Macgasm

The rumors were correct when they stated that Apple would be shipping their newest operating System Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and having it arrive on August 28th.

If you pre-order it today it will be delivered on August 28th. The Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Client upgrade, family pack upgrade, Mac Box Set Single User, and Mac Box Set Family Pack are all available for pre-order. The prices for these are as follows: $29, $49, $169, and $229 respectively.

The Snow Leopard Client upgrade requires that you have OS X 10.5 Leopard before upgrading. The Box Set includes Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, iWork ’09 and iLife ’09. This is good for those who didn’t upgrade to iLife and iWork ’09 (like myself). Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Server is an unlimited client version, Apple has ceased the production 10-client version.

Remember that all Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard versions require an Intel processor. Also, remember that if you’re a Government employee, or a student, to use your discount.

Also, if you ordered a Mac after June 8th, 2009 you are eligible for the Up-To-Date program. The Up-to-date program allows you to get Snow Leopard for $9.95 instead of the $29. It may not be much of a discount, but hey it’s something.

A few days ago I was in the Apps Store in iTunes, and I found Toy Story Mania.  If you have ever ridden the Toy Story Mania ride at either Disney’s California Adventure in Anaheim, California, or at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Florida you will be familiar with this game.  The ride at the Disney Parks consist of several Midway Boardwalk style games like the Ring Toss, Balloon Pop, and many more. Well they’ve taken these games and placed them in the palm of your hand.  In addition, there is a special surprise that can be unlocked while you are standing in line for the ride.

I’ve played several of the games on my iPhone, some I like more than others, but overall they are fun to play.  I found that shaking the iPhone to reload on some of the games can somewhat take away from the game play.  In Woody’s Rootin’ Tootin’  Shootin’ Gallery, you simply move your finger across the darts to reload.  I would have preferred this method of reload on all of the games.

As an added bonus, they’ve incorporated a special surprise in the game.  If you are at either Park, and you are in line for the ride, take out your iPhone and open the Toy Story game.  Once you’ve opened it, navigate to the Menu button, then click on the Gallery Book.  It’ll be the book at the bottom flipping open and close.  Once there, you will see the Search button, go ahead and press it.  See image below.  It will perform its search.  Now it has unlocked 19 different Toy Story Midway Mania wallpapers for your iPhone.  The best part is when you leave the attraction the wallpapers remain unlocked on your iPhone.

So if you would like to continue to relive the ride on your iPhone or iPod Touch, or simply play it for the first time.  I would highly recommend purchasing Toy Story Mania from the Apps Store.  It is currently selling at $4.99.

So you are going back to school. Summer has been too short, and you really don’t want to listen to your professors about boring subjects. Not to mention the long lines to pick up your books if you didn’t get them used from Amazon. I am going to make you life a little more bearable with a couple of games that will not only occupy your time, but might distract you so much that you might fail out of school.

Ricky: Ricky needs to find his little brother Parry. With over 75 levels, 4 worlds and 4 bosses this has to be one of the most addicting games I have played on the iPhone. The game has a Super Mario Bro’s feel to it. Ricky himself wears a Mario hat but looks like Kirby. The graphics in this game are phenomenal. Unlike some other games on the iPhone, Ricky gets more and more difficult with every level. And like Super Mario Bro’s each level is timed. This is a must buy in my book. <iTunes Link>

Paper Toss World Tour: If you really enjoy little time wasters, then you will probably love this game. World Tour is the second game in the Paper Toss series. Basic concept of the game is you tossing a wad of paper into a waste basket. You enemy is wind and distance. In World Tour, every time you get at least 3 paper balls in a row into the trash can, you get a new level added. With each level the distance between you and the waste basket increases. With the increase in distance, the harder the level is. This is a great time waster for when you are waiting in line or waiting for class to start.<iTunes Link>

Some Other games you may want to look into:

Arcade Bowling
Golden Axe
Book Worm
Enigmo

As of just a few minutes ago, Snow Leopard has shown it’s spots in the apple online store. Snow Leopard will begin shipping on August 28th and will retail for the upgrade price at $29 for a single user license. Pre-Order your copy today!

Need a new revenue stream?  Buy up a dozen OS X Snow Leopard packages and save them for a decade, then SELL, SELL, SELL. I know we all love our Macs, but I  seriously have to question a person’s sanity if they’re willing to pay that much for Tiger.

