The OS X boot image epitomizes the simplicity and elegance of the operating system itself, showing a basic Apple logo set against a light grey background. I’m a huge fan of this simple layout, but was very interested to hear about BootXChanger, a tiny application that can alter the boot image to anything you’d like.

BootXChanger comes with an excellent set of PNG images already at a boot-screen-appropriate size and resolution, along with a set of instructions for creating your own. It makes this Mac customization, which would otherwise require some fairly complex digging around, remarkably simple.

Installation

Installing the application follows the standard “Drag to Applications” process and, after double clicking the BootXChanger icon, you are presented with a very straight forward interface.

BootXChanger

You’re able to drag-and-drop any PNG file into the window before clicking “Apply” and entering your administrator username and password. If you’re unhappy with the outcome, reverting to the default image only requires one click.

Available Images

BootXChanger comes bundled with a range of nostalgic Mac icons, bound to recreate a few memories.

Included Boot Images

It also has a range of limitations, put in place deliberately by the developer. The most notable is that BootXChanger will not change the background color of the boot screen (it remains the standard #BFBFBF hex color). This is done so as not to damage the appearance of the loading spinner, displayed as your computer boots. It means that the background of your images must be the same if you’d like them to blend in with the background.

Other limitations center around the number of colors that can be used in the image. The developer suggests that you keep it below 100, and stick to using GIF or PNG-8 image formats.

Intel Macs also have further limitations as images must be compressed to fit inside the boot file. Images that are overly complex may not be suitable for use. BootXChanger checks all these possibilities for you, and will refuse to alter your system if the chosen image is an incorrect format.

Examples

Here are a variety of different examples, showing the outcome of various BootXChanger images:

Backup First!

As with any software that alters system or boot files, I would certainly recommend making a backup of your system prior to experimenting. If anything goes wrong (and your Mac won’t boot), insert your OS X installation CD and select your hard drive as the startup disk for the subsequent restart.

BootXChanger is a fantastic, simple application to make adjusting your boot icon a straight-forward process. It’s likely to automatically prevent you from making any problematic changes, so have fun experimenting!

Earlier this month, Dare to be Creative announced MainMenu 2.0, an update to its system maintenance utility for OS X. This lightweight application allows you to clean up your Mac, improve system performance and free up hard disk space — all directly from the system menu.

The new release offers a range of improved functionality, an informative system menu icon, and integration with the Growl notification service. This review will offer an overview of MainMenu’s key features, and explain how the software can assist with running a fast, healthy Mac.

The Interface

The Main Menu

MainMenu resides in the OS X menu bar as a small icon, offering a compact drop-down menu when clicked. This details the various categories of maintenance functions that can be performed, relating to the system, network, user, disk, and applications. It is also possible to run pre-defined batches of tasks together.

The final item in the menu provides access to MainMenu’s preferences, covering options such as whether the application should launch automatically, the appearance of the menu bar icon (several options are available), and whether the application should display a visible log as maintenance runs.

Improve System Performance

A number of options within the menu can help cut back on clutter and speed up your machine. These include the ability to re-build your Spotlight index for faster searching, and repair disk permissions to improve disk access speeds.

None of these are guaranteed to provide a dramatic increase in system performance, but can certainly have a noticeable impact when combined with clearing temporary files and caches (see below).

Re-claiming Disk Space

A variety of operations aim to delete unnecessary temporary files eating up hard drive space. These include the ability to remove Logs, Temporary Files, .DS_Store Files, and various system caches.

Clearing Browser Cache

Usefully, the menu also offers a central point for cleaning up your browser cache — across any (or all) of the web browsers you may have installed on your system.

Regular Maintenance Scripts

OS X has a variety of scripts (cron jobs) built-in for performing system maintenance, set to run automatically at a particular interval. Main Menu offers an easy way to execute these maintenance operations manually.

Time Savers

A degree of the functionality offered centers around quicker access to operations that would otherwise require running commands in the Terminal (or deep within System Preferences). A few of my favorite time-savers are:

• Showing or hiding invisible files in the Finder
• Relaunching various services such as the Dock, Finder, Airport, or Menu Bar
• Disabling Dashboard (a great way to speed up older machines)

You’re also able to Force Quit or Force Restart any application currently running. This is particularly useful if, for some reason, you are unable to Force Quit an app through the Dock.

Batch Mode & Growl Support

Another useful feature allows you to create a batch of several commonly performed tasks. A batch can be executed with one click, not requiring you to select each maintenance operation individually.

Batching Tasks

The limitation apparent here is that only one “batch” can be created. It isn’t possible to create several different sets of actions, each with a different name — a feature that could be particularly useful.

The latest release of MainMenu adds one final feature: Growl integration. This is a useful way to notify you when a maintenance task completes, and can help to streamline all your system notifications through one central system.

Conclusion

After experimenting with MainMenu for a few days, I can see it being an application I continue to use regularly. Although it seems a little unnecessary to run maintenance operations every few days, I certainly appreciate the in-built shortcuts for restarting services and adjusting Finder display preferences.

Whether you’re a seasoned Mac user who understands the need to flush your DNS cache, or a beginner looking for a simple utility for keeping your machine clean and tidy, MainMenu is certainly worth looking into.

MainMenu costs $20, and a trial is available as a free download from the MainMenu website. It runs initially in a 15-day trial mode with all features active — more than long enough to experiment with the utility and determine whether you use it enough to purchase a license.

Since last year, Apple has allowed all iPhone developers to request 50 promotional codes for their application when first added to the App Store, a policy that makes it easy to offer free applications for trial, review or a competition. It allows easier initial promotion of an app, removing the need for a more complicated process of ad-hoc distribution or offering iTunes gift cards.

A few weeks ago, Apple stopped offering promotional codes to developers of applications rated 17+. This decision sparked controversy, with developers angry that they were no longer able to easily offer promotional copies of their software to reviewers.

The change was particularly difficult to stomach for many developers due to the already ambiguous interpretation of the 17+ rating. According to Apple, the guidelines for this rating category are as follows:

Applications in this category may also contain frequent and intense offensive language; frequent and intense cartoon, fantasy or realistic violence; and frequent and intense mature, horror, and suggestive themes; plus sexual content, nudity, alcohol, tobacco, and drugs which may not be suitable for children under the age of 17.

Although the statement seems fairly definitive, in practice, various other applications are being awarded a 17+ rating. For instance, any app that offers access to the Internet also falls into the 17+ category as it could be used to access objectionable content.

Developer Response

Various news agencies picked up on the change, putting pressure on Apple to re-consider its decision. It seems that Apple has responded and, unusually, reversed the change in policy to now offer promo codes regardless of age rating. The Unofficial Apple Weblog is reporting that various developers have this functionality re-enabled, though no official comment has been made by Apple.

Light at the End of the Tunnel?

To date, the approval and rating system for the App Store has remained somewhat of a mysterious frustration for many developers. Although it is understandably difficult to operate a consistent process across the thousands of applications submitted, developers have voiced frustration at the lack of dialogue with and information coming from Apple.

As John Gruber eloquently expressed:

I can imagine that for the developer on the other end the experience must be like that of speaking to a wall. A monolith.

While no official comment has been made by the company, this turnaround — seemingly in response to developer criticism — could mark the beginning of an improved back-and-forth process. It will be interesting to see whether, as the App Store grows, developers and technology publications find their voice valued by Apple to a greater degree.

Aperture is a great photo management application, but may not be suitable for everyone. I recently made a decision to move back to iPhoto in order to use some of the features in the latest release. Several of these, such as face recognition, are not present in the current version of Aperture.

This decision posed a problem. How do you move several thousand photos out of Aperture and back into iPhoto, without tearing your hair out in the process? This how-to will outline a few different possibilities, along with the process I found to work best.

Why Move?

Before exploring the different export options, I feel the need to answer the question of why you would want to move away from an advanced application such as Aperture:

1. You could be switching to a different workflow, with a different “pro” tool such as Lightroom.
2. You may desire the faster performance of iPhoto, which feels much quicker than Aperture on lower specification machines.
3. Or, like me, you may want to switch to access iPhoto-specific features.

Although you can access Aperture images in iPhoto, this isn’t the same as moving them all across from one application to another. If you’d just like to access Aperture images, you can do so by clicking File > Show Aperture Library:

Show Aperture Library

A solution is needed for exporting all of your images in a useful folder structure, ready for importing into another application of choice.

Drag-and-Drop

The simplest way to move photos from one application to another is by dragging and dropping them out of Aperture, then back into a new iPhoto event or album. Providing you’ve set Aperture to export full-resolution versions when dragging out, this method can work well.

