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ArcheAge closed beta coming in mid-July
The good news for fans of the approaching ArcheAge is that the game will be using update 1.2 for the game, news that brought forth much rejoicing. The bad news is that as a result, the game's beta has been somewhat delayed. Trion Worlds has outlined the state of the game in a recent blog post explaining where the game is in testing and what players can expect in the future. In order to get the new version into testing as soon as possible, the developers are not adding in the Trion-specific features to the game which were mentioned previously on the forums. Closed beta events will be starting in mid-July, with a separate alpha server available to see how the 1.2 play environment plays and what benefits it offers. If you're interested to hear about the state of development, take a look at the full update and get ready for the paradigm shift.
Reflow: A music composition and notation app for Mac and iOS with iCloud sync
Reflow for Mac (US$19) and iOS ($5.99) is a tool that makes composition and practice of music easier. A few weeks ago you may have seen TUAW's Editor-in-chief Victor Agreda, Jr. interview Sébastien Bourgeois, creator of Reflow, in our Origin Stories series. The interview spiked my curiosity about the app, so I took a closer look. While there are some great music notation apps out there for Mac (Tabular) and iOS (Weezic), what caught my attention about Reflow is that it supports both Mac and iOS. Plus, Reflow takes advantage of the latest Mac OS X and iCloud sync features. Let's say you're composing a song in Reflow on the Mac. Reflow (which supports fullscreen mode) will automatically save your work as you progress with autosave. And if things take an unsurprising turn, simply engage versions (just like you would in Pages, for example) and go back to the last iteration of your work that suits you best to carry on from. Finally, Reflow takes advantage of iCloud support, meaning you can be working on the Mac one minute and switch over to your iPhone or iPad and carry on where you left off the next. These simple features make a huge difference to the creative process by letting you focus on the music. But all of these great features would be meaningless if Reflow didn't have the basics to make a fantastic music notation app. Fortunately, it does. The app's beautifully simple interface lets you build multi-track (guitars, bass, keyboards, drums) compositions with musical notation or tablature. It's as easy as clicking or typing in a note or beat, playing on a MIDI keyboard or, for guitarists, dragging and dropping chords in from the extensive chord diagram database. Of course, you can create your own chords, too. Furthermore, Reflow gives you an audio representation of your work using a lightweight audio engine, so you have a great idea of what your composition will sound like before the real players step in. And you can modify and edit your work during playback. Reflow also lets you build and re-arrange your own song structures, so if you suddenly decide the intro sounds better as a middle-eight, just drag it over. Finally, Reflow also supports Guitar Pro and Power Tab files for import. Export your compositions in Guitar Pro, PDF, Wave and MIDI files, or share by email. For songwriters and composers looking to write for a typical band, Reflow has all the tools you'll need. But where Reflow stands above the rest is in its creative process and workflow. With iCloud support, Reflow allows you to transition work seamlessly between Mac or iOS and takes the worry out of saving your work as well as going back through previous versions.
ICS and Jellybean now on a quarter of all Android devices, but over half still stuck on Gingerbread
It seems like only yesterday that Google bundled Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 in its little biscuit layers and sent it off into the world (it was December, 2011, actually). That Android flavor has since climbed the charts rapidly, around four percent each month for the last while, and now occupies the ROM on 23.7 percent of robot-based devices -- up from 20.8 percent last month. That's in part due to new devices (like many in China) still coming out of the box with it, on top of older warhorses like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 finally grabbing some ICS. Meanwhile, its smooth-running younger sibling, Jelly Bean, made a slight gain to 1.8 percent of all Google-run slates and phones -- though that will likely change when the Galaxy Note II hits the market en masse and the Galaxy S III OTA 4.1.1 disseminates to all its owners. Meanwhile, Gingerbread still dominates Google OS installed devices at 55.8 percent, probably thanks to delays or denials of newer flavors to legacy devices.
