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Diablo III

by on 01/07/2008 in Diablo III, Gaming

There are three games that are the corner stones of my gaming history: Total Annihilation, Civilization series and Diablo II. These are games that I seem to return to from time to time. In fact, I’ve just bought a new copy of Diablo II to play it with my 11-year-old brother, fantastic way for us to spend time together, which – living 2037 km apart – isn’t something we get to do in person as often as I’d like to. With Skype delivering audio between us, it’s as if we were in the same room.

Diablo III

Diablo II is now eight years old, and for a game to remain fresh all this time is somewhat of an achievement (installing it on Leopard was a struggle but doable in the end). For years there’s been rumors of Diablo III and those rumors are finally answered: Blizzard announced this weekend that it is in the making and will be released when it’s ready! I’m very excited, especially after watching the gameplay demo on their website. Well worth watching, it shows how they’ve remained loyal to the feel of Diablo yet made they gameplay feel more natural and faster. Destroyable environments, anyone?

Christmas 2008? Probably not, but at least, like always with Blizzard, it’ll be PC and Mac from day one.

–kristian

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Mobile Millennium Edition

by on 10/06/2008 in Apple

I’m glad to say I wasn’t the only one getting things wrong. Apple joined me in the quest for humbling experiences. Not only does the name ‘Mobile Me’ will take time to get used to, but it also reminds us all of the beginning of this century or I really should say millennium. Windows ME was the most hated Windows OS until Vista took it’s throne. What was Apple thinking, are they insane? Who was in charge of branding? I think it’s embarrassing:


-kristian

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WWDC 2008 – Hopes and Predictions

by on 07/06/2008 in Apple

It’s that time of the summer again, WWDC is around the corner and the rumor mills are server farm electricity supplies to the ground. Almost, but not quite. Odd thing this time seems to be that all of it is only really circling the imminent release of 2nd gen. iPhone. No one’s talking about updates on hardware or the possibility of a totally new product. True, pro hardware often gets updated without a keynote unless there’s something that more resamples a revolution rather than evolution. I think pretty much everyone using the pro equipment is ready a revolution, has been for a while. MacBook Pro case design is, you could say, the same as it has been for the last 6 years. PowerBook G4 was released in 2001. Only big step we’ve since seen was the Intel transition. MacPro’s looks the same as the 2003 PowerMac. Let’s not talk about the screens.

I feel tempted not to make another list of things that are going to be announced in the keynote as it’s all too obvious. But I’ll make one anyhow, I have to, for the people. And just to hold on to my bad track record:

  • 2nd gen iPhone – GPS, 3G, slightly smaller, better battery life
  • iPhone SDK v1.0
  • AppStore – 50 apps ready to go, 18 buzzle games, 8 GTD list apps, 4 text editors, etc. 4 really cool games/apps that I’ll buy moment I can, including Skype
  • Snow Leopard – Bug fix only version of OS X, release date Jan 09 but delayed until April 09, $89
  • New screens (one day….)
  • Mention of some great upgrades to iWork/iLife/FCS that are in the pipeline
  • Black anodized aluminium MacBook Pro
  • 10.5.4 – TimeMachine/Aperture flaw stops sucking

    • Hmm. I don’t really feel inspired but check back on monday night to see how off I was.

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Wings of Nutty Behavior

by on 21/05/2008 in Mac Apps, Travel

Annoyance,

On a plane to Finland I’m getting bored after organizing my folders and finding things to archive. A job that someone’s gotto do and there never seems to be time for it.

Hmm. Does this machine do anything else than serious stuff? It does indeed. I can play few rounds of WingNuts 2: Raina’s Revenge, a great arcade style game I had bought about a year ago.

Launch WingNuts 2, go.

What!?! Register? Aah, ok, I haven’t typed the registration code in after rebuilding my machine. No problem though, got everything I need in my email!

MK Tapaninaho

and

click – click – click – click – click – click – click – click – click – click – click – click

And ‘Register’


Dialog box appears:

“The code entered was purchased too long ago and has expired. Go To Site [sic] your registration through the Support section of theCancelrse web site.”

