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- Count The Beats: Inspiration... two apps for the musician on the move
Filed under: Multimedia, Software, iPhone, App Store, Music
Recently I've been preparing to move home and finally did last weekend. Naturally I had to pack up all my musical gear, equipment and of course, my Mac. In the week leading up to the move, I've had my iPhone and nothing else. With no creative outlet and the pressure of looming project deadlines, I found myself scouting the app store for a fix to help me start fleshing out a few creative ideas.
This is what I found that worked well for me.
1. TonePad and TonePad Pro
The iTunes Store describes TonePad Pro as "...the easiest way to make music. Discover the inner musician in you. Create songs by simply touching." And this is exactly what I found. With a 16 x 16 matrix, and an easy-to-use user interface (literally start tapping your fingers and music is made), I found myself coming up with little melodies and tunes immediately. Although you only have the 16 x 16 matrix, to me, what initially seemed quite limiting soon became a boundary for creative focus.
You can save an unlimited number of tunes to listen back to, and upload them to a shared server where your buddies can check out what you've been musing. With the paid version, you can save your melodies into a ringtone that will sync back to your iPhone, too.
2. Flourish
Flourish is something a bit more immersive. While having a steeper learning curve, there's loads more to explore here. The user interface is really fresh and unique (especially for the iPhone), and presents a creative challenge in focusing your composition whilst giving you the space to try different approaches to what you are creating.
Basically Flourish represents musical phrases as physical loops:
-Record loops with expressive multi-touch keyboards.
-Generate percussive and melodic sequences.
-Build arrangements by ear or by eye.
-Select from a consonant collection of instruments.
-Sequence loops by connecting them in chain.
Check out the Flourish website for a few demo clips.
Let us know in the comments below what other apps for the iPhone / iPod Touch, or the Mac, that are inspiring you to make music.TUAWCount The Beats: Inspiration... two apps for the musician on the move originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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iPhone - App Store - Apple - ITunes - IPod Touch
Переслать - GDC 2010: Call of Duty: World at War Zombies postmortem
Filed under: Gaming, Retail, Software, Developer, iPhone, App Store
Russell Clarke of Ideaworks Game Studio hosted a post-mortem report near the end of the first day of GDC 2010 about Call of Duty: World at War Zombies for the iPhone. The game was one of the first big brand hits on the App Store -- it successfully brought a game mode from one of Activision's Call of Duty console games (originally developed by Treyarch) to Apple's handheld device. After a quick joke about how a "post-mortem" was an appropriate exercise for a game about zombies, Clarke got into the nuts and bolts of how Ideaworks went about adapting the game for the iPhone.
The most major feature of the game's development, he said, was the decision last year around this time to sit down and work on prototyping for about six weeks. Nowadays, there are a few successful first person shooters around the App Store, but last year, FPSes were still a new genre for the iPhone, so the team decided to really brainstorm how one would work on a touchscreen.
They started by looking at the original game developed by Activision and Treyarch. Zombies is a extra mode of Call of Duty: World at War that was developed as a "lunchtime project" -- a few developers threw it together on a whim, and enjoyed it so much that they released it as DLC, outside of the original game. So Ideaworks wanted to run with that vibe -- create a game that you could play on your lunch break, or squeeze into a few minutes. They did find that the App Store tended towards more casual and family games, but they didn't feel that the mature game could be successfully translated to a family-friendly format. Instead, they decided to stick with the blood and gore: "Activision," Clarke joked, "said we would have to learn to love our 17+ rating, and live with not releasing in every country in the world."
And they also wanted to create a game with "relaunchability," a term that a developer at Treyarch coined. "What keeps you relaunching the game," said Clarke, "is that, like most zombie games, you don't really win. You're just postponing your inevitable death." He also said that learning became a big function of the gameplay -- the game allows you to defend the same environment against zombies every time, so eventually you learn the best spots to make a stand, and so on.
Before development even started, they created a set of benchmarks in terms of performance and gameplay that they wanted to hit: Twenty zombies felt right for gameplay (you'd only be fighting 10 at any given time, but 10 more would be hanging around in the background), 20 FPS seemed like a good target for speed, 2000 triangles for graphics, and of course two thumbs ("the amount that most people have") for control.
The controls were probably the most interesting part of prototyping -- Clarke says his team really tried to brainstorm an interesting way to control an FPS on the iPhone. The problem, however, was that in an FPS game, you're doing three things (running, looking, and shooting), but you only have two thumbs to do them with. One prototype they created had you tilting the accelerometer around to move (while looking and shooting with two onscreen controls), but for some reason, that made everyone who tested it rather dizzy. In the end, they went with a compromise, including a few different choices: a dual stick standard, an aiming assist system, and even a mode that only slightly uses the accelerometer to look around.
