Macgasm

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In this episode, we talk about external drives spinning down.

[02.2 MB] [00:06:40] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]

One of the first video games I remember playing on the NES has made its way to the AppStore today. We’ve heard rumours of it being in the pipeline, and that it would be released “soon”, so we’ve been waiting with bated breath for the release.   The day has come, Final Fantasy is  now available for the iPhone.

Can you guess what I’m going to be doing for over the weekend?

The really cool thing about the release is that it’s not a direct port of the original. The developers decided to revisit the graphics and provide a touch-up.

This classic is going to set you back $8.99, a small price for such a great game.

Please excuse me while I go relive some memories.

Here’s our latest instalment of the video podcast. I think you’re gonna love it, it’s a huge step forward in my opinion, and provides some “lol” moments. Moving forward, we’re going to be aiming for a 20-30min episode, but this one’s a little bit shorter. We’re probably going to add a fourth segment.

In this episode we chat about Mophie juice packs, jailbreaking your iphone, and Facebook chat.

If you like what we’re doing, make sure you subscribe to our podcast feed in iTunes.

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In this episode, we talk about the Kindle competing with the iPad.

[03.0 MB] [00:09:00] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]

I wonder if Steve Jobs cringes every time the Apple community goes absolutely crazy over code in an SDK. I mean, they never announced a camera, and yet we’re all scavenging for news that Apple’s actually going to include a camera in the iPad.

It’s starting to crack me up a little. I can imagine Jobs banging his head on his desk over and over again while thinking to himself “I didn’t announce a camera!”

Yet somehow, consumers just aren’t happy with what we were told, which was very little, but something like a camera would have been big enough to announce.

So here’s where we stand.

No camera was announced, but developers have found a ton of references to a camera in the iPad SDK. Here’s a compiled list of evidence so far — if we’ve missed anything let us know:

Exhibit A : Images in an SDK

Apple leaves image to accept and refuse video chats in the most recent SDK.  Reports suggest that the size of the buttons are a clear indication that the image was intended to be used in an iPad instead of an iPhone.  Seems pretty logical to us.

Via 9 to 5 Mac

Exhibit B:Beta 3 SDK show’s a little bit too much.

Erica Sadun has managed to dig up some dirty on the latest Beta 3 of the iPad SDK.  She noticed that there was direct references to a camera within the SDK. Included is support for zoom, a front facing camera, and a flash (a camera flash).

Via MacRumours

Exhibit C: SDK 3.2 suggests there’s an ability to snap a picture.

iPhone OS 3.2 hints at camera support, and is iPad-only (3.2 SDK was iPad Only).  Some suggested it was residual code from the iPhone, but no one’s been able to prove it either way.  What we do know is that Apple didn’t pull the code in SDK 3.2, and there might be a reason for that.

Via AppleInsider

Exhibit D : Industrial design hints at camera

iPad Hardware has a slot for a camera.  Mission Repair received a shipment of repair parts for the iPad and noticed that there’s already a slot for a camera built into the frame. If true, camera support is on the horizon.  It might not be in the first version of the iPad, but it’ll certainly be included at some point in the future.

Via MissonRepair

Exhibit E: Apple’s looking to hire.

Apple’s looking to hire an engineer with a “strong technical background to test still, video and audio capture and playback frameworks” for the iPhone, iPad, AppleTV, iPod, etc.

Exhibit F: Macenstien notices that iPad commercial has a convenient speck of dust.

Take an advertisement, play it frame by frame, while adjusting the levels of each frame, and you’re going to find some interesting things hidden beneath the surface.  Macenstien got a tip showing that there’s a conveniently placed speck of dust centered on the device.  Could be a camera, could be a sensor (likely is), or could be a dead skin cell.  You decide.

After years of waiting, Telltale Games released a new entry in the Monkey Island series last year for Windows and the Nintendo Wii. Luckily, the good folks over at Telltale announced that they are porting over most of their catalog to Mac OS X. The first game of theirs to get the royal Mac treatment is Tales of Monkey Island, so I decided I’d buy it to show my solidarity with the Mac gaming community. Here is my review.

The Basics

If you’ve played any of the previous four installments in the Monkey Island franchise, you’ll be familiar with the setting. Guybrush Threepwood, Elaine, LeChuck, the voodoo lady, and Stan all make a glorious return in this five part series of games. The vast majority of the voice cast is returning from either Curse of Monkey Island or Escape from Monkey Island. One thing that has changed noticeably, though, is the way the player interacts with the environment. Gameplay is drastically less complex than the days of yore. Instead of fumbling around with verbs, all you have to do is click on objects to interact. The inventory is even hidden away on the side. I really must say that the interface is extremely well executed.

On the down side, the movement controls are quite awkward. Instead of walking by clicking on a piece of land, you now control Guybrush with WASD or the arrows. Alternately, you can hold down the left mouse button and then move in the direction you want to go. You enable running by holding down the shift key, but there is a massive flaw. When you move between areas, the shift key isn’t persistant. You have to lift up and press it again. When you’re trying to navigate the twists and turns of the jungle, this is utterly unusable.

When I emailed Telltale Games support to report this bug, I received a prompt and polite reply from Seher Basak — a senior tester. Sadly, this was his response:

[The shift key issue] is functioning as it did on PC to eliminate problems that would occur from carrying over input.

They know about the issue, but it doesn’t look as if they plan on fixing it. That is extremely unfortunate.

The Structure

Like Telltale’s other games, Monkey Island is episodic. For $34.95 USD, you get five episodes. Each episode has a unique story, but they all come together to form a cohesive narrative. For example, you spend most of the first episode trying to get off of an island. In the third episode, you spend the majority of the game inside a giant manatee. Character interactions from one episode affect the rest of the episodes thusly.

