preference
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CE-Oh no he didn't!: INQ chief says Android is too geeky for 'pretty girls'
Take one dose of improper generalization, mix it in with a heaping of condescension, and then add a pinch of good old sexism. What do you get? This quote, coming from Frank Meehan, CEO of the Android handset-making INQ: "If you go to a nightclub in any city in the world, the pretty girl has an iPhone or a BlackBerry. She doesn't have an Android phone. She has no emotional attachment to an Android phone. It's too complicated. It's a geek device, it's all wrong." Now, before you go emailing him photos of the Android tattoo girl, there is undeniably some smidgen of truth to the man's words. Android is a geek's dream ecosystem and it's not necessarily the most accessible platform in the world, but to completely write it off for the nightclub-going lady demographic doesn't strike us -- or Justin Timberlake, or Chad Ochocinco -- as the most astute idea in the world. [Thanks, AC]
1C Games: 'Retail is forcing PC games out'
Russian publisher 1C Games is the latest in a long line to declare that the PC games market is dying, and its international publishing director Darryl Still tells MCV that retailers are holding the murder weapon. Still says that the drive to digital distribution these days isn't just due to gamer preference, it's due to the fact that retailers aren't supporting PC games the way they should. "You just have to head into a games store and look for their PC titles," he says, "and you'll see there is no focus, listings or promotions for them." Still says that he predicts the PC market will be completely digital as soon as 2011, two years ahead of estimates that say 50% of PC games sold in 2013 will be digitally delivered. He says that there's more profit to be made with PC games at retail, but that with all of the different providers aiming to release PC titles digitally, retailers very soon won't bother carrying them at all. We're torn -- for every treasured cloth map in a retail box, there are good reasons to stick with digital as well.
Mac 101: Remove unwanted System Preference panes
Sometimes applications can install extras in the form of System Preference panes. However, when you remove the app from your Mac, you might be left with extraneous System Preference panes. To uninstall System Preference panes, just right-click (or control + click if you have a one button mouse) on the preference pane icon and select "remove x preference pane."When you click "remove," the preference pane will be instantly moved to the OS X Trash can where you can completely remove it from your system by emptying the trash. Please note that this will only work on System Preference panes located in the "Other" section of System Preferences.Want to see more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section today!
The draw of DPS classes
Keen and Graev have a good post up about why (according to them) players prefer playing DPS roles. Statistically, it appears to be more or less true-- according to Warcraft Realms, four of the five highest class percentages are traditionally DPS classes: Mage, Rogue, Warlock, and Hunter. Warriors also have a higher population, but it could be argued that only 1/3 of the Warrior specs (Prot, as opposed to Arms or Fury) out there are actually meant for anything other than DPS.So why do players seemingly prefer to play DPS? K&G give three main reasons. They cite something they call "Big Number Syndrome," which is the idea that unless you're dealing big damage, your class is worthless. They say that doing DPS requires less responsibility-- tanks and healers have to pay attention to everything, but DPSers choose a target and kill it. And they say that DPS classes level faster, which seems anecdotally (at least) to be true-- more damage means a faster kill, which means XP more often.In general (very generally, in fact), I tend to agree. For these reasons, some people are definitely drawn to the DPS lifestyle. But I don't think that these reasons are why people chose these classes in the first place. Hunters, for example, have pets, and I think that's a much bigger draw to the class than "big number syndrome" ever was. And let's not forget that these are more or less the most archetypal classes in the game-- someone who's never played the game probably would immediately know what a "Mage" or "Rogue" could do, whereas a Shaman (the lowest class population, according to the census) is a little harder to explain.So I think K&G are putting the chicken before the egg-- these things may be true about DPS looking back (and they may in fact be reasons people choose DPSers as alts). But when people first choose a class to call their own, I think it's a little simpler than that.[ via Hardcore Casual ]
DS Daily: Genre talk
So, we gotta ask: what's your favorite genre, if you had to choose? That's a tough one for us; honestly, tastes tend to change day to day and by what's in front of us. We love action and we love puzzles, and sometimes we prefer racing or RPGs. But if you had to pick -- even if you can only narrow it down to two -- what do you think would win out in a battle for your tastes?
Mac DevCenter: palettes or sidebars?
Following a dilemma that Gus Mueller faced when designing the UI for his latest release of VoodooPad 3, Mac DevCenter has posted a request for feedback on this most heated of UI topics: palettes or sidebars? Preferences can easily sway in either direction, and I personally miss the old-school functionality of Mail's pre-Tiger drawer (yay for column widths that don't have to be constantly re-adjusted), though I will concede that the drawer look is old and ugly by today's slick UI standards of palettes and sidebars.But what do you TUAW readers think? Do you prefer palettes, like in Photoshop, OmniOutliner, iWeb and Pages, or do you prefer the sidebar UI of Tiger's Mail, ecto and NetNewsWire's subscriptions panel (though it's interesting to note that NNW also uses a drawer for its site catalog)? Sound off.
iVideoMail and iVoiceMail plugins for Mail
Here's a novel idea: being able to easily send something besides text and pretty pictures in email. iVideoMail and iVoiceMail are Mail plugins that take the legwork out of recording video and audio clips for easy emailing. They install as preference panes within Mail, and once you customize a message's toolbar to add a button for either plugin (there doesn't seem to be any other way to use them when composing a message), you're ready to start emailing your beautiful mug and American Idol-worthy voice to anyone who can handle it. Just don't blame us if your friends and colleagues begin removing you from their address books.I only briefly tried out the iVideoMail demo and it works pretty well, although the resulting 6-second 320 x 240 video in MPEG4 was 376 KB, which might be considered a little large by some. By why not judge for yourself? Demos are available via a rather annoying submit-your-email-for-a-customized-download-link process, and a license for either plugin is a mere $10 USD.[via Hawk Wings' plugin list]
