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TUAW's Daily iPad App - Warplanes: A History of Aerial Combat
Gameloft recently released a new iPad book-app, Warplanes: A History of Aerial Combat (US$6.99). This app is follow-up to Gameloft's earlier book-app, War in the Pacific. This latest offering includes detailed information on 43 historic war planes including popular bombers like the B-52, fighters like the F-15 and reconnaissance airplanes like the SR-71 Blackbird. You can view a 3D model of the plane, browse vintage photographs, read detailed specs and even watch a video of the plane in action (though not all planes have a video). The app opens to a home screen with clickable images of all the planes and is organized as reference guide, not a chapter book that you read. The content is organized nicely and there is a lot of information for users to comb through, especially if you are new to military aviation. Besides background information, there is an interactive cutaway diagram of each plane and a rotatable 3-D model. The 3D model is a bit disappointing as you can only move it left and right. You cannot spin it to see the top and bottom of the plane. %Gallery-128298% The photo gallery for each plane is also inconsistent. When you click on gallery, sometimes you get a nice slideshow of pictures for each plane. Other times, you open a grid of images for all the planes, not just the one that you are viewing. The latter is a tease as you see fifteen thumbnails on the screen, but only two or three are for your selected plane. Overall, the app is geared towards the beginning aviation buff or the more experienced aviator who wants a quick reference guide. It's not for the seasoned aviation veteran looking for a lot of stellar pictures and heart-pounding video of the planes in action. This media-rich content which would look great on the iPad is lacking. I would love to see more images and, especially more videos of the planes in various aerial maneuvers. More planes would also be a welcome addition as 43 entries only scratch the surface of historic military planes. It is also worthy to note that the book-app is heavily weighted towards US planes and jets. There's a rich history of early World War I and World War II propeller planes that's missing.
TUAW's Daily iPad App: PDF Converter
It's not often that we can make a product announcement and also have it be a Daily App, but that's the case with Readdle's newest iPad app, PDF Converter (US$6.99). PDF Converter adds a tremendous amount of power to your iPad; it makes it possible to save almost any content on your iPad as a PDF file. Whether you have an email attachment, a web page, a document from your iDisk or Dropbox that you want to make into a PDF, PDF Converter does it. A tap on an email attachment brings up the familiar "Open In..." buttons, allowing the document to be opened in PDF Converter. The attachment is automatically converted to PDF format and available for further distribution or storage on the iPad. To convert a Safari web page to a PDF for future reading offline, just add a "pdf" prefix to the URL in the address bar, tap "Go" on the iPad keyboard, and the document is converted and placed in the Documents list in PDF Converter. The app can also take anything from the iPad clipboard, your contacts list, or Photo Library and convert it to a PDF. This is a wonderful app for creating and distributing ad hoc address lists -- by tapping on the names of assorted contacts and tapping the Convert button, PDF Converter instantly creates a formatted PDF with the contact info for all of the people you've chosen. It's also useful for creating ebooks on the fly. I took a Word document from Dropbox holding my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel, converted it to a PDF, and then used PDF Converter to open the novel in iBooks. This was all done without even getting near my Mac. PDF Converter has found a place on my iPad, and I think a lot of iPad users will feel the same way once they install the app.
Element Case Formula 4 covers your iPhone 4 in style
Element Case, the folks that brought you the Vapor aluminium iPhone 4 bumper, have released a polycarbonate case built around a similar design aesthetic. The Formula 4 features the same shaped iPhone 4 edge-banding that the gorgeous Vapor uses and adds a protective back-plate that's covered in a sheet of carbon fibre. The top and bottom edges bulge out slightly, while the right-hand edge features a rubber Element Case branded grip strip. %Gallery-127713% The case is split into two halves. A top half that slides on and is most of the case. The removable bottom half slides off to let you dock your iPhone 4. When in use, the bottom half locks into place solidly and overlaps the top half just slightly, ensuring a good fit. The Formula 4 encases the iPhone completely while the camera, headphones port, volume buttons, mute switch, the dock connecter, power button and speakers remain accessible. The screen itself is left completely uncovered, however, with the case providing only a very slightly raised edge. If you want screen protection you'll have to invest in a screen protector or look elsewhere. Verdict Overall, the Element Case Formula 4 provides good looking, decent protection for the sides and back of your iPhone 4. It's not the thinnest of cases, with extra bulges at the top and bottom of the case, but it has decent ergonomics and doesn't add too much to the depth of the device. If you fancied the Vapor, but couldn't justify the price or were worried about the aluminium affecting signal strength, then you won't be disappointed with the Formula 4. It combines decent protection and solid design, which makes it a winner in my book. The Element Case Formula 4 is available for US$59.95 plus shipping.
Blu-ray playback comes to OS X, but not from Apple
We all know Steve Jobs does not want Blu-ray to be on Macs. He famously referred to the licensing rules for Sony's format as a "bag of hurt." Nevertheless, people do want to play movies on their Macs, and not be ripping DVDs or going to the iTunes store. With Blu-ray disks getting more popular, most computer manufacturers offer Blu-ray playback as an option. Now, you can join the club if you have a recent Mac. Macgo is offering a software player, the first on the Mac, and you can try it free for 90 days. If you like it, it's $39.95 for what's called "a life-time version." The app also supports DVD playback. Of course you need either an external or internal Blu-ray writer that you'll need to buy and set up yourself. I have an internal third party drive I purchased from Other World Computing, so I gave it a shot. On my Dual Core Xeon Mac Pro the app was a mixed bag. The movies I tried played, and looked great, but there was some stuttering, some macro-blocking, and a couple of flat out pauses. This happened on several movies, including Ghost Writer and the restored Once upon a Time in the West. It could be that my older hardware is the problem, or maybe the software player is just a bit flaky. There are no minimum hardware specs posted on the site. There have been some positive results reported out there, however, so since the app is available with that 90-day trial, you can download it yourself and see how it works for you.
