Category: Mac

Mountain Lion was released less than two weeks ago, and we’re still finding new features and nice touches Apple put in their latest OS. While you may have read every review, including an excellent one written by Alex Arena here on Mac.AppStorm, there’s still lots to discover in the newest built-in apps.

Notes, Reminders, Messages, and Game Center are Apple’s latest attempt to bring popular built-in iOS apps to OS X Mountain Lion. These apps include connectivity with iCloud as well as some extra features unique to the Mac versions. If you already have other apps you love for taking notes and keeping up with your todos, you may have just ignored these new apps, but there’s plenty included to make them great apps to keep around. Join me as we begin our tour of the latest apps included in OS X Mountain Lion!

Notes

Notes will be our first stop on the tour of new built in apps. Notes for iOS can be likened to a basic 4-door sedan with cloth seats, while Notes for Mac is a slightly upgraded version with a GPS navigation system and leather seats. The point being, Notes is still a relatively basic app with little features, improved with a sprinkling of extra customization options.

Perhaps the biggest feature of Notes iCloud sync. Make a note on you iOS device in Notes and it with magically appear on you Mac or vice versa, and it works incredibly quickly thanks to Apple’s massive North Carolina data center. Sync with iCloud is invisible and works dutifully in the background. Best of all, if you’ve already used Notes on an iOS device, your notes will start streaming in from the cloud as soon as you’ve installed Mountain Lion.

Notes has retained the famous yellow legal notepad motif along with the ripped page at the top. Notes can also go full screen as many apps in the new OS can. Once you go into full screen, Notes mysteriously looks just like it does on the iPad. You also have two view options, which are included. These options allow you to see and choose which account’s notes you would like to view.

Notes still includes the “Noteworthy” font that comes standard on the iOS variety; it does however have two other font option for you to use. Along with those lovely fonts Apple was kind enough to throw in, you can choose from the bevy of fonts available to the system by pressing CMD+t. Notes can also pull notes from your various email accounts. In System Preferences under Mail, Contacts, & Calendars, you can choose to display your notes in your available accounts, you could alternately just use your iCloud notes.

While Notes is not the standout application that everyone will be gushing over, it does its job. The integration with iCloud allows Notes to be very useful, especially if you live within the Apple universe. All in all, Notes is essentially the same as in iOS with a few upgrades.

Reminders

All aboard! Reminders is the second stop on our tour of Mountain Lion’s new built in apps. Reminders is an essential tool in my arsenal and many others. Reminders in its simplest form is a basic checklist app, you put items on the list and check them off once completed. In my opinion, it is a little more than that.

Reminders closely resembles its iOS counterpart. It has a notepaper texture applied to the text background area and a dark black leather user interface. Like all of these apps that started life on iOS, the design has changed very little. We now have buttons at the bottom that pulls up a calendar, hide the search and list area, and create a new list.

Reminders are associated with your iCloud account and other available accounts. You can select which accounts you would like to sync Reminders with in System Preference under Mail, Contacts & Calendars. You cannot sync Reminders and Calendars separately, including when using an iCloud account. This could run you into problems when you would like to sync Reminders and do not want all of the calendars synced into your Calendar app. I found the problem of syncing Calendars to get Reminders a little annoying. So, I just sync Reminders through iCloud to keep confusion to a minimum.

Reminders also includes additional information for your reminders that you can modify. You can set Reminders to remind you on a certain day or even at a certain location. You can also set the priority of a reminder and add a little note, if you so choose.

While Reminders is simple and modest, it is very useful and has the all important iCloud sync capability along with the ability to sync with other services. The interface is nice enough and Reminders gets the job done.  It’s a great addition to OS X, and perhaps the best option for people wanting a basic to-do list app without all the bells and whistles of more advanced apps like OmniFocus.

Messages

Messages is iChat’s successor in OS X, and it is absolutely better than what it replaced. Although it is better, Messages and iChat are essentially the same, Messages just adds a new interface and the option to message other Macs and iOS devices with the proper OS version. Messages cannot send text messages to any phone number. It connects to iPhones and other devices via the Apple ID, rather than a phone number. Messages, like many of the new apps, comes directly from iOS.

Messages can use a bevy of Internet chat and audio/video services that you may already use. Messages can connect with AIM, Google Talk, Jabber, and Yahoo! Messages also connects to other iOS and Mac users via your Apple ID. Adding services and signing into them via the app is as simple and easy as it has ever been. If you like to add your accounts from System Preferences, you can do so under the Mail, Contacts, and Calendars tab.

Messages has a two pane work interface. On the left you have your conversations and on the right, you have your chat session represented by the familiar Apple style alternating color bubbles. If you want to initiate a video chat, you can do so via the video button at the top of the screen. At the bottom left, you have your familiar status options to change as you please. You can also drop in files up to 100 megabytes to share with others right into the chat window, which is a great way to share without pesky links!

Apple also includes options for you to change the look of the familiar speech bubbles and other parts of the interface. You can alter the background color, change the sender’s font color, and change the sender’s background color. Under “Alerts” in preferences, you can set different audible cues when an event takes place. Finally, you can choose the microphone and camera input that the video and audio chat uses.

Messages is the old iChat turned up a few notches with the same core features. Messages allows a good amount of customization and integration with iCloud. It also integrates well with third party chatting services as well. Messages is a worthwhile addition although it would be nice to see it allow some kind of text messaging so that I can message people who may not have an iPhone running iOS 5 or newer.

Game Center

Game Center is perhaps the biggest and most important of all of the new built in apps. It ushers in an easy way to play against other players around the world. The Mac has not really been known for its game prowess and Windows based rigs have dominated the scene for a long time. However, Game Center might just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and release the floodgates of Mac gamers.

Games you play in Game Center must be downloaded from the Mac App Store and since your Apple ID is connected, all of your stats from any of your iOS devices sharing the ID are also ported over. Games that you or others may be playing on your iOS devices must be available on the Mac to take advantage of Game Center.

If you have already purchased the mobile version of the games and would like to just re-download them on your Mac, you are out of luck. Along with needing to have a specific Mac version of your game, you will need to buy it again, if it is a paid game. If you are playing a game that happens to exist on both the Mac and iOS, then you can find friends and play against opponents through the Game Center app. Game Center also houses your rewards from both iOS and the Mac so that you can bask in them as often as you like!

Overall Game Center is a great addition to the Mac. It has its limitation, the main one being selection of available titles, but is still incredibly fun. Now you may not be doing any intensive gaming with Game Center titles, but for casual gamers, Game Center does the trick! I think its safe to say the Game Center puts Apple in the position of being huge force in the computer gaming industry, especially when you think of the millions of iOS and Mac users who potentially could use Game Center.

Conclusion

Apple has really raised the bar with Mountain Lion OS X 10.8 not only with features, but also with its great selection of new built in apps. Notes has extra functionality built in and still retains the ease and simplicity that many users loved in the iOS version. Reminders while almost unchanged from the mobile version, adds the ability to sync with other accounts and is integrated with Notification Center. Messages takes the old iChat and pumps up the usability and the integration with iCloud. Finally, Game Center has a few shortcomings, mainly from lack of selection, but still adds the ability to game with others on the Mac and iOS platforms with almost no setup. These four new built in apps have further distanced the OS X platform from other competing operating systems by offering great functionality with award wining Apple simplicity.

This week has been another quiet one in terms of app news but we’ve still found a couple of stories to keep you ticking over till next week.

Enjoy!

