Last year’s student-teacher-family educational promotion put up to a quarter pound (i.e. iPod touch precooked weight) of stuff in our hands and Apple’s 2011 come on is for a little plastic card redeemable for virtual goods — which would you rather have?
This will be billed as Amazon’s attempt to compete with the Apple’s Mac App Store, which it is. However, the larger narrative is what’s important here — the era of largely empty boxes baring little plastic disks encoded with bits of information is coming to an end.
Peruse the computer section of Craigslist in just about any city and you will find them — software pirates selling hand-lettered disks out of their parents’ basements or grubby walkups. With multiple online identities and invariably a “legitimate” low-cost PC repair business as a front, they’ve got apps you want at unbelievably low prices.
As promised, the mothership has delivered. It’s all dependent on a Mac OS X 10.6.6, which is available via Software Update. With some A-list launch partners, as well as the company’s own iWork, iLife and Aperture on offer there’s a lot to dig into and mull over as Apple makes an obvious play at hijacking the CES hype.
Whether you want an unofficial tethering app or pirated copies of just about everything, jailbreaking and the Cydia Store for iPhone are the way to go. Now, the creator of that online storefront of a kind is bringing a subset of that voodoo to the Mac.
The shiny new Mac Store will be opening soon, according to all accounts, but when it opens it will be missing some features that users have been accustomed to on the iOS4 App Store for the iPhone and iPad.
Gaming performance issues introduced with the release of Mac OS X 10.6.4 have been fixed and then some. Moreover, those eager beavers (and beaverettes) at Valve are pushing Apple to keep raising their operating system game.
The schedule for mothership’s fifth OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard update has slipped due to a change in focus to fixing graphics driver issues introduced by the last operating system update. Thereupon, OS X 10.6.5 Update isn’t expected until the Fall, perhaps in conjunction with the company’s regular Fall Mac hardware updates.
The best game ever? If you’re a free range Mac purist, now you can find out for yourself. Best of all the system requirements aren’t too step and Valve’s offering this title at a greatly reduced price.
Mac gaming has lagged the Windows world for more than a decade. The launch of Steam for the fairer platform has done a lot to even things up and Mac lovers, especially portable users, have signed up in droves.
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