Hard Candy Street Skin for iPad 2 covers all corners
Hard Candy cases, known for their sex-sells approach (just take a look at their site), has brought their Street Skin line to the iPad 2. Designed as thin yet rugged cases for Apple's iDevices, the Street Skin cases are made of TPU and feature a tire-like design with a raised grip pattern across the surface. The Street Skin for the iPad 2 is no exception, covering the iPad in a semi-flexible rubber that's about 3 mm thick. The case wraps tightly around the back and sides of the iPad with a lip covering the front edge of the screen making sure that all the corners and edges are covered nicely. There are good-sized cutouts for the buttons, mic, ports, speaker and camera meaning you're not losing any functionality with the case on. What makes the Street Skin standout is the hinged front cover design. The front flap fits into the front lip of the case on the screen, ensuring the entire glass front of the iPad 2 is covered save for two small holes where the front lip of the case is shaped to allow access to the Home buttons and the ambient light sensor. When not in use the front flap is secured by two clasps at the top and bottom right corners of the cover. Once you need access to that gorgeous screen you unhook the clasps and fold the cover back around the rear of the iPad, moving the hinge all the way to the rear of the iPad and allowing the flap to be secured across the back using the same corner clasps. Once in place the flap is properly secured out the way, allowing you to get on with your business without having to worry about it. It's a simple yet very effective design. I have doubts as to how long the clasps will last as the corner straps on the front flap are pretty thin, but after a decent period of rigorous testing there doesn't seem to be any wear and tear to them. %Gallery-127557% Verdict The Street Skin for the iPad 2 is a solid case offering. It covers the important parts, leaves access where needed and covers the screen well with it's front flap that gets out of your way when the iPad is in use. The tire-like styling may not be to everyone's taste however, and I doubt the case will do much if you dropped the iPad 2 from any great height save for preventing scratches. I've also noticed that the reverse of the front flap, the bit that touches your screen, is prone to picking up dirt, dust and fingerprints and helpfully transferring them to your screen when you close the case. If kept clean with a cloth, everything is well however. If you want fairly decent protection without adding too much bulk, then the Street Skin for iPad 2 delivers for around $39.95 plus shipping. It's available in black, white and pink, with the white one we had in for testing looking a lot like the classic Storm Trooper armor.
Relaxation Portal for iOS can transport you to another world for free
I've spent the last couple of days testing and exploring Relaxation Portal, an iOS app from SRS Labs that provides stunning audio recreations of several environments in places like Namibia, Crete, an Amazon Rainforest and Martha's Vineyard. For the full effect, you must listen on headphones. In my tests I used a Jabra Halo Bluetooth and a wired B&W P5 headset. SRS Labs has been innovating in audio design in both hardware and software for years, and SRS tech has found its way into live concert recordings, music enhancing hardware, HD displays, car audio and laptops. The audio illusion is certainly impressive. The sound effects are layered, which makes them truly interactive. On the island of Crete, for example, you can turn off the sounds of sea birds, crowd noises and wind, while just listening to the surf. You can control the mix of sounds to fit your mood, or try night mode where the sounds are tuned to replicate the island at night. The 3D effect is quite uncanny, and uses a variety of sound processing techniques to fully immerse you in the aural environment. %Gallery-127537% In addition to the audio treats, the app provides some still pictures of the actual location, and even a bit of history. The app is free, and comes with the 5 locations I've listed above. If that's not enough, you can purchase expansion packs, with locations like Las Vegas (maybe you will hear people crying after they lose a bundle at blackjack), Paris, the Kremlin, the Ross Ice Shelf and Cape Canaveral. Expansion packs contain 5 destinations, and are US$1.99 each. It should be noted that the sound environments created are not really from the locations listed, but rather layers of very high quality recording of natural sounds that match the local environments. For example, birds that are native to Crete or New England. I have a few quibbles with this app. It doesn't run in the background. Check an email, or respond to a text, and the app simply stops. If you launch it again, you will be returned to the place you left. I talked with Allen Gharapetian of SRS Labs and he agrees the app must multitask, and to look for that upgrade soon. The app features a night mode, which I assumed might change the character of the sounds, but night mode just blackens the screen, except for little pop-up ads that are always present. You can upgrade to an ad-free version for $1.99. Gharapetian says the SRS sound enhancing technology is built into smartphones from Samsung and HTC, and they would love to have it on Apple iOS devices. Ultimately this app serves as a technology demo of how good the SRS audio processing can be. Relaxation Portal is not the only white noise, audio environment app for iOS. I've previously enthusiastically reviewed NatureSpace, which has excellent natural recording and it doesn't stop when you navigate away from it. It is also free, but offers in-app purchases of expansion packs. Relation Portal is a unique approach to creating aural environments. With the ability to control the mix and levels of individual sounds, you can tailor your session to taste. I'd like to see the app allow multitasking, and the GUI is not particularly attractive to my eye, but ultimately, it is the sound that matters and the app works very well as a way to relax. Great on a vacation, a long airplane trip, or just unwinding at home. The app runs natively on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch and requires iOS 4.2 or later. Check the gallery for some screen shots and let us know what you think of the audio illusion it creates.
Mophie juice pack air iPhone battery pack now even snappier
Mophie recently announced the availability of a new design for their highly popular and useful juice pack air battery extender for iPhone 4. The Mophie juice pack air snap case (US$79.95) is available at Apple Stores and other retailers, and while it still offers virtually double the battery capacity of the stock iPhone 4, the new design makes it easier to access all of the switches and ports of the smartphone. Let's look at how the design has changed. The previous model, which I personally use on my iPhone 4 all the time, splits near the top of the phone. That means that when you wanted access to the Dock connector, you basically needed to take the entire case off. That wasn't difficult to do, but it was inconvenient. The old design also had two openings on the left side of the phone for the ringer mute switch and the volume buttons, as well as a two openings on the top -- one for the power switch and the other for the microphone and headphone jack. The juice pack air snap is quite different. The bottom of the case snaps off, so you can leave the case on the iPhone if you need access to the Dock connector. The same four LEDs for determining charge status are still there, there's still a micro-USB port on one side for charging the case, and the tiny slide switch for "charging" and "standby" is there as well. %Gallery-127517% Near the top of the case, the two separate ports on the left side have been replaced with one elongated port. This makes the case usable with both the GSM and CDMA versions of the iPhone 4. Previously, the case wouldn't work with the Verizon iPhone 4. Mophie has also opened the top of the case so that using the power switch and plugging in your headset is no longer a bother. With the "old" juice pack air, you slid the iPhone into the case from the top; now with the juice pack air snap, you literally snap the iPhone 4 into the case from the front. I was perplexed by one fact: the new case is .1 ounce heavier than the previous model, even despite the more spacious openings. My guess is that the extra bit of weight is due to the fact that where the case splits, there are two new connectors that route the power from the battery to the area of the Dock connector. A small change, but it does make the total weight of the juice pack air go from 2.4 ounces to 2.5 ounces. At our Denver Geek Lunch on Tuesday, fellow TUAWite Erica Sadun wanted to see the case I was using. She felt that the extra weight and bulk of the juice pack air wasn't worth the ability to have a fully-charged battery most of the time. I'm just the opposite -- I like the extra bit of bulk and the "grippy" exterior of the juice pack air as it makes the phone easier to hold, and I love the fact that even when I'm using geolocation-heavy apps, my iPhone's battery level is always maxed out. The new case is available in two-tone black and silver; it was unclear from the press materials if the snap case will also come in the two-tone white/silver and red/silver models that were available for the previous model.