The problem with this solution is simple: time. If you have a few hundred photo albums, exporting each one separately can be a very long winded process, and take far too long to be practical. A better solution exists for exporting all the photos in your Library with one click.

Bulk Exporting

Fortunately, Aperture comes with a fairly advanced set of export preferences allowing you to specific exactly how a folder structure will be created, along with how files are to be named.

First, select the images to export (this is likely to be all the images in your Library). Click File → Export → Version (or Master, if you’d like the original images). You can then look for the “Subfolder Format” section, and choose “Edit” to define your own export structure.

Edit Folder Structure

This will launch a simple interface for defining a folder structure for export. This is particularly user friendly and easy-to-use.

Export Settings

The options chosen here will reflect how you have chosen to organize your Aperture library. You may have a different Project for each shoot, or prefer to use Folders to structure photos. Either way, you can select from a few of the following:

• Project Name
• Folder Name
• Year/Date/Time (both the current time, and that of shooting)
• Various Custom Numbers/Fields

Using a combination of these options should allow for a flexible export structure, and result in a well organized set of photos on your hard drive.

You can also adjust how files themselves are named using a similar process under the “Name Format” menu.

Importing into iPhoto should then be as simple as dragging the resulting folders of photos into the application. Appropriately titled events will automatically be created.

Other Solutions

A few other solutions exist for simplifying this process and automating it further. You could try this Automator script which, while a little dated, could do the trick.

It’s also possible to approach the problem with AppleScript, though this is a slightly more advanced solution.

Either way, I hope you no longer feel unduly concerned that you are “locked in” to Aperture. The export process can be fairly simple and, while you may lose some meta data, it isn’t too difficult to move a structured set of images out of the application.

Although Safari improves with every version released, it remains difficult for one browser to cater for everyone’s needs. Firefox has successfully approached this problem through the use of Add-Ons, but Safari continues to lack any widely promoted form of plugin or extension functionality.

Despite this, I still remain a huge fan of Safari’s simplicity and speed and am reluctant to switch to another browser. Fortunately, several different methods remain for enhancing and “supercharging” Safari. Today I’ll be taking a look at six applications and tweaks for getting more out of Apple’s latest browser — from saving passwords more effectively to downloading video content.

1. Banishing Flash

Flash is a web technology that can be used to great effect for enhancing design, displaying video, and offering better typography. Unfortunately it is commonly abused and over-used, leading to a frustrating browser experience.

Click to Flash is a plugin for disabling Flash on every webpage by default, providing a simple placeholder instead. If you’d like the Flash content to display, just click the placeholder. You can also right-click and add a site to your white-list, always automatically displaying Flash content in the future.

Although this may seem like a fairly unusual plugin, it can dramatically speed up the loading times of websites. Flash content is commonly used for advertisements or unnecessary animation and, the small number of times you do actually want to view the Flash content, it’s only one click away.

2. Saving Passwords

The default password saving functionality built into Safari is fairly good, but far from perfect. First, it isn’t all that secure — anyone using your computer can login with a saved password. Second, there’s no way to automatically store a password when creating a new account on a website.

1Password is a Safari plugin which can help enormously with password storage, and remains incredibly secure. It allows you to store multiple logins for a site, set a “master password” to unlock all your saved details, and will automatically fill and submit login forms for you.

It’s priced at $39.95, but can save an enormous amount of time. A companion iPhone application is also available, so you can keep all your passwords with you on-the-go.

3. Glims

Glims offers a wide “cocktail” of different features to Safari and can improve many different aspects of the user interface. After using it for a few weeks, you may wonder how you ever managed without it. A few of my favorites are:

• The ability to add thumbnails to Google and Yahoo search results
• The addition of full-screen browsing capability
• Auto-closing of the download window (how many times have you needed to close that pesky window!)
• Automatically organize downloads by date
• Adds website icons in each Safari tab

Each feature can be turned on or off as you require. The only downside is that you may notice a slight slow-down in Safari performance. Nothing too critical, but it can be slightly frustrating at times.

4. Easy Tweeting

Although a plethora of desktop Twitter clients are available for OS X, there’s no harm in adding a simple way to tweet in Safari itself. After all, it’s probably where you first encounter a link or website worth sharing with your followers.

Safari 140 adds a basic plugin to Safari, which will auto-fill a new tweet with the current URL (automatically shortened, of course). After setting it up with your Twitter login credentials, it can save a huge amount of time. Safari 140 won’t replace a dedicated desktop client, however — it’s purely for posting quick links.

5. Block Those Ads

Many of us would enjoy browsing the Internet far more without the presence of advertisements. Sure, they’re a vital way for websites to generate income, but occasionally we all need an ad-free day.

Safari AdBlock is a simple, free plugin that aims to strip advertisements from websites as you browse. It works surprisingly well and can lead to a far less cluttered web experience.

AdBlock: Before and After

One welcome feature of AdBlock is its ability to clean up a page’s layout after removing the advertisements. This means that a site is not left with large, gaping spaces where sponsorship slots used to be.

6. Easily Download Videos

Much of the web’s video content is served through Flash and can be difficult to download for later viewing. Few plugins are better at assisting with this process than CosmoPod, which works with almost all sites serving video content.

Not only will CosmoPod download video content, but with one click the plugin can download the file, convert it to an iTunes/iPod compatible format, and place it in your iTunes library. Everything integrates with the Safari interface for a seamless downloading experience.

What do you use?

I would be interested to hear any plugins or tweaks you use for enhancing Safari. I firmly believe that it’s the best browser available for OS X, but am enthusiastic about finding ways to make the app perform better and make my life easier!

For both iPhone users and developers, a new service from Amazing Mail pushes the envelope — quite literally — of what a mobile device is capable of. The on-demand printing company is offering an integration service for iPhone developers, allowing for the creation of applications that are able to send physical postcards or printed photos.

Two applications have already put this feature into production — Postino (free) and PicCard (99 cents). Both offer the ability to print and send physical copies of photographs taken on your iPhone, priced at between 99 cents and $1.99, depending on where you’re shipping to.

AmazingMail’s CEO Chris Lynde notes:

Postino and PicCard are fabulous examples of how developers can generate margins of 100 percent or more with our web-to-print engine. We’ve already seen both of these apps evolve their feature sets in a matter of weeks based on iPhone user feedback.

For iPhone Users

Postino is a good example of how the service can work. You snap a picture with the iPhone camera, select a frame, draw an accompanying message or signature, and enter the address details of the recipient. The app can also send cards via email, if you’d prefer not to pay for the physical service.

Postino

For Developers

The ability to easily integrate physical printing with the iPhone allows developers to exploit a new revenue stream, particularly with the recent addition of in-app purchasing to the iPhone software.

Key features of this new web-to-print service include:

• Print and mail the next business day to any country
• High quality card printing
• Automatically standardize recipient addresses for maximum deliverability
• Easy-to-use HTTP submission method
• Wide flexibility in terms of the content able to be printed
• Environmentally friendly mailing options

A range of potential uses present themselves, both for personal use (sending family postcards or photos to friends), and for business. The relatively low cost of shipping is appealing — $1.50 to send a postcard internationally is certainly acceptable. It will be interesting to see how the model is adopted, and how developers look to merge their applications with a physical printing service in coming months.

From a slightly different perspective, the addition of dock connector APIs in the latest iPhone 3.0 software may further the ability to print directly from the iPhone. I wouldn’t be surprised to see accessory manufacturers produce a portable digital photo printer, as so many have already done for digital cameras.

A Step Backwards?

Part of me feels that this is a move back to a traditional postal medium and unlikely to work long term. The very notion of a “postcard” is beginning to feel slightly antiquated in the modern age, when you can upload images and video to services such as Flickr as you travel.

That said, I’ll certainly be taking one of these applications with me on my next trip, and hope to impress a few friends back home with some unconventional postcards. Work colleagues may be comfortable with Flickr and YouTube, but I know for a fact my grandparents will still feel excited to pick up a customized iPhone postcard from the letterbox.

Laptop stands are widely heralded as a great solution for a more ergonomic workstation and better positioning of your computer. They come in all manner of shapes and sizes, from the downright awful to very slick and stylish.

I recently took the plunge and purchased the Rain Design mStand. This particular stand is designed specifically for aluminum MacBook laptops, matching the anodized metal finish wonderfully. Like the latest Apple notebooks, mStand is made from one solid piece of aluminum.

While not the most cost-effective solution (mStand costs $50), it certainly goes a long way towards offering an ergonomic and stylish accessory for any MacBook or MacBook Pro. This review will take a look at the design, stability, ergonomic design and limitations of the stand.

