Macgasm

One of the games I have fallen in love with on the iPhone is Chocolatier ($4.99), an incredibly addictive game in which you are a chocolatier who must sell chocolate around the world. You’ll visit factories and build concoctions of delicious treats, following ingredients to a tee in order to increase production of your coveted items.

Once your factories are making the chocolates, your job is to travel to the available cities on six continents to meet new people interested in trying out your foods or being offered missions that can get you rich or give you an arsenal of hard-to-find recipes. You may have to travel to far-away places to find ingredients that are local to a specific region. All the while, you will meet people along the way who can give you pointers and make those trips enjoyable.

Each city has a marketplace where you can buy these ingredients. Some of the prices will be exorbitant. You have the opportunity to haggle with the store owner, though keep this at a minimum; sometimes you’ll upset them and your prices will shoot through the roof. If you really want those almonds and the price is bearable, just buy a bit. (Then haggle, maybe.) Of course, when you return to the same city, the prices are flexible once again. (However, bear in mind that every trip to another city costs money, sometimes in excess of $1,000, so you might not want to haggle at all.)

You will also amass great chocolates made by your character as you travel, just as long as your factories are running and you have adequate ingredients. You’ll find that you can sell these items for high prices. Take heed to the tips in certain cities that specific products are in high demand (or that specific ingredients’ prices have plummeted) to take advantage of the biggest and best opportunities.

As you travel, you’ll collect some great recipes, all of which are sure to make your wallet get bigger and bigger, as harder-to-find recipes often mean that you’re creating rarer delights. From chocolate bars to truffles to infusions, those higher-priced items are more expensive (additions to your factory are not cheap) but you’ll reap the benefits in the end when you find out that a case of a rare infusion exceeds $2,000. If you have hundreds of cases on hand, you’re sure to see a substantial profit.

Further, it’s a lot of fun to just go to a factory and race against the timer to create the perfect recipe. It’s not as easy as it looks, as you have to memorize the ingredients and make sure that they get added to the mix. If you miss, you can break the machine!

It’s really hard to say what’s wrong with Chocolatier. Two elements of gameplay — creating the chocolates and going on worldwide missions — make this game killer fun. I’ve been thoroughly impressed. You get hours of gameplay packed into a really fun application that was made for those of us with sweet teeth (sweet tooths?). I remember during the first part of this game, I went through 2 bags of Hershey’s Kisses. My advice: stay away from real-life chocolate when you play!

If you have kids, you’ll want to limit access to what they do within iTunes. Not only is there explicit music, but we also have to worry about TV shows, movies, and podcasts. There is a lot of adult content available through this particular conduit, so it is prudent to keep an eye out.

All you have to do is launch iTunes, and then press CMD+,

Now go to the Parental settings pane, and go through all of the check boxes and drop-down menus to choose what is acceptable for your child.

Photo Credit: CarbonNYC

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In this episode, we talk about the societal issues with police service apps.

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Want to keep track of your finances? If you don’t use an online application that stores your data like Mint, PocketMoney ($4.99) is a solid alternative. PocketMoney is a personal finance manager, allowing you to keep track of your credit card debts, checkbooks, and bank accounts. Here are some features:

• Expenses are categorized into multiple categories, including Auto (which works together with application MPG, $3.99, Computer, Entertainment, Food/Dining, which works with CheckPlease $0.99, Food/Groceries, and Home).
• On the Transaction Register screen, you can also see your expenses by outlet (grocery stores, drug stores, restaurants, etc.) and see how the cost at the store deducted from the money in your account.
• Visualize your costs by looking at the pie charts to see what you’re spending.
• Set budgets.  In the bar graphs, showing your spending, if the colors are green, you’re in the clear.  If you’re red, you overspent.
• Budgets can be broken down into weekly budgets, monthly budgets, quarterly budgets, and yearly budgets, making it easy to see your spending habits at a glance.

