Macgasm

[Download] [01.2 MB] [0:02:20]
Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner

In this episode, Josh talks about Shovebox.

Yahoo recently released an iPhone and iPod Touch application for their Yahoo! Messenger service. The application, while being 1.0, is quite good. During my testing, I didn’t have any application crashes like many had with the AIM 1.0 application release.

The Yahoo Messenger application uses many little visual aspects that are offered in applications that have been around for much longer. For instance, when you click on the username text box to login, the screen redraws itself so that the big Yahoo logo is gone, along with the new account, and sign in button occupying the same row. It may not be anything to most, but it is quite elegant.

Along with moving buttons and views being re-drawn, the Application does what it’s designed to do. It does allow you to send text messages to contacts on your list. Which is convenient in case you want to keep chatting, but need to get in touch with someone.

Another little touch is the Emoticons that are included with the application. You’re given a choice of 30 different emoticons, which, if you use them, is nice and convenient so you don’t have to remember them all. Along with inserting emoticons, you can also include URLs and photos. You can take a photo right from within the application and send it to somebody.

There are a few issues with the application, nothing that will break the application, but still, they are issues.

The first of said issues, is that when you’re sending a message, you’re presented with a 2 line view, but you can only see one line of the message you send. If you’re message goes to the second line, it scrolls up, and you only see the second line. It’s nothing major, but a minor visual bug.

The second of these issues actually relates to the service, not the application. If you try and send an SMS to a non-mobile number, say Google voice account, it will not work. You’ll be presented with the following screen.

Overall, the application is quite good. It does what is to be expected of a chat application, it allows you to chat. As good as Yahoo Messenger is, I’m still eagerly awaiting an All-in-one chat application, which Meebo is working on, since they did show off their application at the iPhone OS 3.0 preview event last month. Oh, and it’s Free, doesn’t cost a single penny.

We don’t get to talk about a lot of games over here at Macgasm, but I just can’t keep myself from doing it right now.  I’m a pretty big gamer, and I probably fit somewhere between hardcore and casual.  I don’t find much interest in games you find on Popcap, but I’m probably not going to run out and hit up a LAN party either, but I love me some video games.

I’ve been pretty disgruntled with the last 5 games I’ve purchased on my Xbox 360 (GTA 4, Call of Duty 4, Mercenaries 2, Fable 2, and Assassin’s Creed).  They’re all fun for an hour or two, but then it’s a whole pile of same old same old.  While watching one of my new favourite online video shows COOP, I had an eye-opening experience and a moment of revelation.  I love indie games a lot more than I love big developer house games.  It can be summed up pretty quickly with World of Goo.  I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on games this year, and yet I’ve spent more time with World of Goo than any of the other ones.  The concept of World of Goo is mind blowingly simple, but the experience is far beyond anything else I’ve played this year. I got it in the Macheist package originally, but I had such a good time I’m considering buying it again at full price.  Hell at full price plus the price of the entire Macheist bundle I’ll still be way under what I paid for GTA4.  The thought of that blows my mind.  It’s rare that I’m willing to pay for a game twice, but given the state of the gaming industry, I think it’s time we support people who make original games, and blow off the firms that create the same crap over and over again.

If you want to check out some footage from the game check out the video below.

Skype officially released an iPhone / iPod Touch application to the world. Many pundits have posited that this will be the end of traditional Phone service as we know it. Well, it may be at some point, but it’s not, as of right now.

The reason I say that isn’t because of the Skype application being a bunch of junk, quite contrary. It’s because of Apple’s partner’s choosing to not to allow the use of the application on their networks, only because it directly competes with their primary business model.

Granted, this does make complete business sense to limit direct competitors. But this is just going to provide major backlash from customers who, like myself, expect to be able to use their service as they want, however that might be. I see telecommunication providers just as that, providers.

Providers need to wake up to see that soon enough they will only become pipes, nothing more, nothing less. They will all be providing bits, and charging on a per gigabyte basis. I’d like to see a price point where it still makes it economical for the provider to provide the service, and make money, allow for expansions and the like; yet still be economical enough for users to get.