Design

Right from removing it from the box, the mStand looked comfortably at home in my Apple setup. The aim was to elevate my MacBook Pro to the same level of a Cinema Display and transform it into a more usable second monitor.

The design almost identically mimics the stand present on Apple’s Cinema Display and iMac computers — even down to the inclusion of a circular cable hole at the rear.

According to the documentation, the aluminum finish also assists with cooling your laptop through acting as a heat sink. While a solid metal block might not seem the best candidate for a heat sink, I found that it certainly did not cause any problems. My MacBook Pro remained cool and quiet.

Stability

Obviously if you’re going to entrust a small piece of metal to raise your precious MacBook 6 inches above a desk, stability is a major consideration. The mStand shines in this department due to a remarkably well-designed construction. It supports all MacBook and MacBook Pro models, along with any other laptop up to a 15″ widescreen.

Pressing, knocking and shaking the stand didn’t once instill a sense of fear for my laptop’s safety. If you’re using the stand on your lap (which works well), it’s perfectly capable of supporting even the most vigorous typing activity.

Pads cushion both the underside and front of your laptop where it comes into contact with the stand to ensure there’s no chance of scratching.

Ergonomics

The stand’s accompanying leaflet makes it clear that “all ergonomic guidelines recommend placing the screen at eye level, and keeping your back, forearms and wrists straight.” Coupling the mStand with an external keyboard and mouse is a far better solution than using a laptop directly on your desk:

mStand Ergonomics

I can’t see myself lugging all this gear to Starbucks for an afternoon, but it can work extremely well in an office environment.

As mentioned below, at times I felt that the stand may be elevating the screen a little too high. It could be that I’ll just need a few weeks to adjust to looking in a slightly different direction.

Limitations

The main limitation with this product is the non-adjustable height. While this is a common problem with many laptop stands, it could really make the mStand a perfect solution. I found that the stand elevated my MacBook Pro a little too high — almost to the top of my Cinema Display. I do, however, appreciate that this is likely the perfect position from an ergonomic perspective.

The only other niggle (and I’m really splitting hairs) is that the cable hole in the rear cannot accommodate the width of an external monitor connection. It’s a slight inconvenience for keeping cables organized, but certainly not a deal-breaker.

Conclusion

So far, I’ve been remarkably impressed with the mStand. It seems perfectly able to match Apple in terms of design, ergonomics and build quality — no easy task.

Is it worth the asking price of $50? The answer depends very much on whether you require a design that’s able to match the aluminum look and feel of an existing Mac setup. If appearance isn’t a major concern, the Logitech Alto Express may be a better (and more budget-friendly) alternative.

Whichever stand you go for, it’s definitely a move I would recommend for a more comfortable workspace.

As a fan of the Terminator trilogy, I’m fascinated to see how the new movie will fare. I was equally intrigued to take a look at the iPhone game released to accompany the fourth installment in the movie series. Gameloft announced the release last week, and Terminator Salvation is now available to download (iTunes link) for $9.99.

I’m pleased to say that my sentiments echo the rave reviews the game has received on the App Store. It pushes the boundaries of third-person action games for the iPhone, bringing innovative concepts such as an intuitive “cover” system, various enemies and vehicles, and an excellent control mechanism.

The iPhone game was released shortly after a “leaked video” hit YouTube demonstrating the game in action. Whether a PR stunt or not, it serves as an excellent overview of what to expect in the game — both in terms of graphics and gameplay.

Graphics

Terminator Salvation is visually impressive from start to finish, making full use of the iPhone’s processing capability. Environments are rich and detailed, recreating the atmosphere of the film as well as can be expected on such a small screen.

Post-Apocalyptic Graphics

Cut-scenes are rendered using the same engine, with narrative provided through speech bubbles. (There’s no angry commentary from Christian Bale, unfortunately.)

Controls

The game adopts a natural-feeling control system. A virtual direction pad sits to the left, allowing you to walk forward, back, left and right. Dragging the screen allows you to look around the environment and set your targeting reticle on a suspicious-looking enemy.

Move and Look Controls

An excellent cover system responds automatically if you move towards an item which the character is able to crouch behind or peek around. You can continue to aim while in cover, firing immediately as you move. This is a first for an iPhone game and really adds to the app’s realism.

A separate control system is used for mini-games, adopting a similar approach to the popular Labyrinth iPhone app. It makes use of the accelerometer, requiring you to solve a puzzle, thereby “hacking” a device in order to use it. Unfortunately, there is no way to calibrate the iPhone — you’ll need to play these puzzles with your device horizontal to stand any chance.

Gameplay

The game follows the storyline of the upcoming movie in which John Connor leads the human resistance against Skynet and an army of Terminator robots. You play as both John Connor and Marcus Wright at various points, each with their own unique abilities. Unfortunately, the plot of the game is somewhat difficult to follow, twisting and turning to the point where I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on.

Drive!

Whilst playing through the nine levels on offer you’ll encounter 11 different types of enemy (each of which is overcome in a specific way) and drive a variety of futuristic vehicles. The choice of weapons is equally impressive and includes an assault rifle, a shotgun, a grenade launcher, a chain-gun and a surge cannon. Not for the faint of heart!

Each level offers a set of mission statistics upon completion. If you find yourself hooked on the game, it provides a good way to monitor your improvement when replaying a level.

Mission Statistics

For the asking price of $9.99, Terminator Salvation is a fairly short-lived affair. Blasting through the nine levels can be done in a couple of hours, after which you’re rewarded with a new Terminator character. You can replay the game at a slightly harder difficulty level with the new character, though it doesn’t add a great deal in terms of new gameplay experience or variety.

Conclusion

Terminator Salvation for the iPhone is a solid release that makes great use of the iPhone’s touchscreen and accelerometer. Graphics are outstanding, with gameplay that feels natural and is a lot of fun. Areas lacking include a fairly short, convoluted storyline and no audio commentary to better explain what exactly is happening.

If you enjoy gaming on the iPhone, Terminator Salvation is definitely worth a try. It may not be able to offer hours and hours of re-playability, but the time you do spend saving the world from various mechanical enemies is remarkably enjoyable.

“Top Gun” is widely regarded as a classic film, one which seems to retain a sense of timeless prestige as the years pass. Fans of the film — or iPhone games in general — will be pleased to know that a “Top Gun” game is now available for the iPhone. Fast-paced and action-packed, it is an excellent example of game development for the iPhone done right.

The story line picks up where the “Top Gun” film left off, with Maverick and Iceman now instructors at the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School, where you learn to fly. The game can be picked up quickly, is easy to dip in-and-out of, and doesn’t require any advanced flying skills.

Story & Missions

Cut scenes and a story line are provided in a cartoon style. This looks appealing and is easy to skip through if you’ve already seen the dialog before (this is likely, as it appears every time you replay a mission).

Story Scenes

I won’t give any of the story away, but it’s a fairly simple affair! Missions are selected through choosing one of the available briefing folders. There are 10 in total, and you can replay them to unlock certain medals and achievements if desired.

Selecting a mission

Gameplay & Audio

There are two ways in which to play the game, either in a linear “Story Mode,” or by quickly replaying previously completed missions. Gameplay, in terms of flying, is fairly simple; you don’t need to worry about taking off, landing or navigating. These are handled for you, keeping your fingers free to focus on the combat and action. While I crave an application capable of mixing the realism of xPlane with the combat of a game such as this, I fear I may be asking a little too much!

Thick of the action

The game requires you to evade enemy attacks (achieved through keeping clear of shifting “danger zones”) while simultaneously firing upon the enemy with a combination of your missiles and machine gun. Action is fast-paced as the levels progress, but remains fun on account of unlimited ammo and few complicated controls to master.

Avoiding the Danger Zone

Unusually, Top Gun calibrates the position of your iPhone automatically at the beginning of each level. This can be frustrating if you don’t remember to hold the phone in a good position as the level commences. Re-calibration can be instigated through the in-game pause menu, and is as simple as tapping a button.

Various environments are used, from open deserts to the glistening sea. The graphics used in the game look excellent and plane models are reasonably detailed. In an interview with IGN, Senior Developer Bruce Morrison outlined the elements of the game that he felt worked well:

From a technology side, our real-time lighting. From a gameplay [perspective], I like how we incorporated elements from the movie that fans can really identify with, while keeping the experience fresh.

The lighting is indeed excellent and creates a compelling environment in which to play. Even more fun, however, is the in-game audio, which uses a range of songs from the original film soundtrack. These offer a remarkable nostalgia and go a long way towards making the game feel linked strongly to the movie.