ICS now on one in five Android devices, Jelly Bean grows to 1.2 percent
Last month was the first time Jelly Bean poked its head up in the Android distribution charts, debuting at 0.8 percent. It's bumped that stat by a significant proportion, if not a crazy absolute amount, to 1.2 percent of smartphones and tablets using Google's OS. But ICS 4.0 was the biggest gainer, moving up sharply from 15.9 percent to 20.8 of devices at the expense of Gingerbread 2.3, which dropped about 3.5 percent from July. Still, at 57.2 percent saturation, that version is still the richest Android confection by a wide margin. Our aging Galaxy S contributed a bit to its demise this month, thanks to CyanogenMod, so where does your own device sit? Check the source for a further breakdown of the stats.
iOS developer toolchain will bid farewell to the iPhone 3G
Cocoanetics has noticed something that's become apparent to most iOS developers already: with the advent of iOS 6 in a few weeks, Apple is essentially phasing out support for iOS on the iPhone 3G. Apple is slowly deprecating frameworks that iPhone 3G-compatible apps require from Xcode and app libraries, and the upcoming version of Xcode (4.5, currently in development) specifically states that it does not support armv6 devices or anything below iOS 4.3. In other words, both the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G have become extremely difficult for iOS developers to support, and by the time iOS 6 rolls around this fall, there will be essentially no reason for devs to try and make sure their apps and games work on the older hardware. While it may be technically possible to maintain separate codebases for newer and older hardware (by running old versions of Xcode), even the largest developers won't have financial reasons to do so. And the audience likely won't care much anyway. The number of people this affects grows smaller and smaller every day -- most phone contracts last about two years, which means it's been a few generations since the iPhone 3G was released in 2008. And there are a whole lot of new technologies for developers to take advantage of, including iCloud, Automatic Reference Counting, and Storyboard development, that make apps easier and quicker to develop and would never work with the older iPhone models anyway. Apple's never been accused of sticking with a product for too long -- the company has a reputation for moving on to the newer and better as quickly as possible. For developers, the iPhone 3G is essentially being lowered into the ground for good. Of course, that doesn't mean consumers are obligated to dump them; the existing apps they run will still work.
Microsoft details Windows 8 File History, takes us through a Time Machine
Microsoft is still determined to explore every nook and cranny of Windows 8 on its way to the newly official October launch, and now it's swinging its attention towards File History, its revamped approach to preserving our data. The new component supplements Windows Backup, which Microsoft admits is "not a very popular" app, and is more than a little transparent in bringing OS X's set-it-and-forget-it Time Machine strategy to the Windows crowd. Not that we're complaining: the same basic philosophy of getting an automatic, version-aware backup of all our personal files is convenient on any platform, especially when we can get a temporary internal safeguard while we're on vacation. The differences in platforms have equal rewards and drawbacks, however. File History provides more control over backups than its Apple counterpart, including frequency (finally!) and backup age, but it can't be used to backup whole apps like with a Time Machine drive. As always with these in-depth Windows 8 explorations, there's much more to see at the source, so click on through if you've ever been worried about deleting a file by accident.
Google: Ice Cream Sandwich now accounts for 7.1 percent of Android user base
Well, it's about time that Ice Cream Sandwich made some headway -- even if the process is much slower than consumers deserve. According to the Android developer hub, Android 4.0 now accounts for 7.1 percent of all Android smartphone and tablet installations, which is a sharp and welcome increase over the 2.9 percent figure that we reported just two months ago. Naturally, Gingerbread users still account for the lion's share of the Android ecosystem with 65 percent, but it's worth pointing out that this segment also grew during the last month -- no doubt at the expense of Froyo and Eclair. Don't know about you, but we like our desserts fresh, thank you very much. Go ahead and hop the break to see the full breakdown.