Authenticity was another question -- obviously the iPhone doesn't have the processing power of the latest and greatest consoles, so Ideaworks had to work hard to walk the line between keeping the game running smoothly and keeping it detailed enough to compare to the bigger title. They did a lot of pruning on the original model work, turning geometry into straight textures, and cutting off 3D modeling that couldn't actually be seen by the player (the original team had even modeled tree roots underground, rendered on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, but never actually seen). They did things like not animating enemies when they weren't in the player's line of sight, and just using a sphere for the grenade hit model rather than actually modeling the shape, since it worked just as well. In the end, the iPhone had only about 1/7th of the geometry of the original game, but Ideaworks tried to make it at least look as similar as they could.
Multiplayer was a challenge, but fortunately, Activision had already created an online backend, so when Ideaworks hooked into that system, they were able to put together all of the multiplayer ideas they had (2-player, 4-player, and even a full online system) and then some (host migration was a project one of their engineers threw together in his spare time, and Bluetooth multiplayer was also added in on a whim).
Finally, Clarke shared a few lessons from the game's development. In terms of the controls, they learned that offering a choice to the player is sometimes the right move, and when there is a choice, you usually need to force it at some point (if you hide a different control scheme in the options, most players will never find it). Piracy was something else they learned -- while Clarke was hesitant to speak much about his opinions on piracy, he did say that it was easier to pirate the game than anyone on his team believed, and that in the first days of the release, they saw a significant number of extra users playing than had actually bought the game.
Still, Clarke said that the game had done very well -- they've been high on the App Store's Top Paid list ever since release, and while he didn't mention sales for the main game, he said that the lite version has seen over three million downloads. Clarke's panel offered up an interesting look behind one of the App Store's big name hits.TUAWGDC 2010: Call of Duty: World at War Zombies postmortem originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - iPhone devsugar: Unit testing for iPhone view controllers
Filed under: Apple
Unit testing refers to a software validation methodology that allows programmers to test individual program units for correctness. It's been an ongoing question in the iPhone developer community as to whether the iPhone's view controller class is testable or not.
In response to these discussions, iPhone developer Jonah Williams has written up a view controller unit testing how-to over at the Carbon Five web blog. His write-up offers examples that show how to incorporate some best practices into your code.
Williams points out how broken NIB bindings are a common problem for iPhone OS applications. To address these issues, he regularly adds simple assertions that test that each IB outlet and action are set properly from inside his view controller class implementations. These assertions check that IBOutlet instance variables are not set to nil and that IBAction targets have been assigned, adding a layer of protection against broken bindings.
Another typical view controller issue involves responding to application memory warnings. To respond, he adds tests that ensure that each view-dependent property gets correctly released and re-created as views unload and then later reload. By building these into test methods, he can execute this behavior on demand, and ensure that the sequence will execute flawlessly in real world conditions.
Finally, Williams discusses view controller interdependencies. Often instances are tightly intertwined, with objects acting as clients for each other. For example, a simple table view controller, living within a navigation controller, might present a detail view via yet another view controller when a row is selected. That's three separate controllers to account for, when you really only want to test one at a time. Williams suggests isolating these view controllers away from their interdependencies to test each component separately and provides examples of how you can do so.
What made Williams' approach pop for me is how he carefully exposes and isolates dependencies for testing. These are features that can otherwise be hard to inspect and validate in the normal course of programming. His write-up is well worth reading through, and provides an excellent jumping off point for investigating view controller unit testing.TUAWiPhone devsugar: Unit testing for iPhone view controllers originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - GDC 2010: Interview with Street Fighter IV producer Takeshi Tazuka
Filed under: Gaming, Developer, iPhone, App Store, iPad
We stopped by the Capcom Fight Club party here at GDC 2010 last night, and in addition to playing the new game, we also got to talk to producer Takeshi Tazuka. Actually, we got to talk to his translator -- Tazuka only speaks Japanese, and I only speak English, so the interview was done with a middleman in between.
But even with the language barrier, we did get some good chat in about the new game, Capcom's future plans for the iPhone, and what Tazuka thinks about making a game like this for the iPad. Read on for more.
Thank you for speaking with us, I appreciate it. So, a fighting game on the iPhone -- how did you approach that?
I used to create arcade games, and the equipment is kind of similar to the iPhone.
It's similar? But there's no buttons on it.
It is different. The device is completely different. But the behavior for game users is very similar. When you go to game centers, you want to jump in and play a game spontaneously. And the iPhone is the same thing -- it's like an arcade experience.
What did you think of developing games on the iPhone as a platform? Was it easy, hard?
It's really interesting as a platform because people that play games on the iPhone usually don't have a game console at home. I am interested to see how people react to playing video games on their handheld, not on a full console. It's very interesting. Music fans, and other application fans, they play video games on the iPhone. It's very interesting to see those people playing the games on the iPhone.
Are there other iPhone games that you like?
[Laughs] Except Capcom games?
Right, besides Capcom games of course.
I really like Homerun Battle 3D, it's by this company called Com2us. [Pulls out his iPhone and shows us the Japanese version.]
Have you looked at the iPad at all? Are you interested in developing a game like Street Fighter for the iPad?
I'm very interested.
What would be different than the iPhone game?
