPod (Free)

TwitterPod is a Twitter client with message store capability. The messages by your friends and by yourself will all be stored and displayed on an easy-to-navigate window.

Twucket (Free)

Twucket is a new Twitter client for Mac OS X Leopard. It’s designed to use a minimal amount of screen real estate, so you can keep an eye on your Twitter feed in a window small enough to leave open all the time.

Tototl (Free)

Tototl is aimed to provide a lightweight and easy to use desktop client for the Twitter Service on the Mac OSX Platform.

twhirl (Free)

twhirl is a desktop client for the popular microblogging platform Twitter that builds on the very cool Adobe AIR runtime. AIR allows desktop software development using popular web techniques like XHTML/CSS or Flash/Flex. twhirl requires the most recent version of AIR (beta 3) to be installed on the client computer.

NatsuLion (Free)

NatsuLion is a simple Twitter client for Mac OSX Leopard.

Its goals are the follows:

• Be simple
• Feature icons
• Easy to use for Twitter light users

Jetwit (Free)

Jetwit is a simple application for posting messages to Twitter, Facebook and displaying them as a Skype mood text.

Syrinx (Free)

Syrinx is a free, customizable Twitter client with a strong, efficient workflow. Experience your tweets in color by customizing the background colors or using the built in themes. Keep track of unread tweets using the intuitive new bookmarking system. Search your tweets to find what you missed. Now with Growl support, and a new Friends window.

Software twitter

One newly excavated ribcage to go please, hold the glass shards and nails.

Imagine that you’re living on the tough streets of the big city, just trying to liberate someone from their hard-earned cash when you accidentally “fall on some bullets.” A visit to a regular hospital is out of the question. That’s where an amateur surgeon comes in.

You play a pizza boy with a penchant for surgery in the first 17+ rated game to appear in the App Store–mostly for violence and profanity and a lot of references to drugs and drinking. It’s also the first game from Adult Swim, a more complete version of the short, web-based freebie.

The game starts as you accidentally run over a hobo who turns out to be a disgraced doctor. He urges you to slice him open with your pizza cutter and do a little tinkering, and before you know it, you’re on-call for drunks, vagrants, lowlifes, and people who generally aren’t seen in the surgical ward.

You’ll be using your faithful pizza-cutter as a scalpel, your stapler to make stitches, your cigarette lighter to cauterize wounds, along with plenty of other makeshift medical tools. You’ll find out how to use these through trial and error, although there is a rudimentary help screen to give you a few tips. With the pizza-cutter, you’ll trace your finger along a dotted line to make an incision, with the tongs you’ll gently tug out foreign items by slowly dragging your finger across the screen.

However, sometimes the game doesn’t clearly explain how to use complicated items. For instance, you’re supposed to use a corkscrew by gesturing in a circle… but it seems to rarely work. Your patient’s screams will let you know you’re doing something wrong, but you’ll have to point and drag until you find the correct way to advance.

The first few medical tasks include removing bullets, broken glass, and porcupine quills from internal organs with your tongs, but soon you’ll be delving deeper into someone’s innards with a chainsaw in an effort to discover what’s wrong. With 30 different patients to operate on, it provides plenty of gameplay and gets more challenging with each new surgery.

The dialogue is funny, and things like using an Etch-a-Sketch as an x-ray make DIY surgery fun. You’ll find yourself eager to get the next victim, er… patient on the table as quickly as possible.

THE BOTTOM LINE Amateur Surgeon full of the Adult Swim brand of adult humor. It’s a rare entertainment release; comedy and gameplay are equally good. COMPANY: Adult Swim CONTACT: www.adultswim.com PRICE: $4.99 REQUIREMENTS: iPhone or iPod Touch with 2.0 software update.
[via MacLife]

iPhone games

Xylescope not only helps in understanding and utilizing web standards, it also uses web standards to achieve its magic. Xylescope’s source views are taking advantage of Safari’s rendering engine to achieve their unique formatting.

While Xylescope transparently converts source code into richly structured HTML, the formatting of the source views is completely governed by style sheets that can be modified by the user! Every single detail of the way source code is presented is completely under your control. This might seem mind-boggling at first but you will soon become familiar with the new power it provides.

Review by MacApper

Cultured Code’s Xyle scope retails for $19.95 and you can download a free trial from their site. It is a wonderful tool for anyone learning CSS, or anyone who just wants to see how others do CSS, wishing to improve their own. It is not, however, a CSS editor and should not be compared to one. For actual editing purposes, it is mainly only used to do the finishing touches of Web pages.

Read the full review here

More info and purchase Xyle Scope

Software css, web development

LogMeIn connects you to your desktop from anywhere in the world. What a rush!