AMD Llano desktop APU gets reviewed: the best integrated graphics in town
AMD is due to release a batch of new Llano APUs next month that are specifically tailored to desktops rather than laptops. The most powerful among them will be the 2.9GHz A8-3850, which has already caused a stir on the review circuit for one simple reason: it pulls off a brutal "one shot one kill" on Intel's HD 3000 integrated graphics. AnandTech raised an impressed eyebrow at the fact that all its benchmarking games were playable on the $135 AMD chip, which roughly doubled frame rates in titles like Modern Warfare 2, Bioshock 2 and World of Warcraft compared to the more expensive Sandy Bridge i5 2500K. TechSpot declared the APU its "new budget king," with graphical performance "on another level" compared even to an i7. However, the superlatives quickly evaporated once reviewers shifted their focus to the CPU. TechReport spotted that pure CPU performance per dollar was actually lower than what you'd get from a lowly i3. Moreover, it reckoned you'd only have to spend an extra $70 to buy a much more powerful CPU and a separate graphics card -- an option that comes "awfully close to making the A8-3850 seem irrelevant." Ouch. Nevertheless, if an affordable processor with integrated graphics is what you're after, then it's fair to say this one sets the standard. Click the source links below for full reviews.
Blotter for Mac puts iCal on your desktop
Back when I was in corporate America, an annual tradition was to order new calendars for the desk. I preferred the "day at a glance" type, but many of my fellow wage slaves liked these large desk blotter calendars that displayed a full month. Now there's a Mac app from WireLoad, Blotter (US$9.99) that turns your iCal events and tasks into the electronic equivalent of the desk blotter calendar. Blotter After you purchase Blotter from the Mac App Store, an app icon appears in your Dock. I have enough icons in my Dock, so I usually drag 'em off, and that was the case with Blotter. Not to worry, though -- once you've launched Blotter, a tiny menu bar icon appears for setting preferences and creating new events and tasks. Blotter can be set to auto-launch at login, and that's the way it should be. The main feature of Blotter is the beautiful translucent calendar that appears on your Mac desktop. By default, it shows the current week, but can be set in preferences to show the seven days or only weekday dates. The current date is listed as a large number, with the month, year, and day of the week listed below. There's also a list of To Do items, as well as a "Right Now" mini-view showing the next four or five hours at a glance. I have my Blotter calendar set to fade out after 60 seconds -- a quick click on the menu bar icon brings it back to full intensity. %Gallery-127505% Blotter isn't meant to replace iCal. Instead, it is meant to work with iCal so that you don't need to actually open your calendar to look at it. It's always there on the desktop for you to see if you need it, much in the manner those desk blotter calendars were on our real desktops in the past, soaking up coffee spills and giving us a look at what was coming up in the next few days or weeks. If you use Google calendars, no problem -- as long as you're subscribing to those calendars in iCal, they'll show up on Blotter. The calendar can be set to take up a lot of screen real estate or a smaller area, and in the smaller views it is movable to various locations on your desktop. There's a "narrow" mode that displays just the date, To Do list, and the Right Now mini-view, but it seems to defeat the purpose of Blotter for me. On my 27" iMac I tend to always have a lot of windows open, so they obscure the view of Blotter and also defeat the purpose of the app a bit. However, it's possible to hide windows temporarily by pressing Command-H repeatedly while in the Finder, and that makes it very easy to hide windows very quickly, glance at the Blotter calendar, and then return to work without taking my hands off of the keyboard. Within the Blotter preferences, there is a setting for displaying all iCal calendars or just a selected few. One of the few negatives I see with this app is that for some reason, the color of one of my calendars -- which is orange in iCal -- came over as a sickly olive color in Blotter. The two main calendars (home and work) showed up in their proper colors. What about adding new events and tasks to the calendar with Blotter? The app would be worthless without this capability, and Blotter makes it as easy as either clicking on the menu bar icon and selecting New Event or New Task, or by setting up a keyboard shortcut. In either case, a small dialog appears for entering in the scheduling information on the fly. Conclusion Blotter is a very attractive Mac utility for displaying iCal events and tasks on otherwise unused space on your Mac desktop. I fear, though, that Blotter might be made obsolete by Lion. While testing the next version of Mac OS X, I've found it useful to place iCal in full-screen mode. From any screen, it's available with a gesture and a click; much faster and easier than clicking on my desktop and hitting Command-H until I can see Blotter. Still, the translucent Blotter calendar is much sexier than even the Lion calendar in full-screen. Apple should take some design cues from the Blotter developers for the future. Don't just take my opinion about Blotter. I've included a video review of the app by friend and frequent TUAW TV Live guest Doc Rock, who was the person who turned me onto this amazing utility.
