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The Best Games on the Mac App Store Right Now
With the launch of the Mac App Store earlier today, you might be eager to find out what Mac games are available to waste your precious time. While the choices right now are quite limited (and you can find more engrossing games on the Mac Steam store), there are still some gems out there worthy of attention. Remember to check out our screencast walkthrough of the App Store if you’re not sure how to get these games.

1. The Incident ($2.99)

This game cost me many hours on the iPhone and iPad, and I’ve even spent a little time playing it on the big screen. But of all the iOS to Mac ports, this one is the best because of two things. First, it’s only $2.99. And second, it actually works better with keyboard controls than it does on a touchscreen. Use the arrow keys to move back and forth, and the space bar to jump as you avoid a growing mountain of falling debris. The 8-bit graphics and retro soundtrack give the game a great nostalgic feel for original NES fans.

2. Angry Birds ($4.99)

Who didn’t see this one coming? Despite the fact that Angry Birds’ control scheme doesn’t translate to the desktop quite as nicely as The Incident’s, this is still a very worthwhile port. Especially if you’ve yet to experience the game on any other platform, and want to see what all the fuss is about. Gameplay and levels are the same as in the iOS original: you flick birds at structures in an attempt to destroy the pigs that stole your eggs. It only sounds ridiculous if you’ve never played it. Birds are launched using the mouse or trackpad instead of via on-screen touch, which takes some getting used to, but turns out to be almost equally satisfying.

3. Precipice of Darkness ($3.99 per episode)

Penny Arcade is great, in case you weren’t aware. And the game Penny Arcade teamed up with Hothead Games to create is also great. If you’re a fan of Sam & Max, Maniac Mansion or Monkey Island, this is in that vein, and equally entertaining, but with added RPG elements. Episode 1 and 2 of the game are both available on the Mac App Store for $3.99 a piece, but that’s special 50 percent off launch pricing, so presumably each will cost you $8 when the sale ends. No better reason to buy now, in my opinion.

4. And Yet It Moves ($9.99)

The icon of this game might account for its poor sales performance so far on the Mac App Store, but it’s a mistake to judge this book by its cover. And Yet It Moves received widespread critical acclaim and a number of awards from the gaming community, and for good reason. It’s an innovative platformer with a physics-based twist that looks good and plays even better. You control not only your character, but the entire game world, rotating it left and right to move obstacles and change the way in which you can interact with objects. It’s challenging, but there’s no real penalty for dying and checkpoints are frequent, so it’s not terribly frustrating.

5. Zen Bound 2 ($4.99)

Zen Bound is another game that works best with a touch interface, like Angry Birds, but the Mac port has much to recommend it, including an amazing soundtrack and gorgeous visuals. And although getting used to twisting and turning the 3D wooden shapes in this contemplative puzzler with a mouse or trackpad is a little tricky, once you do get the hang of it you won’t miss the touch interface. Play this one full screen for a genuinely relaxing experience.

There are other games on the Mac App Store worthy of your attention right now, but these are the standout titles at launch in my opinion. I think it’ll be far more difficult to pare down to such a small list not too long from now, if the iOS App Store’s trajectory is any indication. What are your favorites so far?

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Twitter for Mac Review: The Bird Is Back
A new version of popular Twitter client Tweetie is finally here, launching today alongside Apple’s new Mac App Store. The updated application comes with a new, more official, name — Twitter for Mac. So, are the various changes to this highly popular application worth getting excited about?

To get the new app, you’ll first need to ensure that your Mac is updated to OS X 10.6.6. Once you are all up to speed, with the new Mac App Store installed, you can go ahead and download the updated application for free. You can’t just update your existing version of Tweetie.

When first launching the new Twitter for Mac application, it’s clear that this is no major UI overhaul. Using small but significant visual tweaks, Loren Brichter and the Twitter team have stayed true to what made the first Tweetie such a success: a simple and clean interface, lacking unnecessary distraction.

The most obvious change is the modified sidebar, which now sports a sleek translucent black look, along with two new icons — offering access to your lists and profile information respectively.

In Twitter for Mac, what was once a “New Tweet” button in Tweetie now offers up a menu of commonly used actions. These actions include tweeting, sending a direct message, navigating to a specific user, marking all tweets as read or accessing the application’s preferences. For advanced Twitter users, this is a welcome change, but having to click twice to compose a tweet may annoy some. Either way, customizable keyboard shortcuts are still here to please everyone.

Twitter for Mac now supports native retweets — just hover over a tweet in your timeline to see the retweet button. However, for those that like to add a short message of their own to a retweet, the option to repost or “quote” a tweet instead is still thankfully present (accessible by right-clicking on any tweet in your timeline).

Trending topics have also been introduced — click on the search icon and a list of what is trending worldwide will appear.

One of the most commonly requested features has finally been introduced, as users can now delete tweets within the application. To delete a tweet, just select the one you want removed and either right-click and select the appropriate option, or press command followed by the delete button.

Conversation management has also changed. In Tweetie, you could double-click on a message to see an entire conversation. No matter how deep into the conversation you delved, Tweetie always displayed a breadcrumb navigation history of your actions at the top of the application. Sadly, this handy navigation element has been removed in Twitter for Mac, replaced instead with just a single back button.

On the plus side, for those with newer touchpads on their Macs, gestures have been introduced — select a tweet, and three-finger swipe to the right to see the full discussion. If there’s no further conversation to display, a three-finger swipe will bring you to a user column for the person whose tweet you have highlighted. If there’s a link in the tweet, the swipe will open it in your default browser.