Bandwidth will no longer be limited, there will be no ‘caps’ in terms of usage, it’ll become limitless, you will pay for what you use. The argument, at least in terms of bandwidth, is what about tiers. For electricity, water, and gas, it’s all quite simple because the rate of ‘flow’ is constant and consistent. You can only fit so much water through a pipe, and once that’s full, that’s it. You aren’t going to gain any additional water through the pipe.

With throughput you could provide different tiers, or speeds of connections. And, this maybe you pay a bit more for, since you’re wanting a bigger pipe, you have to pay for it.

I understand that infrastructure costs money, and having to maintain and upgrade. However, it’s no different than any other company. Let’s try out a scenario.

Let us say you have a provider and part of your agreement is 10Mbps download, regardless, nobody has less than that. Let’s say the cost, per gigabyte, is $0.25. Let’s say you use 100GB of bandwidth in a month. You would pay $25.00 for that month. Then let’s say the next month you use only 50GB of bandwidth. You’re cost would be $12.50 for that month. Thereby, it reduces your cost.

Now, since everybody gets the same amount, what about those who want more throughput. What happens with them. Well, if a provider opted to allow faster throughput, they could, and they could charge appropriately. Let’s try this one out. Let’s say you get faster speeds, 15Mbps, and you’re charged $0.30 per GB. With this example, 100GB would cost $30.00 a month. and the 50GB usage would cost $15.00 a month. This seems equitable to me.

This method, would allow for the elimination of bandwidth caps, provide a base standard for every customer, yet provide flexibility and make it entirely equitable for everybody.

Now, that I think about it more, it’s possible to keep the current system along with the proposed system. Those who know they wont’ exceed a cap, can be capped and pay a fixed amount every month, but those who might use it a lot one month, and not a whole lot the next, could go for the per GB usage plans.

I know I’m being an optimist, and a dreamer, and the greedy corporate suits won’t even think of implementing this, but I know if a broadband provider in my area provided something like this, I’d hop on board and support it; particularly, if they gave us some fiber to the curb, like they promised back in the 80′s.

Feel free to contact me on why I’m right, or why I’m a complete nut at wayne.dixon@gmail.com

I received an interesting email today about the 3.0 iPhone software that I thought I would pass along.  Some developers are pretty pissed right now, and a whole lot more of them are more than a little disgruntled.  The deadline for the first beta was last night at Midnight. The developers were supposed to install beta two, but for a large chunk of them who already beta two installed, their iPhones were rendered useless at midnight.  Sounds a little too much like a Cinderella remake to me! Apparently, the iPhone loses connection to AT&T, freaks out – comes back looking unactivated. That is, it had the “Plug me into iTunes” and emergency only screen.”

The general consensus seems to be that “there’s an issue where when you restore from a backup of B1 firmware it changes the version the iPhone “thinks” it has.”

So if you’re being a rebel and installing beta software on your iPhone, I’d keep your eyes peeled for some of this behaviour.  If you’ve noticed the problem and you’re crapping your pants that you bricked your phone, you should go and get the latest software image.

Thanks for the tip Anon!

If you have any good rumors or nuggests of information for us, feel free to drop me an email. We never reveal our confidential sources!

In a very short period, Apple has definitely changed the way we listen to music. iTunes will quickly be reaching one billion downloads. I was sitting here trying to calculate the percentage I’ve contributed to that billion, and it’s pretty high.

To reward users for this milestone, they are giving away a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro.

Users are entered automatically upon completing a download, or you can enter without a purchase here. I have a few songs I’ve been meaning to download, so I will definitely throw my name in the hat and cross my fingers to win, and also watch to see how quickly the counter reaches 1 billion.

The official rules of the contest are listed here. If you win anything, be sure and come back here and rub all our faces in it and/or thank us for sending you over there to enter!  Good luck!

[Download] [02.2 MB] [0:04:40]
Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner

In this episode, Grant talks about gaming on the Mac. Greenhouse, Blizzard, and Aspyr all have games for our platform of choice.

[Download] [01.2 MB] [0:02:30]
Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner

In this episode, Josh talks about the great Macgasm Flickr Group.