Developing for the iPhone

When asked about the experience of developing for the iPhone, Bruce noted:

The iPhone is great. It’s like a tiny little Mac. It’s running OS X, so a lot of the Mac code we’ve developed over the years has come right over. A lot of the same underlying code we’ve used for other projects is running natively on the iPhone.

I’m continually impressed with how such a small device is capable of creating an immersive gaming environment and capturing your full attention. Top Gun is no exception, representing a very well-rounded game. I’m looking forward to seeing future releases from Freeverse, already well-known for games such as Big Bang Board Games and Days of Thunder.

Areas for Improvement

While Top Gun is a fun game to pick up and play, it does have a few limitations. I would appreciate a way to invert the accelerometer settings, as it felt unnatural to tilt the iPhone the opposite way to which you’d like to move. In addition, the interface can start to look a little confusing as you progress to the later missions. Multiple “danger zones,” targets, commentary, and other aircraft can quickly fill up the iPhone’s screen to a frustrating degree. Missions are relatively short, and the game does become repetitive after a few plays.

That said, the price tag of $4 is a good selling point for the app. It offers an impressive demonstration of the iPhone’s graphic capability, and is a good game to quickly “pick up and play.” If you act fast, it should be possible to take advantage of a 50 percent discount, which is running for a few more days (bringing the price down to $2). For more information, take a look at Top Gun in the App Store.

Today, FileMaker announced the release of Bento for the iPhone and iPod touch, a companion to their popular personal database software. Priced at $4.99, the mobile application can synchronize directly with Bento 2 running on your Mac to keep information up-to-date.

If you’re unfamiliar with Bento, our review is a good place to start. Essentially the application helps you to stay organized through creating a personal database. It offers a great deal of flexibility and is suitable for anything from managing a list of recipes to tracking home inventory.

Bento is renowned for three characteristics: simplicity, elegance, and ease of use. All of these are present in the Mac software with virtually no learning curve required in order to start organizing your information. The same experience has been ported across to the mobile application with great effect.

Creating a New Library

Bento for iPhone is separated into four main sections, which remain consistently present at the bottom of the screen: Home, Search, New Library and Sync. Upon opening the app for the first time, you’ll be asked to create a new library.

Adding a New Library

Two options are available for creating a new library. You can either select from one of the 25 pre-designed templates, or design your own set of fields from scratch.

Flicking through the default templates is done through a cover flow-style animation, though it seems to behave in a slightly different manner. While the functionality is fine, flicking through the various options is slightly sluggish and template icons take a short while to load.

The pre-designed templates available cover a wide range of options — everything from expenses and time billing, to an exercise or charity donation log. Each template has a wonderfully designed icon, and there’s a good chance you can find a library that meets your requirement.

If you’re in need of a custom solution, selecting ‘Blank’ will allow you to design a new library from scratch, right on your iPhone or iPod touch. A simple interface guides you through adding and editing fields, some of which are able to interact with iPhone features (taking a picture, for example).

Home Screen

Two views are available for the home screen allowing you to either flick through libraries in cover-flow mode or view a detailed list of libraries and collections. When browsing in cover flow, tapping the “i” icon will flip the current icon around and display further information about the records/collections within.

This provides a clear and simple way to quickly browse or edit the desired library. I appreciate the inclusion of a list view, as performance is notably quicker than loading the high-res icons for cover flow.

Browsing & Searching Libraries

After opening a library, a list of the collections (groups) and individual records contained is displayed. Various sorting and display options are available to adjust how the list appears. You can either add a new record, or drill down further to edit each item:

Viewing an Item

Searching is powerful, and is performed across all available libraries. Results update in real time as you type, and are broken down by library:

Searching Your Library

It will be interesting to see whether Bento information could be tied into the Spotlight search planned for iPhone 3.0 — this could offer a very useful addition to iPhone-wide search.

Syncing with Bento for Mac

Synchronizing your information with Bento for Mac is a simple process provided both devices are connected to the same Wi-Fi network. After instructing both the iPhone and Mac version to search for other devices, connecting involves authorization through a four-digit security code:

Syncing with Bento for Mac

After connecting, the iPhone should display as a ‘Device’ in the left pane of Bento. You can then select which libraries you would like to sync (in a very similar fashion to managing your device via iTunes).

Connecting to Bento for the Mac

Performance & Limitations

There are a few areas of Bento for iPhone that don’t synchronize with the desktop version. These include any media over 10MB, iCal events and tasks, file list fields, automatic counter fields, and smart collections. In addition, it isn’t possible to modify calculation fields from the mobile app. I would also like to see a table view which displays records side-by-side, making use of the iPhone’s landscape display. That said, these limitations are certainly acceptable, and don’t stop the iPhone application being incredibly useful.

Unfortunately, the stability and performance of the app was, for me, a major sticking point. Bento was prone to crashing every few minutes and there was a noticeable delay when opening the app and browsing in cover-flow mode. I’m fairly confident that these issues will be rectified through an update shortly.

Performance aside, Bento for iPhone represents a powerful and worthy mobile companion. I’m pleased to see that FileMaker has offered an application fully capable of creating a database, not confined to act as a viewer for existing desktop libraries. At the price of $4.99, Bento for iPhone represents one of the most powerful and affordable database tools available. As soon as stability is perfected, I’m confident I shall be a regular user.

More information can be found at the FileMaker site, or via the App Store.

If you’ve ever been interested in what goes on behind the scenes of a shiny new MacBook, you may be familiar with iStat Pro and iStat Menus. These two widgets for OS X allow you to monitor system performance and resources — either through Dashboard, or your menu bar.

A fairly new counterpart to these apps is iStat for iPhone, a tool that can remotely monitor your Mac’s performance in real time, or display information about your iPhone itself. Using your phone as a small display for reporting hardware performance of your Mac is not only useful — it looks incredibly cool.

Monitoring iPhone Stats

iStat for iPhone costs $1.99, and doesn’t require any setting up. After downloading and installing, you can immediately open the application to see statistics for iPhone memory, disk space, IP addresses, uptime and load averages:

The information displayed can be customized through the application settings, accessed via the cog icon towards the lower right of the screen. It’s also possible to email your iPhone identifier and MAC address automatically — useful if you need to authorize your phone when testing a new application.

Freeing Memory

iStat claims to be able to free up iPhone memory and speed up your device. I had mixed results with this process, and you need to be prepared to wait for quite a while as the memory clears. It didn’t seem to make any major change to the perceived speed of operation (the iPhone is already very snappy!), but it may be more useful if you regularly run memory-intensive apps.

Monitor Your Mac Remotely

Monitoring your iPhone is great, but if you’d like to use the iPhone to report on your Mac’s performance, you’ll need to install the iStat Server. This is a free download, and only takes a few seconds to set up.

After opening the server for the first time, you’ll be presented with an authorization code that can be used to set up an iPhone:

iStat can use either Bonjour or TCP/IP to connect to iStat Server. Bonjour works great when both devices are on the same wireless network. TCP/IP (either via hostname or IP address) may work in other cases. Providing a connection can be established, the iPhone should now display your Mac as an available iStat server.

Select your Mac, and enter the authorization code to establish a connection. Immediately after doing so, the display should update to show a real-time feed of your Mac’s inner workings.

This screen is showing a number of different things:

• CPU – A graph of CPU usage is displayed, updated every second to illustrate which type of processes are using the most processing power.
• Network – A graph displaying the current up/down activity of your network is updated regularly, and a peak value is held.
• Memory – Full memory stats, including wired, active, inactive, free, page ins/outs and swap size.
• Hard Disks – Free and used space on all internal and connected drives is displayed.
• Temps & Fans – Statistics for all the internal temperature sensors and fan speeds are available.
• Uptime – I’m always fascinated by how long my Mac has been running.

It’s possible to alter how these details are displayed through the app settings, and you can select to see only those that interest you if desired.

Network Tools

The fun doesn’t stop with monitoring, as iStat for iPhone also has a range of built-in network tools for performing ping and traceroute operations. These worked well when tested, and retain the look and feel you’d expect from an iPhone application.

The most recently used hostnames and IP addresses are stored in the app, so you can easily re-perform the same operation again if needed. Here is an example of a traceroute operation in action:

Conclusion

There are a number of things I really like about iStat for iPhone. Firstly is the fantastic design of the app — both on the iPhone, and also in the iStat Server application. It looks like something plucked straight from an episode of “24″. Second is the way in which statistics are updated in real time, allowing you to quickly see if a process is using too much memory.