ICS reaches 2.9 percent of active Android devices, 63.7 percent still on Gingerbread
As we check back in on Android's Platform Versions dashboard for the first time since January, we can finally see notable growth in the percentage of devices running some flavor of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, up for 0.6 percent then to 2.9 percent. That's likely fueled by the release of updates for the Samsung Galaxy S II and HTC Sensation family of devices, and is a sharp uptick from last month when it registered on 1.6 percent. Gingerbread (2.3) still reigns supreme, running 63.7 percent of the Android hardware that accessed the Play market in the last two weeks, but its growth seems to finally be slowing. Last year at this time that position was filled by Android 2.2, with 2.3 on just one percent of the hardware and Android 3.0 barely registering at all, a point which highlights the long cycle of upgrades. Call it fragmentation or flexibility, app developers can use these stats to plan their releases going forward, although it may be a little while still before the majority of the crowd can access any Ice Cream Sandwich-specific features.
Windows 8 registry shows nine separate flavors to choose from
With each subsequent release of Windows we're left bracing for what will surely be another overwhelming assortment of retail packaging options. With Windows 7 there was a dizzying 6 SKUs to choose from and we're sorry to say that, at least for now, there are even more coming with Windows 8. As noted by windows 8 beta the registry contains the keys for all current versions of the OS and, with a quick trip to Regedit we were able to verify with the screenshot above. That boils down to the following list: Windows 8 Starter Windows 8 Home Basic Windows 8 Home Premium Windows 8 Professional Windows 8 Professional Plus Windows 8 Enterprise Windows 8 Enterprise Eval Windows 8 Ultimate Windows 8 ARM editionWe will of course point out that this is from the Consumer Preview, so not necessarily a final tally, and the Enterprise Eval version is of course just for trials, but it's interesting to note the addition of Professional Plus. Office 2010 Pro Plus adds in extra integration with Sharepoint and Office Communications Server, leaving us to wonder if this flavor of Windows 8 won't offer some similar collaborative tools. And then there's just that one, lonely ARM edition, which could leave non-x86 hardware buyers out of the cross-shopping fun altogether.Update: As Jack Schofield points out, you couldn't actually choose from all those Windows 7 SKUs, there were only three boxed products available in the US. It remains to be seen how many of these Windows 8 variants will appear at retail here.[Thanks, Sagar]
Mac 101: Locating the root path of a Pages document in Pages
Here is a Mac 101 tip for novice Mac users. Running Pages in Mac OS X Lion means you never have to worry about saving a document, it just happens automatically. While this is wonderful, this new feature has caused me to scratch my head a few times while I acclimatise to this simple, but quite different way of saving documents. In previous versions of Mac OS X, when working on a document, very often I would hit "Save as..." from the File menu to (double) check where I had saved my document or to rename my document as it went through various titles. The problem I've found with Versions and Auto Save in Lion (or where I've struggled to adjust!) is that once you've created and titled a document by saving it, you're left with "Save a Version," which means you can't locate where you've saved your document or rename the title of your document from within Pages. Fortunately, there's an older feature of Mac OS X that helps you easily identify where you've saved your document. And I'm not talking about going to Finder or Spotlight to search for it. You can view the root path of your document right from within Pages. Simply hit and hold the Control key on your keyboard (or right-click on your mouse) and click on the title of your document at the top of the Pages window. This will bring up the root path of your document so you can easily see where you document is stored on your computer. Note that you must aim carefully when clicking on the menu bar. If you're in an app that supports Versions, a click on the right-hand side will reveal the Versions menu, and that's not what we want in this instance. If you see the disclosure triangle appear beneath your cursor, move a few pixels to the left.
