Posts Tagged
ios
You’re probably aware of Tiny Tower, a tycoon and management-style game from developer NimbleBit that recieved strong reviews and some pretty strong attention when it seemed Zynga blatantly ripped them off. Earlier this year, they released a new game, Pocket Planes, for mobile platforms which also received critical acclaim (scoring a full 10/10 in our iPad review) and got me seriously addicted.
When browsing the Mac App Store recently, I came across an interesting discovery. NimbleBit has brought the insanely popular game to the Mac in a port that even boasts syncing with its iOS brother. Let’s take a look and see how it stacks up to the well-recieved experience on your iPhone and iPad. (more…)
Here at AppStorm, we review many games throughout our various networks. From Mac games to iPhone and Android games, we can’t help but to give some love to the gaming culture. With the recent addition of Game Dev to the Tuts+ network and our own Gaming Month here at Mac.AppStorm, we decided to review an app that isn’t a game, rather, a game creator: GameSalad.
GameSalad is an application that allows you to create games for a variety of platforms. So in essence, this app can help you create your first game in no time. If you are an indie game developer or someone interested in creating a soon-to-be iOS smash-hit, GameSalad is probably the best and easiest way to get your hands dirty and let your creativity run wild.
Welcome to the land of multiple monitors. The land where you can sit on your desk and immerse yourself with your work, your gaming, and your media. A land where our inner geek comes out and takes complete control over you while salivating over the amount of real estate those screens possess – not to mention how amazingly cool it looks.
But. This land can get a bit daunting. There is a lot of space to use, as well as applications to manage and keep organized. To facilitate this process, we have put together a list of a few apps (old and new) that will help you manage windows, the menubar, and even use other devices as your external monitors.
In the Apple universe, certain developers are rockstars – from the OmniGroup to Panic, their apps are high-quality, beautiful, and full of personality. So when developer Marc Edwards and his team at Bjango released their latest app, Skala Preview, the Mac community had high expectations.
Is this tool for designers a follow-up hit from the team who created iStat, or is Bjango just another one-hit-wonder? Read on and find out!
If you create apps in addition to using them, then you know that it can be a real pain to optimize your artwork for various devices. Prepo is a free application that aims to make the task of converting retina display artwork to ‘normal’ app artwork less tedious.
Does it succeed in making the conversion process quick and pain free? Read on to find out.
There has been some heated debate over the extent to which iOS and OS X will merge in the coming years. Whatever Apple has up its sleeves for the future, it is undeniable that the company is at least trying to make its apps and branding more unified across both systems.
With Lion, Apple brought FaceTime to the Mac, and remodeled Mail, Address Book, and iCal after their iOS counterparts. With the upcoming release of Mountain Lion, Apple has made nearly identical ports of Game Center, Reminders, and Notes for the Mac. It has also changed the names of several Mac apps to match the iOS offerings, rebranding iCal, Address Book, and iChat with the more generic names Calendar, Contacts, and Messages.
So if Apple’s intention is to completely unify the app experience across operating systems, what apps, names, or interfaces have not yet crossed over?
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I do not intend here to rehash any of the digital ink already put out there on Mountain Lion. Our own James Cull did an excellent job rounding up what we know about Mountain Lion. And Scott Danielson has had an in-depth look at Messages for Mac. I want to address instead something that might be nagging at all of us Mac users just a bit.
With Mountain Lion, Apple has stepped up the game of brining the two ecosystems of Mac and iOS closer together. The trend started (arguably perhaps) with Apple’s “Back to the Mac” event in which iLife was touted to have taken cues from iOS design, FaceTime was brought to the Mac, the Mac App store was announced, the MacBook Air was introduced, and oh yeah, Lion was announced with many features reminiscent of iOS.
Lion brought with it many iOS like advancements; enhancements to Multi-Touch Gestures, Full Screen apps, Launchpad, Resume/Auto Save/Versions, an iPad like Mail interface, iCal and Address Book highly styled like the iOS counterparts, auto termination of applications again borrowed from iOS, reversed scrolling to better match up with touch screen devices, and many more things that all spell out one thing; OS X is borrowing heavily from the design of iOS.
Perhaps it’s only fitting since OS X spawned the existence of iOS in the first place. They share much base code in common. In fact, Steve Jobs very much emphasized in the iPhone introduction keynote of 2007 that the iPhone OS (as it was then called) was really OS X. But what’s actually going on here? Should we fear for the future of OS X?
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There’s been a lot of discussion in the past couple of years in the Mac community about the level of importance OS X and the Apple desktop experience has in the overall hierarchy at Apple. For instance, PCWorld recently posted a piece boldly titled, “Mac OS Dwindles in Importance to Apple.”
Our poll question today is aimed at getting your opinion on this. Do you feel like OS X development and progress has taken a backseat in Apple’s eyes to the newer and more exciting iOS platform? Cast your vote in the poll and let us know.
Once you’ve voted, answer an even more important question in the comments: is this a good thing? There’s perhaps an inherent bias in the question that assumes that putting less attention towards OS X in favor of iOS is somehow negative. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. If iOS truly is the future of Apple, then isn’t it good that they’re diverting so much time, effort and resources to that project?
However, many of us still work on a Mac desktop for 40+ hours per week and therefore might not be too happy at the thought of Apple putting our beloved operating system on the back burner. Then again, maybe this argument is void and Apple hasn’t slowed their progress on OS X in the least. What do you think?
When I used an iPad for the first time, I couldn’t help but think that it felt like the future of computing. The iPad not only impressed me with its beautiful interface, but also delighted me with an effortless user experience. No matter how much I used the device, it never became cluttered or disorganized like my Mac. Apps launched quickly and I never had to spend time fiddling with window sizes or knowing what apps were running. Everything simply worked.
Apple has touted OS X as the most advanced operating system, but with iOS revolutionizing many computing paradigms, it is beginning to feel outdated. If Apple is to truly make the Mac the personal computer of the future, we will need to see some bold changes; changes that may eliminate some of the staples of desktop computing that most of us can’t imagine living without.
I think that Apple can, and will, successfully transition us to a future where iOS runs across all of its hardware. Read on for my take on why our computing world is headed this way.
Slowly we have seen how Apple has implemented iOS features into the Mac, and have made them work delightfully. Lion was aimed right at making the Mac more intuitive and more iOS like. Everything from the scrolling direction to the gestures were all improved with the iOS experience in mind, and it shows.
But there are still plenty of things that iOS has that Mac OS X doesn’t. For example, the cool little copy and paste pop up menu. Today we are reviewing an app called PopClip that brings this functionality to the Mac. How well does it work? Read on to find out!