Quotebook for iPhone is a fun, handy app
Quotebook for iPhone (US$1.99) is a fun and clever way to create a portable library of memorable, inspiring or otherwise notable quotes. That list can be categorized, sorted and shared with others. Quotebook is simple and does its job. While commercial software gets more capable and robust, there has always been a subset of apps that do one thing well. It's a category with loyal fans (like me), as sites like this demonstrate. Quotebook is certainly among them. Here's my review. UI Quotebook's main screen features a scrolling list that should be familiar to almost anyone who's used an iPhone. Across the top are four buttons: preferences, two sort options (date of entry and rating) and the Add button for creating new entries. Below that is a search bar (more on that in a bit) and the list of quotes itself. Each is presented clearly. The quote is presented in bold type. Beneath each is its creation date and origin, both speaker and source. At the bottom of the screen are four icons: Quotes (which offers the main screen), Authors (a searchable, scrolling list of who said what), Sources (books, etc. from which your quotes originated) and finally tags. It's a simple UI but totally effective. Each icon's purpose is clear (they're also labeled) and the list is legible. That's how it looks. Here's how it works. %Gallery-127442% Use Most of the time you'll use Quotebook to capture quotes. Fortunately, its easy to do. Here's how. First, tap the "+" in the upper right-hand corner to produce the edit screen. The cursor is placed in the quote field, ready for input. Start typing away, and then enter the author's name and the source, then give the quote a rating (based on a five-star system). To enter a tag, you must tap Done to dismiss the keyboard and then tap the Tag field. But that's only part of the fun. There's an info arrow next to Author and Source. Once you've created those entries, tap the arrow to learn more about the speaker or source. For example, if I add a Walt Disney quote and then tap the info triangle, a new screen appears, offering a mobile-optimized version of Walt's Wikipedia page. I can also view Walt's WikiQuotes page from there, and possibly find another gem I'd like to add. The same goes for the source. If I enter a Bible quote, for example, I can jump to that source's page on Wikipedia and WikiQuotes. Here's another fun tidbit. If I've got a quote saved on the clipboard when I launch the app -- let's say I found something on Twitter I'd like to add to Quotebook -- it'll notice it and ask if I'd like to add it to my library. Simply selecting Yes creates a new entry and pastes the quote. Finally, the Auto Suggest feature frees you from all that pesky typing. When you start to enter a famous quote, the Auto Suggest button appears. Tap it to see if the app has guessed the quote you're about to enter. If so, confirm it and the new entry will be completed for you, with all fields intact. If Quotebook guessed incorrectly, dismiss the suggestion and resume typing. The search options are nice, too. Tap the search bar on the app's main screen and you'll see four options: author, source, tags or all. Tap author, source or tags to restrict your search, or use all (the default) to throw the net wide. Quotebook will search the body of each quote, the source, tags, everything. The Author, Sources and Tags buttons offer scrollable, searchable lists of their own. Finally, don't keep all that wisdom to yourself! Quotebook makes it easy to share. While browsing any quote, tap the Share button to easily regale your family and friends via email, SMS, Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler. You preferred method not on the list? Just tap the Copy button and prepare to paste into your app of choice. Conclusion Quotebook is a niche app for sure. Not everyone maintains a list of meaningful quotes, much less carries it around all day. But those who do (those with iPhones or iPod touches at least) will enjoy Quotebook. For two bucks, it's fully worth it.
OCZ's RevoDrive 3 X2 review roundup: SSD melts faces with 1.5GBps read and 1.2GBps write speeds
Did our footage of OCZ's new RevoDrive 3 X2 whet your appetite for more info on the super speedy SSD? Well, your wish is the web's command, and we've got a full roundup of reviews that'll tell you all you need to know. After putting OCZ's latest through its paces, the consensus is that the SSD is seriously quick in remembering and retrieving data. According to Tom's Hardware, the RevoDrive 3 X2 -- with its max 1.5GBps read and 1.2GBps write speeds -- "smokes everything" they've had pass through their lab. However, AnandTech noted that such capacious bandwidth is "simply overkill" for most users, as the drive only really flexes its muscles once the queue depth increases from enterprise-level workloads. Several sites noted that the lack of TRIM support on Windows machines was also a concern, and that more cost effective (albeit slower) storage solutions can be had with a DIY RAID array of SATA SSDs. Of course, you don't have to take our word for it, get down to the nitty gritty in the links below. Read - Hot Hardware Read - AnandTech Read - Tom's Hardware Read - PC Perspective Read - The SSD Review
iCade, the almost-ultimate gaming accessory for your iPad (updated)
I've been playtesting the iCade for a few weeks now to see how it holds up under "real world" use. The iCade began as a joke product on ThinkGeek's website but was then produced by ION Audio as a real, working arcade cabinet for the iPad. Using Bluetooth to connect to your iPad, the iCade provides a very realistic arcade feel. There are, unfortunately, some major drawbacks. Read on for a full rundown of the hardware and software used to simulate those days of yore, when buttons were meant to withstand hours of abuse and time playing was measured in quarters, not $0.99 increments. Hardware assembly and quality First, you'll have to assemble the iCade. While not complex, I found the little plastic grommets used to hold the back panel in place could split if overtightened, so watch out for that. The materials used in the iCade are all quite good, really. It's plywood and plastic, yes, but so were arcade cabinets in the 80s. The joystick and buttons feel like they came from a professional supply that you'd find on a decent MAME cabinet. One thing that bothered me was that in every review I'm seeing different art on the cabinet. Personally I'd like to choose a specific pattern, but it doesn't appear to be possible. The picture at ThinkGeek has the coolest artwork, but that's not on the demo unit we received. Go figure. Power for the iCade is provided by a couple of AA batteries, but if you purchase a power supply, you'll be able to plug the thing in. I found the batteries lasted through several hours of gaming, so unless you use this daily, I doubt you'll need to plug yet another device into the wall. Speaking of power, while there is a place to "dock" the iPad, it is not a dock with pins. It's simply a plastic molded bracket that holds your iPad in place. While this works OK, I wound up adding a couple of pieces of sponge packing material to the sides of the iPad, effectively wedging the iPad securely into the iCade. As we wound up moving the iCade around among players, this was helpful in securing it. The iCade features rubber feet (self-adhesive, included in the box), keeping the unit pretty stable. But if your kids get aggressive with it, the iPad can move around a bit in the plastic dock. There's a top panel that rotates out of the way, covering the iPad and finishing the look. The top panel also includes a handy reference for the button mapping (sort of -- more in a moment on this) and how to get started. The information is really just about getting started, so I guess the only use is if you sell this in a garage sale. The buttons are actually numbers (and the joystick can input numbers), used to pair your iPad with the iCade. Honestly, this is clunky at best, and most of those buttons aren't really used in the games for the iCade. But as I said, the buttons and joystick are excellent quality, and I'm not sure what else ION could have done here other than adding another costly component like a numeric keypad. One nice touch: when the iCade is powered up and ready to go, the place where you would normally insert a quarter lights up. You can see this in the gallery. %Gallery-127049% Hardware playability If you're worried about lag from Bluetooth, rest assured you'll never notice with the iCade. Given the only compatible games are from decades ago, you won't