World of Apple

At this year’s Macworld the Apple faithful had a real treat in store, but little did I know just how good the treat would be. Ahead of Macworld I had invites to two new movies that were out to cover Apple as a company and the cult following: Welcome to Macintosh and MacHEADS. Unfortunately I was only able to attend one of these events. MacHEADS is not currently available for me to pick up and watch, so this review is not a comparison.
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Description: Rolandoland has been invaded and the Rolandos need your help! Use innovative tilt, tap and Multi-Touch controls to solve physics puzzles, toy with interactive environments, and evade pesky enemies as you lead the Rolandos to victory.

Developer – ngmoco, Inc

Rolando – $5.99 – iTunes Link

Rolando is one of the thousands of casual games available for the iPhone, unlike many other iPhone games Rolando is packed full of charm and most importantly was designed from scratch for the iPhone platform. Those that have been sceptical of Rolando’s price in the past will be glad to know that as of writing Rolando is now just $5.99.

Games on the iPhone have long be criticised by the naysaysers mainly pointing that the device has no buttons. Rolando is one of those games that takes full advantage of the lack of buttons.

To give a brief bit of background; Rolando’s are small round creatures who worship you “The Finger”, Rolando’s can be navigated around the 36 levels by simply tilting the device left or right to roll the Rolando’s around. The main aim is to complete the puzzles in each level while at the same time collecting gems and saving a defined number of Rolando’s from the bad guys and all this happens to the sounds of Mr Scruff.

Rolando implements multi-touch and the accelerometer seamlessly, objects can be rotated using two fingers, landscapes can be pinched to zoom in and out and some levels allow the device to be rotated endlessly to steer the Rolando to it’s destination.

Rolando is not only striking in it’s gameplay but the overall polish is second-to-none, before you even enter the game itself the menus are fully interactive, reacting to touch commands and accelerometer.

Rolando also includes a feature dubbed “iSave” which allows the “home” button to be instigated mid-game, when you start up Rolando again it will restore your previous session exactly where you left off. The same applies when incoming phone calls interrupt your game.

Pros

• Price
• Superb gameplay
• Fluid and smooth
• iSave function
• Polish
• Soundtrack
• Integration of multi-touch and accelerometer
• Fun factor

Cons

• None, other than the fact that the game actually has an end.
• Addictive

Verdict

Rolando is in a class of it’s own when it comes to iPhone games. Rolando delivers the fun factor, lengthy gameplay and original content to make a game that will no doubt define iPhone gaming for many years.

Description: The iGirl application consists of a beautiful 3-dimensional female model that can be manipulated by the user to perform various actions, including dancing and speaking. Users can interact with iGirl on their iPhones and iPod Touches by shaking the device and touching the screen. The 3D model’s hair color, skin color and clothing can be modified to change her overall appearance.

iGirl – $0.99 – iTunes Link

iGirl is the height of ringtone applications for the iPhone but offers quality to boot. Open up iGirl and you’ll be greeted with a splash screen that hangs around a little too long for my liking. Once inside you can create an iGirl of any ethnicity, change the hair colour, clothes and even give her a name of your own.

What’s surprising about this crude and limited application is the visual values, iGirl offers decent 3D scenes and a well rendered female, the camera can be rotated around using standard multi-touch controls and even give the iPhone a little shake to see your girls displeasure.

Pros

• Excellent example of iPhones 3D abilities
• Entertaining
• Incredible cheap

Cons

• Long loading time
• One of the worst time wasters available
• Some bad dancing

Verdict

Facts can’t be avoided forever, this application is aimed at 15-18 year old guys with no girlfriends. For the rest of us this is a cheap way of wasting a bit of time. A sure-fire best seller.

In the random drawing conducted this morning…. the lucky commentator drawn out of the back was Martha Garrett. Congratulations Martha! I will be in touch today to coordinate with the developer so that you can receive your copy.

Thank you to everyone who commented. The response was incredible and keeps me going to continue to write such time-intensive reviews. I appreciate it very much.

Remember, December 5, 2008, midnight EST, is the cut-off time for you to post a comment on the Review of Accordance 8 in order to have a chance to win a free copy. Good luck!

Also please be advised that some of the links to the developer’s site might be temporarily unavailable. I received this notice from Accordance:

The entire website is being transferred to a new server this weekend. The address will not change, and you should be able to continue browsing and downloading almost without interruption. However, the online store will close for a few hours from 11 a.m. EST on Saturday to allow us to transfer all the accounts to the new site. Please plan to place your orders before that time, or wait until we can reopen the store later in the day.