There are a few areas where it would be great to see features added. I’d welcome the ability to drill down further into the information to, for example, view details of individual applications and processes. If I notice that something is using a great deal of processing power, it would be useful to know what, exactly, is causing the problem.

iStat for iPhone is a great little tool, comes in at a very affordable price ($1.99 at present, normally $2.99), and does actually have a few useful features. Whether you need the ability to perform ping and traceroute operations on the go, or just want to feel like James Bond, it’s worth giving the application a try.

OS X is a remarkably versatile platform, with a huge range of software on offer. Whether you’re a designer, musician, journalist, scientist or running a business — there’s a tool to meet your needs. To help you wade through the mass of software and pick out the best bits, we’re starting a new series called “Workflow.”

Each post will walk you through all the particular applications required for a particular task. The first installment will outline all the best applications available for web design. From collecting together your inspiration to hitting publish, you’ll soon have a collection of software to make the process as easy and enjoyable as possible.

Asset & Inspiration Management

LittleSnapper

LittleSnapper is a fantastic application for creating a collection of screenshots and graphics for use in a web project. Whether gathering inspiration, design mockups, or revisions of a design, it can offer a great tool for tagging and storing images.

It’s possible to capture screenshots from any major browser — either of the entire screen, or a particular element of a web site. Annotation tools are excellent, and are completely vector-based. It’s simple to undo additions, and an image can be exported with or without all the notes you’ve added.

Screenshots can be shared with others via an FTP server, or through the integrated QuickSnapper service. This is simple to set up, and works reliably.

Text Expander — A great way for storing snippets of text, code, or copy, and easily recalling them when needed.

Yojimbo — A powerful information manager, allowing you to store almost anything at all: passwords, text, PDFs, images…you name it.

DevonThink — Similar to Yojimbo, providing another fantastic way to store web resources, screenshots, documents, client information and mockups.

Linotype Font Explorer — If you’re someone who works with type on a regular basis, Font Explorer X is a great tool for browsing, managing and activating your typography.

Graphic Design

Pixelmator

Pixelmator offers a fantastic solution for web designers looking for a simple, inexpensive graphics editor. While it can’t match the sheer versatility and power of Photoshop, the interface and tools available are excellent for the price ($59).

The speed of Pixelmator is impressive, as it can rely upon core image technology to utilize graphics card performance, rather than passing the load of processing on to your internal memory or processor. Integration with Automator is also excellent, and setting up repeated tasks is a simple process.

Adobe CS4 — A thorough collection of graphic design tools for professionals. Not cheap, but some of the most advanced software available.

RapidWeaver — A “WYSIWYG” web design environment for OS X, with some great in-built themes.

xScope — A thorough set of tools for measuring, aligning and inspecting on-screen graphics and layouts.

Keynote — While Keynote is a presentation app, it’s fantastic for creating charts, graphics and design elements.

Slammer — A great tool for overlaying grids and measuring spacing of a design.

Development & Coding

Coda

Coda is a relatively long standing integrated application for coding and developing web sites. Managed around a collection of “sites,” each one is associated to a local folder and FTP server. Both can be kept in sync easily through the integrated publishing system within the application.

Text editing looks good and is remarkably functional. A wide variety of different languages are supported, and full subversion support is built into the application. CSS code can be edited with visual feedback, showing how changes made will affect layout.

Espresso — The main competitor to Coda, Espresso offers a similar range of features and includes the excellent CSSEdit.

TextMate — A powerful and versatile text editor, with a bunch of powerful snippets, macros, and unique scoping system.

CSSEdit — A novel environment in which to edit CSS, showing changes visual previews in real time.

TextWrangler — A completely free text editor, with coloring support for any language you care to throw at it.

SubEthaEdit — Famous for providing real-time collaboration between different users, SubEthaEdit is also a solid code editor in its own right.

Publishing

Transmit

Transmit is one of the best-known FTP clients for the Mac, and my personal tool of choice. Priced at $30, the feature set is impressive: Amazon S3 support, .Mac sync, Dashboard integration, server-to-server transfers, and a wonderful interface.

A few of the other applications noted below do offer similar features for a lower price, though they lack the polish and reliability of Transmit. If you’re a Coda user, you’ll also appreciate the integration with Transmit and similar cross-over of style and interface.

Cyberduck — An open-source client, with a feature set to rival Transmit. It also supports transferring to Mosso and Amazon S3.

Interarchy — An expensive application at $59, with a bunch of powerful features for advanced users.

Yummy FTP — Offering a few unique tools such as transfer auto-recovery, scheduling and alias support.

Forklift — A great-looking app, though it comes with a heavy price tag.

Fetch — A basic and fairly inexpensive app that checks off all the features expected from a traditional client.

Subversion / Git

Versions

We’ve previously covered a roundup of subversion and git tools. While the command line does work for these version tracking systems, a variety of applications can offer a much easier-to-use interface. Our featured tool of choice is Versions, a gorgeous-looking and full-featured app for OS X.

Versions includes the latest release of SVN, a visual timeline of changes, easy reverting to older versions, and thorough security features. The app feels at home on a Mac, with a solid interface and excellent visual design.

Cornerstone — A great-looking app, with all the features you’d expect for a subversion client.

svnX — An open-source GUI for most features of the svn client binary, with a slightly plainer interface.

Gitx — Featuring a history viewer and a decent commit GUI for dealing with Git.

OpenInGitGui — A droplet which allows you to open Git-Gui from finder.

Conclusion

The Mac provides a fantastic platform for developing web sites: organizing your material, designing, coding, uploading and version tracking. We’ve covered almost 30 applications, each with something to bring to the table in each respective area.

Feel free to make your own decision on which tool is best for your needs. If you’re a big fan of an application that hasn’t been mentioned here, please let us know in the comments!

If you’ve ever suffered from fraud on the Internet, you’ll know how important it is to use decent passwords, keep them safe, and watch out for phishing activities. Unfortunately, a simple password isn’t always the best way to protect yourself online. Many banks are now starting to use two-factor authentication, a system requiring a dongle that generates a coded number before you’re able to access accounts online.

This concept has today been extended to mobile devices by VeriSign, with the launch of VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) for the iPhone. This free application will act as a security dongle, generating a coded number that can be entered for additional security on various web sites.

This “two-factor authentication” process is a first for a device such as the iPhone. The first factor is something you know — a username and password. The second factor is something you have, namely the code provided via your iPhone. It greatly enhances security and means that, for a thief, simply knowing your password is not enough.

Setting up VIP

To get started setting up the VIP software up on your iPhone, begin by downloading it from the App Store. The app is free, and relatively straight forward to install and configure.

When launching for the first time, you’re asked for your mobile phone number. This is used to send a text message to you, linking a particular phone number with your iPhone. After the setup process is complete, you’re able to flick through the introductory documentation, watch a tutorial video of how the service works, or dive straight into setting up the VIP service on participating web sites.

The documentation is particularly good, clearly setting out the process you need to follow to register your iPhone as a VIP Credential on various member sites. Also available is a handy FAQ, which covered the majority of questions I had about the service.

Various VIP iPhone Screenshots

There are no settings or configuration options in the app, other than the ability to hide or display your device ID. Everything is kept as simple to use as possible.

Web Sites Supported

At present, the VIP service is supported by just over 40 web sites. The most notable partners are PayPal, eBay, AOL, and various banking organizations. A short list can be found at VeriSign’s Where to Use page.

Each web site you’d like to use the authentication for requires an individual set-up process, generally involving logging into your account and entering a few additional details.

PayPal Walkthrough

The first service I set the software up for was PayPal. After logging in, the page to activate VIP can be found via My Profile > Security Key. After selecting to activate a VeriSign device, you are asked to enter the unique iPhone ID, and two security codes generated by the app (the code changes every 30 seconds).

Immediately after doing this, the service is activated.

Confirmation of Device Set-up

During your next login you’ll be asked for a username and password as normal, followed by the random code from your iPhone. If you decide in the future that you’d like to deactivate the feature, it’s simple to do so from the same PayPal page.

Conclusion

Hopefully, services such as this will go a long way towards increasing consumer confidence with shopping and banking online. VeriSign certainly feels this is the case:

A recent survey found that 86 percent of consumers prefer sites that enable proactive security measures such as two-factor authentication. Meanwhile, 68 percent said they would like better systems in place to protect their identities.

As more web sites and online services move to support this security standard, I imagine its popularity will grow. The idea of using your iPhone as an additional layer of authentication for web site access is convenient and appealing. At present, no UK banking institutions use VeriSign as a partner so — for now — I’m stuck with a few different authentication devices.

