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Sixth anniversary bringing big changes to Guild Wars
The sixth anniversary of Guild Wars is here, and ArenaNet is celebrating in a big way with an update today. This sixth anniversary brings new content, some surprising new birthday tonics, and some big changes to PvP. That last item on the list comes courtesy of the Lunatic Court members and their efforts to free Mad King Thorn last Halloween. "While these events have long passed, the aftereffect of this plot has caused instability to seep into the land causing fluctuations. This Flux will come and go monthly and cause alterations to PvP that will encourage players to alter their playing style in order to take advantage of the current Flux." The update coming later today offers fans plenty of other changes and upgrades as well. Players will have new challenges in the form of hard mode quests, a new look to the game with optional high-resolution town textures, and an overhauled friends list. If you're mutual friends with another player, you'll be able to see what map he or she is currently in. Finally, ArenaNet is celebrating six years with six weeks of sales -- starting today, a different item will be on sale in the NCsoft store every week. The sales will be updated every Thursday at noon PDT. Massively has joined in the party too! We'll be bringing you even more news on the celebration events, an exclusive interview with two members of the Live Team, a chance to win some Guild Wars prizes, and maybe even a few more surprises! You'll want to keep a very close eye on the site, our Twitter feed, our Facebook page, and our forums so you don't miss anything!
Apple planning May event to celebrate its 10-year retail anniversary
Get your glad rags out, because it looks like Apple's preparing to celebrate the 10th birthday of its first retail stores at the end of next month. Employees have been told they can't request any vacation time in late May, possibly because Apple's planning some sort of event to mark the anniversary. The first Apple Retail Stores launched on May 19, 2001 in McLean, Virginia's Tyson's Corner Mall and at the Galleria in Glendale, California. The Glendale store has even achieved cult status now with the store number designation 001. It is possible that the holiday blackout is due to a new product launch; new Sandy Bridge iMacs are due, and there's always the iPhone 5. However, the iMac doesn't seem special enough to stop all staff going on holiday, and the iPhone 5 now seems more likely for September. The most recent holiday blackouts were for the Verizon iPhone 4 and the iPad 2. If Apple is planning a birthday party for its retail stores, will you be going along? How do you think Apple should mark the anniversary? Let us know in the comments. (Edited to fix store name.)
Talkcast tonight; 7 PM PT/10 PM ET: Happy Birthday iPad Edition!
Hippo, birdie, two ewes, Hippo, birdie, two ewes, Hippo, BIRDie, two ew-wes, Hippo, birdie, two ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwes! Here we go again! It's the first birthday of our own iPad, the little tablet that could. It's seems like that little guy has just been around forever, but really it's only been a year. Look how far we've come! In that time we've seen millions of stork deliveries make millions of people happy the world over. We even have a new sibling in the family, the iPad Mark II. Today we even celebrated with a slate of TUAW meetups worldwide to celebrate, and we'll (hopefully) get reports from attendees (aside from me, that is). Keep in mind that when you come for the show, you are invited to stay for the aftershow, and TUAWTF is never recorded for a very good reason. Your calls and questions help us make the show the best it can be, otherwise I'm just talking to myself! To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or download the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the Talkshoe Web button on our profile page at 4 HI/7 PDT/10 PM EDT Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (yay for free cell phone weekend minutes!): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8. If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free X-Lite or Blink SIP clients; basic instructions are here. Talk to you tonight! Photo by extraketchup | flickr cc
Osborne 1 celebrates its 30th birthday, and that of the portable computing revolution
On April 3rd, 1981 -- thirty years ago today -- Adam Osborne unveiled the Osborne 1 at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco. It had a 4 MHz Zilog Z80 CPU, two single-sided floppy drives, 64K of RAM, and a five-inch monochrome CRT display. Nothing particularly special there, even back in the day. No, what made the Osborne 1 extraordinary was the fact that the 24-pound plastic machine had a carrying handle on the back -- and at the bargain price of $1,795 with software included, it became one of the first mass-produced portable computers to succeed. Which, of course, spurred competitors to create an army of even more luggable, loveable machines. Shortly after helping to change the course of history, Osborne and his computer fell into a spiral of pain, but the next time you admire the way your ultralight slides into a manila envelope, you'll know who to thank. Find a short but sweet chronicle of the Osborne 1 at our Technologizer link.