Tighter Twitter integration expected in next release of iTunes

We already know that Ping will be dropped out of the next version of iTunes, version 11, which is expected to be released sometime in the coming months (along with the possible release of the iPhone 5 and iOS 6) however The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has been finding more and more ways of increasing Twitter’s presence across its entire product line. Currently, Twitter support in iTunes is limited to finding followed users on Ping, the built-in social network.

Twitter really has been a hot topic for Apple over the past year and really does show how much faith the company is placing in the social network. iOS 5 featured built-in support for Twitter and allowed users to tweet links, YouTube videos, photos and more directly from iOS and Mountain Lion also brought tighter Twitter integration into the OS, with built-in tweeting directly from the new Notification Centre feature.

Although there were rumours that Apple was buying Twitter (and detailed talks between the two companies seemed to confirm this), these were simply to discuss tighter product integration and it may be that iTunes 11 is the first product of these talks. We will keep you updated on this front.

Chrome 21 released with retina-display support

If you’re lucky enough to have a new retina MacBook Pro, then there’s good news for you. Chrome 21 was released back on Tuesday with support for the new retina display, meaning that the company has kept its promise that it made several weeks back in June when the new MacBook Pro was announced that Chrome will support the higher-resolution display.

Chrome 21 also includes a new API (application programming interface) called getUserMedia which lets users give access to websites to access their computer’s webcam or microphone without having to install an additional plug-in (usually, a Flash authentication is used here) and a new WebRTC API allows web applications to take pictures of users, such as the experimental Sketchbots in the Chrome Web Lab does.

The new update also fixes several bugs and security loopholes and is therefore recommended for all users. If you’ve got automatic downloads on in Chrome, then it should have already installed itself for you, otherwise simply update your browser to the newest version.

Tweetbot for Mac receives another update

The Tapbots team are firing on all cylinders at the moment as the alpha version of Tweetbot for Mac received another update this week to version 0.6.3.9, alpha 4 (now that’s a mouthful). The new version brought along TweetDeck-like columns for your mentions, favourites, direct messages and so on, along with a new status bar icon and notifications for multiple accounts on Mountain Lion.

The window snapping feature is pretty easy. Simply click on the feature that you want (mentions, direct messages etc) then click on the gear in the lower-right hand corner and hit Open in New Window. Then drag the new window next to the original one and line up the top-right corner of the old window with the top-left hand one of the new one – they will automatically stick together.

With the rapid update turnaround for these alphas (we’re almost on one a week), we can rest assured that the final version will hit the App Store very soon. The paid version will also feature iCloud integration in the Mac version, meaning that your timeline is synchronised across all your devices.

The update to the alpha is free and if you haven’t yet got it, head over to Check for Updates in Tweetbot to grab it.

Heard Anything Else?

If you’ve heard anything else exciting that’s happened this week then go ahead and post a link to it in the Comments section below for the benefit of our other readers!

AppStorm’s App Store deals of the week are back! We have some great free and discounted apps available just after the break, so be sure to check them out.

Be Sure to Check Back Next Week!

We post an article containing price changes on popular apps every week, typically on Wednesdays. Make sure you check back here for some great discounts on apps you should buy. Have a wonderful weekend!

We’d like to say a special Thank you! to our weekly sponsors from the past month, for sponsoring our site and for the great apps they make. If you would like to feature your app on our site with an advertisement, be sure to check out our available slots on BuySellAds or register for a weekly sponsorship for your app.

If you haven’t already checked out our the great apps that sponsored our site last month, be sure to check them out now!

And a special thanks to you, our Mac.AppStorm.net readers, for reading and sharing our articles. We couldn’t do it without you!

Steam is one of the predominant forces in digital distribution of games, and it launched on the Mac just over two years ago. In our continuing effort to dispel the myth that Macs are no good for gaming, today we’re going to take a look at our favourite games available through Valve’s store that you simply must download.

Portal 2 – $19.99

I’m going to kick off with a game that I absolutely love: Portal 2. Not only is Portal 2 my favourite game of all time, the adventures of Chell, GLaDOS and Wheatley won numerous awards and became an instant classic. If you only download one game on this list, please make it Portal 2.

Portal 2, the sequel to the game that turned the phrase “the cake is a lie” into an iconic meme, Portal, continues the adventures of the Chell in Aperture Science, a now abandoned science laboratory and research facility that sees her awaken villain and eventual comrade GLaDOS, a maniacal AI that wants nothing more than to oversee the testing of human subjects. Portal 2 also introduces Wheatley, another AI voiced by Stephen Merchant, a portrayal that is simply amazing.

We’ll be taking a more in-depth look at Portal 2 soon, as part of our tour of the OS X gaming icons. If I haven’t convinced you yet, I will do soon.

Portal – $9.99

You may also want to consider grabbing Portal too (hilarious pun, right?). Honestly, you can jump right into Portal 2 and if you can choose only one of the two, I’d go with Portal 2. However, if you want to start from the beginning and get a little background to the events of Portal 2 through gameplay, the original Portal is definitely worth buying.

Grand Theft Auto III – £5.99

The self-proclaimed “highly controversial” yet “hugely successful” franchise, Grand Theft Auto, brings the dark underworld of Liberty City to the Mac with Grand Theft Auto III.

It might not exactly be a “must have” game, not being suited to everyone’s taste in games, but it certainly is a classic and those that enjoy the series should definitely check it out for OS X. It’s also available in triology form in a package that includes Vice City and San Andreas.

Half-Life 2 – $9.99

Half-Life 2 is the sequel to 1998′s Half-Life, a game that influenced the entire first person shooter genre in a big way. While that 1998 classic is unfortunately not available on OS X, Half-Life 2 and it’s subsequent two episodes are and truly are must haves.

Half-Life 2 sees you in the role of the silent Gordon Freeman, a theoretical physicist from Black Mesa (which just so happens to be the rival science facility to Portal’s Aperture Science) that’s on a mission to bring down the alien control over Earth in an apocalyptic metropolitan area in Eastern Europe.

The classic game needs to be in every gamer’s Steam library, and is available, alongside it’s two sequel episodes on Steam. Be warned, you’ll be left on quite the cliffhanger once you’re through with both episodes and will have to join the rest of us waiting for gaming’s most notorious case of vapourware, Half-Life 3, to finally see the light of day.

Civilization V – $29.99

Civilization V, a best seller on Steam, allows you to become ruler of the world by leading a civilization from primitive, humble beginnings to space-bound travellers by declaring war and conducting diplomacy.

The game’s first expansion pack, Gods and Kings, was just recently released and saw a lauch on Steam. In the expansion, you’ll encounter an expanded core game with new technologies, buildings and units, new civilizations, religion, new naval combat and more.

Team Fortress 2 – Free!

Team Fortress 2 is another gaming icon and a mutliplayer title that remains popular to this day. Team Fortress 2 is a first person shooter sess you join one of two opposing teams that battle it out in combat. Players choose one of nine classes in each team, each with pros and cons, and ones that have been the subject of a pretty viral video series.

The game continues to update and provide endless hours of entertainment to a user base that’s most certainly still alive. It’s well worth checking out.

LIMBO – $9.99

LIMBO is a puzzle platformer presented in a distinctive black-and-white style utilising it’s graphical style and minimal ambient noise to create a dark, eerie atmosphere. LIMBO follows a boy who awakens in the middle of a forest, seeking his missing sister and encountering few human characters in an enviroment that soon transitions into a crumbling city.

The game got a number of 5/5 (or equivalent) reviews and holds an overall metascore of 88/100.