I can’t fault the implementation of this service; setting everything up is very simple and straightforward. The only complaint I have is the lack of publicity it seems to have received. Until reading about the iPhone application, I hadn’t been aware that a two-factor authentication system was available for PayPal, eBay, or any of the other supported sites. This is a great way to improve security, and letting more people know about the facility would seem like a logical move. With all the publicity surrounding the dangers of phishing, I’m surprised that this service hasn’t been offered greater acclaim as a solution.

If you’re interested in finding out more, I recommend watching the introductory video on eBay, which provides a decent overview of how the service works. To get started straight away, head over to the App Store and download the VIP software.

I’m interested to know your thoughts. How security conscious are you? Is this solution one that you’ll try out immediately, or are you happy with the tried and tested username and password combination?

Ever since I owned a Sony Ericsson phone which connected to my Mac via Salling Clicker, I’ve been fascinated with controlling OS X remotely. The iPhone created a fantastic device for taking remote control to a new level, and a search for “remote” in the App Store illustrates how popular the idea is.

A relatively new app on the scene is Rowmote, which takes a much more simplified approach. Rather than trying to offer a huge array of functionality, it simply replicates the controls found on a standard Apple remote. This provides a thoroughly appealing solution as Apple doesn’t always bundle remote controls with new computers.

Initiating a Connection

Rowmote consists of two separate applications. As you’d expect, one goes on your iPhone and the other (a “helper app”) is installed on your desktop. The installation process is simple, although a restart was required by the desktop installer — something I’m not used to on OS X!

Provided that both devices are connected to the same Wi-Fi network, they should see each other immediately and initiate a connection (as shown on the right).

One of the major advantages of connecting via Wi-Fi is that a line of sight isn’t required to communicate. Whether you’re wandering around the room or happily waving your iPhone around, it should still be able to skip a track or adjust your volume.

Application Switcher

The only aspect of the remote which goes beyond that provided by Apple is the ability to swap focus between different applications. These include Front Row, Airfoil Video, Boxee, iPhoto, iTunes, Quicktime, DVD Player, Keynote ’08 and ‘09, PandoraJam, Plex, Powerpoint 2008, Skim, Spotify and VLC.

The latest version of Rowmote also has preliminary EyeTV support, allowing you to change channels and adjust the volume. It would be great if future versions could offer full control of EyeTV via their full-screen menu (in a similar fashion to Front Row).

Other Solutions

There are a number of other remote control applications available for the iPhone that are worth noting as alternatives.

For accessing your music and video, the first (and most popular) to note is Apple’s Remote app. This allows full control of iTunes playback, browsing of your library, and a whole range of other features. Other media-centric applications include VLC Remote for controlling the popular video player, a Boxee Remote, or jfControl for generic volume, track skipping, etc.

If you’re looking for a presentation remote control for Keynote, it’s definitely worth considering Apple’s official Keynote Remote. This is another visual treat, showing you which slides are coming up next along with any notes you’ve made. If you prefer to use PowerPoint (on Windows or Mac) it’s worth considering i-Clickr, which offers similar functionality.

Finally, a number of different remote controls allow you to actually control the keyboard and mouse of your machine. These obviously offer the broadest level of interaction, but can be incredibly fiddly to use. My favorite is Snatch, but other free solutions include RemotePad or Remote Desktop Light.

Conclusion

While I certainly admire the simplicity of Rowmote, in some ways I feel left wanting more. It’s great to have a low-cost application to replace a standard Apple remote, but the iPhone is capable of far more powerful and interactive connectivity (as some of the other remote applications go to show). It seems frustrating that you’re unable to interact with iTunes in a detailed level as you can with Apple’s Remote application. That said, if using Front Row, a similar level of navigation and control is possible.

Rowmote requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later, and is priced at 99 cents. It’s certainly a great deal cheaper than a replacement Apple Remote, and offers marginally greater functionality. If you’ve lost the remote that came with your Mac or want to replicate its simplicity on your iPhone, Rowmote is definitely the way to go.

For anyone who’s ever designed a web site on a Mac, you’ll know that one of the biggest headaches is testing your design on Windows browsers. Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer have a nasty habit of displaying the same web site in very different ways, and constantly swapping between XP, Vista and OS X can be a time-consuming issue.

Alkaline is a new application, launched yesterday, that goes some way toward alleviating this problem. It’s powered by Litmus, an online tool that can show you how your web site appears in a vast array of different browsers and operating systems. Alkaline is their first move to the desktop environment, and certainly stands to save web designers using OS X a huge amount of time.

Setting up Alkaline

Alkaline is a free download, and only takes a few seconds to get up and running. However, to actually use the app, you’ll need to create an account with Litmus. You can initiate this process right from within Alkaline itself, and when completed you’ll be presented with a useful graphic which explains how to enter your information into the application:

Litmus Login Information

Once logged in, you’re able to start running a few tests.

Creating and Managing Tests

Initiating a new test is very simple — just enter the URL of the site you’d like to check, and select the browsers in which you’re interested. Testing in Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7 is completely free of charge, though you’ll need to subscribe to access all 23 browser versions available.

After initiating a test, you’ll need to wait a while before the screenshot images are generated and returned. This took around one minute in my testing — a more than acceptable delay for a free account. You’ll then be presented with a resizable screenshot of the site in question, and the option of viewing the result with or without browser chrome is available. A test information window is also displayed:

Litmus Test Information

This outlines a variety of information about your test, including the site URL and title, creation time and browser/platform information.

Tests are concurrently integrated with the online version of Litmus, so you can log in and access your results from anywhere. This is done by accessing your personal URL (e.g. http://yourname.litmusapp.com) and logging in.

Version Support

When ironing out problems and bugs with display in a particular browser, you’ll likely be running several tests, one after the other, until the issue is solved. Alkaline supports the storage of different test versions so that you’re able to flick back through previous screenshots and check where improvements have been made:

Version Storage

This is really useful for seeing which code/design changes effected which browsers in different ways over time — as you fix one problem, another often occurs. These different version images are also available through the Litmus web app.

Plugin Support

If you’re someone who uses an integrated environment such as Coda for design and development, you’ll be pleased to know that Alkaline is offered as a Coda plugin. A different version is also available for TextMate. Alkaline is also pushing developers to create a plugin for their own application, and has provided instructions on how simple the process is.

I expect this will be a great way to generate interest from other developers, and it would be incredibly useful to have support built-in to other apps such as Espresso and BBEdit.

Pricing & Conclusion

After running a few different web sites through Alkaline, I’m really impressed. It goes a long way towards negating the need for virtual machines, Windows licenses, or any messing around with keeping different copies of Windows up to date. I’ll definitely be keeping the app installed, and I do think it’ll come in very handy for future projects. While I expect I’ll still need to boot up a virtual machine from time to time, gaining a general overview of how a site looks in Alkaline will be invaluable.

The obvious limitation is that you don’t actually get to use your site, and there is only so much you can gain from viewing a range of screenshots. To really generate an idea for how your site works in a different browsers, you do need to actually use the application itself. Animation, user interaction and rollover effects can often behave in a way you wouldn’t expect — issues that wouldn’t be picked up via a static image.

The free version of Alkaline allows testing in Firefox 2.0 and IE7. To upgrade to access all 23 browsers you have two options. A ‘day pass’ is available for $24, giving you access to all web browser (and also email account testing) for a 24-hour period. Alternatively, you can pay a monthly subscription of $49 per month for unlimited testing. The service doesn’t come cheap, but can offer real value and save a decent amount of time if you’re an OS X web developer.

For more information, check out the detailed screencast or head over to the Alkaline web site.

There has been a reasonable amount of speculation surrounding JavaScript speed improvements in iPhone 3.0. Testing carried out on the iPhone Simulator bundled with the SDK didn’t lead to a conclusive outcome, but benchmarking done by Wayne Pan would seem to suggest that iPhone 3.0 handles JavaScript 3x-10x faster than iPhone 2.1.

Last year the WebKit development team released information about a new JavaScript engine, slated to have a dramatic improvement in performance. Originally dubbed SquirrelFish (now called ‘Nitro’), to date it has not been included in any major release of the iPhone OS. Expectations are that the performance enhancements found in iPhone 3.0 are due to the inclusion of the SquirrelFish engine, leading to faster web site browsing and snappier web app performance.

The new Nitro engine has gradually been improved by the WebKit team over the past year, and is included in the latest Safari 4 Beta. This new engine accounts for the dramatic performance improvement in Safari 4, which Apple states as enhancing both JavaScript and HTML rendering:

Using the new Nitro Engine, for example, Safari executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and more than 3 times faster than Firefox 3 based on performance in leading industry benchmark tests: iBench and SunSpider.