Emulate Lion's Versions in Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word does not support Lion's "Versions" feature yet, but there's no reason to panic. There are a few options that you can use to cobble together a work- around until the Mac BU team updates the Office suite. Also worth mentioning: although I am focusing on Microsoft Word, the same technique can be used in just about any word processing or text editing application. "Does the app provide any auto-save settings?" The first thing to check is whether the application that you are using offers any auto-save or auto-recover options, even if it doesn't support Versions specifically. Microsoft Word offers two auto-save options. To find them, launch Word, then go to Preferences -> Save and check the options shown below: The middle underlined option is the most important: it says to save auto-recover information every minute. I think the default is every 10 minutes, but a lot can change in 10 minutes. The top checkbox is optional, but creating a backup means that you have another way to recover if something goes wrong. Options never hurt. These backups are stored in the same directory as the original, and the filenames end in "~" which is a long-standing convention for backup file names. The third is also optional, but personally I prefer the older .doc format simply because it's more compatible with other non-Microsoft applications. The XML-based .docx format also got a bad rap previously for compatibility issues with Dropbox, although if you're running the current version of the cloud storage utility you shouldn't have any problems. (That said, .docx is the better format, not to mention the more modern format. I think of the ".doc or .docx?" choice sort of like choosing between .mp3 or .m4a: the newer formats have technical advantages, but not as many applications support them. The difference, of course, is that it's usually pretty simple to convert between .doc and .docx.) "Where does the app store files?" Some applications automatically store files in a certain folder structure, and you can't move them (at least not without getting into creating links, which may or may not work well). Text editors and word processors, however, generally let you choose where to store files you create; Office also has settings for default folders for saving and auto-recovery under Preferences -> File Locations: Note that setting the default for "Documents" does not mean that you can't change it for individual files later, it just tells Microsoft Office where to start when opening or saving new files. You can also change the location of the AutoRecover files. I put mine into ~/Dropbox/Backups/Microsoft Office/ because if the computer I'm on dies completely, I can access the data from any other Dropbox-connected account. Is this an unlikely scenario/edge case? Absolutely. Does it hurt to set it anyway? Nope. "But my application doesn't have those settings!" Check out Default Folder X which, as the name implies, can set the default folder for just about any application (plus other things). Dropbox No doubt you noticed that I suggested using Dropbox to save the files. That's not just because they are available online or on any iOS device. Dropbox also keeps every revision for the past 30 days. That means that every time you hit "Save," a separate version is saved on Dropbox. Browsing Dropbox revisions isn't as visually slick as using Versions on Lion. To view them, select the file in Finder, and then use the Dropbox icon on your Finder toolbar, or Control-click (right-click, or two-finger click) on the file and use the Dropbox contextual menu. That will launch the Dropbox website and show you a listing of all the versions, and give you a chance to download them (some file formats can even be previewed online). While Dropbox only saves 30 days' worth of revisions, Dropbox Pro users also have the option to add the Pack-Rat feature which will keep revisions indefinitely. With every save, you are creating an off-site backup of your latest work, so even if you only use one computer, Dropbox is the place to save your most important and most often changed files. "But what if I forget to press save? My app doesn't have any sort of auto-save functionality!" Don't fret if your app doesn't have auto-save; you can add it to any application very simply by using Keyboard Maestro. It's as simple as creating a macro which says "If I am using {insert application name here}, and there is a 'Save' button, press it every X seconds or minutes." I've created just such a rule for Microsoft Word here: This rule will only run when Microsoft Word is active and there is a menu option for "Save" (which will be disabled if you don't have any files open). If it does find the Save menu item, it will select it. (You could also tell it to press "⌘ + S" but I prefer selecting menu items to keyboard shortcuts.) With this rule you never have to worry about spending an hour on a Word document only to lose it all when the app crashed and you realized that you had forgotten to save it. If the file isn't saved when the Keyboard Maestro macro runs, it will prompt you to name the file. (There are other applications like Keyboard Maestro which support the same kind of features, but Keyboard Maestro is the one that I know and use. If you would recommend others, let us know in the comments.) Versions is great, but there's no need to wait for your app to support it Versions is a great addition to OS X, and I love not having to remember to save, but only a handful of applications support it at the present time. If you want to (or are required to) use another application, take a few minutes to check out your auto-save options. There are few things more frustrating than losing unsaved work, but the good news is that there are fewer and fewer reasons for that to ever happen.
Dear Aunt TUAW: Where are my versions?