Left 4 Dead 2 – $19.99

Set in the zombie apocalypse, Left 4 Dead 2 takes you through cities, swams and cemetaries, playing one of four survivors fighting off the undead threat. Along with friends in the award-winning co-operative mode, Left 4 Dead 2 takes you through a number of campaigns and maps in a first person shooter game developed by the same people who set the bar for first person shooters with Half-Life.

Conclusion

That’s been my picks for how the funds in your Steam Wallet should be spent. Of course, there’s a considerable catalogue of games for OS X available on Steam, and if you’ve got your own recommendations not featured on this list, be sure to share them in the comments!

Macs have never been regarded as machines built for gaming, and are often mocked in the community for their aptitude in this area. In fact, just earlier this day I saw a thread on Reddit mocking the Mac’s ability to play games. That may be true; the Mac certainly isn’t the best platform out there for games.

However, what is undeniable is the improvement the platform has been making in the last 18 months or so. That time has seen the release of two pretty big outlets for games, the Mac App Store and Steam, as well as a steady improvement in the hardware that makes up the Mac family.

Steam Continues to Grow

Just over two years ago, Valve released Steam for OS X, their digital distribution service for games, developed in-house or otherwise. The launch was teased with a series of parodies of popular Apple ads, including swapping out Justin Long in Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign for a turret from Portal. Likewise, a full-blown video homage to the iconic 1984 commercial was produced, starring characters Alyx Vance, Wallace Breen and the Combine, to promote the release of Half-Life 2.

Steam’s release on the platform brought the launch of a bunch of popular Valve titles including Half-Life 2 and it’s episodes, Portal and Team Fortress. In 2011, Valve signified a significant step forward by releasing one of the biggest games of the year, Portal 2, simultaneously on both Windows and OS X.

While a lot of major developers, such as EA, have yet to publish their Mac games on Steam, even when they’re available for Windows via the service, the launch and subsequent growing popularity of the service offer some confidence that future releases will be available alongside or in place of physical media.

Mac App Store Sees Success

The Mac App Store was launched in January of last year as a digital distribution platform for all categories of apps. The growing popularity of the store has seen success for many apps, including a notable catalogue of independent casual games that accompany iOS counterparts. The store’s prominence, much like the iOS equivalent, has allowed games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope to launch on OS X with a chance of success and not needing to encounter the costs of going through physical retail channels.

The Mac App Store continues to grow, but is yet to really gain much attention from the gaming community. Aside from some older games like Grand Theft Auto 3 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, “big name” developers have not adopted the store as a distribution channel so it’s unlikely we’re going to see games like Black Ops 2 make a debut. Allow a few years to pass though, and perhaps a reconsideration of how Apple profits from store sales, and it might just get some credibility from non-indie developers.

Game Center Is Here

Mountain Lion brought Game Center to the Mac with a flagship feature of allowing developers to implement cross-platform gameplay between iOS and OS X. While not at the Ping-level of unpopularity, Game Center is yet to see real traction outside of very casual games. It’s always useful to have should a time come when you need it.

“Big name” titles continue to use their own services for multiplayer – through Steam, Portal 2′s co-op mode can be played between Macs, PCs and PlayStation 3 consoles – but that isn’t having a significant impact on the user experience of such multiplayer modes on the Mac. The great thing is seeing how many iOS game developers are making their way over to the Mac with the App Store, and having the Game Center on iOS and OS X should help accelerate that trend.

Macs Remain an Afterthought

While large development companies are getting on board with the idea that Macs play games, few are actually going to the extra effort of producing the title natively. Instead, we’re stuck with ports of PC counterparts that are notably worse than if they were developed for a Mac, and not simply ported over. Although it is an ageing title, The Sims 3 is one game on my shelf that I know is merely a port through the Cider technology that unfortunately leaves the game on OS X inferior to it’s Windows version in performance.

Hopefully this will change at some point. It’s certainly better than nothing and you can still have an enjoyable experience with these afterthought ports, but it’d be nice to see an embrace of OS X properly. Hey, at least they’re half-way to fully supporting the Mac.

Physical Media Is Becoming Irrelevant

The trend that began with the MacBook Air all the way back in 2008, prompted the loss of the Mac Mini’s optical drive in 2011. Just this summer, Apple’s transition away from physical media hit the MacBook Pro, removing the optical drive from the “next-generation” model and leaving only the iMac and Mac Pro with the hardware still on board.

This transition leaves an ultimatum for developers and publishers: drop support for the Mac or move to a digital distribution model. Fortunately, even the big names in games are getting on board with digital distribution for environmental reasons, which should increase the irrelevance of physical media for games over the next few years.

Hardware Continues to Improve

As is customary, the current lineup of Macs are receiving continual updates that improve the specification and performance of models. The entry-level iMac features nice 512mb dedicated graphics and the latest update to the Mac Mini saw one of the two stock consumer builds feature dedicated graphics with 256mb of memory. The continual improvement of graphics in Apple’s hardware constantly improves the value for money of Macs and contributes to dissolving the meme that Macs can’t power gameplay.

My 13″ 2012 MacBook Air sports Intel’s HD Graphics 4000 and that has proven enough, even as an integrated chipset, to power games like Half-Life 2 and it’s episodes, Portal 2 and The Sims 3 running natively at full resolution (or, near to) and at medium to high graphics with little problem, aside from a somewhat noticeable increase in fan noise and the occasional spike in heat.

In a Nutshell: Improving

In a nutshell, the Mac is improving. Mockery of the platform by the gaming community probably won’t stop anytime soon, and it might take a couple of years before larger gaming franchises see their releases available on Mac-based digital distribution networks. Mac developers like EA have their flagship games on Steam already for Windows, but presumptive technical disparities leave them unavailable for Macs. Hopefully, as our beloved operating system increases in popularity they’ll become more important to gaming companies and see a subsequent support in future releases.

August is Mac.AppStorm’s unofficial gaming month so be sure to keep an eye out for more posts, roundups and reviews of the world of gaming on OS X.

Keeping open multiple application windows, even multiple browser tabs, can eat up a lot of memory and slow your machine down. But when you’re busy, it’s difficult to sacrifice the ease of having every application and website you need one click away for that extra speed boost.

Click.to makes that trade off a little easier by gathering all of those applications into a single menu interface. By allowing you to access everything in one place, it’s no longer necessary to keep a tab for every web app and a window for every application going at the same time. But how much functionality can Click.to really provide in a single popup menu? We’ll take a look!

Making the Satellite Work for You

Click.to is a popup window, called a satellite menu, that appears whenever you perform certain actions. To get the satellite menu to show up you can either copy just about anything or you can hover over the area of your desktop where the hidden satellite menu lives. Once visible you can interact with all of Click.to’s services, and there are a lot.

When you start Click.to for the first time, you’ll be prompted to choose the services, or applications, you want in your satellite menu. Not to worry, though; anything you leave out goes into a flyout menu hidden beneath the bottom button in the satellite. That way if there’s a service you want to keep close at hand but don’t use everyday, you can still have it nearby. You have a lot of service applications to choose from, too, including the obvious social media favorites, Google’s main services, Microsoft Office, some mail apps, and plenty of others.

Click.to starts working when you copy text or a file. Depending on what you copy, your satellite menu will pop out at you and offer the relevant services. If you copy text, just about all of the services are going to be offered, but the field will be narrowed if you copy an image or a PDF.

Click.to autohides, but you don’t just have to copy something to the clipboard to get it back. Hovering over its hidden position will also cause it to appear. Click on any of your services, and start typing. When you’re ready to post your text or perform your search, depending on the service application you chose, click the post or search button in the bottom of the window, and you’re off to the races! It’s worth noting that if Click.to needs to get into a browser to perform whatever action you’ve requested, it uses your default browser and won’t try to force its way into Safari.