In addition to superior JavaScript performance, Safari offers top-flight HTML performance — the best on any platform — loading pages 3 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and almost 3 times faster than Firefox 3.

While Nitro is certainly responsible for the improved JavaScript performance, better HTML loading times may be due to other browser enhancements. Hopefully these will also make the move to Mobile Safari, increasing performance and page loading speed. This is even more important on a mobile device, where connection speed is far more limited than on most desktop machines.

Moving this new engine across to Mobile Safari on the iPhone is indeed the next logical step, and the 3.0 release of Apple’s iPhone operating system would seem a reasonable point at which to integrate it. John Gruber created a simple script to test whether a browser is likely to be running the Nitro engine — this tests positive in Safari 4, and he confirmed yesterday that the test is also passed on the iPhone 3.0.

All these pieces of an ongoing puzzle would seem to lead to a fairly strong conclusion that Mobile Safari on iPhone 3.0 will receive a completely new JavaScript engine, significant speed improvements, and better web application performance. I’m thoroughly looking forward to experiencing the same speed boost on my iPhone that Safari 4 brought to my desktop, and can’t wait to try out the new software.

Today, MacHeist announced the contents of their latest application bundle, providing the opportunity to purchase software to the value of $558 for the bargain price of $39. A huge range of applications are included, ranging from eBay companions to professional 3-D animation tools.

Over the past few months, various ‘missions’ have given regular readers the chance to gain additional discounts on the bundle and gather free licenses for various applications. The final bundle will be on sale for two weeks, with 25 percent of all money paid being donated to a charity of your choice. This analysis will take a brief look at each application on offer to see just how far your $39 can go.

iSale (SRP $39.95)

iSale is a fully fledged desktop application for eBay, allowing you to create really good looking auctions with ease. Interesting features include the ability to easily integrate video descriptions into your auction, and a companion iPhone app. iSale’s main competitor is GarageSale.

Picturesque (SRP $34.95)

Pitched as “Making Images Gorgeous,” Picturesque is a simple image editing tool which allows you to quickly and easily add interesting effects to your photographs and graphics. It isn’t a great image editor as such, but more of an enhancement tool for adding reflections, 3D effects, curves, shadows, borders etc. It isn’t an app I’d pay $35 for, but is good to have included.

SousChef (SRP $30.00)

As someone who loves cooking, I’m very interested to give SousChef a try. I’m not generally a fan of desktop software for managing recipes (searching the Internet generally works fine), but the fact that SousChef collates every users recipe into a searchable ‘cloud’ does offer an interesting angle. It also has a great large text mode for viewing your recipe across the kitchen.

World of Goo (SRP $20.00)

World of Goo is a physics based puzzle/construction game with, as the name would suggest, copious amounts of goo. Its unusual, cartoon style graphics coupled with a reasonably realistic physics engine make for a reasonably odd experience. If you’re not really into puzzle games, I expect it will only provide a few hours of entertainment, though it’s received some very good reviews.

PhoneView (SRP $19.95)

I’ve been trying various applications similar to PhoneView for some time, a tool which allows you to access and manage iPhone data from your Mac. In particular, I like to maintain a backup of all my SMS messages for safe keeping. While I do generally trust iTunes, PhoneView looks like a great application for keeping your own additional iPhone backup.

LittleSnapper (SRP $39.00)

LittleSnapper is a brilliant application for storing and editing screenshots or web page ’snaps’. The interface is delightful, it integrates with all major web browsers, and vector based editing tools allow you to annotate your images in a really impressive fashion. If you need an app for keeping track of inspirational websites, graphics and screenshots, the inclusion of LittleSnapper alone justifies the $39 price tag.

Acorn (SRP $49.95)

Acorn isn’t an application I’ve come across previously, but again falls into the category of an “image editor for the rest of us.” It strips away all the Photoshop bloat and provides a simple way for a regular Mac user to edit photographs or create simple graphics.

Kinemac (SRP $299.00)

Dubbed a “3D real time animation & presentation app,” Kinemac allows you to create impressive 3-D animations without requiring vast amounts of knowledge. It’s a reasonably technical tool, and while undoubtedly impressive, probably won’t really appeal to the average Mac user. The high price tag does bump up the value of the MacHeist bundle, which is undoubtedly one reason for its inclusion.

WireTap Studio (SRP $69.00)

WireTap allows you to record any audio which is being played by your Mac. Similar to Audio Hijack Pro, it provides a simple way to record audio in a lossless format, organize and store clips, and export to a variety of formats. Very useful for recording podcasts, iTunes audio, or Skype conversations.

This app is only ‘unlocked’ when $100,000 is raised for charity (likely to only take a couple of days).

BoinxTV (SRP $199.00)

We’ve covered BoinxTV in an in-depth review previously, so I’d recommend reading Matthew’s comments from a few months ago. Essentially it is a simple way to create and edit great looking video presentations, save them to disk, and broadcast them in real-time if desired.

This app is only ‘unlocked’ at a certain point, which is yet to be announced.

The Hit List (SRP $69.95)

The Hit List is a direct competitor to Things, providing a simple tool for organizing lists and “Getting Things Done.” It combines a simple interface with a powerful feature set, genuinely helping you to stay on top of your tasks. It’s definitely worth trying out.

This app is only ‘unlocked’ at a certain point, which is yet to be announced.

Espresso (SRP $80.00)

Espresso was only released from beta a couple of days ago, and offers an impressive text/code editor, integrated FTP, CSS editing tools, powerful preview functionality, and plugin support. It’s a fantastic competitor to Coda for web developers, and is another gem in this bundle of apps.

This app is only ‘unlocked’ at a certain point, which is yet to be announced.

Big Bang Board Games (SRP $24.95)

The seemingly obligatory board game app for MacHeist, Big Bang Board Games offers an impressive 3-D interface for playing Checkers, Chess, Reversi, Backgammon and more. Online multiplayer support is also built in, and it’s a fun app to open when you need to kill a few minutes — a huge step forward from Minesweeper!

This app is only available for the first 25,000 buyers.

Conclusion

As ever, this year’s MacHeist bundle packs a decent punch across a wide range of software genres. There will be an app (or two!) for you whether you’re looking for games, web development, image editing, or audio/video tools.

The price of $39 is an absolute steal for such a powerful collection of applications, and I’d definitely urge you to consider it a good investment for your software needs over the coming year!

Elgato is a company synonymous with television and video hardware products for the Mac. Today they announced the availability of Turbo.264 HD, a hardware conversion tool that offers a fast way to encode video between formats or move video off your HD camcorder.

Many different software tools exist for converting video on the Mac, ranging from QuickTime itself, to more advanced solutions such as HandBrake. Depending upon the Mac hardware you’re running, these software solutions may mean an extensive wait for converting video — particularly if you’re doing so at HD resolution. Hardware encoders such as the Turbo.264 HD can take the load off your Mac, and dramatically speed up the process.

Main Features

Convert between any and all formats

The main features and selling points of the new hardware encoder fall into four different categories:

1. HD Camcorder Support — Provides far quicker conversion to a viewable desktop video format. The example provided by Elgato is that where it used to take over an hour to make a 15-minute movie, it now takes less than 20 minutes.
2. Accelerate TV Export & Video Conversion — Either between video formats, or from the EyeTV recording software
3. Preview & Trim Video Files — You can directly edit video before commencing a conversion or import.
4. Suitable for all levels of knowledge — Default profiles allow converting for your iPhone, YouTube or HD. Alternatively, you can create custom video output profiles by adjusting size, aspect ratio, overscan, frame rate, data rate and more.

Software Interface

The software interface for Turbo.264 HD seems remarkably simple — important for a fairly technical process such as video encoding. It ensures that an average user won’t be confused when opening the application, while also offering a wealth of more advanced conversion options for power users.

After adding videos to convert, you can select a particular quality setting for each, ranging from “iPod Small,” all the way through to full 1080p HD. Obviously, the higher the quality chosen, the longer the encoding process will take.

Adding Video & Selecting Encoding

Once you’ve got the conversion going, a progress window shows how far along the current video is, along with how many other videos are still queued for processing. Also interesting is a reading which displays how many Frames Per Second are currently being converted:

Encoding Progress

Who Needs It?

It seems that there are two types of users who could benefit from purchasing a Turbo.264 HD. First are those who simply convert a lot of video, or regularly record live TV to move onto a portable device (or iTunes). If you regularly find yourself checking your watch while the fan whirrs away on your laptop, this could be a real time saver. It’s also particularly useful if you’re a big YouTube fan, as videos can be exported for uploading to the web (and even automatically uploaded to YouTube, if desired).