The iPad is obviously heavier, so the user experience would be very different. [Motions with thumbs, has trouble holding a bigger device the same way.] Different than using iPhone.
On this game, how did you work on developing the interface to make it easier to use?
There's actually a mode called dojo mode, it's a tutorial or training mode, where you can learn how to improve your technique, brush up your technique, and learn to fight against really hardcore players as well. It doesn't only teach you how to play, it teaches you how to do super combos, hadoken, and how Ryu fights against Ryu, how Guile fights against Ryu. It's learning, dojo style. With this game, the major segment that we're targeting is late 30s. Those people who used to play Street Fighter II big time. So that's why it's a little easier for those people to pick up and play.
Was there anything that you wanted to do that you couldn't do because of the smaller platform?
Because of the memory capacity, we couldn't implement any more than eight characters total. We would have liked to put more characters in there, but the memory is limited.
A lot of people wouldn't have expected Street Fighter to become an iPhone game. Are there any other Capcom games that you'd like to put on the iPhone that people might not expect?
We have a lot of plans. But we can't tell you anything right now. We will try our best to do more than you expect.
Great, we're excited. Thank you.
Thank you very much.TUAWGDC 2010: Interview with Street Fighter IV producer Takeshi Tazuka originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - MacHeist nano bundle adds Tweetie for final day
Filed under: Deals
The ever-popular MacHeist bundle, offering eight Mac apps for $20 total, closes out at midnight Pacific Time tonight. If you've been on the fence so far about whether or not to buy in this year, two bits of news may push you over the brink.
First, all the initial applications have been unlocked; both Tales of Monkey Island and RapidWeaver are fully present and accounted for. Second, there's been a last-minute addition to the roster; Tweetie for Mac (normally $20 on its own) is now part of the bundle.
If you're Macheisting this year, let us know what you think of the app selection; if not, share your reasons why. (We will accept "I'm saving up for tickets to Tron Legacy" as a valid reason.)TUAWMacHeist nano bundle adds Tweetie for final day originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - GDC 2010: Ngmoco justifies the freemium model
Filed under: Gaming, Software, Developer, iPhone, App Store
As popular as Ngmoco and its games are, whenever we seem to post about them, the subject of their business model seems to rise to the top again. While they have emerged as one of the iPhone's top original developers, they've also lost a lot of fans by sticking with a model they call "freemium," even to the detriment of some of their most popular games. They release games for free, and then monetize the games by using microtransactions, selling both virtual items and virtual currency for real money.
We have a lot of questions for the company, and we'll be asking even more of them coming later this week. But first things first: we cornered Ngmoco producer Allen Ma here in their suite at GDC 2010 and asked him to try and tell us why Ngmoco is so insistent on "freemium," and how they feel about some of the adverse customer reactions to their model. Read on to hear why free-to-play, pay-to-play-more is the model that they're betting their business on.
When we post about Ngmoco, the first comment on the post is often "Here's Ngmoco trying to steal our money again." What do you think when you see a reaction like that?
It's very, very odd because it's strange to see those moments when our goal as a company is that we want to give you a full game experience for free. That's really what Eliminate is. You can log into Eliminate any time you want, and play the game against anyone else, for free. And it's Quake 3 on the iPhone! So it's very interesting when people go oh they're scamming us because they want us to pay ten to twenty dollars to play through a game experience. That really is not true. Because you can never pay for the game and get the same exact experience.
Well, it's not the same exact experience.
It is, it just takes longer to get there.
That in itself makes it not the same.
Well does it or doesn't it, right? Because I feel like there's a lot of games out there where you're paying to do something faster than someone else. There's a whole black market that exists in World of Warcraft where you can buy a level 80 character for hundreds of dollars. There's this market where people are willing to do that. We're just doing that in a way where it's legitimate and fair to everyone.
Well, but a lot of players frown on that even in World of Warcraft. A lot of players say if you buy a level 80, that's cheating, because the game is designed to be played the other way.
And in Eliminate, we would never let you buy a fully maxed out character, right? In Eliminate specifically, what we're allowing you to do, we're still allowing you to play the game, but we allow you to earn credits at a higher frequency than other people. You still have to play the same amount of games, you can't cheat your way to max level, but in actual total number of days to get there, you're lowering it.
I think another reason that people have an issue with this is that you guys, Ngmoco, have said that you're not even bothering with paid apps. There are some people who are willing to pay for a good experience, they're even willing to pay ten dollars for a solid, worthwhile, whole unlocked version of the game. And Ngmoco is saying we're not doing that, it's all freemium or nothing. What would you say to that?
We're just finding that, with paid, you can't make any money. There's only a handful of companies that are able to charge more than three dollars for a game. Gameloft, EA, Square Enix. Anyone else, they charge more than two bucks, no one's even going to look at their game. There's no way that we could have built Eliminate, for the cost per install or cost per SKU that we would have sold, to actually be able to make back that money in the timeframe that we wanted to. It's funny, because people are saying that they're willing to pay, but when push comes to shove, they're actually not willing to pay. That person that says they're willing to pay $10, they'll probably wait for it to drop to 99 cents before they actually purchase it. What they really want is a $10 game for 99 cents. What we're giving them is a $50 game for free. That's really our stance right now.
