| rss2email.ru |
 Все о праздниках ежедневно  |  ВирусВидео - лучшее из популярного  |  Скачивайте лучшие фильмы  |  Мужской журнал ManDay.RU  |
 |  TheAppleBlogTheAppleBlog, published by and for the day-to-day Apple user, is a prominent source for news, reviews, walkthroughs, and real life application of all Apple products. http://theappleblog.com рекомендовать друзьям >> |
- MacHeist Nano Bundle Unleashed…for Free
MacHeist announced its newest Mac app bundle, the MacHeist Nano. The traditional MacHeist software bundle is usually severely discounted and there has always been a price. But, for this one, they’re giving the software bundle for free.
MacHeist is offering six apps instead of the usual dozen or so it usually does with its regular offering…hence the “nano” part.
ShoveBox
(Retail: $24.95)
ShoveBox catches all those little scraps of information that you can’t act on now but would rather not forget. It sits in your menubar, waiting for you to drag in text, images, URL’s and more.
WriteRoom
(Retail: $24.95)
For people who enjoy the simplicity of a typewriter, but live in the digital world. WriteRoom is a distraction-free writing environment. Unlike the cluttered word processors you’re used to, WriteRoom lets you focus on writing.
Twitterrific
(Retail: $14.95)
Twitterrific is a fun application that lets you both read and publish posts or tweets to Twitter. The application’s user interface is clean, concise and designed to take up a minimum amount of real estate on your Mac’s desktop. This is from the same guys who brought us the Twitterrific iPhone app.
TinyGrab
(Retail: $14)
Harnessing the power of pre-existing and new OS screenshot taking capabilities, TinyGrab instantly uploads and allows you to share with a small URL — all in under 30 seconds.
Hords of Orcs
(Retail: $24.95)
Hordes of Orcs is a tower defense game in which you must build walls and lethal towers to defend your village from the Orcs emerging from, what the village elders call, "The Glowing Portal of Really Bad Things That We Should Have Bricked-Up a Long Time Ago." It’s made by Freeverse, the guys who made the popular Skee-ball and Flick Fishing iPhone apps.
Mariner Write
(Retail: $49.95)
Mariner Write is a powerful, yet streamlined word processor for Mac OS X. It’s for everyone from professional writers, to educators, students, to the average user. It’s also been touted by Macworld as the one of the best Microsoft Word alternatives.
This isn’t the full-blown MacHeist 4. This is a smaller bundle to hold us over for the next few months.
For those who don’t know about MacHeist, it’s a site that sells Mac OS X software. The unique thing is that the users are asked to complete certain challenges to get free and discounted applications and the software bundle grows as more customers purchase the bundle.
Переслать - Quick Look: Warhammer Online Mac Edition
Over the years, I've been forced to redefine my definition of "native" game clients for OS X. At first, I was a die-hard, nothing but true native code for me, thanks. Then, as the harsh reality of understanding that true native code is about as likely as Congress putting aside their differences and acting on what's best for the common man, in a moment of true despair I opined that maybe running games in Crossover wasn’t such a bad idea.
Now, the trend seems to be to use TransGaming's Cider, which in non-technical terms a wrapper game developers can use to bridge their Windows code over to OS X. It's not a "true" native client, but, since it doesn't require a virtual machine or the ritual sacrifices that seem to go along with getting games to run on Crossover, I can handle that. Warhammer Online, from EAMythic is the latest game to get ported. After a few months of beta, it was released October 26. Full disclosure: this isn’t a full review. I’ve only got about 15 hours or so of game play to base these observations on.
I've had decent luck with Cider ports, although my sample set of Sims 3 and Spore is a little small. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR) is definitely the most resource-intensive of the ports I've tried. For the most part, it worked fairly well. I have a brand-new MacBook Pro, but with only 2GB of RAM. I had enough stutters and jerks to prove to me that jumping to 4GB would be optimal, but it wasn't unplayable with 2GB, either.
Gameplay
Warhammer has two modes: one where you fight against the computer-controlled monsters (PvE), and one where you fight against other players (PvP). There are two sides, Order and Destruction, and they are locked in the age-old, time tried, cliché battle to control the lands. What I liked is you can earn the experience needed to level up in both modes — although there is a separate level called Renoun where you only earn in PvP.