be too worried about any lag. In all of my testing it was never an issue. The buttons and joystick are very high quality. The entire panel comes as one piece, professionally assembled elsewhere, and I feel like the unit will stand up to years of button mashing abuse. The joystick has a metal stick and red plastic ball, just like a real joystick. It's an 8-way stick, like a traditional arcade joystick, and it performs admirably. The only problem with the buttons? There are too many. Given the fact that the games supported by the iCade thus far are limited to a bunch of Atari 2600 games and a few of the arcade games (much more on this in a moment), once you enter the Bluetooth pairing code, they wind up getting in the way. Sure, you can do a few things, like switch to black and white and whatnot, but that's not really helpful. There are no instructions on how each set of buttons matches up to games, either, so it often becomes a trial and error process to find out what works. Typically the rightmost, lower white button is your main action button. But even the joystick can have a slight learning curve, as I discovered with Asteroids. Software compatibility As other reviews have pointed out, the faux-wood and black plastic elephant in the room would have to be that the iCade only supports one app. Atari's Greatest Hits is certainly a serviceable retro gaming app, complete with a number of 2600 and arcade games, but the iCade seems like overkill for such an outing. Compounding the problem is that the iCade really only fully supports the 2600 games. Which begs the question, why not just make a real Bluetooth 2600 joystick? It'd be cheaper, more accurate and unquestionably perfect for the job. Some Atari arcade games are supported, whereas others are comically impossible to play -- mostly the ones that rely upon landscape view! Don't get me wrong, my kids had a great time playing Centipede, Millipede, even Adventure, but we have Adventure on one of those cheapo "plug into your TV" controllers that is almost exactly like an old Atari controller (except for the weight, thanks to a 9-volt battery inside). That thing does a great job, whereas the iCade can be a little confusing with all the extra buttons. If the iCade supports more games in the future, it'll be one of the best accessories out there and possibly the coolest accessory for gaming. For right now, you'd have to be a pretty huge Atari fan to justify the US$99.99 price at ThinkGeek, not to mention the constant cycle of backorders. That said, the fact that this thing keeps going into backorder means some people are really digging it. I will agree that some games, like Centipede, Crystal Castles, Battle Zone, Tempest and a handful of others are really fun on the iCade. Since you can buy all the games for the Atari app for less than $20, once you break down the cost, you're looking at about $6 per "great" game you can play. The rest are just sorta OK. I mean, do you need an arcade interface to play Basic Math? Considering that price is still cheaper than trying to maintain a real Atari 2600 (I have known people who do this) and find thrift store cartridges, it's a question of how much you're into retro gaming. Final thoughts If you are looking for a great gift for a retro gamer, or just nostalgic nerds in their 30s (like me), the iCade will wow someone. If you're looking for a MAME cabinet or something similar, you'll be disappointed. I can't say enough good things about the hardware on the iCade -- it is built well and it's clear it'll stand up to heavy use. Even at just a penny under a hundred bucks it's not a bad price for the quality. But you'll have to determine whether or not you can suffer the limited software catalog to justify owning one. In my case, there are probably other ways to burn my cash, be it on the App Store or on a more versatile accessory like the Fling. Update: My one gripe with the iCade was the singular app available from Atari. Well, today ION announced on Twitter that an SDK is available for developers. Here's looking forward to more games for the iCade! By the holiday season this will be a must-have gift, I think.
Roadshow from Fetch Softworks downloads videos to iPad for offline viewing
Longtime Mac users are very familiar with Fetch Softworks. The company has been around since 1989, and is named after the classic Mac FTP client -- Fetch. Now Fetch Softworks has branched out with a new addition to the family named Roadshow. Roadshow (free download, $4.99 in-app purchase to remove ads and enable unlimited video) isn't a Mac app, and it's definitely not an FTP client. It is a fun iPad app that answers the question "How can I download online videos for viewing on my iPad at a later time when I'm offline?" How it works Roadshow has a built-in web browser that you can use to head out to your favorite sites. When you find a compatible video (more on that in a moment), you'll see it show up in a horizontal scrolling icon list above the browser. To download and save the video for offline viewing on your iPad, just tap on the video icon and a progress bar shows you how the download is coming along. The app worked well in limited cases. For example, when I browsed Vimeo I was able to tap on any video and have it appear in the scrolling list for download. I easily queued up a few videos for download in this manner. However, I didn't have a lot of success with many other sites. Anything that is stored on YouTube, for example, cannot be downloaded. That's not really the app's fault, but more a legal detail of the terms of use for YouTube. %Gallery-126910% Compatible videos My next idea was to see if I could download some of the tutorial videos from Apple's support page, hoping that if my Dad ever gets an iPad, I could preload a bunch of tutorials on the device. No such luck. Next, I headed out to PBS to see if I could grab some video. Nope, it's all Flash content, so there's no way to even watch the video on the iPad, nonetheless download it. I went out to four local TV channels to see if I could watch news stories, thinking that Roadshow would be a great way to capture the news for viewing later. Once again, I was stymied by the inability of the iPad to play Flash video. Fox Business News video was available, so I quickly grabbed copies of our very own Mike Rose in several of his frequent appearances as an Apple pundit. Fetch lists Vimeo, MSNBC, and TED Talks as sites that have compatible video. After this experience, I'm going to go out of my way to make sure that TUAW TV Live can be watched using Roadshow -- right now, we host the completed videos on YouTube and embed them into each week's show post. Other washouts included ABC.com (they want you to watch the video through their free app), NBC.com (Flash...), CBS.com (full episodes weren't available, although clips were), Fox.com (Flash, although they do have an iPad app), the Food Network, A&E TV, Xfinity.com, you name it. I didn't realize just how bad the situation is for video on the iPad until I wrote this review. C'mon, Apple and Adobe -- let's get this resolved! The collection When you do finally locate a video that is viewable on the iPad and you download it, Roadshow puts the captured video into a "collection," a virtual storage shelf onto which each of the video clips is placed. To watch a video, you tap on it and then tap the play button. The video goes full-screen, and you're able to enjoy it. To delete a video, there's a trash can icon. Sharing videos is made possible by a button that allows you to send a link to the original source web page. Conclusion Roadshow works as advertised. I only have one minor complaint about the app. For a company that has had such a beautiful icon for Fetch for many years, the Roadshow icon is disappointing. Perhaps you can change it to your Fetch dog carrying a video in his mouth... Unfortunately for Fetch Softworks, the inability of the iPad to view Flash video makes it difficult to get source material to watch! If you have a source of non-Flash video that you're used to watching through Safari on the iPad, then by all means download the ad-supported free version of Roadshow. You can try it out and watch up to 15 videos; after that point, there's a $4.99 in-app purchase that removes ads and lets you watch video until you drop -- or run out of non-Flash videos. Roadshow is fast, intuitive, easy-to-use, and a wonderful way to view video offline on an iPad. It's so nice to see Fetch Softworks branching out into the world of iOS apps, and if Roadshow is any indication, we're going to see some great things out of this venerable development house.