When you set out to make these games, even a game like We Rule, are you still thinking about it in the old model of, the premium experience for this is $50, or the premium experience is $10? Is there a "right amount" of money to spend to get the full game, or are you just saying the sky's the limit on the amount of money you should pay?
I think what freemium allows us to do is continually make the game better. So instead of going, OK, you as the user have to take a gamble to see if this game is worth x amount of dollars to you; instead, why don't you come in and try the game. If you like it, throw us a couple of bucks. When you do that, we know that you like that piece of the game, and we'll give you more of that, so that if you continue to like it, we'll keep designing these things, right? The ones that you don't like, we'll stop doing. For example in Eliminate, people really wanted co-op. So we're going to give them co-op, because they're going to keep playing the game. Some of them will continue to keep paying to play the game, and that's encouraging as a developer to keep making it better and better. And this is why World of Warcraft works, right, because users are willing to continue to pay to play the game. Unfortunately, not every game can be as excellent as World of Warcraft where everyone in the world is willing to pay for it. I could point you to a game like Dungeons and Dragons Online, which used to be a regular MMO and now is a free-to-play MMO, and they're saying that they're making like 60-80% more revenue as a free-to-play game than when it was paid. And they're now updating the game way more frequently than they did when it was paid.
So it sounds like you're not even thinking in the old model of, "here's this experience for this amount of money." You're thinking of it as a dialogue, where you pay us for what you like, and we'll return more content. You're not just investing two bucks to speed up your game, you're investing two bucks in the game and in future content.
Yeah. You're paying to support the game, and you're paying to support all of the free players that weren't willing to pay for the game. So when you think about it that way, you're paying so that we can maintain the servers that allow all of the people to play. So again, going back to Eliminate, our game that's working right now, you're paying for the game, so that you can continue to own people that don't pay for the game.
Great, thanks very much.TUAWGDC 2010: Ngmoco justifies the freemium model originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - EyeTV Hybrid shrinks down, gains Win7 compatibility
Filed under: Hardware
Same price, same features (mostly) but a sleek and slender new look: yesterday Elgato introduced the latest revamp of its EyeTV Hybrid USB tuner for high-definition digital television. The US$150 widget gives you the option of watching over-the-air digital television in full HD glory, and can also tune in unencrypted (Clear QAM) and analog cable TV signals. If you've got an analog source like a VCR or videogame console, you can also route those signals through the EyeTV Hybrid to watch or play on your Mac (for those who don't need the analog option, Elgato also sells the HD tuner-only EyeTV One for $120).
The tuner ships with the EyeTV 3 software, enabling live TV, DVR functionality and shared recordings for your iPhone and iPod touch. With every new EyeTV Hybrid you get a one-year subscription to the TV Guide data feed, which provides full listings and enables the Smart Series recording feature; the software also can detect and display the embedded ATSC schedule information for broadcast shows. After the first year, re-upping with TV Guide will cost you $20.
Other than the slimmer profile, the major new feature on this model is the addition of driver support for Windows 7's Windows Media Center. Mac users may not care much, but this does let you use the same tuner if you're using Boot Camp, or you can loan it out to Windows-centric friends -- if you trust them to give it back.
You can check out our previous coverage and reviews of the EyeTV Hybrid for more.
TUAWEyeTV Hybrid shrinks down, gains Win7 compatibility originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - GDC 2010: Ngmoco previews We Rule and GodFinger
Filed under: Gaming, Freeware, Developer, iPhone
We stopped by Ngmoco's suite at GDC 2010 on the afternoon of the first day of the show, and got a chance to preview two upcoming titles they're working on testing and releasing soon. Both of the games follow Ngmoco's popular (and yet much-maligned) "freemium" model, in which you download the game for free with the option to buy in-game items or currency that can change up or speed your gameplay. Still, while the model might turn some players off, the games we saw were the kinds of games Ngmoco is slowly becoming known for: polished casual experiences that bring an established genre squarely into their business model.
The first game we saw was called We Rule -- it's currently "beta testing" in the Canadian App Store and will be available to users in other App Stores soon. It was described to us as "Farmville meets Age of Empires," but what we saw was much more like Farmville rather than the more combat-based RTS title. The game opens on a screen full of "realms," each one developed and grown by one of your Ngmoco Plus+ friends, and you can zoom into your own to start building it up.
It plays a lot like Farmville, which is a gigantic Facebook game in which you grow crops and cultivate plants of all kinds. Ngmoco's version is slightly different, but only slightly: you're still laying down crops, waiting for them to grow (30 seconds for the cheapest and easiest crops, and up to days for the rarer and higher-level items), and then harvesting them for in-game currency that lets you grow more and build more, and so on. It's not strictly a competition (you don't track totals with friends or score points for what you grow), but the game is very social, with push messages notifying you when crops are done or when your friends have done something spectacular or worthwhile. There's a big focus on customization as well -- you can build things like mailboxes or signs that make your realm very different from anyone else's.