If you’re posting to Twitter, Facebook, or any other web app that needs a login, you’re going to have to grant Click.to access the first time you take it out for a spin. Be careful of creating emails or anything else that has multiple fields with Click.to, as well; your subject lines will default to “clickto,” likely not what you’re going for and slightly less helpful than a default “(no subject).”

Making Click.to What You Want it to Be

If you realize you’ve made a horrible mistake and want to take everything back, you can change the default services that appear in your satellite menu in your preferences. There really are a lot of service applications to chose from, far too many to list here, but if it turns out there’s something you need that they don’t provide, you can add it. There’s even a little tutorial on the Click.to app website to walk you through it.

The appearances tab in the preferences lets you choose where you want the satellite to spend its time or if you even want it to appear automatically at all. If you fill up on services, you can resize the icons down, and you can create a keyboard shortcut to make the satellite menu appear without hovering.

I’m copying things 60,000-70,000 times a day, and while that’s clearly an exaggeration, with the Click.to satellite menu sliding out every time I tapped Command+C, it sure felt like I was doing that much copying and pasting. Luckily the “show satellite icons on desktop” toggle in the appearance preferences took care of that for me. The satellite menu was still waiting on my desktop if I hovered my mouse in the right spot, but it stopped jumping out at me from behind potted plants just to see my hilarious spit takes. That preference isn’t labeled “this will stop the satellite from showing up every time you copy something,” though, and it really should be. This was almost a dealbreaker for me.

Conclusion

Click.to is a great app for getting shortcuts to your most used applications, be they of the web or Mac variety, right on your desktop. It’s almost endlessly customizable, and where the possibilities for customization end, your own ingenuity picks up. If the service you need isn’t offered, just add it, and Click.to will hold your hand while you do.

Click.to brings all of your services into a single interface. It’s simple, it’s easy, and if you’ve wanted a faster way to post to specific applications, especially if you’ve wanted to post to web apps when you weren’t inside your browser, this is definitely one to try. Without interrupting your workflow, Click.to gives you likety-split access to just about everything you need.

Pandora, the crazy popular internet radio webapp, already has a Mac application of its own, but it’s only for subscribers. With a Pandora subscription, you get lots of little perks, and you get those perks in the Mac app, too. However, the official Pandora app isn’t for the rest of us who use Pandora infrequently or who haven’t found the value there to invest in a subscription, yet.

That doesn’t mean we want to be tied to a browser window to listen to Pandora, either. Tiny menubar app Bandito has that all wrapped up, thankfully. Taking Pandora out of the browser and putting it on your desktop, Bandito’s bringing you the best of both worlds.

Unmasking Bandito

When you open Bandito, you’ll obviously have to login to Pandora. If you haven’t created a Pandora account yet or need to reset your password, those aren’t things you can do in the Bandito application, and you’ll be directed to a browser to take care of it.

Once you’re back in Bandito, you’ll see all of your stations load, and your most recently created station will start to play. It’s super obvious what the play, forward, and volume controls do, so let’s skip that. The thumbs up and thumbs down you’re used to from Pandora are here to do their same jobs, too.

For those who aren’t Pandora power users, a thumbs down not only skips the current song but lets Pandora know it isn’t your style and you don’t want to hear it anymore. If you give too many songs the axe, Pandora stops skipping them, though, due to their licensing agreements with the labels, and will let you know why your songs aren’t moving forward. You won’t get that notice in Bandito, though, and those not in the know may just wonder why the thumbs down stopped working.

There are a couple of sharing buttons for Facebook and Twitter. While it’s nice and almost expected to have the option, I wish Bandito had gone further, as Tumblr is definitely missed for sharing music to social media. It would have been nice to have the option to share via email and Messages, too, while we’re at it.

Do More Than Just Listen

Clicking the bottom of the window will display all of your playlists, and if you have too many to be contained, scroll up or down to see them all. You can also delete or rename your playlists. Shuffle will create a giant shuffled playlist of sorts from all of your single playlists.

If you want to create a new playlist, just enter a search query in the Start a New Station field. Much like the Pandora webapp, you can really search for anything, but Bandito’s search isn’t as attractive or user-friendly as Pandora’s. There aren’t links to additional information in the search, as in Pandora, so when I was creating stations, I wasn’t always sure I’d gotten exactly what I wanted.

There are a few options in the application preferences, such as a toggle that will display a Growl notification whenever a new track plays. You can also replace the Bandito icon in your menubar with the current song’s album artwork or have the artist and song title display in the menubar. There’s also a few shortcuts to checkout in the preferences if you don’t want to use the mouse to pull up the Bandito window every time you want to thumbs up a song, pause, or move forward. This is super helpful since the keys that normally control iTunes along the top row of your keyboard aren’t going to do a thing for Bandito.

Things to Work On

Whenever you open Bandito, including if you have it set to automatically open on login, it will start playing your most recently created radio station. This autoplay feature isn’t something you can turn off, and you don’t necessarily want Bandito playing something the moment it opens, especially when you have no control over what that something is. Poking around in the forums, others have expressed their exasperation at this “feature” and the devs have promised to work on it for the next release.

The search when creating new stations was lackluster, but to be honest, it’s not that big of a drawback. When it comes down to it, this app is for listening to Pandora on my Mac. If I really need to interact with Pandora in a meaningful way, for instance to create stations, I can just do that in a browser.

My only big caveat when recommending Bandito is that it seemed to freeze if I got too athletic in my clicking. If I chose a radio station, changed my mind, chose another before the first had loaded, and then tried to minimize the window to the menubar in quick succession, Bandito would just sort of give up. I actually had to go into Activity Monitor and quit from there. Which, I’ll grant, is kind of a big deal. After I realized what had caused Bandito’s nervous breakdown, I made sure to give it plenty of time to load between clicks, and I haven’t had an issue since. Not a glowing report, but it works.

Did Bandito Steal the Show?

This isn’t going to be a replacement for Pandora’s webapp. If you’re looking for the social aspects of Pandora, like the affirmation that your friends are digging the same music as you, that’s not here. You can’t learn about the music in Bandito in the same way that you can with Pandora in a browser. And creating stations with Bandito is kind of a pain. There’s also the problem of Bandito freezing if you move more quickly that the application does.

However, it does do something pretty big; it gets Pandora out of the browser, onto your desktop, and into your menubar. Creating stations and finding new music with your friends are sort of fluff and not what Bandito has set out to do. It’s an app for playing your Pandora stations, and that’s exactly what it does. Once it has some of the bugs worked out, Bandito will be something really great. For now, it’s quite good, and definitely worth checking out if you want a way to play Pandora out of your browser without a Pro subscription.

This post is part of a series that revisits some of our readers’ favorite articles from the past that still contain awesome and relevant information that you might find useful. This post was originally published on August 23rd, 2011.

As most laptop users are aware, running multiple applications on that thirteen inch display is a pain. Things get crowded very quickly and there isn’t much you can do besides drag and resize each window- slowly and painfully. Or can you?

In this post I’m going to blast through all the different options for managing windows on your Mac. There are some general categories to keep in mind: those that work with virtual desktops (or in Apple-world: Spaces), individual windows and some unique window management solutions. Let’s dive in!

Virtual Desktops and Spaces

Spaces, Exposé & Mission Control

Built right into your Mac is the powerful Mission Control (Mountain Lion and Lion) and Spaces (Snow Leopard) system utilities. Built to help you manage windows in an easy to use and understand manner, they feature a virtual desktop setup along with the built-in Exposé features that lets you see all of your working windows at a glance.