The iPhone is a small computer in your pocket. But what if you need access to your actual computer–the one you left at home or the office? Maybe there’s a file you need to view, a program you need to run, or even a machine that needs troubleshooting. Whatever the case, LogMeIn Ignition makes that connection from afar.

The iPhone version of the popular remote-desktop service accesses your system (or a consenting friend’s) remotely. Once connected, you get complete control over the machine, just as though you were sitting in front of it. Of course, you have to operate within the crowded confines of the iPhone’s smallish screen and work without a physical keyboard or mouse. LogMeIn offers good alternatives to those devices, and except for a few bugs and input issues, it expertly handles virtual networking computing (VNC).

You’ll need to install software on the remote computers, then enter your LogMeIn password and computer password to connect. An on-screen keyboard easily translates key input, and Windows users can send Alt-Tab and Ctrl-Alt-Del commands. However, we couldn’t get similar application-swapping and force-quit commands to work on Macs.
Mouse control is trickier. By default, LogMeIn employs a screen-moving method; the mouse pointer stays fixed in the center of the iPhone, and the desktop scrolls underneath it as you drag around with your finger. To click a menu on the remote computer, you drag the menu to the pointer rather than the pointer to the menu. It sounds backwards, but it’s effective in practice. (Or you can switch to a traditional mouse-movement style.)
You can zoom in and out on the desktop with quick, familiar finger-pinches. The only real navigation problem is scrolling within documents; you’re supposed to use a “two-finger drag” to approximate a mouse wheel, but we just couldn’t get this to work well.

We also encountered frequent “low memory” messages when starting LogMeIn, and the program often crashed shortly after connecting to our remote desktop. Fortunately, an iPhone reboot seemed to solve these issues, at least temporarily.
LogMeIn Ignition supports Edge, 3G, and Wi-Fi connections, and in our tests it worked smoothly over all three (though EDGE was a bit sluggish at times). Even with the bugs, it’s an incredibly handy tool for your iPhone arsenal.

THE BOTTOM LINE

A no-brainer for existing LogMeIn users and an attractive option for everyone else, LogMeIn Ignition puts your (remote) desktop in the palm of your hand.

LogMeIn Ignition 1.1.85
COMPANY: LogMeIn
CONTACT: www.logmein.com
PRICE: $29.99
REQUIREMENTS: iPhone or iPod touch with 2.0 software update.

[via MacLife]

iPhone remote, utilities

Some day very soon, all of us are going to have to sit down and figure out just what constitutes the perfect iPhone app. I mean, setting aside such trivialities like what genre an app belongs to or how much it costs, we can certainly agree that there are certain attributes that set apart an ideal iPhone app from some of the more standard fare that litters the App Store. Can’t we?

For starters, the app would need to be designed specifically for the iPhone—there’s no room for half-hearted ports in our pantheon of great iPhone apps. And that app would also have to take advantage of the things that make Apple’s mobile devices special—that means exploiting the touch screen, the accelerometer, the whole ball of wax. The graphics would have to measure up, of course, and the sound would have to be superb. Finally, the perfect app would be simple to use—you should be able to tap it and get down to business without too much reflecting about what it was exactly that the developer had in mind when the app was still on the drawing board.

I’m not sure that the perfect iPhone app exists just yet. But the above paragraph comes perilously close to describing Rolando, the alarmingly addictive iPhone and iPod touch game from app-making powerhouse Ngmoco.

Roll On, You Rolandos: In Rolando, you’ve got to get the circular, fun-loving Rolandos from Point A to Point B without losing them to the clutches of Shadow creatures. Using finger gestures on the iPhone’s touch screen helps control the action.

In many ways, Rolando is a classic side-scrolling platform game, in which you move your pieces from Point A to Point B, overcoming obstacles, gathering up items, and avoiding menacing bad guys as you try to reach the finish line. Knock off one level, and you move on to the next challenge.
In the case of Rolando, that means you’re responsible for the safety of the Rolandos, little round guys who just want to roll around, jump, and otherwise enjoy the verdant splendor of Rolandoland. Unfortunately, their gambols have been interrupted by invading Shadow creatures—sinister dark boxes whose very touch proves deadly to Rolandos. Your mission is to roll and jump the Rolandos to safety, picking up gems and rescuing drowsy members of the Rolandoland royal family along the way, all while avoiding Shadow Boxes that lumber, fly, and otherwise impede your path.