Happy Birthday, iPad! Come out to celebrate
It got mocked for its name, and for the "magical and revolutionary" marketing machine behind it. Critics called it "just a big iPod touch" and wondered what it might be good for. Customers, meanwhile... well, after a year of the original iPad and just three weeks of the iPad 2, the gadget that defined the tablet market of the 21st century shows no signs of slowing down. Apple's history of flat computing concepts goes back decades, but it wasn't until the mid-2000s that the rumor grind really began to churn in earnest. Remember those patents about multi-touch screen controls? Yes, that's early 2006, and it almost looks like the guy's got a Smart Cover on his tablet. Ah, the memories. After the run-up to the January 2010 announcement and April launch, the iPad took on the world. Today, in honor of iPad Year One, you can take on your fellow TUAW readers at our first worldwide meetup! Come to your local 2 PM meetup for some iPad multiplayer gaming, meet your fellow readers (and maybe a TUAW staffer or two), and an all-around good time. We'll be doing some live streaming, and there may even be a bit of swag. Hope to see you there!
Happy 35th birthday to Apple, Inc.
It's no joke: Apple, Inc. turns 35 today. On April 1, 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne (who 12 days later sold his share of the startup for a meager US$2,300) founded Apple Computer. As a newborn, Apple intended to sell low-cost, hand-manufactured microcomputer components to fellow members of the local Homebrew Computer Club. [Ron Wayne will be appearing on Fox Business News this afternoon at 3:30 PM to talk about his early Apple experiences. –Ed.] Not satisfied with selling a few parts to a handful of enthusiasts, a persistent Steve Jobs pitched Apple's products to Paul Terrell, owner of a newly founded computer store in Mountain View, CA, called "Byte Shop." After a few exposures to Jobs' reality distortion field, Terrell agreed to an order of 50 fully assembled Apple I personal computers from the infant company. The two Steves, with a bit of help from their friends (and funded by the sale of a few prized possessions and a favorable loan from a parts supplier) assembled the company's first 50 machines. Together with Byte Shop, Apple put the original machines up for sale at $666.66 each, lighting the match that would later ignite the personal computer revolution.
RuneScape: Sixth anniversary retrospective
When it first launched back in 2001, RuneScape was a primitive beast. Its blocky three-dimensional world was littered with hand-drawn two-dimensional sprites, and most of its sound effects could have been created by whacking random objects with a hammer. Only a handful of quests and skills existed, and there wasn't much land to explore. After over a decade of development, the RuneScape we have today bears little semblance to its primitive ancestor. The map is an order of magnitude larger, the list of quests has grown immensely, and there are countless things to do in the world. With several million actively playing free accounts and over a million paid subscribers, RuneScape has risen from its humble beginnings to be one of the world's most popular free-to-play MMOs. It's been a long road, with a few important milestones along the way. Today marks the sixth anniversary of the date that the RuneScape 2 beta was officially completed and the game's first major overhaul was launched live to players. Anyone who played back then will remember the beta fondly as the rebirth of a game they loved. Since then, regular game updates have added a huge amount of depth and content every year. In this retrospective article, I look back at RuneScape's past to see how it got to where it is today and what's new to the game over this past year.
Happy 10th birthday, Mac OS X!
It's hard to believe that 10 years ago today, Mac OS X made its official debut after several months of a paid public beta. Mac OS X v.10.0 "Cheetah" was released on March 24, 2001 for US$129. It was slow, clunky and made many users want to throw their Macs out the window, into the closest body of water or quickly scurry back to the safety of OS 9. Despite the plethora of errors, it was clear that 'Classic' Mac OS's days were numbered. The anniversary comes a day after one of Mac OS X's major development leaders, Bertrand Serlet, announced that he was leaving Apple. Serlet helped guide the transformation of the NeXTStep OS purchased by Apple into the Mac OS X (and eventually iOS) that we know and love. In the rest of this post, we share the seven (soon to be eight) major releases of Mac OS X (10.4.4 is considered a major release because of the rewrite for the Intel platform) and video blasts from the past as we share footage of the original announcements and previews of Mac OS X. Check out the gallery of UI changes as well. %Gallery-88902%
Mac OS X turns X years old today
Whether it changed everything, made you think different, or was just a sideshow to the Windows centerpiece of your life, there's no denying version X of Mac OS has been the most successful and enduring piece of software Apple has ever produced. It is turning 10 years old today, so we thought we'd spare a moment to say congratulations and to dust off an image of our favorite logo of the bunch. And who knows, with the next iteration being dubbed Lion and the lack of any more senior big cats available, maybe this will be the last big anniversary before Apple takes the leap into version 11. [Thanks, Robert]
Runes of Magic celebrates its second birthday
Happy birthday, Runes of Magic! Two years have gone by, and you're growing up so fast. Anniversary celebrations are already underway in RoM. If your account has been lying dormant, you may want to wake it up, join the festivities, and get some free goodies while you're at it. For me, these two years flew by. It doesn't seem all that long ago that I wrote a look back at the first year of RoM. In two years, RoM has seen three major updates, and a fourth is just around the corner. The first two chapters made it into the first year, and although Chapter 4 didn't quite make it into this article, chapter 3 brought a whopping amount of content and features. If your extra ginger beer isn't cutting it anymore and you're feeling brave, move on up by grabbing a bottle of Blenhiem's old #5 and join me for a look back at the last year of RoM.