Remember in Tweetie when you wanted to send a tweet with a long URL? You had to click that ‘Shorten URL’ button. In Twitter for Mac you can just paste in any URL, no matter how long, and Twitter will do the hard work for you. The displayed character count for your tweet will already account for the URL being shortened. There doesn’t appear to be a way to turn auto-shortening off, which might be an issue for some.

Despite a few questionable changes, including the removal of the option to see if a user is following you or not, the features introduced to Twitter for Mac make for a huge overall improvement, which is made all the more enjoyable thanks to the applications newfound speed. Twitter for Mac is fast, three times faster according to Twitter. Switching from one account to the other, from your timeline, to your replies, is all super fast and fluid, and your feed updates in real- or near real-time.

Highs: Fast; clean, attractive and intuitive UI; free

Lows: Lacks some features power-users might miss

If you’ve just downloaded the Mac App Store, make this your first download. Even if you don’t use Twitter, this new client is a pretty good reason to sign up.

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Screencast: The Mac App Store in Action
Want to see how the new Mac App Store works, but you can’t because you’re at work, using an older version of OS X, or (gasp) a Windows user? Here’s a screencast with a complete rundown of how it looks and works on your Mac.

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First Impression of Mac App Store: Try it, It's Good.
The Mac App Store is here, and is now up and running on all three of my Snow Leopard-sporting machines. As you might expect, the experience is very much like what you get from the iOS App Store. But the Mac version has its differences, too.

First, let’s talk about the similarities. The Mac App Store looks a lot like the iOS version, especially the one you find on the iPad. Like the iOS App Store, the Mac store requires you to have and sign-in with an active Apple ID. You’ll need this to purchase and download free apps from the store, though your account doesn’t have to be associated with a credit card if you want to just download free apps or use iTunes gift cards. Promotional codes appear to also work, if you can get your hands on some.

Purchasing apps works much the same as on an iOS device, too. You click the item’s price and it will ask you for your Apple ID credentials, or begin downloading immediately if you’ve recently provided them, triggering an animation of the app’s icon jumping to your dock. Every app you download from the App Store will appear in the dock by default, though it actually resides in your Applications folder. There’s no way to turn this off, since the App Store lacks a preferences menu, but you can always just drag icons out of the dock after the fact. The app’s icon will show a loading bar as it downloads and installs, and will appear as normal once the operation is complete and you’re free to use it.

The fact that there is so little you can customize or change about the Mac App Store is indicative of the direction Apple seems to want to go with software. As with iOS, the goal is probably to provide a surface-level simplicity that reduces potentially confusing menu items to the absolute minimum. Many third-party apps that launched with the App Store seem to share this design philosophy, too.

Since the Mac App Store lacks its own dedicated preference menu, I initially thought users couldn’t limit access to it in the way they could the iTunes and iOS App Stores. Not so, since Mac App Store restrictions can be set using Parental Controls, found in OS X’s System Preferences, as shown in the screenshot below.

One of the best carry-overs from the iOS version of the App Store is the ability to install software on multiple machines. Software purchases on my iMac can easily be installed on my MacBook Pro or Mac mini just by “purchasing” it again on each of those machines with the same Apple ID. Alternatively, you can hit the “Purchased” icon at the top of the App Store interface to check what you’ve bought, and an install option will appear if you don’t yet have it on the machine you’re using. Unfortunately, you can’t transfer purchases from your iOS device to your Mac, so if you bought Angry Birds on your iPhone and your iPad, you still have to buy it again for OS X.

Note that only apps you purchased through the Mac App Store have this ability. While the App Store will recognize that you have iWork or iLife apps installed from before, for instance, trying to purchase these on other computers will actually result in a charge to your account, not just a free re-download.

One big difference many iOS users will notice is in pricing. Mac App Store prices tend to vary much more than those for iPhone and iPad apps, and tend not to reside around the $0.99 mark. Around $20 to $30 seems to be fairly common, and some software climbs as high as $80 or even $150. For now, at least, the introduction of the iOS model of software distribution hasn’t led to a similar pricing model.

I’ve yet to experience updating an app, since everything I’ve purchased so far is already up-to-date, but I suspect it won’t differ all that much from updating apps on the iPhone or iPad. And while it’s early days yet, I think the Mac App Store will be a success for Apple, considering I’ve already bought around three times more OS X software than I have during the past three months combined. How about you?

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Mac App Store Launches, Featuring Over 1,000 Apps
The Mac App Store officially launched today as promised, at around 5:30 a.m. Pacific time. Users can gain access to the new OS X software distribution platform by downloading and installing the Mac OS X 10.6.6 update, available either through Software Update or direct from Apple’s website (a combo updater should be available from Apple Support soon).

The new Mac App Store launches with more than 1,000 software titles already in its library, including software from Apple’s own iWork and iLife suites, and from major Mac software vendors like AutoDesk, Omni Group and others. iPhone App Store users will also recognize titles like Flight Control HD and The Incident from the mobile storefront.

Once you’ve installed the Mac OS X 10.6.6 update, the Mac App Store icon should automatically appear in your dock next to the Finder. As with the iOS App Store, you purchase software using your iTunes ID and password, and they are then downloaded and installed automatically. Charts are carried over from the iOS version, too, including Top Paid, Free and Grossing apps for the whole store and for individual categories.

We’ll be featuring ongoing coverage all day. Many early users are reporting problems with downloading apps, probably due to server congestion at Apple, so be patient. Go get it now and let us know what you think.

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