Dear Aunt TUAW, Hi, I found (the hard way) what seems to be a bug in Lion's new "Versions" feature. If I take an image that is on the desktop, make an edit (e.g. annotate it) and then quit Preview, it automatically saves the change. Then if I open the file again, I can use File->Revert to Saved, and restore the original, all fine. However, when the image is on my USB memory stick, it is all good until I try to restore the original version. It says "No previous version available" and "Time Machine can't find your backup disk." This is obviously a huge problem. If I make edits to an image on the USB stick, I need to manually undo everything before quitting to prevent them from being saved. Is this an issue on your computers as well, or is it just me? Your loving nephew, Romesh Dear Romesh, Versions does not work on non-HFS+ volumes. It's likely the format of your flash drive causing these issues. Normally, Lion saves your app versions in .DocumentRevisions-V100 in the hard drive root, but only on HFS+. When you edit a file on an unsupported volume, Lion deletes temporary versions when you close the document. That's why you're seeing that behavior. There are no versions to recover to when you work outside of HFS+. You can easily reformat your thumb drive to HFS+ in Disk Utility. Follow the directions in this post for partitioning and formatting the stick. Once reformatted, Lion will be able to create the revisions folder, and allow Preview to access those earlier versions. Another advantage for HFS+ formatting is this: when you use HFS+ you can also use FileVault on your USB sticks, which will prevent anyone from being able to read its contents if it's lost/stolen. Auntie has added a few extra versioning notes for the interested (read "geeks") below this response. Hugs, Auntie T. The Document Interaction Control Menu Here are a few tips about versioning that you might not have known about. You've already seen the document interaction menu, the triangle-based drop-down menu that appears to the right of the file name in the title bar. When accessed, it looks like this. When you select Browse All Versions, did you know that you could use the option key to change the "Restore" option into "Restore a Copy"? Also, did you know that the document interaction menu also appears inside the version browser? Click to the right of each file name on the history stack and you'll find the option to "Delete this version". If you hold down the option key, that changes to "Delete Old Versions", allowing you to clean up the entire history at once. The Versions Infrastructure
From the boneheaded design file: Browsing Versions in Lion
I like Lion. I really really do. I can forgive Apple for breaking my Network Area Storage device, but in general it's a nice upgrade. There is, however, that matter of the "browse versions" feature in iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote), Preview and some other apps designed to work with the Versions feature in Lion. I asked several experienced Mac users if they understood how it all worked and not a one did. While some knew of the feature, and were anxious to use it, they couldn't find it. I would have expected a function that deals with a file to be on the File menu. Nope. Apple has it in the title bar, just where you are sure to miss it. If the document is locked, there's nothing in the File Menu either. You can lock the document from the title bar, but you have to unlock it from the drop down that appears on the word "locked". These are GUI choices from hell. When you finally do figure out how to browse your versions, your entire desktop changes, and you wind up in the Time Machine GUI (which Apple calls "The Star Field"), even though you never invoked Time Machine. As my colleague Erica Sadun points out, why introduce another system? Apple now offers full screen mode in several applications so you won't be distracted, but browsing versions morphs your desktop into a purple universe with flying stars whizzing by. Talk about distractions. There's no doubt that you can stumble through Apple documentation and find all this information out, but hey, this is Apple. You know, "it just works." By the way, I searched for "browse versions" in the Pages help document and came up blank. Lion does have some great features, but it's important that people understand them and that they are easy to use. It seems like these document functions really should be part of the File menu. If Apple wants to hide them in the title bar, that's fine, but give users a fighting chance. Apple should not change its motto to "it just works if you can find the non-intuitive place we've hidden it." If you want a good overview, our Steve Sande has done a nice job of explaining the new document control features. How are you doing with all this? Did you figure it out, or have you been lost too? I'm sure some of our readers were just fine, but I'll bet a lot of you are in the tall weeds.