Fortunately, you have a whole arsenal of finger commands and the iPhone’s built-in accelerometer at your disposal. You can tap on a particular Rolando to control it (or better still, use your finger to draw a box around multiple Rolandos to control all of them at once). Tilting your iPhone or iPod touch causes the Rolandos to roll in that direction. (Except for the decadent members of the Rolando Royal Family, apparently — the King Rolando must be shoved around by other Rolandos, and the Prince Rolando ping-pongs back and forth every time he hits an object, amping up the difficulty of solving levels when royalty is involved.) Drag a finger upwards, and the selected Rolandos will jump. You’ll also come across assorted buttons, wheels, elevators, and other doodads, that you can press, drag, or push with a finger to help your Rolandos reach their final destination.

Because Rolandos are usually scattered throughout a given level, you’re not bound to only pay attention to the balls you have in your sights. Tiny icons let you know where other Rolandos are scattered on the screen; tap one, and you’ll jump to that area. Or you can always use two fingers to drag yourself to a new part of the level so that you can get the lay of the land.

You get points for each Rolando you deliver to safety as well as any diamonds you happen to pick up along the way. You score bonus points if you can complete a level in the allotted time limit (though you suffer no penalty if you go over time). In a week’s worth of playing Rolando, I have never delivered any of the Rolandos to safety in time to receive a bonus—not even close. I imagine that this is because I am terrifically unskilled.

The only time you suffer any sort of consequences in Rolando is when you’ve gotten enough of your Rolandos killed—either by the cruel hand of the Shadow creatures or by driving them into some equally deadly obstacle—so that you’re unable to complete the level. Even then, the game lets you start from the beginning of that level—or a balloon-festooned checkpoint if there’s one of those—instead of hurling you back to square one. Completing a level opens up new ones—there’s 36 in all, spread across four lands (which unfold in map form whenever you launch the game). So things never get too old.

Help Is On the Way: While challenging, Rolando also helps explain things with in-game tutorials.

Gameplay is challenging without being frustrating. It took me several tries to get past the Mount Rollmore stage in Honeycup Meadows, but when I finally did, the satisfaction equaled most every professional achievement I’ve tallied in my working career. Ngmoco includes helpful tutorials in each stage, with tips on how to bend the Rolandos’ movements to your will. Even better, you can opt to skip these tutorials if, like me, you find yourself repeating a stage frequently enough to commit the dialogue to memory.
We also tested Rolando with the seven-year-old daughter of one of Macworld’s editors. The game’s music and visual style—those Rolandos are just so cute—wowed her, and she got the hang of controlling the Rolandos almost immediately. But the levels require enough problem-solving ability that really young kids won’t be able to do much more than watch their Rolandos bop around aimlessly.

In some ways, Rolando is just about the perfect casual game. If you’re interrupted in the middle of a game, just hit the iPhone’s button and your exact place will be saved. (A little number will even appear by the Rolando icon on your home screen reminding you just how many Rolandos you still have alive.) I was on the subway headed home from work, trying to figure my way through Altitude Adventure when I noticed I was about to miss my stop—by hitting the home button I was able to save my exact place in the game without losing a single Rolando to those hideous Shadow creatures.

The music that accompanies Rolando is peppy without being annoying. The sound effects are clever, and the game is filled with the sort of little touches that are rapidly becoming the hallmark of Ngmoco games. As with Topple, another Ngmoco offering where the expressions on the playing pieces reflect the action taking places, the Rolandos become visibly nervous if they get to close to the shadow creatures. They grimace when you have them exert themselves. And they look bored if you spend too much time concentrating on other pieces.

The game is not without its flaws. I find the Royal Spikey Commandos—Rolandos who can stick to and climb up walls—a little difficult to control. And sometimes when I’m swiping my thumb upwards to make a Rolando jump, I inadvertently activate another Rolando. This could just be my special burden—I am notoriously ham-handed—but I suspect other players might share my occasional frustration.

Still, it’s clear after just a few minutes playing around with Rolando, that Ngmoco has clearly thought through this game and how to make the most out of the iPhone’s unique features. Even at a premium price, Rolando is a must-have game and a stellar example of what you can do with the iPhone platform if you just put your mind to it.

Rolando is compatible with any iPhone or iPod touch running the iPhone 2.1 software update. (Buy it on the App Store.)

[via Macwordl]

iPhone games

3D support is one of the major upgrades you’ll find in this version of After Effects. Of course, After Effects has been creating 3D environments for years, but the individual elements making up those environments were actually 2D, simply animated in a 3D space. The new After Effects, however, can import true 3D objects contained in the PSD files created by Adobe Photoshop Extended. A 3D object—a car, a plane, a gun, a purse, or whatever—will keep its 3D depth as you animate a camera around it, apply lights, and other effects. One caveat: After Effects can’t model in 3D, and it doesn’t apply advanced lighting effects, such as interactive reflections or specular highlights, to objects. These features are still the realm of dedicated 3D modeling/rendering programs, but After Effects’ 3D approach will still pay off handsomely for tons of different projects, letting animators skip the learning curve and hassle of using dedicated 3D software.