So where's the "premium"? Every time you grow or build something, there is a little button marked "mojo," and "mojo" is a type of magical in-game currency that can be used to speed up whatever you're growing. Mojo can be earned slowly in the game, but if you want to use a lot of it, you can pay real money via in-app purchase to get more. Thus, if you want to grow the game quickly and don't want to wait to earn more mojo, you can start putting real money in.
Ngmoco did say that they'd "learned" from their previous games, and that they wanted to make sure that even the free game was a full experience. But that mojo button was awfully big and purple, and combined with the fact that there were also in-game ads all over the build we saw (when we asked if there would be a way to turn them off, even with real money, we were told that they haven't decided yet), it certainly seems like Ngmoco will do their best to get you to invest in the game.
The other game they are showing off this week is called GodFinger, and if We Rule is based on Farmville, GodFinger is Farmville mixed with Pocket God. The game is centered around a planet that you can rotate around with your finger, and the planet is populated by "followers" that offer you, as a God, all sorts of prayers and wishes. Granting those wishes (like adding rain to crops or sunlight to people who need their day brightened) will grant you "awe," which is another currency that you can use to upgrade your planet however you see fit, by terraforming the ground or building various structures and upgrades.
GodFinger is also very social -- you can actually "assign" one of your friends on Plus+ to a certain follower (as in, you can name a follower after your friend Katie), and then we were told that your friend will get push notifications and even benefits in their game depending on what you do to them. For example, if your follower Katie asks for sunlight and you grant the wish, your friend Katie will get a message that you granted her virtual wish, and even get a bonus of some kind in her GodFinger games.
We didn't see ads on the game, but of course being as this is Ngmoco, there is a "freemium" plan in there. You can purchase "awe" with real money, and that will let you use your god powers even more per day than usual, kind of like Eliminate's energy currency. GodFinger definitely seemed like it was a little less "pushy" than We Rule, in terms of asking you to spend real money, but of course, if you're playing the real game, there will presumably come a time when the game will tell you to stop playing for the day or pay up. It's still in development, of course, so even Ngmoco isn't 100% sure
Both games are definitely polished and well designed -- they ran great on the iPhone 3GS, and the graphics were colorful and easy to understand. But Ngmoco's main obstacle will be to keep their business plan from getting in the way of their game experiences. They say their main goal is making fun games, and it'll be up to these two games to prove it.TUAWGDC 2010: Ngmoco previews We Rule and GodFinger originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - TextExpander 3 makes short work of keyboard shortcuts
Filed under: Software
TextExpander, one of my very most favorite (yes, I like it that much) utilities has been updated to version 3. This is a major update and renovation of the program, which has changed from a preference pane to an application.
I honestly don't think that I could use a Mac without TextExpander anymore. I have a customized list of "frequently misspelled words" that I have it correct for me, as well as a snippet of text for creating a new shell script, a shortcut to insert the current date or time, HTML markup, and more.
TextExpander has been able to sync via MobileMe for some time, but version 3 also includes the ability to sync via Dropbox. It can also correct "double caps" at the beginning of a sentence which happen when you accidentally hold down the shift key for too long. There is a feature to capitalize new sentences as well, but that feature was a little hit-or-miss for me.
In its new application form, TextExpander has to be running for it to work. That may seem obvious, but since it used to be a preference pane, users may be used to it running "hidden" as a daemon in the background. There is an option to hide the application icon in the dock. If you hide it in the dock, you can still access TextExpander from its icon in the menu bar. They've even included several different styles of icon for the menu bar, which is good news for those of you who believe that menu bar items should only be black and white.
The menu bar offers a slew of cool new features, including a search function and a list of all of the folders and snippets for you to navigate, in case you have forgotten a shortcut. This is a good reason to start sorting snippets into "Groups" which were previously a bit of a pain because you had to tell each group to sync via MobileMe. Syncing is now an "all or nothing" option.
You can also create a new snippet, edit the last expanded snippet (handy if you realize that you need to "tweak" it), or use the clipboard to make a new snippet. New in this version is also the avility to create global "hotkeys" which will reduce the "friction" involved in making a new shortcut. I know I've previously thought "Oh, I ought to make a shortcut for this" but I usually wait too long before I finally get sick of re-typing it and actually do it.
I've only just started playing with this new version, but it looks like a great upgrade to what was already a full-featured application.
TextExpander costs $34.95, but they offer a full-featured demo and a 90-day guarantee which is far longer than I'm used to seeing for software. If you own an earlier version of TextExpander you can upgrade for $15. Those who bought TextExpander on or after November 1st, 2009 are eligible for a free upgrade.