Agenda is a fast, tidy calendar app for iPhone
Agenda (US$1.99), from Washington, DC developers savvy apps, is a calendar app for the iPhone that's legible, fast, bursting with Multi-Touch support and reminiscent of the desktop organizers we used before apps replaced archaic paper. Nearly every function is a swipe away, and even the icon displays the current date. Here's my look at Agenda for iPhone. UI Black text on a field of white. That's Agenda. As some apps get "cutesy" and try to resemble real-world objects, (I'm looking at you, Calendar for iPad), the folks at savvy apps went in the opposite direction. Agenda features year, month, week, day and event views. A colored dot indicates an event's parent calendar while the tools – navigation buttons, edit/create button and settings button – remain consistent across all views. Best of all, nearly everything you'll want to do, aside from enter event details, can be accomplished with one hand. Heck, with one thumb. %Gallery-126892% Use A calendar must satisfy two main tasks: record information and display it. Here's a look at how Agenda handles both. To enter a new event, tap the "+" button in the lower right-hand corner. The Add Event screen appears, which should be familiar to anyone who's use Apple's Calendar app. In fact, it's identical. Populate the title field, start/end time, repeat field, etc. as appropriate and then tap Done in the upper right. The sheet disappears, and your event is added to the calendar. Agenda's only real advantage in event creation is that the button is always available. With Apple's Calendar app, the new event button disappears while in single event view. Of course, Agenda shines when displaying information, making great use of swipes and taps. By default, Agenda presents a list view. Each day in the list features the date, pending appointments and their respective start times. Swipe up and down to scroll through the list and tap the top of the screen to return to the current day. As you enter a new month, its name is briefly displayed. Here's where it gets fun. Swipe right once from the list view to produce month view. A gray bar highlights the current week, and the current date is in red. Every day with pending appointments displays a dot(s) corresponding to the parent calendar's color. While in month view, swipe up and down to move from month to month, and tap any day to see its events in detail. Next, swipe right again to enter yearly view, which presents a nice overview of the whole year. Again, tap any month to jump to it. Back to list view. Swipe left once to enter daily view. A mini calendar appears in the upper left while the date appears in the upper right. Below a divider is a color-coded list of what's due on that day. Swipe up or down on that list to move from day to day, or tap any item to see its details. Here's what's really cool: while in this event-specific view, swipe up and down to scroll through that day's individual events. Any phone number or address is tappable from event view, so you can place a call or jump to a map. Conclusion Agenda isn't the app for rapid event creation. However, those interested in a speedy, efficient and good-looking way to move through their events ought to consider Agenda. The fact that you can do almost everything with the swipe of a thumb is very nice indeed. Old eyes like mine appreciate the legibility, and I can't help but love the speed. Good work, savvy apps. Agenda is very well done.
The Daily Grind: How long does it take to review an MMORPG?
Evaluating an MMORPG is a tricky business. Massively has a long-standing editorial policy that frowns on "reviewing" massively multiplayer titles. I say "reviewing" with quotes because it's difficult to write about games in a completely review-free manner, and everything from opinion pieces to straight-up news stories often contains observations that might feel at home in a standard review. One of the most difficult factors to reconcile with an MMORPG is the time allotted to the review process. How long does it take to experience enough of a particular title to both form an opinion about it and talk intelligently about multiple aspects of it? The answer can vary from game to game and from person to person, and herein lies this morning's Daily Grind topic. How long does it take you to decide about an MMORPG? Minutes? Hours? Months? Inquiring Massively minds want to know where you stand on evaluating our favorite genre. Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Aluratek Mini Surge Dual USB Charging Station: Pocket-sized power package
One of my major gripes while traveling is the lack of available wall sockets in hotels, as I often have two or three devices while my wife brings her iPhone and iPad. To help keep us from fighting over where to plug in our gadgets, Aluratek is now shipping the Mini Surge Dual USB Charging Station (US$19.99). Design What's so great about this little white box? In one small package it offers two USB charging ports and three grounded AC outlets (American-style plugs), all while providing 612 Joules of power surge protection. The prongs on the plug on the back of the Mini Surge fold flat for travel, keeping them from damage in transit and from scratching any of your gizmos. Unlike some portable power solutions I've tried before, the prongs on the Mini Surge lock into place so you know they're going to stay extended when plugging the device into a socket. The Mini Surge is designed to handle up to 1800 Watts of power at a current of 15 Amps. If you're planning on plugging in a lot of "big equipment," ensure that you won't exceed that limit. Most portable electronics won't have a problem. Using the Mini Surge Dual USB Charging Station Fortunately, I have a lot of stuff that I need to charge up and keep powered, so I have the perfect setup for trying this out. I plugged an iPhone 4 (with a cable to charge up a Mophie Juice Pack Air) and an iPad into the USB ports, and my MacBook Air, Apple Battery Charger, and an iPad 2 with charging brick into the AC outlets. I'm not sure of the total power load on the Mini Surge as a result, but the device didn't get warm at all. There's a green LED to let you know that the surge protection is working -- if you are hit with a surge the light will go out if the protection is no longer sufficient to keep your gadgets safe. I love the fact, even with five devices connected, I still had an empty socket on my wall. Conclusion There are similar solutions available from other brand-name vendors. Belkin's Mini Surge Protector with USB Charger (US$24.99) also has three AC outlets and two USB ports. While the prongs on the plug don't fold down as they do on the Aluratek Mini Surge, the Belkin device does rotate through 360° so that you can actually fit two of them on one standard two-socket outlet -- one pointing up, one pointing down, or each pointing an opposite direction sideways. For a few years, I've had a Kensington Portable Power Outlet ($24.99). It also has three AC outlets, two USB ports, and surge protection, but has the added flexibility of a 17" flat power cord that means it can also be a short extension cable. In terms of price and size, the Aluratek Mini Surge Dual USB Charging Station really has the edge. I have a personal mission to keep reducing the amount of bulk carried on my travels, and this is an attractive and lightweight way to keep all of my devices powered up without carrying too many adapters.