No, in a matter of fact I wont. I can’t. I’m on an airplane!

This really sucks. It’s not saying it’s an invalid code or that it requires Internet access at the point of registering. It’s just too fricking long. And old.

I’ll suggest something but I first want to say that I’m all for serial numbers and web authentication for apps. It’s important for the developer to make money out of what they love doing and we love using.

But, and this is my suggestion. Don’t let it get in the way of the experience. As far as I see, there is no reason to expire a serial code*.

Many indie Mac apps come with a generous 30 day trial period, in Wingnuts’ case I think you can launch it 9 times and play only few selected scenarios. Fair enough. I’m not sure why it didn’t give me that option this time. I haven’t played it since ‘the great rebuild of 08′.

Idea I had for the web authentication when you don’t have access to the Internet is to let the user semi-activate it and use it for a week. Then each time the app is launched try if connection to the server is possible and towards end of the week, warn the user that it’s time to find that open network.

I don’t know if this would be hard to implement, don’t think so. Yeah, it is more work but then again, so is making rest of the app and making sure it’s accessible and trouble free to use.

I’ll post an update once I find time to go through the registration and find that newer, younger and shorter password!

Any similar experiences? Please share below.

–kristian

ps. I do have another license for the game, too. One I got with the MacHeist bundle. It also requires you to go on their website to get the serial.

*Of course, there are serial number farms where these sometimes end up but I guess that is what devs have to cope with, just like musicians have to cope with piratism.

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Aperture and Time Machine not Sitting in a Tree

by on 28/04/2008 in Apple, OS X, Technology

Hope Apple fixes this quickly.

After getting a Time Capsule, I’ve started liking Time Machine again. No need to plug in a cable makes a massive difference. Difference between remembering to use it sometimes (I used to share a drive with Darina) and not having to remember to use it, ever.

However, Time Machine doesn’t seem to like Aperture that much, it wants to back up the whole library every single time there’s a change. Apple acknowledges it and suggest turning of Time Machine when using Aperture. I’m not sure if the problem is solved as long as they’re not running at the same time but will try it as soon as these 14.9 gigabytes of images have flown across my flat.

Taking Murphy’s Law into count, there’s a possibility of 2.45/31 for the HDD to die 16 days after turning Time Machine off.

–kristian

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Web Design Workflow for Non-Web Designers

by on 15/04/2008 in Technology


check $value ('0', '1')
if $value = '1'
then set hireDesigner to 'Yes'
else
tell application "iWeb"
launch
end tell
end if

A bit of light humor I used in a recent web design workshop I did for a group of photography students. Not sure how to continue it. Any ideas?

[UPDATE] I’ve now finished the script. It was so obvious in the end…

–kristian

digg_url = ‘http://tapaninaho.com/blog/2008/04/web-design-workflow-for-non-web-designers’;
digg_bgcolor = ‘#ffffff’;
digg_skin = ‘compact’;
digg_window = ‘new’;

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iPhone Copy/Paste Is Coming

by on 15/03/2008 in iPhone

I bet the iPhone OS X 2.0 will bring the long waited, dearly missed feature of being able to Copy/Paste text and, possibly, files like photos or notes and items like contact details. I can see why they haven’t so far, it’s probably one of the hardest things to implement while keeping the UI as simple as it is. I have two reasons to believe this:

Firstly, it’s pretty obvious. It’s a feature that is missed by more people than the Exchange support is. There’s has been literally countless times when I’ve wanted to send a phone number from my contacts in an email, or SMS, or paste a piece of text from a webpage. You just can’t do it. This would also make the Notes app so much much more useful*.

Secondly and more crucially, Now that the SDK is out, third-party app developers will want to write apps where this is possible. And to keep this sort of feature consistent system wide, Apple has to device it themselves and not allow several different implementations by different developers.

Way I think it’ll be possible is through some sort of contextual menu or some thing similar as we have in the Maps app where the page curls. Copy/Paste -mode. That’s just speculation but no matter how they implement it, I’m sure we’ll have it by mid-June.

