Monthly Archives: February 2010

PopCap's Plants vs. Zombies Arrives In AppStore And Kicks Butt

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Update: Didn’t take very long for Plants vs. Zombies to top the Paid Apps chart as well. I wonder if they had a free trial version of the game if the game would top all three charts. Or, if players had a chance to see the game in action before purchasing it, they wouldn’t buy it.

PopCap’s Plants vs. Zombies made it’s appearance in the AppStore this morning and before the end of the day has made it’s way to the #2 Paid App and #1 Top Grossing App. A truly amazing feet for a PopCap game, much less any game in the AppStore.

It’s currently received 458 ratings, 444 of which are 5 star, and only 3 are one star. The one star complaints are that the mini games in the PC game are not in the iPhone game. One reviewer spent the $2.99 so that he could basically tell us that he would rather be: “SHOT, ELECTRICUTED, FLAMED, BOMBED, AND BURIED ALIVE THEN PLAY THIS PIECE OF $&@!” (That is an exact character for character quote). The third one star review basically thinks the game is boring and can’t believe all the positive reviews are from players. Has this guy never gone to the PopCap website and played the free web version?

I mention these reviews because the game is pretty much an exact copy of the PC version (minus the mini games mentioned in that one star review). It plays very well, and is actually a bit easier to play since you just have to tap the sunlight instead of trying to chase it down with a mouse.

PopCap has a real winner here and is probably going to make a fortune off this title alone. Especially at the $2.99 price point. This app is definitely one to grab if you are a fan of PopCap.

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Magic Mouse Pretty Darn Magic!

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I must say that I am pretty impressed with Apple’s Magic Mouse. It’s sleek, with a good 3/5 of it’s surface being available for multiple-touch functions. Being made from aluminum, it’s sturdy, solid feeling, and clicks like you would expect a mouse with real buttons.

Unlike the “Mighty Mouse”, when you click and drag with the Magic Mouse, it doesn’t feel like you are trying to hold the mouse so that the ‘whole mouse button’ doesn’t release.

Also a great feature of this mouse is that when you scroll windows by sliding you finger down or up the center of the mouse, you can tell the Mouse Preference Pane to glide just like you were flicking your finger across the iPhone/iPod touch’s screen.

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There is also a great $5 shareware program called MouseWizard that adds all kinds of great functionality to the multi-touch abilities of the Magic Mouse.

MouseWizard is a great supplement to the System Preference Mouse Pane. It’s a program that can reside in the MenuBar, Dock, or both, not in System Preferences, so it won’t conflict with Apple’s Mouse Preference Pane.

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The Menubar items include battery status, 3 settings entries as well as the standard application menu items.

MouseWizard lets you set tapping instead on clicking the mouse for both the right and left clicks. Two finger gestures include: Middle Click, Fourth Click, Scroll Up, Scroll Down, Swipe Left, Swipe Right, Zoom / Shrink. Three finger Click and Whole Hand Click. All can be configured to do one of many functions:
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I’m currently waiting for a D-Link DBT-120 Wireless Bluetooth 2.0 USB Adapter from Amazon to hook it up to my Mac Pro. When I purchased the beast 3 1/2 years ago, I didn’t see the need to have Bluetooth and WiFi in the box. I now realize that I should have configured the order with both. A hindsight… Apple has tested their wireless keyboards and mice with the D-Link adapter which is why I ordered it rather than the many others to choose from.

Back in the days of the Mighty Mouse, I would never have suggested to anyone to use it. With the Magic Mouse, I have to say that so far, I have to problems suggesting the mouse. Mind you, I have only just started to use it, and there might still be some issues with both left and right buttons down in games. However, what I have seen so far is darn amazing and I’m very pleased I got one.


Apple: Please, Make Up Your Mind About The Mini Player Keyboard Shortcut In iTunes!