There's even a companion application for the iPhone and iPod touch called TextExpander touch which will sync to your local Mac, so you can use your snippets in a wide range of iPhone apps.TUAWTextExpander 3 makes short work of keyboard shortcuts originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Hack: The iPod serial library enables homebrew remote controls
Filed under: Hardware, iPod Family, Hacks, iPhone
Warning: If you are baffled by people who think dismantling technology is fun, and completely fail to understand the excitement of building robots to battle other robots, this post may not be for you. Just so you know.
On the Make: magazine blog, they recently posted a piece about the evolution of a project. It was an iPod remote from last year that has gone from a "start and stop" only device to a full featured remote. It is a lovely piece of tech, powered by Arduino hardware. Arduinos are open-source circuit boards and software you can use to develop interfaces with all sorts of electronics.
I remember reading the first post about this remote last fall and being interested in where he would take this project, mostly because I love seeing what people do with Altoids tins. I have to admit hooking one up to a giant "Easy" button for my car never really occurred to me, though.
I really like the idea of building my own remote; partly so I can say I did it, but also because it would be a nicer way to get my iPod or iPhone (depending) working nicely with my car stereo.
Honestly I only understand about half of what he's talking about in this article, but I'm good at following instructions and I am reasonably handy with a soldering iron, so this doesn't look completely unreasonable. If I do end up building one I'll be sure to post all about it for you. In the meantime, have you built an unholy alliance between your Roomba and your iMac, or any other variety of Mac Tech Mashup? Tell me about it, I'd love to see what you all can do!
TUAWHack: The iPod serial library enables homebrew remote controls originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Don't trust the critics: Four Apple products they thought would fail
Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone, iPad
Ever since the iPad's introduction a month and a half ago, the internet has been awash in criticism of the as-yet-unreleased device. "It's just a big iPod touch," many have said. "No Flash, no multitasking, no sale," others bemoaned. And a few have gone so far as to say, "It doesn't do a lot of things that a netbook that costs half as much will do." For these reasons and many more, many of the pundits and forum dwellers have but one prediction: the iPad is going to crash and burn.
Don't you believe it, because the critics have been wrong before. Several times, actually, according to The Week, which provides a list of five Apple products the critics thought would fail. Out of those five, only one, the Newton, failed to find mainstream success. The other four were industry-defining products which went on to sell millions of units each.
What did the critics have to say about these four "failed" Apple products when they first debuted, and which products were they? Click "Read More" to find out.
1. The Mac
It seems absurd now, but there was a time when some critics thought the Mac would be a complete failure. They considered the mouse-driven interface "Useless." Ponder that one for a bit. "Awkward," "Not easy to learn," and of course, "Costs too much" were other 1984-era complaints leveled at Apple's latest creation. These critics were used to the keyboard-driven interface of DOS-running PCs, and from the sounds of things, they considered the Mac, with its graphic user interface and "awkward" mouse, to be nothing more than an overpriced novelty, doomed to fail.
I hardly need to tell you what happened next. The original Macintosh completely revolutionized the computer industry. Within only a short time, companies like Microsoft scrambled to duplicate the GUI/mouse combo the Mac brought to the market. Today, nearly every desktop, notebook, and netbook out there runs a GUI/mouse interface. And 26 years after the first Macintosh debuted, Apple still sells Macs by the millions every year. I wish I could fail half as hard as that.
2. The iMac
"No floppy drive?!?" was the echoing cry among the tech world in 1998. Add to that the iMac's hermetically-sealed case and not particularly upgrade-friendly components, and once again, tech critics and build-it-yourself users who had been used to beige towers predicted the iMac would never catch on. Instead, the iMac sold like crazy and almost instantaneously doubled Apple's PC marketshare. Twelve years later, the iMac is still Apple's best-selling desktop, and it shows no signs of going anywhere anytime soon... unlike those floppy disks everyone once thought were so crucial.
3. The iPod
One of the greatest things about the internet is that in a way, it's the closest any of us will get to time travel. Let's go back to October 23, 2001, and get Slashdot's now-famous opinion of the just-announced iPod: "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."
The comments that follow are even better. "I don't see many sales in the future of iPod." "All I can say is, as an Apple 'fan', I'm sad." But don't just take Slashdot's word for it. The forum folks at MacRumors had some true gems too: "Great just what the world needs, another freaking MP3 player." "I still can't believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player?" "'I'd call it the Cube 2.0 as it wont sell, and be killed off in a short time...and it's not really functional." "The Reality Distiortion Field[TM] is starting to warp Steve's mind if he thinks for one second that this thing is gonna take off." "Not exactly 'revolutionary'. " "The real money is in DRM and distribution (ala Real Musicnet). If Apple were smart they would be focusing on high gross revenue from services rather than a playback device." "It is by no means revolutionary or groundbreaking. It is an MP3 player. BFD. It is just a step in the evolution of an MP3 player [...] Think different is dead."