After Effects CS4 also offers much-improved motion tracking—for example, you can place a 2D image on a moving surface, such as a billboard on the side of a truck. Motion tracking isn’t new to After Effects, but while its earlier rendition worked fine for simple projects, it could fall apart in a few scenarios. If tracked pixels moved out of the camera’s frame, for instance, or if they got blurry, lost contrast, or became distorted as your tracking subject or the camera changed orientation, motion tracking could lose its effectiveness. The new After Effects, on the other hand, includes a standalone program called Mocha that handles many of those tracking challenges in stride. Mocha does this by using better edge detection technology and also by letting you draw multipoint mattes around objects that are important in the scene, helping Mocha determine where to focus its attention. The end result is that many tough tracking projects can now be accomplished in a few minutes, but the drawback to Mocha is that it requires you to learn a new interface and import your tracking data back into After Effects. Mocha isn’t rocket science, however, and going through a couple of tutorials will be enough to get you up to speed.

Another set of new features in After Effects helps you stay organized and efficient as you work with large, complex projects. A QuickSearch text box now appears in your Project and Composition panels, giving you a fast Spotlight-style keyword search that encompasses every element in your project. Begin typing the partial name of a composition in your Project window, and you’ll see everything else disappear but your matches. Type a layer name into the Composition panel, and you’ll see that layer showcased on the Timeline. Type in the name of an effect or a property, such as rotation or position, and you’ll see only the layers using that criteria, along with their relevant keyframes. What’s more, a new flowchart view can show all your nested compositions flowing into their parent compositions, helping you visualize how your project is organized.

Adobe has given After Effects many more nips and tucks as well. You’ll get a few more effects filters, such as Cartoon. There’s also metadata support, letting you search through metadata that came with your original media and then add your own. And now you can export your compositions to Flash, keeping layers and keyframes intact. The list of tweaks is long. Suffice to say that there are plenty of new tricks to interest long-time users in an upgrade.

Bottom Line

After Effects may be mature, but it’s hardly showing its age. Thanks to smart, relevant new features and upgrades, After Effects remains the gold standard for Mac motion graphics and compositing.

COMPANY: Adobe Systems, Inc.
CONTACT: www.adobe.com
PRICE: $999; $299 upgrade
REQUIREMENTS: Multicore Intel processor; Mac OS 10.4.11 or later

[via MacLife]

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Find Any File 1.0.2 is a free program for Mac OS 10.4 and later that lets you search for files on your disks, primarily on HFS formatted ones.

Contrary to Spotlight, it does not use a database but instead uses the file system driver’s fast search operations.

This lets you search for file properties such as name, dates, size, etc., but not for file content (use Spotlight for that)!
Find Any File can find files that Spotlight doesn’t, e.g. those inside bundles and packages and in inside folders that are excluded from Spotlight search (i.e. system files), and Find Any File is fast. Not always as fast as Spotlight, but faster than other, similar file search tools you might find for the Mac.

Features

Find Any File has a few hidden gems:

1. If you hold the Option key down while choosing Find, you are asked for an administrator password - and then Find Any File will restart with root permissions, being able to find really any file on your Mac’s volumes (something that Spotlight won’t do).

2. It sports a new hierarchical view for the found items. You can switch to it using Command-2 or click on the right little icon at the top of the results window.

3. You can save your entered searches to files (they’ll have the extension “.faf”). You can later open them again from within the Find Any File application, or you can double click them in the Finder - in the latter case the search will automatically start, unless you hold down the Option key while Find Any File opens the document.

Limitations

This tool’s design was inspired by the Classic Mac OS’ Find File application, hence its UI design might look a little old fashioned. And the Icons aren’t snazzy, either.

Using this tool on volumes that are not Mac (HFS, HFS+) formatted, including network volumes, may not work well - or even not at all. You’ll notice. This won’t change - it’s the nature of this program to depend on the efficient search operations designed for HFS volumes.

The user interface of this app gets sluggish when it’s performing a search. This is mostly out of my control, as this app is written in REALbasic, which has a rather unsatisfying multi-threading implementation.

Key Features:
• Can search as root user
• Saveable queries
• Folder view for results

New in version 1.0.2:
Move to Trash works now; volume selection is observed with root search and saved searches; results update after moving items.

System requirements:
Mac 10.4 or later

Freeware

For more information, visit:
http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/

Software search, utilities