As mentioned PocketMoney works with Check Please and MPG, two other applications I was able to try.  MPG is great for a car owner who wants to keep track of car maintenance.  With MPG, keep track of oil changes, maintenance, car washes, and length of trips.  Fill up the gas tank often?  Use the data to keep track of the deals you have at the gas stations you’ve visited (or to see how your car is handling gas mileage).  Once you input the your charges into MPG, it can be posted to PocketMoney.

Check Please is an easy-to-use tip calculator for when you’re dining out.  Unlike other tip apps out there, it deals with discounts and coupons, which makes this more appealing, and it also works in different currencies.  Of course, having Check Please post the cost to Pocket Money isn’t too shabby either.  If you’re going to be keeping track of your expenses on your iPhone, you might as well do it in one application, not several.

PocketMoney is also available in a free version (and Check Please has a free version as well) so that you can try it before you are ready to dive in.  The free version of PocketMoney is limited to two accounts. But if you’re someone who wants to keep an eye on all your accounts in the palm of your hand, the paid version is definitely worth the money.

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In this episode, we talk about the new hardware Apple released today.

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Apple just released a magic mouse (do we really need an alliteration for a mouse?).

Essentially it’s magic, and by magic I mean multitouch with the ability to scroll, pan, and swipe documents for easier navigation.  So, essentially, they put a trackpad into a mouse.  Sounds pretty revolutionary to me.  It’s gonna run you $69 USD, so if you’re in the market you might want to check one out, but be warned, I’ve never come across an Apple mouse that I’ve liked. If I were you, I’d recommend waiting until you hear some reviews before you spring your credit card from your wallet and make a deposit at the Bank of Jobs.

It looks like Apple’s decided to grace us with some new iMacs and an updated Mac Mini without making us wait for a major Apple event to get the news.

Brand spanking new iMacs and updated Mac Minis have been released.  For the iMac line they now have Backlit Displays, and Quad-Core processors.  They come in both a 21.5 and a 27 inch widescreen display.

The Mac Mini

• 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• 2GB of DDR3 1066 MHz memory
• 160GB hard drive
• Five USB 2.0 ports
• FireWire 800
• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics
• A SuperDrive®.

But the real news comes with a 999.00 USD price tag. It’s a Mac Mini with Snow Leopard – Server Edition. It features two 500GB hard drives, which means you now have a new option for a home server, that doesn’t include buying a Mac Mini and OS X Server separately.

iMac Refresh

• LED-backlit displays with a 16:9 aspect ratio
• The  21.5-inch iMac features a 1920-by-1080 pixel display.
• The 27-inch iMac features a 2560-by-1440 pixel display.
• Both 21.5 and 27-inch displays use IPS technology.
• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics or ATI Radeon HD 4670 discrete graphics in the 21.5-inch model
• ATI Radeon HD 4670 discrete graphics or ATI Radeon HD 4850 discrete graphics in the 27-inch model.
• 4GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 memory and capacity up to 16GB across four SO-DIMM slots.
• iSight® video camera, mic and stereo speakers integrated into the thin aluminum and glass design.
• AirPort Extreme® 802.11n Wi-Fi networking, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, Gigabit Ethernet,
• Four USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire® 800 port
• Built-in SD card slot.
• Top of the line model now has 2.66 GHz Intel Core i5 quad-core processor with 8MB shared L3 cache

If you use Flying Meat’s VoodooPad and/or Acorn applications, you should know that Gus Mueller, the developer, has RSS feeds where he releases beta versions. You can use these releases to test out the latest features, and try the newest bug fixes. If you like living life in the fast lane, and aren’t scared of potential crashes, you should really give these beta versions ago.

Acorn Beta Feed
VoodooPad Beta Feed

Now, that said, I should tell you up front that beta software doesn’t always work properly. Instead of complaining and cussing when beta software breaks, you should file a bug report with Flying Meat Support. This makes the software become more stable and useful for everyone.

Photo Credit: Brymo