Like adventure games from the late 80s and early 90s, this installment of Monkey Island is focused around interaction with non-player characters and solving clever puzzles. Unlike the classic adventure games, however, you won’t get stuck on some ridiculously difficult puzzle. If the game senses you’re getting stuck on a puzzle, Guybrush starts giving you hints. The best part is that you can adjust the frequency of the hints right in the menu. If you’re a hardcore gamer, you can turn them off. If this is your first time to the rodeo, you can crank that sucker up. Flexible difficulty that leaves all of the puzzles in tact is a pretty great way of tackling the problem. I applaud this implementation.

The Future

All the cards on the table, I find this to be extremely promising for the future of gaming on the Mac. We are slowly seeing more games — Braid and World of Goo for example — coming to the Mac because of the demand from the users.

Telltale has plans to bring Sam & Max, Strong Bad, and Wallace & Gromit to the Mac. Until the 28th of February, they are running a poll to see which of those three franchises should be ported first. If you’d like to get in on that, check out this page on Telltale’s site.

Of course, Apple’s mobile platforms are the elephant in the room. Telltale representatives have expressed interest in offering their content to as many platforms as possible. Clearly, the app store has a pretty big audience, so Telltale is keeping their eye on it. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if we eventually see something from Telltale hit the app store. Quite frankly, I’d like to see something completely original, and not just a port.

If you want some Monkey Island goodness on your iPhone or iPod Touch right now, you can check out LucasArt’s The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition on the app store for $7.99 USD.

In Sum

This is a solid port. Outside of a few quirks (Which I am told they are working on as I type), there aren’t many noticeable issues. Considering this is their first release, I am fairly impressed. Giving the folks at Telltale your hard-earned money will send them a message that Mac gaming is worthwhile. If Telltale thrives, it will only drive more people to release games for the Mac.

I sincerely recommend Tales of Monkey Island to anyone that enjoys adventure games and puzzles. If you’re at all familiar with the series, you will not be disappointed. At the same time, it isn’t really inaccessible to new players. They do a great job clarifying the major plot points of the last four games through dialogue. If you’re considering buying it, you can go play the demo. If you like it, please vote with your dollar.

So, what do you think of Guybrush’s latest outing? Have something to say about porting games to the Mac? Comment on this post or hit me up on Twitter.

Image Credit: Lucius Kwok & Telltale Games

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In this episode, we talk about session-only tabs in Stainless.

[02.4 MB] [00:07:20] [Hosted by: Josh Schnell & Grant Brunner] [Subscribe]

Last Friday Apple made the completely redesigned Mashable app available for download (free). What, you don’t know what Mashable is? If you honestly don’t know, it is a professionally-staffed site dedicated to reporting on everything social media, self-proclaimed as “The Social Media Guide”. The app is yet another app that takes website content and optimizes it for the iPhone, incorporating and taking advantage of many of the UI elements in the iPhone SDK, making it far easier to quickly read, search, and share Mashable articles.

Per Mashable’s announcement, the app’s features include:

1. Browse by channel, category, tag or author

2. Share stories via email, Twitter and Facebook

3. Read later: save stories to read offline

4. Drag to refresh: tap and pull down to refresh story listings

5. In-App Browser : Visit external links without leaving the app

6. Price: FREE!

For me, an app like this has to do certain things well in order for me to continue to use it: load quickly, be very intuitive to use, easy to refresh, contain all of the articles and features available on the actual website, and be fun to use. Let’s run through the checklist, then:

Load quickly. The app is lightning fast, loading the current main Mashable page quickly after a brief splash screen. Navigation to other sections is done by scrubbing across a top menu and clicking the section title; the app responds instantly to all of these gestures. Article lists and selected articles also load quickly. All video links are to YouTube clips, so the experience is consistent with other apps that open YouTube and return after the video has been viewed.

Intuitive to use. The app is highly intuitive to use. Navigation is a breeze with browsing by categories, tags, and authors all supported. Search is simple and reliable. Articles can easily be shared on Facebook via Facebook Connect pop-up functionality. The one feature that was a little frustrating to use, and only because I ignored the pop-up when it first appeared, is sharing via Twitter. Unfortunately, to set up Twitter sharing, a quick trip to the application settings within the iPhone settings applet must be made; once there the specific Twitter client the user prefers has to be selected. Alas, the list of supported clients is very short, with only web, Tweetie, Twitteriffic, Echofon, and Twittelator supported. This settings applet also allows Instapaper Credentials to be entered–though Instapaper is supported I can’t comment on it because I do not use it.

Easy to Refresh. It’s pretty cool to see Loren Brichter’s innovative, fun and easy-to-use innovation, as introduced in Tweetie2, being used in other apps. I first saw it in the latest version of Gowalla, now Mashable. If you’re unfamiliar with how it works, it’s a simple click-pull-and-release gesture. It is very slick and contributes to the overall fun factor of using the app.

Contain articles and features of website. There is nothing missing here; in fact, I’d suggest it is a bit easier to use and navigate the actual website.

Fun to use. I realize some people may scoff at this, but isn’t this part of what the iPhone is all about? Apps should not only be easy to use and extremely functional, but should bring some whimsy to the table, too. This is often the key to making a great app–people will want to use it and you will have yourself a captive audience that will grow by word of mouth and will be loyal to your site as a result. It is a win-win proposition for the app developer/owner and the end user. The Mashable app is more fun to use than any other news app I have seen, and the emphasis on a cool interface and the ability to share information quickly contributes to this.

As an avid Mashable reader this app indispensable; it has resulted in me reading more Mashable posts than ever before. I highly rate the app, but really hope they add to the Twitter client support list. Overall, if you have even a passing interest in social media news I cannot recommend this app enough.