Price: $19.99 (for a Mountain Lion upgrade)

Hyperspaces

This utility allows you to take the idea of Spaces to the next level. Hyperspaces lets you customize each space to feature different desktops, naming them and switching to them in an easy Heads-Up-Display mode. It only works on Snow Leopard, but if you’re using an older Mac that doesn’t have Mission Control, it might be worth the price for some extra Spaces features.

Price: $12.95

VirtueDesktops

If the new mission control setup isn’t your style, you might find a better option in VirtueDesktop. It works very similarly to the old version of Spaces- letting you create virtual desktops that are easy to switch between. It hasn’t been updated in awhile, but it was the start of the old “Slapbook” phase, where you could shift between desktops by tapping the side of your Macbook’s monitor.

Price: Free

HyperDock

If you’d rather get previews of the windows that you’ve hidden or minimized for active dock applications, take a look at Hyperdock. It gives you a miniature preview of each window you have running for each application in your dock. Just click the window and Hyperdock will bring it to the forefront.

Price: $9.99

DisplayMaid

This app allows you to save and restore applications’ position and size inside of different workspaces. You can set up different workspaces for when you’re at home or on the go and have the application automatically adjust based of the arrangement of the displays.

Price: $4.99

Window Management

Cinch

This little utility brings the enviable technology from Windows 7 to the Mac. It allows you to drag windows to the edge of the screen to “Snap” them to one side of the screen, talking up just half of your display. You also have the power to drag the window to the menubar to maximize it. It nicely outlines where the window will end up after you let go of your mouse as well.

Price: $7

SizeUp

This application takes keyboard shortcuts to the next level! Applying quick keyboard shortcuts to moving and resizing windows to fill a quarter, half, just the middle or the entire screen. It can be a bit overwhelming to try to learn 15+ keyboard shortcuts at once, but it sure makes moving windows around a breeze.

Price: $13

Divvy

This popular application allows you to quickly manage the size and placement of application windows. On any active window, you can pull up a heads-up-display and use a grid to plot out where and how big the window should be.

Price: $14

Moom

Another widely popular application that completely takes over the seemingly useless green traffic light button at the top corner of each screen. Moom repurposes this button and gives you quick access to resizing the window or customizing where and how big it should be through a Divvy-like grid pattern.

Price: $10

BetterSnapTool

This utility brings a similar set of features as most of the other window managers. It allows you to resize windows into halves, quarters or fill the whole screen. It has a handy overlay that shows what the window’s size will be once resized.

Price: $1.99

DoublePane

Similar to Cinch, DoublePane allows you to quickly resize two windows so they can sit side-by-side, taking up just half the screen each. It’s perfectly simple and priced to make reading a Safari window and taking notes in Pages next to each other extremely simple. This would be a great option for students doing research or anyone that finds themselves with two windows open on the same display throughout the day. You can also chose your own keyboard shortcuts to assign to managing the windows.

Price: $2.99

Flexiglass

This application follows suit with most of the window management applications out there. Except it features the ability to change the function of the traffic light bubbles in the top corner of each application. You can define what right clicking on them does. It also supports setting up multitouch gestures for window control.

Price: $9.99

WindowMagnet

This application has hot edges and corners that allow you to quickly resize your windows. Simply drag a window to the side to resize it to take up half of your display, or to a corner to take up just a fourth. It even gives you a nice overlay preview of what space the application is going to take up.

Price: $4.99

Optimal Layout

This application seems to boast some of the most features of any of these window management applications. From keyboard shortcut controls to grid layouts to grouping windows together, this application seems to have it all. However with a lot of features comes a bit of bloat and confusion. It also takes up a bit too much of my menu bar for my liking (though this is fully customizable).

Price: $13.99

Other Interesting Window Management Apps

Spirited Away

My g-to app to help control window clutter, Spirited Away makes inactive applications disappear from your screen. You can also set up a block list to avoid having your twitter feed disappear on you.

Price: Free

Think

Think is a super simple application that hides away other windows and the desktop so you can concentrate on what you need to get done. You can set the transparency as well as a color that you’d like your window to be surrounded by (I recommend just black). It makes it very easy to switch between focused applications as well.

Price: Free

F.lux

Not quite a window management application, however it does affect what you see on your screen. F.lux changes the tone and color of your computer screen as the night wears on. Set it to the type of light in your environment and F.lux matches its tone so that your eyes don’t become as sore.

Price: Free

Deskshade

Perfect for hiding icons and folders on your desktop, Deskhade can help you prepare for screenshots as well as insert movies into the background. A movie of floating clouds sounds nice for a background- just beware on the CPU / Battery drain of such a feature.

Price: Free (for now)

Menu Eclipse

This application let’s you wield control over the menu bar sitting at the top of your screen. Make it invisible or opaque, it really gives you a lot of control.

Price: $2.99

 

Swapp

This handy utility allows you to switch all the windows on one display to another. You can even just select the most forefront window and send it over to your secondary display.

Price: $4.99

Conclusion

That’s the end of our collection of window management apps. I hope you’ve found a few new gems to help keep your OS X experience organized and efficient.

There are a million of these types of utilities on the market so if we missed your favorite, leave a comment below and tell us about it.

Reading. Writing. Researching. Revising. Studying. Discussing. These are just a few of the many things that a good English major is expected to do. The workload might seem overwhelming at times. Luckily, a number of different apps exist to help you out along the way.

From writing apps to dictionaries and even publishing tools, a huge variety of Mac apps can definitely find a helpful home in every English Major’s hard drive. This list contains a few of what I consider to be the most helpful apps for an English major.

Conclusion

These are just a few of the many apps available to help English majors, and college students in general. Whether you are working on a screenplay for class, need to practice your typing skills or just want to look up a word, there is an app in this list for you. They are all well designed and generally fairly priced. If you can put the app to use, you should definitely download it.

I’m always curious to know what you would add to the list. What is your must have Mac app that’s perfect for an English major? Are there any apps on the list you love or are particularly excited to try out? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

We’re excited to let you know about the latest addition to the Tuts+ family — Gamedevtuts+!

Gamedevtuts+ is dedicated to teaching game development, with tutorials, tips, and articles about level layout, game design, coding, and working in the industry. We walk you through how to create games from scratch, go into the theory behind game development, level and character design, discuss working in the industry, and much more…

Read on to find out more about the all-new Gamedevtuts+!

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What to Expect on Gamedevtuts+

If you’ve ever wanted to learn about game development, or brush up on what you already know, we think you’re really going to love Gamedevtuts+! We’ll be publishing a combination of step-by-step written tutorials and screencasts/video lessons. Most weeks you’ll see 4-5 high quality tutorials, tips, and articles, so make sure to subscribe to the Gamedevtuts+ RSS feed so you don’t miss a thing.

If you’re an experienced game developer and you have the skills to create a screencast or text and image tutorial for Gamedevtuts+, it’s easy to familiarize yourself with the guidelines and pitch your idea. We’d love to help you pass on your experience.

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Subscribe, Follow & Stay Up To Date

Don’t forget to follow Gamedevtuts+ on Twitter, Facebook, and everywhere else! Here’s how to keep up to date with what’s going on:

• Follow @envatogame on Twitter
• Like Gamedevtuts+ on Facebook
• Find us on Google+
• Subscribe via RSS
• Join the Newsletter
• Game with us on Steam

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Our First Few Posts…

If you’d like to delve straight into the content, here are a few quick links to our first handful of posts on Gametuts+. We hope you find them useful — it’s a good taster of what’s to come!