How saving changed in Lion - Infographic
You can check out the full-size images in the gallery below, but clearly Lion thinks about saving documents differently. Read more about versions and locking documents in this post. %Gallery-130270% Note: If you're having an issue with the image loading in the gallery, click one of the thumbnails and it should load. There's an issue with our CMS which we're still trying to fix. Our apologies. Another note: Once the thumbnail loads, right-click the image and choose View Image to get to the full-sized image. Final note: Or download or view the full sizes here: Before Lion saving After Lion saving
OS X Lion Version control, the File menu, and me
I love Lion's idea of consumer-grade version control, which Apple calls Auto Save and Versions. I'm just not particularly happy with its GUI. That's because it relies on a new vocabulary of menu choices and on users understanding what's going on under the hood. Take the save options for example. You can "save a version," "duplicate," etc. These are very good tasks to do. My question though is if these are the right tasks and the right names for the typical Lion user. If you go out and ask a bunch of people what the "save a version" menu item means, you're going to get a lot of answers, many of which don't agree. In Lion, this menu option creates a new revision point for your document, committing your changes into the version control system for your file. After saving a version, you can later revert to that save by browsing versions or by reverting to the most recent commit point. It's like Time Machine for document edits, and it's very, very handy. As a developer, that's familiar ground. We've been doing this stuff for aeons. For consumers, it's new. It's somewhat ground breaking. It's really putting the consumer's needs first. This is what Apple should be doing, where it should be innovating. The problem is this. That "save a version" description doesn't really communicate what's going on. This is why you get all those diverging and conflicting "explanations" of what the menu option does. It's not expressing itself well. I personally think Apple should have left the menu item as "Save." Save describes what's going on with the file, and communicates that in just four characters. "If I click Save, the computer will save this file." If Lion passively creates versioned backups, all the better. Not only am I using a simple 4-character command, Lion's adding value to that 4-character command for me. Awesomesauce. Engineers shouldn't feel obliged to differentiate new features when people can keep on using them as if they were the old ones. Apple could have just used the original name and added value to it behind the scenes. The old save was good. The new save is better. But Apple really should reconsider that menu option.
OS X Lion: Auto Save and Versions to the rescue
Some of us have Command-S wired into our hands. Whenever we write a few words or enter a couple of cells into a spreadsheet, our hands twitch and we compulsively type a Command-S to save a document, just in case... A new feature of OS X Lion is Auto Save, which is going to stop a lot of Mac users from doing the Command-S twitch. Versions is another related feature that keeps copies of different versions of your documents for posterity. Auto Save takes a snapshot of whatever you happen to have open on the screen in an app at any particular time, and saves it for you. Let's say that you have TextEdit open with three different documents, all scattered about on your 27" display. None of the documents have been saved, and you suddenly realize that you need to leave for a meeting. You quit out of TextEdit, and the familiar "Do you want to save the changes you made in...?" dialog doesn't appear. No problem. The next time you launch TextEdit, all three of those documents open up in the exact same locations on your screen that they were in originally. Another cool feature of Auto Save is the ability to revert to a last saved version of a document. That's helpful when you're working on a document, add a lot of changes, and then suddenly realize that what you've added is ... crap. Just select Revert to Saved or Revert to Opened from either the File menu or a disclosure triangle next to the title of the document, and you're back to your original document. What's fascinating is that Auto Save and Versions keep all of the different versions of your document in one file. There's no folder full of saved versions with time and date stamps -- instead, you just see the file and all of the magic is done internally. What if you don't want a file to be accidentally changed. That's where the Lock feature comes in handy. Two weeks after the last time you edit a document, Lion auto-locks it for you. The next time you try to make a change, Lion asks if you want to unlock the file or duplicate it to create a template. Versions brings the power of Time Machine to individual documents. In many Lion-savvy apps now, there's a "Save A Version" menu item that takes the place of the previous "Save" item. This is where that muscle memory that you built up doing Command-S is going to come in handy. As you write a document, you can continue to use Command-S from time to time to save a version of a document. When you want to go back to a previous version, choose "Browse all versions" from the drop-down menu near the title bar of the document and a very Time Machine-like window appears: The Versions window provides a side-by-side comparison of your current document version with all of the other saved versions. If you find a previous version that you want to copy something from, just do a copy and paste between the two. There's also a Restore button for making a previous version the "live" version of a document. At this time, Auto Save and Versions are only usable in specific Apple apps, including iWork 9.1 (Pages, Keynote, and Numbers) and TextEdit. As more apps are updated to take advantage of the many new features of OS X Lion, we're sure to see the convenience and security of Auto Save and Versions become commonplace.
