Shouting Grounds

With 12 apps being offered for $39.99, you can’t beat the deal and with 25% of all orders going to charity you can even rationalize your purchase as being a gift to those less fortunate. Win-Win

I’ll talk about one of the major apps in the list that caught my eye.

Kinemac, the 3D motion graphics application, tops the app list as far as retail value ($299). If you’re a Mac user with at least a marginal amount of interest in media production, I would say based on its inclusion you would be hard pressed to find a reason not to buy this bundle. While it doesn’t quite measure up to apps like Apple’s Motion or Adobe’s AfterEffects in the realm of features, it’s certainly intuitive and easy on the eyes.

Some of the more powerful features in Kinemac include being able able to drag damn-near any image type to any surface for mapping. You can map not only 2d raster images but text, 2d vector (svg), and video files as well! If you don’t fancy building your own models using the limited primitives (sphere, cube, cone, cylinder, ring, star, 3D text, etc) provided in-app, you can drag over 3D obj and 3ds files made using other 3D modeling software. All of these features are implemented in realtime so you get a machine-specific representation (I’ll touch on this in a moment) of your animation immediately without rendering. Key framing is full featured with full bezier editing via a timeline. You can add backgrounds with alpha to export Final Cut compatible exports for video overlays.

Now the hiccup:
Some things I noticed about Kinemac that concern me are the fact that your export options are limited by your graphics hardware (another reason to pony up for Pro’s verses standard macbooks), shadows as a result of lighting are seemingly unsupported (unless you’re talking about text effect shadows), and 3d modeling (as far as creating, forming, and exporting your own meshes) is not supported.

Using an Intel graphics chipset means that you don’t have support for anti-aliased exports of your projects (kinda weak), it also limits (possibly removing) your motion blur options. Even on my Dual G5 with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro motion blur export controls are disabled, though I can add anti-aliasing (yay). The lack of shadows made me pause, because it seems like such a no-brainer to include, but technically since this software does everything in real-time it is limited in what it can represent without a proper ray tracing engine. We all know that real-time shadows as seen in video games are generally of poor quality (see cheating) so perhaps this is why they didn’t bother to include this as a feature. Finally the copy of Kinemac that you purchase is tied (via hardware signature/online activation) to a single workstation. A pretty inflexible arrangement in this day and age of extreme workstation mobility to be sure, but hell, why not buy to bundles? You will still be saving tons of money.

Running at a fraction of your $39 investment you will certainly get tons of use out of Kinemac despite any technical hang-ups you may notice. If you’re a mac user, I suggest taking the plunge.

Here’s a list of the other apps being offered (and some that will be unlocked as more buyers commit).

It looks like a new game will be coming out for the iPhone, and judging from the video it looks like it still needs a bit of work, and hopefully won’t be too terrible. Obviously this is a different breed from the console versions, and meant to focus on taking advantage of the iPhone’s touch, and motion interface (for lack of anything else). Hopefully there will be some actual lightsaber swordplay at some point. Due for a September ‘08 release.

Tags: StarWars, Force Unleashed, iPhone, Apple, App Store

Those with iPhones or iPod Touch devices might be wondering, “if I buy a program on the App Store, what happens if a new version comes out?”

Well luckily that’s all been worked out.  Anyone who has downloaded the free New York Times app and been immediately disappointed by the performance and quality of it have probably noticed the App Store icon on the home screen showing a little number badge on top of it.

If you go to the App Store and follow that notification a similar badge appears in the updates section, allowing you to download the new version of whatever application needs updating.  If you are away from your sync computer, it will install and prompt you to copy the new version over to your sync computer when the phone is connected.  Very slick. 

Nothing like a little som’n som’m to look forward too every now and again.

Tags: AppStore, itunes, iPhone, iPod Touch, updates

By running Apple Software Update you should see iTunes version 7.7 now available for download.  Even though the App Store doesn’t seem to have a direct link on the iTunes storefront.  A simple search for Super Monkey Ball will let you get to the App Store tab. 

With this single move you can download and purchase a shit tonne of goddamn applications.  Free apps include (finally) AIM, Facebook App, MySpace Mobile App, eBay App, IGN Game reviews, NetNewsWire, Evernote, and all sorts of little games and productivity applications. 

Pay software includes, Bejeweled, Super Monkey Ball, OmniFocus, Band, and christ there’s too much to name.  Seriously, tomorrow is going to kick all forms of ass when the 2.0 software is avaiable.

Or you could just download the 2.0 iPhone update yourself, right now.

Of couse, I can’t guarantee that that update will work properly, and it is known that updating your iPhone or iPod touch with 2.0 software will wipe the phone and attempt to restore from a backup created just before the wipe.  The backup checks what is available and authorized in your iTunes library for the restore so make sure (if you do this) to update using your main iTunes library.

This program is an example of why the App store and iPhone combo is going to be awesome.

Tags: iPhone, iPod, iPod touch, iTunes, Apple, App Store, iPhone 2.0

I’d heard of CodeWeavers‘ “CrossOver Mac” before. I understood that it was an attempt to run Windows applications without installing windows. It was basically an actively supported OS X build of WINE that was tailor-made for running business applications like Office and Photoshop. It seemed promising, especially when word of games support was advertised. I installed the demo copy about a year ago and was mildly impressed. It installed Office 2003 fairly well and ran quickly, compared to emulators that were publicly available. I had already bought Parallels and since I was using my original copy of Windows XP with it, I didn’t feel that I needed a program like CrossOver Mac since my needs were being fulfilled.

On the games front, I believe I had tried to install a game or two using CrossOver mac, but I didn’t have much luck. The program gives you a list of supported applications to choose from, but you can also launch an unsupported installer if your app of choice isn’t on the list. Since it had just coalesced as a product, their supported applications were mainly productivity packages and fairly limited. Since this was the case, I forgot about it for a while.

I was searching the net yesterday and noticed that CodeWeavers had split their flagship program into two halves. CrossOver Mac would now be dedicated purely to productivity and CrossOver Games would cover the entertainment sides of things. Each program is to be separately updated and expanded based on customer demand. There’s even an application voting section where you can show your interest in particular applications and games. Should you have deep interest in having a program be supported (and deeper pockets) you can pledge funds toward its support. Not a bad idea.

What does a year of development get you in regards to CrossOver? Steam support. That’s right! CodeWeavers has added specific support for the Steam gaming platform! You can install it from a game disc, or pull the installer directly from the web. After I finally remembered my login information for steam, I had, within minutes, over ten games available (yes 90% of those games are variants of Half-Life, but still) for play. I only have a measly MacBook (pre Core2 Duo) with a built-in Intel 950 graphics chip, but I was able to play Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Deathmatch, Half-Life Source, and Ragdoll Kung-Fu without a problem. The framerate on Ragdoll Kung-fu was very playable. HL2 was ok, not great, still playable. I’ll have tweak my settings a bit. I’d assume that even if Half-Life 2 was natively built for OS X it wouldn’t play much faster with my little video card. This software is amazing!

Yes, WINE is free and UNIX based, but CodeWeavers are putting a badly needed support framework around the app that makes it much more accessible and functional. The built-in net-install of steam is a great touch. So many PC games are up on steam now, that it only makes sense to get that program under your developmental belt.

So far, I’m really impressed with this offering as it means that all the money I’ve spent on PC games might very well not be wasted. I’d be able play these games in the future on my platform of choice (even if my old PC dies on me through severe neglect). CodeWeavers even has a Linux version with the same perks as the Mac app.

CrossOver Games is $39.99 at the CodeWeavers’ website and is downloadable immediately upon purchase (as God intended).