–kristian

*BTW, I think it might be pretty cool if the Notes app doubled as email drafts. This way they’d be automatically synced via IMAP and you could continue editing on you desktop.

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Fake Steve on Apples Delay on Releasing the Mobile OS X SDK

by on 29/02/2008 in Apple, iPhone, Technology

Fake Steve:

Look, I’ve gotta admit, I’m pretty disappointed with the developer tools engineers. These guys have really let me down. We were supposed to have the iPhone SDK out by February and let’s be honest — it ain’t gonna happen. They’re all whining now saying that they told me from the start that February was unrealistic. Well, you know what I think is unrealistic? Not meeting deadlines and expecting to keep your jobs

–kristian

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RIP xServe RAID

by on 27/02/2008 in Apple, Technology

It is quite surprising how little news – or talk in general – there has been about the demise of the xServe RAID. I guess one reason for lack of discussion about the news is that most people never had any connection to the product or the product category in general.

Personally, I’m very disappointed with Apples decision to pull the plug. For the last year I’ve worked closely with one of these machines (along with an xServe) and come to really like the fact that when ever there was problems it was just one number to call to solve it. That was the single biggest reason why we went with it instead of getting a cheaper third party raid system. We didn’t want two manufacturers blaming each other in case we encountered issues. And, in fact, I think this is a major reason why so many people like their Mac’s; both hardware and the OS are made by one company giving Apple a head start on removing compatibility issues. (This reminds me of the time I was working at UCCA and we had to wipe 6 Dell PC’s and reinstall. We couldn’t find the original DVD that came with the machine, Windows XP SP2 wouldn’t work as there was so many obscure Dell specific drivers needed and it ended up taking us weeks to get new disks from Dell.)

Another reason why this decision is upsetting is the way Apple pulled the plug. It’s quite a lot of fun to follow Steve Jobs keynotes at Macworld and WWDC Expo’s to see all the new cool things Apple has created. It’s exciting as most of the new products they launch seem to come out of blue. Having this custom of secrecy drives curiosity making them a company worth follow. Curiosity, after all, is one of those things that separate apes, cats and men from rest of mammals.

But xServe RAID is – or was – not an iPod. iPod is something you buy because you want it or you just happen to get it as a birthday present. You don’t plan 6 months ahead on ‘investing’ in it. The xServe RAID is different. You have meetings about it. You allocate chunks of your budget for it. You evaluate different options. You talk to your managers about it to justify spending £10000 on something you will rely on for the next 5 years. You need that piece of metal and 14 hard drives to be supported for that period of time. Same goes for any other piece of enterprise hardware.

I’m not going to speculate on the reasoning why Apple decided on this move but I will offer two suggestions on how Apple should’ve done this differently.

1. Phase it out. Tell you customers 3 months before the product it due for cancellation that these are the last units to be made, they will be supported for the expected life time of about 5 years but no more will be made after February 2008.

2. Press release. Be open about the fact that you had to suck up and leave the competition. I know it’s shameful enough to have a competing product advertised at the spot where you used to have your own crown jewel but you should still address it.

Anyhow, the RAID is gone and only positive side of this is that we might start seeing these systems on eBay. They’ll make a fantastic bedside table.

–kristian

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Hard Drive Price/Gb

by on 08/02/2008 in Hardware

It’s been a year now since I first started tracking HD drive prices. It’s not a hugely academic study – or extensive for that matter – it’s merely tracking the cost per Gb of the cheapest drive in each major size category on Dabs.com which I believe has some of the most competitive prices (here, in the UK, at least).

As 500Gb drives are clearly the most cost effective, it’s interesting to see 250Gb and 320Gb prices rising. Also interesting is the fact few months ago, other than 750Gb/1Tb HD’s, prices were either stagnant or rising.

If you want more detailed info, you can download the spreadsheet here: .numbers or .pdf.

hd_prices_feb_07.png

–kristian

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