The other users are those who own a HD camcorder and would like a faster way to move their video off it to a usable desktop format. Doing this through an external device, such as the Turbo.264 HD, can make it a much more enjoyable process, rather than one which seems to take an eternity. It integrates in the background with iMovie or Final Cut Pro, so you can still benefit from all the great video editing features of those apps while enjoying improved exporting performance.

Pricing and Availability

The Turbo.264 HD is currently on sale for $149.95 and requires Mac OS X 10.5.6 Leopard. You can pick one pick one up directly from Elgato, and shipping starts on March 23.

If you don’t require HD functionality, the older model can still be picked up for $99 from the Apple Store.

As someone who manages a few different web sites and Twitter accounts, I do find that it’s easy to waste a decent chunk of time checking all their various statistics. I often browse to the different websites from my iPhone, logging into each account sequentially to view the latest number of visitors or news feed subscribers.

Enter Ego, a new statistics tracking application for the iPhone. It provides one central location to check web statistics that matter to you, supporting Feedburner, Mint, and Twitter. Authentication is handled automatically once you’ve set the accounts up, and a decent range of statistics are offered through a minimal and simple user interface.

Adding and Managing Accounts

The whole point of Ego is to eliminate needlessly logging in and out of several different web sites and accounts. Therefore, there’s inevitably going to be a reasonable amount of setting up required to add all these accounts in the first place. Clicking the settings icon after opening the application allows you to add and edit accounts.

Ego supports as many widgets of each type as you want, color coding them to make it easy to see which widgets represent which service you’re tracking. Three services are currently supported, and I’ll go into further detail about each shortly. After adding an account you’re able to drag to re-order it in the dashboard screen, ensuring the important stats are displayed and loaded first.

Mint

Mint is a simple statistics tracking tool for websites which you can install on your own server. Unlike Google Analytics, it’s a commercial stats package which costs $30 per site. If you’re already running Mint, you need to install the ‘Ego Helper Pepper‘ to allow the iPhone application to connect to the stats system. Unfortunately, you’re also out of luck if you’re running an older version of Mint — version 2.0 or higher is required.

Manage your Mint stats

By default, the Mint widget displays the number of page views and unique visitors your site has received today. Tapping on a widget will cause it to cycle through the number of visits so far this hour, this week, this month, and a total count of all visitors received to date.

This system of displaying information saves valuable space on your iPhone screen, and doesn’t require drilling down into, and back up from, additional views.

Twitter

The second service supported is Twitter, which requires your Twitter ID and password to set up.

Twitter followers and following stats

The default widget displays (arguably) the most important statistic — the total number of followers you have. Tapping it will alter the view to show the number of people you’re following, and the number of updates which you’ve sent to the service. Also shown is the most recent tweet that has been posted to your account.

FeedBurner

The final service that can be tracked is FeedBurner, a tool for managing and reporting RSS feed information. Setting up FeedBurner requires you to enable the ‘Awareness API’ found in your account settings — without this, Ego won’t be able to retrieve any data.

FeedBurner reader count and trend

This is the simplest widget, displaying only the current number of subscribers to your feed and (when tapped) the number of subscribers you’ve gained or lost since yesterday.

Future Versions

Many would agree that support for Google Analytics — fast becoming the most popular statistic tracking tool — is a big requirement. Fortunately, the developers note that:

We built Ego with a very flexible framework for adding support for other services. Coming in version 1.1: Google Analytics support!

I’m sure that this won’t satisfy everyone, and it’ll be interesting to see whether the developers choose to cater for every request they receive, or keep the application focused on a narrow selection of services. They’re taking requests, so if there is a particular stat you’d like to be able to track, you can email the developers via the Ego site.

Conclusion

For me, this simple app will save a huge amount of time and annoyance. Having all my statistics in once place means I’m likely to check them more often, but it’ll be far quicker to do so. Support for additional services is necessary, and I’m sure future upgrades will add greater flexibility.

I’m particularly fond of the user interface, and the way that tapping to change the information displayed makes the app even easier to use. Not being required to drill down to see further information saves time, but consequently limits the actual data which can be displayed.

It would be useful to see trend information (as displayed in FeedBurner) for the other widgets. I’m aware that data depends upon what is available from the service API, but I expect this would be feasible with Mint. Trend data is always useful — more so than a single figure.

If you manage a web site and are a statistic junkie, spending $1.99 on this app will be a fantastic investment.

Much has been said about the new iPod shuffle. Its size has been praised, lack of buttons grumbled about, and — as with most new Apple products — has caused a little controversy. I wanted to try the product out for myself as I’ve been needing a small MP3 player for exercise. My iPhone is a little too cumbersome to carry while running.

I’ll be taking a look at the packaging, unboxing the iPod shuffle, and offering my thoughts on the hardware and software bundled with the gadget.

Unboxing

Apple seems to be continuing down the road of shrinking packaging material, and the box for the iPod shuffle is really small. It comes presented with the shuffle center stage, containing a simple manual, 3.5mm audio to USB adaptor, and the headphones.

Initial Impressions

The first thing to note, as you’d expect, is that the iPod shuffle is absolutely tiny. I’m fascinated to see where the constant shrinking of the shuffle will ultimately lead to, and I don’t think it’ll be long before you’ll struggle to find it in your pocket. The build quality is also remarkable, with the aluminum construction feeling bulletproof.

As with the previous generation, the entire device is fashioned into a large clip. You can easily attach it anywhere, and it’s sturdy enough that I wouldn’t be concerned about it falling off when running. The top of the shuffle sports a small switch which toggles between shuffling tracks or playing music sequentially.

The headphones are (unfortunately) exactly what you’d expect. They’re standard iPod headphones, albeit with a new and sleek in-line track/volume controller. They have the same ‘rubbery’ feel as recent iPod model earphones, and offer the same reasonable level of comfort and sound. Don’t expect to be blown away, though Apple should be working on an adaptor to allow you to use your own earphones in the near future.

iTunes Connectivity

Connecting to iTunes is as simple as ever, and includes a few options which haven’t been present before. Upon connecting, you’re asked to register your iPod (with a nice new graphic to show the new shuffle in the lineup):

Registering the iPod Shuffle

When setting up, you’re asked if you’d like to enable VoiceOver. This works by generating spoken audio for the names of your tracks on your Mac (or Windows machine), before transferring them to your iPod along with the music. Because of this, you’re asked if you’re happy to install the VoiceOver desktop software.

Installing VoiceOver

This integrates silently into iTunes, and you don’t really notice anything is occurring. A short downloading status message appears, and then syncing music is handled as normal. You’ll be pleased to know that disk mode is supported as before, allowing you to transfer other files on the iPod. If you’d like, you can also set a volume limit and automatically reduce the quality of audio when syncing to fit more on the device.

iTunes Settings

Track Navigation & VoiceOver

There has been a decent amount of debate over how usable the headphone remote would actually be for skipping between tracks. I’d say it’s probably the least user-friendly interface that Apple has created for the iPod to date, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still function very well.

The annoying aspect of VoiceOver is that it isn’t the quickest method of navigating your iPod’s content. There’s quite a bit of waiting involved, and it’s tricky to skip through what is being read out. Not a problem if you have two or three playlists, but increasingly annoying as you add more. While the new computer voice in Leopard was noted as a decent improvement, I still think that artificial computer vocals have some way to come before they’re anything like the real thing. ‘Alex’ is perfectly coherent, but it’s a little odd to have your track information spoken to you by a digital voice.

Commendations, Complaints and Caution

On the whole, the size reduction and multiple playlist support do make the iPod shuffle a decent improvement. It’s brilliant if you’re exercising, and the controls do allow for simple track control without fumbling with the iPod itself. I’d really appreciate a way to use my own headphones with the shuffle, and look forward to some form of adaptor being released.

It is possible to trick the iPod, by setting the track and volume playing with the default phones and switching across to your own. Far from ideal, and doesn’t allow any subsequent control of the player. If you’d like to buy a better pair of supported in-ear phones, you can do so from Apple.

However, the general fact is that most shuffle owners don’t want to carefully select specific tracks to play; there’s been no way to do this in the past (even lacking multiple playlist support), so in many senses the new version is a step forward. I’ll certainly be happy with being able to use the new navigation method and appreciate the ability to flick through playlists.

Ultimately, the new iPod shuffle is a decent looking flash drive, backed up with a seasoned and fantastic piece of software — iTunes. The player has a few areas in which improvement is needed, but represents a solid advancement of Apple’s iPod device.