Celebrate EQ's 12 years with a look back and an interview with John Smedley
Time grows many layers, and this is especially true in MMORPGs. After all, not only are new quests, stories and chunks of content added to a game as it goes along, but the players themselves add their own memories and experiences to the mix. MMOs truly are virtual worlds, and they change over time and become richer. EverQuest is no exception. After 12 years of adventure, danger, and story-telling, the game shows no signs of stopping. What is planned for the game? How will the last 12 years affect the decisions for the next 12 years? EverQuest has been one of the flagships of the genre, but how does a game of its age maintain any type of market visibility? Massively sat down with SOE President John Smedley, EQ Assistant Lead Designer Alan VanCouvering, and Associate Producer Harvey Burgess to find out. We'll also be taking a look back at the long history of Norrath and will even throw in some nuggets about EverQuest Next. Click past the cut and let's take a look!
Blizzard turns 20, thanks fans for support
Blizzard Entertainment is 20 years old today. Instead of spending it quietly counting the billions of dollars raked in from World of Warcraft players, CEO Mike Morhaime and EVP Frank Pearce sent a message of thanks to Blizzard's loyal fans.
Crashing the parrrty: DDO's producer joins the fifth anniversary festivities
What's better: birthdays or pirates? For Dungeons and Dragons Online Executive Prodicer Fernando Paiz, both are equally awesome, which is why DDO's fifth anniversary is smoothered in secret pirate sauce. In a birthday letter to DDO's playerbase, Paiz gushes about the game's accomplishments over the past half-decade, including its action-based combat, DX11 graphics and free-to-play transition. But all that is the past, as he talks up the myriad of in-game events that are currently happening in the game, which include fighting off pirates, collecting lost goodies and claiming your rightful booty. Paiz also expressed excitement about DDO's future, starting with the European F2P edition that's coming soon to the international community. He also hints at several developments that are coming down the pike for the game, such as a new crafting system, high-level adventure packs, and a never-before-seen content system. You can read the full producer's letter over at DDO.
Happy Birthday, Steve Jobs
While there has been a lot of Apple news today, we can't forget that one of the founders of the company, Steve Jobs, has a birthday. Yep, Steve turns 56 today, and health concerns aside, we hope he has a great one. Over the years he's had a profound influence on our daily lives. From revolutionizing the computer industry to unleashing the creatitve power of Pixar to re-inventing Apple and making it a powerhouse of consumer electronics innovation, Mr. Jobs has almost been a national spokesperson for innovation and good design. A savvy businessman and astute judge of what works and what doesn't when it comes to user-centric design, I think we all owe Steve a debt of gratitude for his uncompromising character and attention to detail. On the next page there's a YouTube tribute video that is short but sweet, plus a few links to some other videos of Steve throughout the years. Happy birthday, Mr. Jobs!
Engadget Mobile turns 5 today -- help us celebrate with a Motorola Aura giveaway!
On this fateful day in 2006, Engadget Mobile was born -- and the world has never been the same. Of course, we never would've made it this far without you, our dear readers, so we wanted to give something back... and we think you'll like what we've come up with. The Motorola Aura is one of the most unique handsets ever to come out of Schaumburg, featuring a circular display covered with a 62-carat sapphire crystal along with a rear window that lets you marvel at the action of the watch movement-like swivel mechanism. At its launch in late 2008, it retailed for some $2,000 in limited quantities -- and it remains a collector's item today. It won't out-game your iPhone or out-email your BlackBerry, of course... but as an evening or weekend phone, there's probably not a better conversation piece out there. Want it? Read the rules and regs below! Thanks to Motorola for providing us with the Aura! The rules: Leave a comment below. Any comment will do. You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you'll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.) If you enter more than once, only activate one comment. This is pretty self explanatory. Just be careful and you'll be fine. Contest is open to all residents of the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), 18 or older! Sorry, we don't make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad. Winners will be chosen randomly. One winner will receive one Motorola Aura. If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of the end of the contest. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen. Entries can be submitted until Sunday, February 20, 2010, at 11:59PM ET. Good luck! Full rules can be found here.
