As heard on CNET.com, Valve has been hinting at a Mac release for their last game in the Half-Life series. Their biggest hint to date - a spoof of the (in)famous "I'm a Mac" ads (picture above; credit: Valve) seems to suggest that not only is Half-Life coming to Mac but it may also bring Steam along with it.
Up to this point Steam, a cloud-based gaming community that allowed users to play full games on any computer, has been a PC only platform. As far as requirements go, today's Macs are ready to tackle gaming applications as they currently meet most/all minimum system requirements.
All in all, if you're a gamer and a Mac user; you may no longer have to compromise as far as gaming is concerned.
On Feb. 15th, Microsoft announced the launch of their new mobile phone platform - the Windows Phone 7 Series (going forward I will only refer to it as WP7S). And although that's quite a mouthful to say; there appears to be more to it than just a name.
The UI is decidedly anti-WinMo and is more than just a nod at Apple's simplicity centric design. At it's core it is the first smartphone since the iPhone to rethink how a phone should operate. Long gone are the gridlocked icons - a minuturization of a Windows 98 desktop - in their stead a rather pretty and eye catching 2D menu screen echoing the Zune HD's UI. Let's rewind just a bit; 'pretty' and 'eye catching' were not typos they were used to describe something coming from Microsoft!
Rather than taking Apple's approach of an App to Task system, WP7S reimagines how we will information on our phones. Say you wanted to send an email to a contact, rather than looking up your contacts email in a dedicated app then opening a dedicated app for email, WP7S categorizes these and other functions (like social media updates) under PEOPLE so you can just pull up the contact you need. Think of if as MotoBlur but a lot crisper and more functionality beyond twitter and facebook. Interestingly enough, Microsoft has confirmed that they will not allow the use of skins over the UI.
Though it seems like Microsoft has kind of shut out Apps from their device we've been promised that this will not be the case. According to Andy Lees, Sr. Vice President of Mobile Communications Business, the WP7S experience will be codependent on it's relationship with the development community. App developers will be essential for this (or any other) OS to be successful and although Apple has the 2 year head start, Microsoft has the patience and the money to demand attention from the dev community.
So what we basically have here is the teaser trailer of what can be a really good movie or an over-hyped bust. Time will definitely tell if Microsoft can steal the show but they've definitely been able to turn heads. If Microsoft has learned from their previous mistakes with the WinMo platform then we should expect to see a more focused experience and a clear marketing approach. In either case, Microsoft has teased with enough eye candy to make this Apple enthusiast take a second look.
Twas the night before the keynote and all through the land; The bloggers were a frenzy For what was at hand. They boarded their planes handling laptops with care. In hopes that his Steveness and Tablet would soon be there.
We all know by tomorrow it just wouldn't matter...
This is my obligatory pre-Tablet/Unicorn Tears/Mythical unannounced "game changing," "print industry saving," "god-tablet" post. Tomorrow once there is real news to report we'll bring you the condensed version of tomorrow's Apple Keynote.
Thank you to all the men and women that have brought us all kinds of Tablet/Slate/whatever news and rumors. In specific thanks to Gizmodo.com, TUAW.com, and AppleInsider.com for all the great stories - check those out and see how they panned out after tomorrow's event.
Yesterday Google officially made the Nexus One aka the Google Phone official; now what? After all but promising that the Nexus One will cure cancer, Google announced the latest (and currently greatest) handset running the Android OS. The much hyped news bouncing around the interwebs was that Google will change the way people buy cellphones and "change the mobile industry." If that was their intention they fell short of doing so.
To mark the occasion Google created a new way to buy the phone - direct from Google. Once you make the appropriate button clicks you're ready to make your purchase of a brand new unlocked Nexus One for $530 or a T-Mobile subsidized handset for $180 with a 2-year agreement.
As I mentioned earlier, spec wise the phone is a beast. Aesthetically it IS the prettiest phone to come out of HTC - whatever that means I'll leave up to you; and pricing isn't horrible for an unlocked phone. But I repeat: This. Will. Not. Change. The. Mobile. Industry.