Kanex AirBlue: A portable Bluetooth music solution
Kanex is well-known for their cable solutions; items like the Mini DisplayPort to HDMI cable are great for pumping video from Macs to HDTVs. Now the company has come out with the AirBlue Portable Bluetooth Music Receiver (US$49) -- a small device that you plug into speakers, AV receivers, automobile AUX ports, and other common audio inputs -- and then beam music to from your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. Kanex provided one of these small black disc-like receivers for testing purposes, and it's a handy little device for getting rid of a few more cables in your life ... although you will need a cable to connect it to your audio input. Setup and pairing Setup of the AirBlue is a piece of cake. For a cord-cutting solution, the AirBlue comes with a lot of little cables (below). One of these is a standard USB to Mini-USB cable that's used to charge the unit. Charging the AirBlue will take about 4 - 5 hours, and once it is fully charged it will work for up to 20 hours. When the Airblue is full of power, you can then take the little 2" diameter flat black disc and plug one of the included cables into it -- a standard 3.5 mm to 3.5 mm audio cable or a 3.5 mm to RL audio cable for speakers. Pairing the unit is also quite easy. Dead center in the top of the disc is a small button with a built-in blue LED light. Pressing it for 6 seconds puts it into discovery mode, indicated by the LED flashing about 4 times per second. At this point I picked up my iPhone, went to Settings > General > Bluetooth, and saw the Kanex AirBlue show up in the list of Bluetooth devices (below). With a single tap, the iPhone and AirBlue were paired. Using the AirBlue I was particularly interested in using the AirBlue in my car, a Honda CR-V that has a center console between the driver and passenger seats that contains an auxiliary audio port. My mission? To blast tunes from the iPhone to the sound system in my car and also see what would happen if I tried to use it to listen to Navigon Mobile Navigator turn-by-turn instructions. Rather than use the standard 3.5 mm to 3.5 mm audio cable that came with the AirBlue, I took the opportunity to try out an Ipevo Bendi ($14.95 for two). It's a semi-rigid audio connector; think of a pipe cleaner (chenille stem for the non-smokers out there) with audio cables in it. I like the fact that the Bendi held the AirBlue up and off of the console. Once plugged into the AUX port, I turned the AirBlue back on by holding down the power button for a few seconds, and then launched a Grateful Dead tune in the iPod app on the iPhone. With a tap on the AirPlay button, I was able to select the AirBlue as the recipient of the music (below) and had "Friend of the Devil" blasting from my car speakers. Just to check the range of the Bluetooth connection -- advertised as 30 feet -- I opened the doors on the car, grabbed the iPhone, and started walking away from the car. I was well over 70 feet away before the signal actually dropped, and could easily stand 60 feet away and still hear the music playing. Navigon Mobile Navigator is set up to work with the iPod app, reducing the volume level of music when the application decides it needs to talk to you. Sure enough, "Sugar Magnolia" faded away in volume as the Navigon app tried to give me directions to a nearby gas station, and then increased the volume back to normal once it was done. Very nice! Conclusion There are a lot of similar solutions available for Bluetooth connections to speakers. For example, the Belkin Bluetooth Music Receiver ($49.99) is about the same size and also comes with similar cables. Monoprice sells a generic receiver for $19.92, so if you're looking for a device you can probably find one that's less expensive. However, I'm happy with the Kanex AirBlue's range, ease of setup, looks, and excellent low-noise sound quality. It's tiny enough to go on trips with me and my iPhone, and will work great in rental cars. The Kanex AirBlue is currently available for pre-order on the Kanex website.
