Macheist is offering 5 little apps free of charge. Whereas normally registering these little gems costs $15-$25 or so each, you get them all, fully registered, FREE!
The final assignment in the class I'm teaching this semester was basically: "pick a social issue or news item and respond to it in some way using humour." One of my of students produced this.
For the last year, I'd been hoarding my gold-pressed latinum to buy the ever-imminent new MacBooks and they were finally announced yesterday. Which turned out the be same day I bought a refurb'ed white and plastic MacBook.
I don't care about the aluminium. I don't give a hoot about the new trackpad. I'm not a fan of glossy screens. I could care less about the multi-touch (and I just did and will probably continue to do so at regular intervals). Here's what I care about: a similarly specified refurb'ed white Macbook goes for 250$ CDN less.
The only thing I liked about the upgrade and that gave me a moment's pause was the graphics chip. Diablo 3 is coming out probably next year-ish and well before our next computer upgrade is due so this purchase is going to be the laptop that will allow me to summon Zombie Wall. I'm going to have to rely on Blizzard's usual kindness to lower-end machines and play it on rock-bottom resolutions.
So I decided to get the latest old-school machine and spend the difference on a refurb'ed Time Capsule, which I've been eyeing for nearly as long. It will come in very handy with two laptops in the house. And I can recoup some of its value by selling my old Airport Express and my current USB-anchored external HD.
My reason for writing this is to offer people drooling over this new bejewelled and gilded scarab a way of getting (in my view) a little more bang for your buck.
No kidding. I just had to buy a replacement due to their crappy design. I reinforced my replacement with some electrical tape. I'll be going to get my refund.
1) Pandas like bamboo. 2) Thai massages are not for the uber-ticklish. 3) Mai tais are not particularly thai. 4) Three mai tais are not any more thai. 5) If you are going to buy a $2 watch, don't bother getting a Calvin Klein one, they are no better than regular $2 watches. 6) Contrary to what they tell you in law school, engagement letters are not strictly necessary. 7) Thailand is a wonderland of puns.
My company currently makes games for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.
The first 2 have a good business case. Lots of people run Mac OS X and Windows, and buy games to play. (Thank you to all the customers who keep us small developers alive.)
Linux doesn't have as good a business case for us. Not very many people buy the Linux versions of our games. But, I foresee Linux continuing to grow in leaps and bounds on the desktop. And our codebase is in Java, so it isn't that much extra work to make Linux versions.
Going Mobile The mobile OS wars are warming up fast. In the past we've gotten some scattered requests for PocketPC or Palm versions, but it hasn't seemed worthwhile. Apparently there was good money to be made selling Palm apps in the past, but greedy distributors (hearsay says Handango) and a decaying platform have destroyed it.
J2ME and BREW cellphone apps are making money, but only for a few big companies (at least in North America). The carriers have been very greedy distributors, and locked down their platform tightly.
Apple's iPhone is fresh mobile platform coming on strong. They've publicized their app distribution rate as taking a 30% cut. That's a lot better then most desktop games distributors (Yahoo Games typically takes 70%). Apple has been tremendously successful at iterating the iPod from version1 to perfection. They're following the same process with the iPhone, building a mobile platform from the ground up. I think the iPhone will be one of the long term mobile platform winners.
Google Android is the other mobile platform I'm keeping an eye on. Open-source and available for carriers to build on. Apps are written in the Java language, but using G's own VM and libraries. (A nice end-run around SUN, straight to Java developers.) It hasn't launched on any real phones yet, but I think it has huge potential. The first Android phones are supposed to be available "soon."
You already have a computer in your pocket (your cellphone). The big question for software developers is: what platform is your next one going to run?
In other news, my refurbished MacBook had to have its hard drive AND RAM replaced since I've bought it. So I'm pretty disappointed that Apple QA dropped the ball on that, but I can't complain too much because both repairs were free since it's been <1 yr and done on the spot at the Apple Store in Laval.
In northern Michigan a few weeks ago, we visited Fort Mackinac, the first American fort to surrender to the British in the War of 1812. We were treated to the following animatronic display, repeated every 45 seconds or so:
Amongst all the iPhone and OSX 10.5 hubub, I haven't heard much said about the part of the Stevenote talking about games. EA announced they are soon going to be releasing Mac versions of a bunch of their games. John Carmack also demonstrated ID's next engine which will support Macs along with the PC, XBox 360, and PS3. That's a nice announcement in itself, but it's really just the beginning.
Soon...
Apple is going to start selling games from the iTunes store.
In fact, they already do sell iPod games from the iTunes store, alongside music, movies, and TV shows. Desktop games is a natural next step for the store. Digital distribution is just getting started for games, but it's projected to take an increasing share in the future, just like digital music sales. There are already a number of "game portals" selling downloadable games including Valve, Yahoo Games, MSN Games, and RealNetworks. Most of them only sell games for Windows though. It makes a lot of sense for Apple to compete in this market with their iTunes store. They can even use it to give a nice boost to OSX.
Apple will only sell games if they support Mac OS X.
This will provide a huge incentive for game developers to make their games support Macs. "You want us to sell your Windows game from our massively popular iTunes store? Sure, as long as you have an OSX version we'll sell them both for you." The downside of this is that Apple wouldn't be able to match the full roster of games sold by other stores ... at least until they convinced a large enough portion of the industry to support Macs. EA's the largest publisher in the world, and ID's engines get licensed for use by a multitude of other companies, so they'll be able to hit the ground running.
This would be a deliciously clever move for Apple, using the iTunes store to give even more boost to Mac OS X. I don't have any real knowledge that this is Apple's plan, but it's not such a big stretch really. Everybody in the downloadable games biz knows about the increasing role of the "game portals" and online distribution. It's the exact same situation that the music industry has undergone. Games are more complicated to sell since they are code and not pure data, but it's not a big deal in practice.
I'm pretty much 100% certain that Apple will start selling games from the iTunes store in the next year or two. It's a natural fit, and something I've been thinking about for awhile now. The WWDC announcements mean it might be coming sooner then later. The only real question is whether they will sell pure Windows games to Windows users, or whether they will use this opportunity to force a massive influx of games to OSX.