Build a Canabalt-Style Infinite Runner From Scratch

This screencast talks through and shows the entire process of creating a Canabalt-style platformer and discusses the tricks used to create an infinitely scrolling game. The final game has randomly generated levels, player movement, death conditions, along with basic scoring — and you’ll have created it in 30 minutes!

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When Designing a World, Player Mobility Must Come First

Ever played a game that was packed with great set pieces, concepts, characters, and mechanics, but nevertheless felt boring? Perhaps the problem lay in how your character moved through and interacted with the game world. In this article we’ll take a look at player/world interaction through the lens of player mobility for a few key games, and see how this helps us understand the way level design and character design should work together.

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Coding Destructible Pixel Terrain: How to Make Everything Explode

In this tutorial, we’ll implement fully destructible pixel terrain, in the style of games like Cortex Command and Worms. You’ll learn how to make the world explode wherever you shoot it – and how to make the “dust” settle on the ground to create new land.

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The thing that I love the most about Google Docs is its no frills interface. I’m a vocal advocate of the app and thanks to it, I haven’t used Microsoft Office in the past three years. But, Google Docs isn’t perfect either and has a bunch of quirks that haven’t been addressed properly by Google so far. Offline access and multi account login are two that top my list of gripes.

A couple of weeks ago, I got the chance to review Google Drive for Mac. Unfortunately, it didn’t offer either of the two above mentioned features. But, the app is a step in the right direction. Not discouraged by the launch of an official client, the developers of Collections have ventured with a Mac app of their own to help you organize your cloud documents locally.

Getting Started

With Collections, all of your Google Docs can live in one place, no matter which account they’re associated with. Now you can view and edit everything through the same efficient interface. Simply login to Google once for each account and let Collections handle the rest.

I was glad to see a help wizard that gives a crash course about using the app in just two steps. On a side note, these days I’m thrilled to see how Mac developers are putting a lot of effort into crafting nicely thought out help wizards to assist users getting familiarized with the app. It’s fast becoming a trademark style of the Mac ecosystem and hope other developers follow suit soon!

Getting started is fairly simple. If you have linked a third party app with Google in the past, the procedure is exactly the same. After entering the login credentials of your Google Account, allow Collections access to your files and the basic account information.

As the app gets down to syncing the files in the background, you will be prompted to add more Google accounts. If you plan to add more, the rinse and repeat!

File Sync and Folder Structure

File sync in the background is a welcome addition. But, it is really not a good thing to sync all the files and folders without asking the user for some input. I was travelling and hence was tethered to a costly mobile broadband plan while reviewing the app. I was on the verge of tears to see that Collections run roughshod over my capped bandwidth.

In most cases, I would have lauded the app for a lightning fast sync, not this time though. Before I could figure out how to pause the sync, hundreds and hundreds of files were already downloaded to my Mac.

After poking around for a while, I found that there is no option for selective syncing of files and folders. Nor is there an option to pause a sync in progress. We can overlook this shortcoming taking into account that this is a beta release. It would be a major fail if this feature didn’t make into the final release.

Accessing Files

Collections lets you access your Google Docs with unparalleled speed. The three column interface actually makes the workflow more streamlined. Your accounts and the folders are listed in the left column of the app. The folder structure, including the sub folders from the Google Drive were intact.

Click on a folder to see the files in it in the center column. All files are organized in a chronological order with the latest ones at the top. It’s nice to see the icons of the file types were retained. They make identifying the various types of documents painless. If you are like me and have hundreds of documents in your account, the search bar at the top might come in really handy.

Previewing and Editing Files

The speedy preview mode lets you rapidly scan the contents of your documents and find exactly what you need. You can’t expect much from a preview mode and the same goes for this app too.

Double-click on a document or on anywhere in its preview to edit. The app then brings up the Google Docs in the web app mode in the right column. Editing and collaborating with others works just like you do in a web browser.

Final Thoughts

Collections is your Google Docs command center – a personal portal for all of your accounts that lets you continue the experience offline.  I’ve never been a fan of web apps in a thinly veiled native wrapper passing themselves as true blue native clients. When Gmail for iOS pulled that stunt, I ripped them apart for iPad.AppStorm.

Now, Collections is built the same way, a web app wrapped in a Cocoa wrapper. But, in my opinion, they have tried their best to make the app as native as possible. Their goal seems to bring seamless document editing with multiple account support to the desktop. And, with a couple of tiny quirks, Collections has succeeded to a great extent!

If you’re a web developer or just like to use every character imaginable in your daily routine, Macs have a menu for that. Whenever you’re in a text field, you can just click “Edit” and click “Special Characters…”, or simply use the shortcut CMD + Option + T. It’s a nice, easy way to insert pictographs and the like, but what if you want a little something more, there’s a new app in town.

Being the sheriff and all, I introduced myself to him. He’s an outlaw of third-party sorts; says his name is Characters. He carries his fair share of trusty bullets and stars and even tries to hit you with a few arrows once in a while. Even though his supply of said objects isn’t as plentiful as that of Apple’s, he’s been taught some Greek and Latin to talk his way out of any predicament. This fellow don’t mess around. I happened to haul him in for questioning and found a few extra developer tools on board. Let me take you back to the Old West for a few minutes while we examine Characters.

Welcome to the Ampersand

Install Characters on your Mac and it’ll have been branded. This app slaps an ampersand right in your Launchpad. The icon isn’t half bad though; the designer did add a nice drop shadow to it. When you click it, another one pops up in your menu bar just waiting for a fight. I can’t say much for the spirits ‘round this particular saloon, but the vintage black-and-white icon fits in well with the boys (Dropbox, AirPort, time, etc.). Now, click that ampersand and you’ll be whisked off to the world of Characters. I’ll give you fair warning: you may come back with a dingbat or two so be careful.

Searching

What would this sort of app be without a search function? The integrated one works just as well as OS X’s and it’s always found what I’ve been looking for, but I have one suggestion: let users input HTML code for a character to see what it really looks like. This would make Characters an even more valuable tool since it could work both ways instead of just allowing you to copy something.

Searching will yield results from all categories, regardless of what you have enabled in the app’s preferences.

The Selection

As I said before, this menu bar app doesn’t have the widest selection of drink. I like the fact that all the basics are there because those are what I personally use most, but what about the web developers who need a selection that’s a bit wider? OS X’s Special Characters window’s arrow selection, for example, is colossal compared to the Characters app. I’d expect a third-party alternative to at least have more, but it falls short in most categories. The bullets are still first-generation .22 magnum with a few 12-gauge shells for the shotgun. I don’t see anything futuristic here, but OS X offers every crazy thing you can imagine. There’s even a bullet that looks like a bullet.

There are many characters hidden in the Dingbats category, so enable that under the gear to make sure you have as many showing as possible.

If you take things abroad and archaic, Characters only offers Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Latin Extended-A. I understand that these are the main characters that people will use, but what if you want something like Armenian or Coptic? Head over to OS X’s official window — again.

Pictographs? Oh yes, we have four of those in stock for you today and they’re all related to playing cards. I like the idea of having a menu bar-based app for this sort of thing, but why must the selection be so offering? $2.99 is a bit steep for something so restricted and it feels like more of a tweak or add-on than an app.

Copy HTML Code for a Character

The most valuable feature in Characters is its ability to copy the HTML code for a special unicode character. You can click the “Designer/Developer” switch to toggle modes and you’re going to want developer mode for HTML codes. All you have to do is click a character and the app will automatically put the HTML for it in your clipboard. You can then proceed to put it in your WordPress theme or add it to a website you’re working on. It’s an fast and easy way to keep your workflow moving smoothly without switching to another app.

