Strategy games for the iPad are all over the place in terms of quality. Great Little War Game HD is one of the good ones, with many challenging levels and good graphics. It is also easy to learn with tips at the start of each level instead of a massive tutorial to digest. It is a basic turn-based strategy game much like the old Advance Wars that defined this genre.
You can make your Mac remind you of the time. Go into System Preferences, then Date & Time. Click on the Clock tab. Then select the Announce the time option. You can have your Mac tell you the time on the hour, half hour or quarter hour. You can even select the voice. This comes in handy if you have a particularly busy day and need to keep track of time.
Lion was updated to version 10.7.1 through Software Update this week. Most of the changes involved fixing bugs and improving reliability. The update was specific to several versions of Mac hardware and whether you had Lion Server installed as well.
You can get 10.7.1 by simply running Software Update from the Apple menu on any Mac with Lion. Details about the update are at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4764.
In line during the tough economic times of the past.
In line during the tough economic times of today.
Apple had two interesting announcements this week. The first was the addition of a low-end iMac strictly for the education market. In the past Apple has kept around older iMac models and continued to sell them to students and educators. But this time around they have produced a new version of the 21.5-inch iMac for that purpose. The model comes with an i3 processor, 2GB of memory and a 250GB hard drive for $999. You can buy this low-end iMac from Apple, but only if you qualify for educational pricing. Note that for only $200 more you get the standard low-end iMac which comes with an i5 processor, twice the memory and twice the disk space.
The discontinued white MacBook is also available for educational purposed, but cannot be purchased by individuals from Apple. Reportedly it can only be ordered by educational institutions.
Apple released an add-on to Lion this week in the free Lion Recovery Disk Assistant. It allows a Lion user to use an external hard drive, such as a USB flash drive, as a recovery disk. A hard drive with Lion installed will include such a disk as a separate hidden partition on that same drive. But this method will work even if that internal drive is damaged. It will allow you to boot from the external drive and use tools to repair your disk, restore from Time Machine or even log on to the Mac App Store and re-download and install Lion.
The financial turmoil this week has produced an interesting bit of data. While Apple’s stock price went down with the rest of the market, it didn’t suffer as much as others. Several times on Tuesday, and by the end of the day on Wednesday, by the numbers it was the world’s most valuable company. At the end of Wednesday it was valued at $337.2 billion, ahead of Exxon Mobil which was in the lead previously.
“I gave up chewing on his shoes. He seems to get much more excited when I chew on those new Apple Thunderbolt cables.”
Here’s a simple but fun and beautiful game that can be enjoyed by just about anyone. In Osmos you are a small cell trying to get bigger. You do that by simply eating things small than you, and avoiding things larger than you. But each level has a puzzle aspect to it that keeps it interesting.
Select an editable piece of text in Safari, Mail, TextEdit or almost anything else. Then Control+click or right+click and look for Transformations. You can make the text all upper case, all lower case, or capitalize each word in the selection. Very useful for when you accidentally type some text in all upper case and want to correct it without typing it all again.
Apple made steps this week toward the eventual release of iCloud. They launched iCloud.com, a test site for some of iCloud’s new features. The site is meant for developers who need to test iOS app compatibility with iCloud. Web-based versions of services such as Mail, Contacts, Calendars and iWork document storage are reportedly all part of the test. This shows that Apple is close to releasing iCloud as other portions of the free service, such as iTunes in the Cloud are already available.
In addition, Apple announced pricing for iCloud storage upgrades. You get 5GB of storage for free. Since music, apps, books and photo storage are not counted against your total, then it is hard to imagine needing more. But if you store a lot of iWork documents, then you can get an additional 10GB for $20/year, 20GB for $40/year and 50GB for $100/year.
iCloud is expected to launch at the same time as iOS 5 for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The Apple web site says “Coming this fall.” MobileMe users will be allowed to stick with MobileMe until June 30, 2012, if they wish. Many may choose to wait so they can keep using features like iDisk and MobileMe Web hosting and Photo Galleries.
I have never had so many complete strangers comment on my iPhone case before. And I think you can see why. That’s right, it is a “Lego” case. Actually, it is the Brickcase from Smallworks. But the idea is that you can add Legos to it. Decorate the back as you wish. Or, build your own tripod or iPhone stand and click your iPhone to it.
While the realistic forward view and accelerometer controls of most racing games fantastic on the iPad and iPhone, sometimes top-down with on-screen controls works too. That is the case with the super-fun Death Rally. You race around short courses for the best time, while trying to destroy your AI opponents with weapons. It is top-down, but the graphics are excellent, so you quickly forget that. I like that the courses are short so you can play a quick race as a break at any time.
Click on the + button at the top of iCal in Lion, or press Command+N, and you can add events without having to use anything but plain text. For instance, you can say “Meet with Joe at 1 pm Tuesday.” It will add the event and bring up the event editor so you can add an alert or other information. See the iCal help for details of exactly what iCal understands. If yo uphold down the click over the + button, you get to choose a calendar before entering the event text.