The PvE quests are fairly trite, being mostly "go forth and kill me 10 of these." One nice variation is a Public Quest. When you go into an area, you’ll get a pop up to “kill x of this.” Any player in the area killing these contributes to the kill total. Participating in these earns you some influence you can use to buy better gear — almost all the gear upgrades I found were earned from either Influence or Renoun rewards.
There are also PvP quests relating to capturing enemy turf or killing other players. You can also play PvP scenarios, which are similar to a Team Fortress-type map. You'll go into a small area and need to fight other player for control of a few objectives. This is where I had the most fun. The battles are short, usually fairly intense, and last about 15 minutes. You can queue up for one with a press of a button. When enough players are queued up, the scenario will begin. When it's completed the game will return your previous location. Being able to gain levels doing this relieves some of the boredom attached to just running quests.
There are a couple of amusing bones EA has thrown to Mac players. All Mac players unlock an in-game title, “I’m a(n) Order/Destruction” depending on your faction. If PC/Mac people kill enough of each other, you can also unlock a secret title.
Competition
Warhammer's biggest competition on the Mac is World of Warcraft, and in many ways it's not a fair comparision. WoW has years of polish behind it and only has a PvE mode (the PvP stuff is more of a tack-on than a core game component as it is in WAR). There is a visual similarity between the two, but it's ironic. Warhammer Online is based on the old Game Designers miniatures game, which WoW borrowed from for its look. However, I found the look to not be a sharp as WoW, and the characters models were a little bland by today’s standards.
One of the benchmarks I’ve used when reviewing games to judge their elusive “fun” factor is how many times I bullcrap myself into thinking, “I’m just logging in to check one thing,” knowing full well I’m going to be in there for at least an hour. That about sums up my weekend with WAR. You can download a free, 10 day trial here. Existing customers, aka, yous Windoze folks, can download the client for free.
Переслать - Art or Virus? Symantec Villifies Spoof Apple "Trojan"
Security firm Symantec is warning computer users about a new Mac-specific Trojan that deletes files on the user’s hard drive, according to Techworld.com. It has dubbed the piece of malware “OSX.Loosemaque,” and uploaded a YouTube video of how it goes about its nefarious purpose.Basically, it’s a Space Invader clone wherein when you kill an alien, a file in your home folder is deleted. It looks like it’s evil — and designed to perform such a task without the knowledge of the Mac owner on which the program resides. But it isn’t. It’s an art project that clearly advertises its purpose and nature to all who would wish to use it.
The game, dubbed Lose/Lose, is the brainchild of Zach Gage, who created the program as part of an online art installation and released it for public download in September. It’s intended purpose is not to dupe unsuspecting gamers, but to pose questions about the relationship between killing in video games and real-life moral issues. Gage says as much in a statement on his web site:
By way of exploring what it means to kill in a video-game, Lose/Lose broaches bigger questions. As technology grows, our understanding of it diminishes, yet, at the same time, it becomes increasingly important in our lives.
Even if a user were to download the game from a different, less well-intentioned place, the game itself warns users right when it opens, stating that “Killing in Lose/Lose will likely result in files on your hard drive being deleted. You have been warned.” Of course, that doesn’t mean that an intelligent programmer couldn’t remove or change said message, and redistribute the game themselves with the intent of causing harm.
That’s what Symantec’s worried about, and why the firm decided to issue its warning about the so-called Trojan. Of course, the company took the opportunity to recommend installing security software as a means to protect against this kind of dangerous artistic expression, seeing as that’s the business it’s in.
Should you worry about this game or threats derived from it? Not unless you are one of the slim few whose retro Mac gaming addiction is so acute that you feel the need to hunt around the digital frontier in suspicious and shady locations looking for independent games of questionable quality and without any sort of legit distribution channels. Or if you happen to be a devoted patron of the arts, and therefore can’t resist the urge to download software you know full well will harm your computer and destroy your files, all for the sake of the artistic effect it has. In either case, anti-virus software won’t help.
Переслать
| rss2email.ru | отписаться: http://www.rss2email.ru/unsubscribe.asp?c=6893&u=24004&r=311667163 управление подпиской: http://www.rss2email.ru/manage.asp |