It goes on like that, for pages and pages. And this is at a site full of Apple fans, the majority of whom were unimpressed with the iPod at best and thought it was Apple's death knell at worst. People who weren't great fans of Apple at the time, like the guys behind Penny Arcade, had even harsher things to say about the iPod, even two years after its release (not safe for work language -- it is Penny Arcade, after all). Over nine years later, where are we? Over a quarter of a billion iPods have been sold since then, and it's largely due to the iPod's momentum that Apple has become the phenomenal success it is today.
4. The iPhone
For the first half of 2007, before the iPhone actually hit stores, people either thought it was the greatest innovation of the past ten years (at least) or an overpriced, overhyped device that lacked features common to many other phones. Of course, there was no lack of punditry from those who thought the iPhone was doomed, and Apple right along with it. Tech critic John Dvorak said of the iPhone, "I'd advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you'll see." A former CEO of Palm said, "We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in." And who could forget Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, perhaps the best-remembered critic of the iPhone: "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance." Ballmer claimed Apple would be lucky to get 2-3% cellphone marketshare.
Over 42 million iPhones later, Apple has become the largest mobile device company in the world. And whether you agree that HTC and other phone manufacturers have violated Apple's patents or not, the influence the iPhone has had on the smartphone industry is undeniable. Before June of 2007, almost all smartphones looked like clones of the Blackberry. Less than three years later, an awful lot of smartphones now look like clones of the iPhone instead.
With these four products, Apple drove the evolution of three industries: PCs, portable media players, and smartphones. All four products were smashing successes despite all the doom and gloom from both professional and armchair tech critics. Now, with the introduction of the iPad, Apple is aiming at a new industry: ultraportable computers. For the past month and a half, at least half of everyone paying attention to the iPad has laughed at it, pointed out its shortcomings, and predicted its failure. My prediction? A year from now, we're going to have a very long list of misguided iPad quotes to point and laugh at.TUAWDon't trust the critics: Four Apple products they thought would fail originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - GDC 2010: Real Racing and Flight Control on the iPad with Firemint
Filed under: Gaming, Software, Freeware, App Store, iPad
We got to sit down with Australian developer Firemint here at the Game Developers Conference 2010 in San Francisco -- it's a mobile game developer who hit it big last year with the very popular iPhone game Flight Control, and while it used to make mobile games for just a handful of larger game publishers like EA, the company is now trying to cement a reputation for making a smaller stable of high quality App Store games. "We like to joke that we went from ten customers to ten million," community manager Alexandra Peters told us.
She also showed us their second game, Real Racing, which has been winning all kinds of awards even in the crowded accelerometer racing game genre, and talked with us both about Flight Control HD (their upcoming "soon after launch" title for the iPad) as well as what's next for the company.
Real Racing was impressive for an iPhone racing game. While the accelerometer-as-steering is basically a cliche in iPhone games at this point, Real Racing pulls it off pretty well by focusing on that -- depending on the settings, you can simply let the car accelerate and even break on its own, and just focus on hitting the curves while driving 48 different cars around the game's 12 tracks, or actually jump in and control the car yourself.
We only got to drive a few laps, but the game's crystal-clear presentation got us interested enough to want to play more. The game is currently $4.99 in the App Store, but there is an interesting lite version to try as well -- Volkswagen actually approached Firemint after the success of the game and commissioned an "adverware" version to release on the App Store. It's there to try -- unfortunately, the content is a little light for a game with so many ads, but it's one of the better integration models for in-game ads I've ever seen, and the extra commission for Firemint certainly help offset the costs of development for a free game.
Firemint also told us about the version of Flight Control they're working on for the iPad. It will be called Flight Control HD, and of course it'll make use of the bigger touchscreen, but like most developers, Firemint hasn't had an actual iPad dev device to work with -- they've only got the game running in the iPad SDK simulation. Peters said the iPad makes for a "very personal and very immersive experience," so they're hoping to take advantage of that with Flight Control HD -- they've even set up a Wacom tablet to test the larger control scheme out. And they're hoping the game comes out soon after the iPad's launch on April 3rd, so look for it then.
Other than that, Firemint also has two other games in development, still under wraps. The first will be coming out later this year, and the other one is definitely the biggest iPhone project they've ever done (we got the impression that it would be a larger, 3D action project) that will be out sometime in 2011. We asked them if those games were planned for the iPhone or the iPad, and they told us while they were currently working on both of them for the iPhone, "we'll have to wait and see" on the iPad.
All in all, Firemint seems to be a company that has really taken advantage of the opportunities in the App Store, and grown both their reputation and their repetoire thanks to Apple's platform. Flight Control and Real Racing have both been excellent examples of their "just a few good games" philosophy, and we can't wait to see what they do with other titles and the iPad.TUAWGDC 2010: Real Racing and Flight Control on the iPad with Firemint originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" uses Macs to solve mysteries
Filed under: Cult of Mac
If you happen to have gotten caught up in the phenomenon known as the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, then you know that the computer of choice for these world-class computer genius hackers is made by Apple. I screened the film version of the story, and MacBook Pros are visible throughout as the the tool used to solve mysteries. It's a good film as well, as far as taut thrillers from Sweden go. In fact, I found it a refreshing take on the thriller (with a little social commentary thrown in) and was unsurprised to find it was based on a highly-regarded novel.