The drawing will be done over the weekend, and the winner will be announced and notified early next week. Thank you everyone for your very kind comments.

Accordance by OakTree Software is one of those massively powerful programs that causes me to think, “Where to begin?” Let’s start with introductions. Readers, Accordance 8 is a highly flexible and in-depth program for studying the Bible, commentaries, and related reference tools—including maps—with the ability to conduct extraordinarily complex searches. Its functions meet the needs of the layperson up through the scholar starting with simple translation comparisons all the way to delving into the original languages behind the English translations of the text. Those two sentences, however, do not do this program justice. As I have stated in the past, I am a fairly new Mac convert, joining the cult family in about May 2007 after nearly twenty years of Windows usage since Windows 3.1. Prior to my switch, my Biblical software of choice was the very popular Logos program—particularly the Scholar’s Library. Logos did the job, but I did not find it particularly intuitive—and no matter how useful a program may be once mastered, if mastery becomes a chore, I lose interest and motivation. This is why I remain a mediocre Photoshop user. Although there are a ton of resources and conventions and blah, blah, blah to learn the program, I do not care for any software that requires the time of maintaining a second husband to understand. This fact does, however, have to be balanced with the reality that complex programs do have a learning curve, but a good developer will minimize that curve as much as possible and thoroughly equip the user with tools to quickly navigate that painful period. I am very pleased to report that Accordance has done this with true faithfulness to continuity with the Macintosh GUI. While I had recently learned that Logos is being developed for the Macintosh platform, and my (expensive) license is transferable, unless something has greatly changed with their user interface, I do not anticipate ceasing use of Accordance as my primary Bible study program. Also, I have my doubts that a long-time Windows developer with its attached baggage of Windows butt-ugly navigation experience will be able to create a product with the look and function of a citizen of the Appleverse.

I have also used the free program MacSword as an alternative to the free PC software e-Sword and promptly gave up. It was confusing and aggravating in addition to being very limited in its available resources as compared to its PC counterpart. I have a well-stocked personal library of theological texts; if it is more efficient for me to grab books and conduct research the old-fashioned way, then a particular study program is not for me. Now despite this admittedly glowing introduction, I will now highlight the major features that I have been road-testing and give my frank assessment of each—good and bad. In the interest of full disclosure, the base software and any add-on modules reviewed were given to me gratis from the developer. I hope I have developed a relationship with my readers from my prior reviews to have earned the trust that this does not influence my opinion. In fact, in this case, I had already learned that my Windows Logos license for which I had paid well over $500 could be transferred to a Macintosh license prior to contacting the Accordance developer, so my motivation for requesting the review was not a burning need to try to obtain sophisticated Biblical study software for free.

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Recently, I’ve seen more and more images done in HDR, or high dynamic range imaging. In a nutshell, HDR can return some really cool looking pictures. See this article at Wikipedia for more in-depth info on HDR. Programs such as Photoshop can create this effect, however that will cost a pretty penny and can require a bit of work. Photomatix Pro allows you to create these images for much less money and time. As we often strive to do, we have a copy of Photomatix Pro to give away at the end of the reveiw, courtesy of the wonderful folks at HDRsoft. So let’s get started.
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I noticed the Macessity LowKey on PicoCool recently and was stunned. The product photos showed an elegant solution to a pair of major problems: the lack of a good place to slide my iMac’s keyboard when not in use and the difficult placement of the high-use USB ports on the back. What a great idea! What grace in the execution! Could it be true? It almost is. Almost.

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After missing the chance for the iPhone 3G on July 11 by being 4 people too far back in line and waiting for what seemed to be much longer than it actually was, I finally received my direct fulfillment from AT&T. Having spent the wait reading everything I could find about the new iPhone and downloading applications in preparation, I was quite glad to finally hold the phone in my hands. So after some time to play around with the phone, and without further ado, my take on the new iPhone. (more…)

I thank everyone who responded in the comments to my review of Toast 9 Titanium. The warm compliments were gratefully received. So now without further ado, the winner of the contest is first- time World of Apple visitor Miles!

Miles, I will be emailing you with further instructions. Congratulations, and we do hope you make make World of Apple a regular stop for your Apple news and reviews.