Conclusion

This is a tool for developers, so I understand that there’s no functionality for normal users. Sadly, there’s a very limited selection of special characters and on top of that, the only functionality that makes this worth using is HTML code copying. While everything works great and there are no bugs, there’s also no reason to use this as a tool since it doesn’t have enough to offer. If you’re working on something simple then it’ll be fine, but if you need some extra special arrows or something, this isn’t going to work. I’d suggest using a web resource instead. Otherwise, use this app as the only way to access characters in the fastest manner possible.

Minecraft is a phenomenon. The game that was born from one man’s mind has sold nearly 7 million copies and generated an immensely devoted community of fans. It’s been heralded as one of the best games of all time, and it’s not at all difficult to see why.

When we reviewed it last, Minecraft was still in beta, version 1.9, and has since been officially released, taken out of beta and received a wealth of significant updates. With Minecraft 1.3 hot off the presses and hitting as a free update, it’s time to take another luck at why this game is so successful and offer some update views.

The Ultimate Sandbox

Minecraft is a open-ended, sandbox-style game that doesn’t have a defined storyline. When you create a new world, the game generates a random terrain that consists of various biomes, each with individual features like weather, plants and even structures. These range from dense forests packed full of trees that you’re able to harvest for wood to dry, cactus-filled deserts. You can encounter jungles, snowy mountains aside ice lakes and vast oceans, all with seemingly non-existent boundaries.

As you explore the land, you’ll end up coming across structures such as small villages, jungle temples and pyramids in the desert, all of which have a chance of including a lucrative set of loot should you find them. As you head underground, amongst the stone, metal ores, gems and more, there’s also dungeons full of monsters (and similar sets of loot, should you be able to fight off the threat), large ravines and even abandoned mineshafts that suggest someone has explored before.

The land is also home to mobs, both passive and hostile. The former includes cows, pigs and sheep while the latter covers everything from zombies the iconic, explosive creepers. All of these can be either killed or harvested, with a chance of food or materials dropping when you do. The hostile mobs will become a particular problem in dark areas or at night and will require your attention to avoid death.

There’s no defined storyline or aim for the game. You wake up on a seemingly unexplored land and must harvest, mine, fight and build to survive. There’s no aim other than to survive and achieve your own goals, although the game’s official “end” occurs when you kill a boss in a dimension aptly named “the End” (even then, you’ll only be presented with an ending sequence and then your game can continue on). The community have create their own stories and legends about the game and the existence of the previously-mentioned structures suggest someone has walked the lands before, but nothing is officially confirmed and you won’t find yourself making your way through a storyline.

You can play the game by yourself, or host others too by setting up a multiplayer server or opening a world up so other players can join over LAN (a nice new feature introduced in the 1.3 update). A creative mode offers the player the ability to fly and have unlimited resources, but the default survival mode, with varying difficulties, ensures the challenge of gathering resources and having to maintain a satisfactory level of health and hunger. You can also play a hardcore version of survival, where death will end the game, delete your world and prevent you the ability to respawn.

The Basics: Mining and Crafting

The two fundamental actions in Minecraft are mining/gathering and constructing. The first thing you’re likely to do in Minecraft is punch trees to receive wood; wood that can then be used to construct a crafting table and subsequently tools, such as axes and pickaxes, that can be used to mine resources faster.

Blocks like wood and cobblestone can be replaced in the land to build structures, although other resources will need to be crafted or smelted in a furnace before they can be used. For example, if you mine iron or gold, it’ll need to be put into a fuelled furnace before it’s turned into ingots, which can then be used to construct blocks of the material, tools or other items.

There’s a plethora of different natural resources from the wood you can get from the four types of tree (the harvest logs and subsequent crafted wooden planks will differ in shade according to the type of tree) to sand from deserts and beaches to stone from your mines and the various available metals, gems and items of value that reside underground.

There’s not a complex system of the items in the game, although the crafting recipes will probably take you a short while to learn without needing to reference to the Minecraft Wiki.

Essentially, that’s Minecraft; you take blocks from the generated world and then place them elsewhere, although, perhaps only after smelting them or crafting into something else, to generate structures. A system of redstone, powered primarily of the dust that drops from Redstone Ore, allow you to create simple machines with pistons and other items.

The charm of the game is that you can do what you want. You can opt to spend nights underground trying to collect as much stuff as possible, or set out to build a city. You can build machines to automate what you do, or construct mini-games and adventures within Minecraft for other players.

While taking part in all this mining and crafting, you’ll have to be sure to keep your health up by avoiding hunger through killing animals for meat or growing crops. If you die, and you’re not in hardcore, you’ll respawn at the last place you slept or, if you haven’t slept in a bed yet, the original spawn point.

To Hell and Beyond

The world in which you spawn is referred to as the “Overworld”, made up of the features we’ve covered already. However, there’s also two additional “dimensions” accessible through portals, and with significantly different characteristics.

The Nether is one such dimension, the game’s version of Hell, is accessible by the player by constructing a frame of Obsidian (an item in the game created when water hits non-flowing lava, and mined with a diamond pickaxe) that’s lit on fire inside. The fire turns the frame into a portal, which the player can walk through to teleport to the other dimension.

Unlike the Overworld, the Nether does not have multiple biomes, and, if you dig down, you won’t start to hit materials any different than the ones available in the level on which you spawn. Instead of dirt, the landscape is primarily made of “Netherrack” and water is swapped out for lava, available in much larger lakes than is common in the Overworld.

The Nether brings it’s own mobs, including the flying, fireballing Ghasts, Blazes and Zombie Pigmen, which drop unique items that can be fundamental to activities and items in the Overworld. Glowstone, a form of lighting that’s alternative to the simple torches, is also found exclusively in the Nether. With lava, debatably tougher mobs and an overall larger risk, the Nether is dangerous and will require your player to get prepared with armour and tools from the Overworld. In this way, the dimension adds higher-level content which is recommend only once you complete objectives in the primary world.

Like the villages and temples found in the Overworld, the Nether has one structure: Nether Fortresses. These are constructed of the dimension-specific Nether Brick blocks and is also the only place you can find Nether Wart, a primary ingredient in the high-level potion system in Minecraft.

The other dimension of the game hosts the boss battle that results in the game’s official ending, “The End”. The End is not accessible through player-made constructions; only three End Portals will spawn in your map, in a special structure that is the prison-like Stronghold. You’ll need to experience most of the game before even attempting to head here, since merely the item needed to navigate you to a Stronghold requires you to armour up in order to hunt down Endermen (a pretty unique mob primarily found in The End itself, but that also spawn in the Overworld at night, can teleport and require quite the attack to be killed) to collect their pearls and head to the Nether and collect the dropped items from Blazes.

The End is a pretty simple dimension, a floating island of End Stone that Endermen walk upon and the game’s boss, the Ender Dragon. While making sure the Endermen don’t kill you, a difficult task in itself, the end of the game is reached by killing the Ender Dragon. Once killed, the end sequence will commence before the player can jump right back into continuing their game.

It’s completely optional but the aim of killing the Ender Dragon provides some goals for the player to achieve – you’ll need go mining, find diamonds, build a pickaxe, mine obsidian, construct a Nether portal and kill blazes just to collect one of two ingredients needed to craft Eye of Enders, required to both find and power the End Portal – if being thrown into a complete sandbox isn’t their thing. It doesn’t turn Minecraft into a linear, story-based game, but at least offers the player something to be achieved.

