The Steam client and store for Mac was released this week with an almost immediate outcry from Civilization IV fans. Despite assurances that games bought through Steam for Windows PC would be playable on the Mac, Civilization IV owners were given short shrift. Aspyr – the developers responsible for the port – posted on their site that this was due to a Take2 Interactive – the publisher – decision.
That changed today, and Mac users can now download the Civ IV pack.
Apple announced the MobileMe mail beta today with a slew of new features. The feature I have wanted the most, server-side rules, is present.
Rules to keep your email organized everywhere. Mail rules help you reduce inbox clutter by automatically filing messages into folders you select ahead of time. Set them up at me.com, and your rules organize your incoming email on the web and everywhere else — on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, and PC.
I’d like to see the ability to define server-side rules in Mail.app on the desktop in addition to the me.com web site, but that’s a minor quibble.
Interestingly, MobileMe has also added an Archive button along with an Archive folder to the offering. This is very Gmail-like, and I am not sure I like it. I typically file email into specific folders to keep from having to search through a mass of email. On the other hand, Spotlight on the iDevices and desktop is pretty robust. I’ll give it a try and see how it works.
I know there are a lot of Google fanboys out there that will disagree, but these changes really bring parity or exceed Google’s standard Gmail offering. Yes, there is an annual cost, but that’s worth the price of not giving Google even more of my personal info.
http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/kids_are_all_right
A good read.
Stephen Fry posted his thoughts on the iPad. He waxes enthusiastically about the device, but his thoughts about Apple naysayers are perhaps the best:
I have always thought Hans Christian Andersen should have written a companion piece to the Emperor’s New Clothes, in which everyone points at the Emperor shouting, in a Nelson from the Simpson’s voice, “Ha ha! He’s naked.” And then a lone child pipes up, ‘No. He’s actually wearing a really fine suit of clothes.” And they all clap hands to their foreheads as they realise they have been duped into something worse than the confidence trick, they have fallen for what E. M. Forster called the lack of confidence trick. How much easier it is to distrust, to doubt, to fold the arms and say “Not impressed”. I’m not advocating dumb gullibility, but it is has always amused me that those who instinctively dislike Apple for being apparently cool, trendy, design fixated and so on are the ones who are actually so damned cool and so damned sensitive to stylistic nuance that they can’t bear to celebrate or recognise obvious class, beauty and desire. The fact is that Apple users like me are the uncoolest people on earth: we salivate, dribble, coo, sigh, grin and bubble with delight.
Lots of rumors beforehand and nothing like reality.
iTunes 9 was just released. You can go to any number of sites for the press release, so just my first impressions.
The look is now softer, more subtle, maybe a little more “plastic”. The maximize (green) button no longer puts iTunes into mini mode on the Mac. You have to hit Shift--M to switch, which follows the Windows behavior. The Application tab and the Store both have a new, lighter look.
The Applications management tab is going to be a hit with people who have a lot of apps.
Management of Playlists, Photos, TV shows, and Podcasts similarly got refinements, albeit not as dramatic as the Applications. It would be nice if Aperture and iTunes could both pull CoreData links and show quick thumbnails of the albums.
I don’t recall a full screen Coverflow option. I may just have missed it previously.
The “Automatically fill free space with songs” is new for the iPhone. I like this.
Downloading Yojimbo 2.0 today on a clean build of Snow Leopard. Type Yojimbo into the search box on Safari, and the autofill:
People want their sync.
Via Twitter, Ken Case reveals that a new OmniGroup application is coming tomorrow:
All he has revealed:
Yes, a new product which works well with both OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner.
Also, it’s a Mac app which will cost less than $30.
Stay tuned tomorrow for the OmniGroup reveal!
Bare Bones Software, home of the fantastic Yojimbo and BBEdit, have released a new mini-app called WeatherCal. It’s a Preference pane that adds weather to iCal as an all day event. Simple and elegant and US$10.
If you want to save a few dollars, here’s how to DIY. Go to Weather Underground and bring up your zip code’s weather forecast. In the upper right, you’ll see an iCal button. Right-click, copy link, then Subscribe in iCal. That’s it.
If it’s this easy, why would you want to use WeatherCal? The feed is kind of messy, and WeatherCal cleans up the report. It also adds a nice little icon to represent the weather. For example, today’s weather shows an umbrella. WeatherCal also offers OTA syncing if you use MobileMe while my manual method requires a wired sync. You will have to decide if a clean feed and little icon are worth the price of two mochas.
Side note: If you are on iPhone 3, you can cute and paste the link into a subscribed calendar right on the iPhone.
I’ve set up the new Airport Extreme Base Station and tied my existing Time Capsule to the network. As posted in my earlier post, the dual antenna to support 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz networks allows me to name the 802.11b and 802.11n networks with the same SSID. The newer Macbook and Macbook Pro line will failover from the 5Ghz to the 2.4.Ghz when the network signal degrades.
No real surprises. A match of Left4Dead did not reveal any loss of quality due to the loss of QoS from removing the Dlink 4300. I will test the MobileMe “Back to my Mac” functionality tomorrow.