iTunes and iWork updated for Lion, add full-screen support, and resume
What good is an OS update without some software that can take full advantage of all its fancy new features? Naturally, Apple's got your back, and today you'll be getting some spiffy new versions of iTunes and iWork to compliment that fearsome Lion upgrade. iTunes 10.4 finally ushers the music management app into the 64-bit era, and adds support for OS X 10.7's full-screen windows. The iWork Update 6 also brings along the distraction-free functionality, as well as resume, auto-save, and versioning for all your important docs. Not everyone is seeing the updates just yet, so be patient, it shouldn't be much longer before you're interrupted by that slightly annoying, but oh so satisfying, Software Update window.
Wizard101 goes anti-disco in the June producer's letter
The community at Wizard101 is still riding high on the recent Wintertusk world expansion, and according to the June producer's letter, KingsIsle wants to keep the good times rolling. Apart from relaying a few testimonials about the recent expansion, the producer's letter is all about the Benjam-- er, Crowns. Leah Ruben spotlights a couple of promotional sales from the company, including a Dragon's Hoard booster pack that has the potential to deliver rare goodies, and a GameStop card that unleashes a genie (among other things) in your Wizard101 world. Ruben says that a recent graphical issue known as "discoing" on older machines is now fixed. "While sometimes it's fun to dance the disco with flashing colors and lights," she jokes, "it's a bit distracting when you're trying to adventure through the new worlds." Finally, Ruben says that the UK version of the game has added a German language version for those who perfer to play in their native tongue. Assuming that you're German and not Swedish. Or Kenyan. Or... well, you get the point. You can read the full producer's letter over at Wizard101.
Facebook acquires Mac development house for design talent
Facebook has just bought Dutch Mac development house Sofa, according to a company blog post. In the Mac world, Sofa is best known for four of the Mac apps that it makes: Kaleidoscope, Versions, Checkout and Enstore. However, Facebook's acquisition of Sofa had nothing to do with the Mac apps -- it was purely a purchase to get the company's design talent. "Terms of the deal are not being disclosed. But again, this is a pure talent acquisition for Facebook. And we've heard the main emphasis behind it is to continue to boost their [Facebook's] product design talent," according to TechCrunch. Fans of Sofa's apps don't have to worry about their future however. Though Facebook purchased the company, it did not purchase the rights to the apps. The company says that Kaleidoscope and Versions will live on, but Sofa will need to find homes for the apps at other development houses. Checkout and Enstore will also survive due to joint partnerships that were formed to create the apps.
Instapaper's free version goes on extended hiatus, dev explains why
Marco Arment has an interesting writeup on his blog about his iOS app Instapaper (and, of course, the web service that runs behind it). Arment says on his blog that he's quietly been removing the free version of the app from the App Store, and that's resulted in a surprising effect: sales of the full app have actually increased. Because of this, Arment says he's rethinking a free version completely, and may not bother ever bringing it back to the App Store. Traditionally, free or "lite" app versions are very helpful -- they give users a taste of what the app does without any overhead costs to them but the time to download, and they can raise awareness of an app in certain situations. Of course, the drawbacks are that a free app doesn't make any money, and it can often be a drain on resources, requiring extra development time or support. That's where Arment says his problem comes in -- the free app isn't really worth it, doesn't convert to paid as he'd like it to, and perhaps most interesting, actually causes some "image problems." A lot of free users don't realize that the free version has a limited featureset, so they aren't even seeing what the full Instapaper app can do. Moreover, the reviews for the free app (drawing from a pool of users who haven't invested anything in the app, and can "download and dump" but still review it) are noticeably worse than those for the paid version. The whole post is intriguing, and it really goes against some of the conventional wisdom on free versions of apps. Of course, I think games are different than Arment's service, but it's true -- while a free app will likely grab you a larger audience than just putting out a paid version, it still may not be the best thing for a specific app to do. Instapaper Free is gone for now, says Arment, and it may not be back at all.