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Really, what is the deal with you guys. Every time you update iTunes, the Maximize button/Keyboard Shortcut (Ctrl-Command-Z) works differently. At first, tapping Ctrl-Command-Z would toggle the user between the normal view and the Mini Player:
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Then updates started showing up that when the keyboard shortcut is used would cause iTunes to “Maximize” it’s window to the full screen. Then with iTunes 9.0-9.0.2, the shortcut was toggling between normal and Mini Player again.

Now with iTunes 9.0.3, the Ctrl-Command-Z maximizes the iTunes window again. I now see that there is a “new” shortcut: Shift-Command-M. That toggles between the Mini Player and the normal iTunes window.

Apple, please, make up your mind and stick with it. You guys are so much better than Microsoft and Windows, yet with iTunes, I feel that you decided to give the project to a bunch of Windows developers you recently hired.

So is it safe to assume that “Shift-Command-M” is the toggle now and forever? Please?


The Joy Of Tech Hit The Nail Right On The Head!

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Today’s “The Joy Of Tech” hit the whole rumor/speculation/hype thing perfectly on the head! I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Thanks ‘Joy of Tech‘ guys, your humor always makes my day!

 

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Will Apple Fanboy's Ever Relax?

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No sooner than the iPad news is released than rumors of yet another “real” Mac Tablet computer are floating around again!

Don’t get me wrong here, I consider myself to be a pretty faithful Apple Fanboy. I have quite a few iPods (3G, 4G, 5G and an iPod touch), two iPhones (myself and my wife), and two Macs (MacBook and Mac Pro). I lust for the new Unibody MacBook’s, I would love to have that new trackpad. I would also love to get the new iPad when it comes out and I am pretty much planning on getting the next-gen iPhone when it comes out.

However, I think all this speculation and rumor business is totally over the top and ridiculous. For probably a year, there has been nothing but rumor, speculation, and lust over a nonexistent Mac Tablet that finally turned out to be the iPad. We still haven’t heard the end of that damn thing. Why does the 3G cost so much more than the hardware ($500 vrs. $630), will it be able to make phone calls?, will it be able to record movies?, etc… Not to mention all the humor that has arisen from the whole feminine product name: iPad.

Will Apple come out with a real Tablet computer? Who the F**K cares! Oh My God people? You all are worse than stalkers! Unbelievable! You monitor web log files for browser types that could mean that a new device from Apple is coming. You even figure out that there were 50 iPad devices in Apple with various types of applications on them before the announcement.

Do you people have lives? I used to work for a company that makes MMORPG’s. In one of the games, the GM’s created a vine that started growing outside the main cities gates. Once someone noticed it (about 10 minutes after it was put into the game), players started watching the vine to see what would happen next to it. They organized watch schedules so that there was at least a couple of people watching that vine ever minute of every day. We’re not talking a graphical MMORPG either here. We are talking text based, so they had to “Look” at the room and the vine repetitively over and over again. That went on for over a month!

With Apple, it seems that I am seeing that behavior all over again. When the store closes for 5 seconds, blogs post about the closure as if something wonderful is going to happen. If a store that sells Apple products make a mistake, the blogs post an image of the mistake within seconds, if Steve Jobs blinks out of pattern, he’s either going to announce something or he’s dying! Just look at the over analysis of the invitation to the iPad announcement. Every paint splotch was analyzed trying to make heads or tails of what the announcement was going to have in it. Because they all knew that one of the announcements was going to be an Apple Tablet. (Which it wasn’t)

TUAW, even scored themselves over the predictions they made and way over scored themselves. They pretty much had all the predictions wrong, yet the worst they did was 5 out of 12 or something like that.

My God people, get over it. Get on with your lives. As William Shatner once said: “Get a life!”

If Apple comes out with new hardware, you will hear about it when Apple announces/leaks it, not a moment sooner. You can speculate all you want, but that is not going to make Apple/Jobs create a device that you folks have been having wet dreams about for over a year.

Just be happy that your favoriate computer company is making money and doing pretty darn well for itself. They are not likely to die anytime soon, and a real Tablet will not put them over the edge and become the new Dell/HP.

Sheesh!


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