You can play a game of Minecraft with the sole intention of reaching the end and then finishing, of course. I participated in The Verge’s speedrun to the End, a co-ordinated effort to kill the Enderdragon in a fresh, newly generated world in as little time as possible, and it was pretty fun.

Graphics, Audio and Charm

Minecraft is known for it’s distinct blocky style consisting of a pixelated texture. It’s not a style limitation subject to technical features, with more advanced visual effects like lighting available. This isn’t some retro game, it’s a style specifically engineered to create Minecraft’s distinct charm.

You’ll come to love Minecraft’s style, even if it doesn’t necessarily compete with the blockbuster console games of today’s industry. Don’t underestimate it’s requirements though; your Mac will need a fair bit of graphical power to run it smoothly.

The game’s soundtrack consists of scenic tracks that are very nice and contribute to the charm of the game, although you probably will get tired of them eventually after your inevitable addiction fuels many late nights of playing.

New Features in Minecraft 1.3

Minecraft 1.3 brings a bunch of new features to the game as a free update. Firstly, maps will now generate with new structures, namely temples in the jungle biome and pyramids. These both come with traps and puzzles that need to be endured in order to reap the structure of it’s loot. Being added in one of the earlier 1.3 snapshots, i’ve been playing with these for some time and it’s nice to have additional structures to encounter as you explore the lands.

An addition to the existing structure, villages, allows players to buy and sell items from the NPC villagers using emeralds as a currency. This is nice, and does allow both an emergency supply of food should you need it, and even facilitates faster access to some of the more advanced items and, therefore, gameplay of Minecraft.

The enchantment system of the game, which allows players to upgrade tools and armour in various areas, previous required a lengthy process of killing mobs, something that wasn’t entertaining in the slightest. “Mob Grinders” could automate this process, but would then leave you to wait for upwards of an hour to get a good level before enchanting just one item.

One of the most significant changes in Minecraft 1.3 sees a variety of additional actions give the player experience, including mining ores and smelting items in the furnace. This just seems “right” as much more of the game contributes to your experience of it, and makes upgrading items a much faster process. You still don’t get to choose what enchantments your item receives, but the faster process somewhat combats the randomness.

A new gameplay mode has also been added, Adventure Mode, which is suited for player-constructed adventure maps. This mode, which is in it’s early stages of development, does not allow players to destroy, harvest and place blocks in a traditional way. Instead, most of the users action is limited to controls and redstone items, which limits a player’s ability to cheat. Naturally, for adventure map players and builders, it’s a welcome addition.

As would be expected, the update adds new items to the game, all of which are definitely beneficial to the game. These include Ender Chests, a special type of chest that allows you to access the same inventory from any Ender Chest, tripwires, writeable books and farmable cocoa beans. None of the new objects or changes to existing ones are bad or negative to the game, although some tweaks might not be to your satisfaction since they involve more work on your part.

You can view a pretty extensive list of updates in Minecraft 1.3 on Reddit. The update only confirms Minecraft’s value through Mojang’s constant, feature-packed updates. Even at the time of writing this review, days before the official Minecraft 1.3 release, the game’s developers are already at work on developing features for future updates, which look promising.

Conclusion

At face value, Minecraft’s premise isn’t going to appeal to everyone. It’s a sandbox to a further extent than games like The Sims, that still offer the player significant story-based and RPG aspects. However, Minecraft is more a tool than game and it’s fun is a product of how you choose to play with it. You can construct amazingly detailed buildings or use the tools to create adventure maps to share with other players. You can construct arenas to play the mini-games that are a product of community invention or just explore the lands.

It’s a fun game, and comes at an amazing value at $26.95 for essentially infinite replayability. The 1.3 update only cements that further, with Mojang’s commitment to bringing free updates that add significant batches of new content and gameplay. With the new objects, trading and experience systems, LAN multiplayer feature and more, Minecraft 1.3 gets a definite thumbs-up from us!

With so many task management, GTD, and to-do apps available, for a new task management app to be worth the trouble to try out, it has to give you that extra bang for your buck. A good task management application has to identify a hole and try to fill it, and do a really good job at the same time, or it’s just not worth moving from another task app that’s getting the job done.

Currently available to download for free while in beta, Nokumo is attempting to solve your task management woes, make your workflow more productive, and make it worth your while to switch to a new app. Giving you a space to keep your contacts, events, tasks, and projects under one roof, Nokumo looks to be a powerful application. But can it deliver on its promises?

Serious Project Management

The contacts view gives you an overview of all of your contacts on your Mac. There’s also a tab to view just organizations, which is incredibly handy, as getting your best friends mixed up with the company that cleans your carpets or mows your lawn isn’t the most effective way to manage your rolodex.

You can tie contacts to tasks or calendar events, useful for people management if you’re planning a party or a get-together. Similarly, link organizations to documents inside Nokumo or to projects you’re working on. This will allow you to see the history of a relationship with a business or partner over time and easily keep track of what you’ve worked on together in the past.

Tasks can be created in Nokumo or synced from Calendar. You’ll be able to set start and end dates, allowing you to create tasks that begin in the future and won’t appear on your radar until you’re ready to start working on them. You can categorize tasks and link them to different projects. There’s also an alarm feature that will let you alert yourself just before the task begins, just before it’s due, or even at the halfway point.

Projects are similar to tasks, but you can assign projects to multiple people. You’ll set start, due, and end dates, just like a task, but you can also create milestones. Within the project, you can track its progress, so you have a good idea if things are going to plan or if it’s not going so well.

Notes and Documents allow you to store data for your projects and tasks. Keeps notes about what’s going on and link them to your projects for reference. If you have any files that are relevant to your projects, you can browse for them in the Documents tab and then link them where appropriate. You can even link notes and documents to contacts and calendar events, and your documents can really be any sort of file, not just text or PDF files.

Where Things Didn’t Work

This is the first beta for Nokumo, or so the splash screen says when I open the app, and it shows. The interface isn’t at all intuitive, and it took me awhile to figure out what I was even supposed to use the app for. The help file was no help, as each feature gets a one sentence description but no actual explanation.

Nokumo is still referring to Calendar as iCal, and that’s okay in a beta, especially as the Mountain Lion shift is so new. However, Nokumo is a cross-platform app, and while it works well on the Mac, there are some PC remnants in the menus and in the interface. I hope as Nokuma moves out of beta, compatibility on the Mac isn’t an afterthought.

A huge problem for me was the inability to sync with Google Calendar. The majority of my calendars, and I have more than a few, are managed in Google Calendar and are synced with Calendar on OS X and iOS. I have one really out of date calendar on my Mac, and that’s the only one Nokumo could find or do anything with. For me to be able to do any sort of meaningful task or project management, I’d need access to those calendars, and it just wouldn’t be practical for me to move all of that to Calendar right now.

There were a few other annoyances with the UI, but the biggest of the small bugaboos was how difficult it was to create new categories, project types, groups, and tags. These are all similar ways of organizing the different pieces that make up Nokumo task management. However, you can’t just create a new tag or type when you’re creating a new project or task. You have to open up the application preferences and create each one at a time. It’s time consuming and counterintuitive, as I know what I want to tag a project when I’m creating it, not an hour ahead of time.

Conclusion

There’s still a lot of good here, and Nokumo is a robust project management app. If you haven’t already found something that’s working for you, this is one to give a try. The ability to link contacts to tasks to projects to documents is incredibly useful, so that you have everything you need organized in one place.

Nokumo is still in beta, and hopefully when they get to the final release, they’ll have all their ducks in a row. With a more intuitive user interface and syncing, Nokumo could really show itself to be a powerhouse. Until then, it’s usefulness is only so-so.