The lead character, Lisbeth Salander, actually uses her MacBook Pro to hack into all manner of places, just as Macs have managed to appear in all sorts of movies. There's even a Flickr group dedicated to chronicling the appearance of them in film and TV. If you got a kick out of Hackers back in the day, Lisbeth will be a little familiar, but she's a nice modern spin on the "cool hacker" type.
TUAW is part of a "blog hunt" for clues to win prizes for the movie, and you can find out more on the next page...
Join the Dragon Tattoo Blog HUNT -- an Internet-wide scavenger hunt tied to the feature film launch of the bestselling book The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Win great prizes: free movie tickets, books, the movie soundtrack, posters and more. To join the contest, start at the beginning of the HUNT by visiting the contest page for full details and the first clue. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is in theaters near you starting March 19th.
The next clue:
No 9 to 5'ing for this guy. Just like Lisbeth and Mikael, this renegade, Jonathan Fields, made his own way (he even wrote a book about it) and he helps people find the career that lets them do what they love to do.TUAW"Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" uses Macs to solve mysteries originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - GDC 2010: Street Fighter IV for the iPhone out now
Filed under: Gaming, Software, iPhone, App Store
Tonight at GDC 2010, I went out and stopped by the Capcom Fight Club party here in San Francisco, and while there, Capcom projected the actual App Store interface for sending their Street Fighter IV app to the App Store on various screens around the room. We actually got to see them press the button on the release live and in person, and sure enough, the game is in the App Store right now for $9.99.
Before you go press buy, though, I'll also tell you that I got a chance to play the game, and while it is about as faithful a Street Fighter IV game as you can get on the iPhone, playing a fighting game without actual buttons is not really an ideal experience. While I was able to pull off a Hadoken and almost all of the other old moves after a few tries, the highest levels of competition in a fighting game require precision and subtlety, and this control scheme has neither of those. If you just want to play Street Fighter on an iPhone, sure -- be an early adopter, pick up the game, and enjoy a few rounds of Guile vs. Ryu. But if you're looking for the kind of in-depth fighting experience that Street Fighter IV on consoles and in the arcades offered, you probably won't find it here -- the controls are a little too inconsistent to really dig into the deep counter and powerup systems on display.
The game does have a lot of extras and addons, including a dojo mode for training and Bluetooth multiplayer. And while the game's eight characters offers up a pretty slim selection compared to the current console titles, these are definitely classic Capcom characters, and all of the old moves you'll remember still work. Save for the controls, nothing about this game is half-done -- it's definitely a premium port of a premium game. But as a true fighting game experience, this one comes up short. Buy it if you want, to see the spectacle of Street Fighter squeezed into Apple's touchscreen, an achievement in and of itself. But don't buy it expecting an ideal Capcom-style showdown that you'll be able to pull up time and time again -- for that, save your quarters for the arcades.
Stay tuned -- we did get to talk with the Japanese producer of the game about what he thinks of the iPhone, the iPad, and the challenges he had to overcome by squeezing this one on to Apple's handheld. That interview is coming up later today right here on TUAW.TUAWGDC 2010: Street Fighter IV for the iPhone out now originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - eBooks outnumber games in the App StoreThe number of eBooks in the App Store has surpassed the number of games for the first time, and the spread is widening. Mobclix, a mobile device advertising agency, reports that as of last month, there were over 27,000 eBook apps while games were relegated to the runner-up position of 25,400 apps. Over the last reported month, new introductions of eBook apps more than doubled that of games (158 eBook versus 71 game apps).
There are a number of reasons being kicked around to explain this phenomenon. It's easier to churn out an eBook than a game app. There are more free eBook than gaming apps, since many of the eBooks are out-of-copyright classics or collections of free content; this lowers the cost of development. Once an eBook engine is built it's fairly trivial to use the framework for another book.Currently there are over 10 times more free eBook apps than paid ones. It's different in gaming where paid apps outstrip free ones by over 2 to 1.Note: One source contradicts another on the above point, so consider it removed.
These eBook apps will, of course, work on an iPad, but the Apple idea is to have you use one eBook reader and that would be iBooks. Jason Kincaid of Techcrunch, admittedly with no background evidence, posits that there may be an eBook purge coming. It would be very un-Apple to have an iPad owner searching for a copy of Treasure Island, and letting them find over 25 apps with differing interfaces and many of them free.
This could be confusing for new iPad owners, and more to the point, Apple can't monetize it. It doesn't sound unreasonable that Apple will do whatever it takes to make iBooks the eReader of choice at the expense of the plethora of current eBook apps. They will be doing it in the name of providing a simpler and more enjoyable user experience, but of course you can't pocket what you can't sell.
It will be fascinating to watch the eBook market about two months from now, after the first iPads have been delivered, and to see what Apple has planned.
[via The Guardian]TUAWeBooks outnumber games in the App Store originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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