Create photo albums right on your iPhone with Album App Mini
As we're well into vacation season, Album App Mini is a well-timed app to send your pictures to friends and family, in nicely formatted photo albums, without having to invoke software on your laptop or desktop. Album App Mini lets you import photos from your camera roll or online photo services, like Flickr or Facebook, and create attractive templates and add text. Photos can be cropped, scaled and rotated. Text can be any color you choose, and there are several fonts and type-styles to work with. The app has 30 layouts for photo placement, which is certainly more than enough, and it has 5 themes. Album App Mini also has a tutorial, which was a bit difficult to get into. It looked like a video you touch to start, but in fact, it was a set of static pages that you scroll through. Albums can be several pages, and the completed albums can be emailed -- something the iPhone software doesn't supply natively. You can upload photos to MobileMe galleries, but it looks like that function may be going away when iCloud appears. When you're done, you can email your finished album or send it to Facebook or Twitter. I noticed some image degradation when I emailed the album, so it looks like things aren't going out at full resolution. The app also supports AirPrint. Album App Mini is a reasonable US$0.99, although extra themes cost money, which is a growing practice I'm not wild about. I'd rather spend an extra buck on an app and get the whole thing. I like the way this app works, and I'm going to give it a full try on an upcoming photo trek to New Mexico. It's a nice way to send a finished product while you are on the road. You can see some screenshots in the gallery, and feel free to comment on any other similar solutions you have seen and like. %Gallery-126756%
NYPL Biblion: World's Fair iPad app a compelling look at yesterday's future
In 1939 and 1940, a world that was beginning to climb out of the Great Depression and about to descend into World War II had a brief glimpse of a bright future at the New York World's Fair. After the Fair shut its gates for the last time in 1940, the organizers took their meticulous records of the event and presented them to the New York Public Library for safekeeping. 70+ years later, the library has opened the Fair to the world again in the form of NYPL Biblion: World's Fair, an innovative and exhaustively detailed history of the Fair in an interactive iPad app. In this review, I'll discuss this amazing app -- the first in a hopefully long series exploring the NYPL's collection -- and show you some screen shots of the app in action. %Gallery-126665% User Interface and Navigation The free app is huge -- 252 MB in size -- and contains essays, documents, photos, film, and audio from the Fair. With this much information on hand, the designers had to figure out a way to let users navigate the history of the New York World's Fair in their own way. Rather than guide users by the hand in a static timeline, the World's Fair app starts by displaying floating groups of pictures, each of which is labeled with a different title: Introduction, A Moment in Time, Enter the World of Tomorrow, Beacon of Idealism, Fashion Food and Famous Faces, From the Stacks, and You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet. If you're new to the app and don't touch one of those groupings, the app quickly displays a magazine-like front page with suggestions of where to go next. There's a lot of animation involved in the app, which was produced for the library by Potion, and it makes great use of the standard gestures used on the iPad. Want to move between the "stacks?" Just flick between them. Tap on one of the stacks to read an introduction, and then tap on a bright blue and easy to see View Stories link to see a graphical representation of stories. Within the story groupings are colored bars: red for audio and video content, blue for featured images, orange for documents, and yellow for connections to related information from the NYPL stacks. The user interface is everything in this app, since it's your way to browse the tremendous amount of content that's packed into it. I personally found the app to be easy to use and understand, and to give you an idea of how much I like the Biblion World's Fair app, it actually kept me entertained one evening for five straight hours. That's unprecedented for me, as I usually get bored and distracted by something else fairly quickly. I feel like the Biblion app literally takes me back in time to the late 1930's, and since I'm a history buff I can easily get sucked into wandering through the articles, photos, and other audiovisual content for hours. Knowing how much I like this app, I was surprised by several tweets by a well-known blogger/author I know. He found the Biblion World's Fair app user interface to be "a mess." I personally think that linear thinkers might have a bit of an issue with the user interface, as it's really meant for exploration and wandering around the virtual library stacks. For me, a guy with an incredibly messy desk who is always working on about five things at once, the Biblion World's Fair app was a joy to use. There is one complaint that I have -- there's no search function built into the app. While it's a lot of fun to zip around from subject to subject, it would be nice to be able to search for certain names or topics throughout the collected content. Content The Biblion World's Fair app truly brought not only the New York World's Fair to life for me, but provided excellent context into the historical significance of the event. The Fair was opened with a televised (yes, in 1939) speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which was the first time an American president used the new medium. Unfortunately, no recording exists of that speech. One wonderful find in the app is a group of short color movies by an amateur filmmaker by the name of H. Earl Hoover. The silent movies give a personal perspective of the event from a regular citizen who attended the fair, and the color and scope of the event really comes across in these movies. The NYPL team was able to recreate the "Democracity" city of the future pageant that took place inside the Fair's iconic Perisphere, using a combination of pre-production drawings, scripts, photos, musical scores, a chorus, and computer animation to create a short video. I'm sure the recreation doesn't have the emotional impact of the actual exhibit, but it was a game attempt by the developers to show what it must have been like. Something that surprised and delighted me was to find that many of the essays accompanying photos in the app were non-judgmental, telling the story of the New York World's Fair without the usual postmodern "interpretation" that seems to plague many historical exhibits these days. Kudos to the NYPL for keeping the majority of the essays as descriptive as possible without tainting them with personal or political judgment. Many of the things that we now take for granted, such as electric appliances, television, suburbs, and freeways, were first demonstrated to the public at the Fair. The impending world war is a constant undertone of many of the essays, with discussions of the fate of the Czechoslovakian exhibit after the German invasion in 1938 and how the controversial Soviet Union exhibit closed after 1939 after that nation invaded Poland and Finland. There's no way that I can do justice to the sheer amount and quality of the written and visual content of this app. Just know that if you have an interest in this period of time in our history, the portions of the New York Public Library's collection that are highlighted in this app will keep you entertained for many hours. Conclusion The New York Public Library states that Biblion is to become a series of applications that will "explore ... the Library's vast and awe-inspiring collection." In fact, when the app first launches, the phrase "Biblion: The Boundless Library" is displayed, and the Library intends for Biblion to become an electronic magazine of sorts that will highlight different parts of the collection and exhibits. We're fortunate that the NYPL decided to pick the 1939-40 New York World's Fair as the topic of the first issue of Biblion, as they had a lot of material to work with. If this app is any indication of what we can expect in the future, Biblion is going to be an exciting and worthwhile collection of historical information. If you're an iPad owner, don't worry about whether or not you like history -- download this free app and give it a try. You might surprise yourself by spending hours immersed in this fascinating look at the future as seen from the past.
Recco claims to provide hyperlocal restaurant savvy
The New York Times recently profiled a new iOS app named Recco. It's yet another social network app, but this time one built around restaurant recommendations. Rather than a service like Yelp, Recco is attempting to be extremely local, picking up restaurant recommendations not from people in your state or city, but from your actual friends and a few food experts. It's an interesting idea, even if the Times' piece makes the app sound just like any other social network startup. The Times actually mentions that Recco only has 2000 users so far, which is adorably tiny in this day and age. Still, if you have a circle of friends out frequenting new restaurants and ready to let you know which ones are the best, Recco seems like it might be an interesting experiment -- it's a virtual replacement for the kind of standard food chatter around town. Recco launched back at SXSW this year, and it's available for free on the App Store right now.
