A while ago I wrote about how excited I was for April’s impending release of both the iPad and Valve’s Steam gaming client for Mac. April came and went, and while I’m loving my iPad, Steam is still not out for Mac. I signed up for the beta at the beginning of the month but […]
This past week. I took a substantial leap of faith. That’s right, I left my MacBook Pro at home and traveled with my iPad and iPhone only. Overall iPad was able to keep up with my digital note taking, research and communication needs. There were just a couple of times when I was glad to […]
Last night I heard on the news that there was a “Winter Storm Warning” and laughed to myself thinking “Yeah right!”. When I found myself brushing all the heavy, wet snow off my car this morning, I suddenly had a lot more faith in our Weather-people! Check out the snowstorm in action below from my […]
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Every year, countless numbers of people (and increasingly, businesses) reach for their inner teenager and pull off some amazing pranks on April Fool’s Day. This year is no different, though the online world has gotten more and more savvy to Google’s Topeka’s hijinks. The great people over at TechCrunch are keeping a live tally of […]
As an Apple fan, I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited as I am now. If I could roll the clock ahead to April right now then I would, and woe be it to anyone who tried to stop me. Why am I so excited? Well, two things really.
First, obviously, is the iPad. Somehow in the last week I have gone from staunch iPad skeptic to literally “in a froth” to get my hands on one (thanks Penny Arcade for the excellent descriptor of my frenzied state). I’ll be the first to admit that as it was presented it is a fairly unassuming device. It doesn’t really do anything that you can’t do with an iPhone and a MacBook, and falls awkwardly somewhere between. But oh, the promise! The sheer potential of such a device is astounding. My intent is to purchase one as a statement, if nothing else. A statement to developers that I need them to develop great apps for it. But enough about the iPad.
What really has me excited for April is the announcement that Valve, creators of Half Life, Portal, and Left for Dead, will be bringing its steam delivery service to the Mac platform, and its Source engine along with it. If you’re a Mac gamer, or wish you were, then this is amazing news. It’s no secret that our platform of choice is routinely ignored by game developers.
Apple themselves have also ignored us by refusing to offer us more powerful graphics options (yes, I really do need 1GB of VRAM). Blizzard has really been the sole supporter of Macs in the game realm, steadily releasing their Mac versions simultaneously with their Windows counterparts… on the same discs even. For a company the size of Valve to start building Mac-native versions of their games and really support the platform should encourage other companies to follow suit.
It’s already panning out like I expected. Razer has already announced they will fully support Mac OS X with their line of gamer centric peripherals (I’m a huge fan of their mice). My guess is that next we’ll see some of the larger publishers such as EA and Ubisoft (though please leave your draconian DRM behind) start to pick up Mac knowledgeable programmers and start to build native versions of their games rather than the bogged down ports we receive now.
Even if other developers don’t jump on board immediately, I can’t express in words how excited I am to be able to download my already large library of Source games without launching bootcamp first. And when Portal 2 releases around the holidays, I’ll finally be able to consider myself a Mac gamer instead of a gamer who likes Macs.
It can be daunting to try to stay on top of the endless flow of information available online. Among other tools, I use Google Reader, Socialite, and email alerts to stay on top of the topics that interest me. I recently started using “Alltop.com”:http://my.alltop.com/smalldogelectronics to help with this.
Alltop says its purpose is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you. They do this by collecting the headlines of the latest stories from the best sites and blogs that cover a topic. They then group these collections — “aggregations” — into individual web pages. Then they display the five most recent headlines of the information sources as well as their first paragraph.
We created an Alltop so we could stay on top of the latest Apple news. Many of us make it habit to get to work and fire up our page first thing in the morning. Click here to see our Apple-news themed Alltop page, or to create your own! “Alltop.com”:http://my.alltop.com/smalldogelectronics
Speaking of iCal… this Sunday marks the start of the Chinese New Year—the Year of the Tiger. The Chinese New Year changes every year, so if you don’t want to miss it in the future, subscribe to it via iCal. Download the Chinese Holiday Calendar for iCal here. See all of Apple’s iCal Calendars here. […]
It’s time for the Winter Olympics, and once again, those who love to watch the action but don’t have a TV will look to the internet for coverage. Thankfully, those behind major sporting events have followed the lead of online movie and TV services and have transitioned to make video content available online. However, this […]