A picture’s worth a thousand words.

Seriously?  So, neither Apple, nor AT&T yanked the application from the AppStore? Right.  So, then Google’s Voice App should still be in the AppStore.  Oh wait, it’s not.

This giant pile of speculation is more annoying than usual this go around, because everyone and their brother is claiming both Apple and AT&T weren’t responsible for pulling the application.  And neither of them are saying whether or not they were talking during the application approval process.  Here’s the thing, scientifically, the simplest explanation is always the right explanation. Gas companies say they’d don’t collude either, but we all know they do.  If they didn’t, gas prices wouldn’t fluctuate so much from one supplier to another.  They collude, and the capitalist in all of us know they’d be stupid not too.

All the FCC response consists of is lawyer speak, and you can bet your money on the fact that there’s an on going dialog between the two companies, whether it’s through their lawyers, managers, or code monkeys.  Someone from AT&T is calling to point out their “legal” rights every time an application goes against their original contract.

Let’s take a step back and talk about what this whole thing is really about.

Is the iPhone my phone or Apple’s phone.  If it’s my phone then I’ll install Google voice if I please and Apple shouldn’t have a say in what the heck I put on it.  If I want to duplicate core functionality on the phone then I should have every right to do it.  If it’s Apple’s phone and I’m just renting it then my hands are tied, and they can take it back any time they want and make me abide by any draconian policies they want me too.

So for once, can we talk about what this is really about.  Because, I’d like to know if I’m really purchasing a phone or renting it.  If I’m just renting, then I’d like to know when the due date is, because I’ll be sure to return the phone as soon as possible.

But please, for the love of all things holy, please, please, please stop being so naive, and start to realize that no matter what either company says, there’s probably a good chance we’re still only getting half the story.

Photo Credit: Lori Greig

I’m very excited that Snow Leopard is on the horizon. The idea of a smaller, more efficient operating system is incredibly appealing to me. With the implementation of technology like OpenCL and Grand Central, we’re in for some pretty snappy computing in our near future. Don’t think that is exciting? You should. If you’re reading Macgasm, you probably spend a fair amount of time on your Mac. Snow Leopard is a $30 update that is exclusively designed to make your computer better. If Snow Leopard delivers what Apple is promising, we’re going to be in darn good shape as Mac enthusiasts.

If the under-the-hood tweaks don’t get you all hot and bothered like they do for me, it should also be noted that OS X will now ship with Exchange support built in. Now all of you whiney business types (I’m looking at you, CNET) can stop your complaining. On top of that, we’ll be seeing the implementation of Quicktime X. The new chrome-less look will make watching videos a much more pleasant experience.

Some minor things have also been updated. Stacks have been implemented slightly differently, and now they will actually be useful. Instead of making you click through to see all of your icons, now you can scroll through without having to launch a Finder window. But maybe you’ll want to launch a Finder window now that it has been rewritten in Cocoa to take advantage of the horse power of your computer. All of these tiny things are adding up.

Snow Leopard might not seem that exciting on the surface, but I think we’ll all end up praising Apple for making our computers work better than ever.

Photo Credit: freeparking

I have a rule of thumb: If I’m going to use an application in my daily life, outside of reviewing stuff for the blog, I buy it.  It’s taken me a while to get to that point, but I think I’ve reached an age where Karma’s more important than free stuff. One application that I’ve purchased recently, and hope to use on a daily basis is iStat for the iPhone. The whole iStat package is pretty phenomenal, but when the Bjango group took the application to the iPhone, I knew right away it was something that would be extremely useful.

What the application does is keep track of your system resources across a network, both LAN and WAN, so it helps me keep an eye on servers and machines around my office.

There’s some stuff I’d love to see added to the iPhone application, but I’m not sure if it’s currently doable under Apple’s rules and regulations.

I’d love to be able to get a reading of the server or machines processes, just in case things get really out of hand and you need to figure out what’s killing your machine.  Currently, over Bonjour networks at least, you can’t get information on the network addresses for the machines you’re looking at.  I think that’s something that needs to be included, and would really put this application over the top.

I’ve toyed with creating an App like this for a while, and it seems that the Bjango guys have not only beat me to the punch, but they’ve also took it a lot further then I was thinking about.

Oh, did I mention that it looks sexy as well?  It does.