Ultima Online celebrates player's 83rd birthday in game
Think Ultima Online is all about ganking, Lord of the Flies, and survival of the fittest? Think again, as the feel good story of the week comes courtesy of the long-lived granddaddy of sandbox MMOs. Speaking of long lives, UO player Hollie Macrall recently celebrated her 83rd birthday, and while we don't know for sure whether that's some sort of MMO record, we do know that the Ultima devs were duly impressed enough to reward her with an in-game flower marking the occasion. As you can see in the accompanying screenshot, Hollie was surrounded by friends and family for her virtual celebration and is also the proud owner of the one-of-a-kind item bearing the inscription "In appreciation of age and wisdom. Happy 83rd birthday Hollie from the UO Team."
Vanguard's fourth anniversary raises new questions
Vanguard is somewhat of a unique beast among other "AAA" MMOs; it's a forgotten child that still offers great adventure, open-world excitement, and hardcore raiding. While we all have heard of the botched launch and practically dead-in-the-water development cycle of the game, the fact of the matter is that players are still playing it. You can't force a player to enjoy himself, so why are the members of the Vanguard community still playing? Is it possible that they are having a good time? Or do social ties mean more than great adventure? Could it be that players simply have not found a game that they enjoy more than Vanguard, warts and all? We asked the players on the official forums and received a total of four responses. The thread was immediately pushed down by standard complaint posts. Could it be that the community has been the worst thing for the game, a game that needs, more than anything, positive word-of-mouth? Click past the cut and we'll look into it.
Wikipedia celebrates 10th anniversary, co-founder Jimmy Wales opines on app stores
Did you know that Wikipedia is celebrating its 10th anniversary this week? It is, on January 15th! It's hard to believe that the 'edited by the everyman' encyclopedia has been around that long... or maybe we're just getting old. Either way, co-founder of the site (and man of many personal appeals) Jimmy Wales took the opportunity to answer some questions about the past, present and future of Wikipedia, and, when asked about the growing prevalence of mobile apps and app stores, well, Wales had plenty to say, including that models such as the iTunes app store can represent a dangerous "chokepoint" and that they could be "a threat to a diverse and open ecosystem." He also added that mobile devices are owned by people, and those people should control their own devices. We can see where Jimmy's coming from in some ways -- apps are a wholly new, untested way of ingesting content, but we have a hard time swallowing wholesale that the app store model could threaten internet freedom more than an issue such as net neutrality. But you know, if you ask us nicely, Jimmy, we might just take your word for it. Hit up the 'more coverage' link to check out a video of Jimmy Wales waxing philosophical about the birthday celebration.
iTunes celebrates its 10th birthday, still takes too long to sync your iPhone
If you've managed to use any piece of technology for ten years, it's safe to say that said piece has some serious lasting power in an era filled with flavors-of-the-week. It's a bit startling to think that Apple's iTunes has now fallen into that category, but sure enough, the music-turned-media-application is now a decade old. Fittingly enough, it just hit version 10.0 a few months ago, and it may very well be tweaked to play nice with an all new device later this week. Head on past the break for a look at the very first iTunes introduction at Macworld 2001, and then think about how many times you've hated your life as you watched that sync progress bar crawl along at glacial speeds. No, seriously, think about it.
Happy 10th Birthday, iTunes!
You've come a long way, baby. Back on your birthday on January 9, 2001 at Macworld Expo, you were just a music player and manager -- the Apple-ized offspring of SoundJam MP, given a fresh face. Soon enough, though, you would become the conduit for iPod synchronization, the platform for music and video purchases, and now the landing zone for the iOS App Store. Not bad for a ten-year-old. Even though we may tease you for your vanities and complain about your sluggish, do-everything approach, we still couldn't do without you. Happy 10th birthday, iTunes! Commenter Kevlar points to our rundown of the iTunes user interface from 1.0 to 7.0, here, and Twitter buddy MightyKenny points to a YouTube clip of the actual 2001 introduction; it's embedded in the second half of this post.
