If you have a drivers license, you’re probably painfully aware of the price you pay every time you fill up your tank. Catamount Software can’t solve the world’s energy crisis, but they at least offer a way to keep track of it all. MPG is an app that allows you to keep track of your fuel and service expense for multiple vehicles. True to its name it keeps track of your miles per gallon and updates the number every time you fill up. More after the jump.
Ever since the days of playing Tetris on my old black and white Gameboy I’ve held a special place in my heart for blocks falling from the sky. And interestedly enough, I haven’t seen anyone make improvements to that D-Pad and A and B buttons I used all those years ago. I can honestly say that I didn’t expect to see a good Tetris port on the iPhone/Touch. Not that I didn’t expect to see Tetris, but I thought they would try to overlay buttons on the screen (a’la Yeti3D) and things would just get awkward. Thankfully, they didn’t. Full review after the jump.
Feeds is the third RSS app I’ve ever used for the iPhone, and easily the best so far. It may not have the fancy effects that smartRSS has, but it makes up for it with a much better cleaner layout. Perhaps one of it’s greatest advantages is also a sizable drawback, it’s based on the Google Reader API, meaning if you don’t use Google Reader you’re out of luck.
Yay, another weekly feature! Since the dev scene on the iPhone and Touch is constantly updating their projects (that is to say, evolving), we’d be remiss if we didn’t continue to cover the games and applications we review. Since we only have a few reviews up right now, this week is going to be pretty short (but memorable!).
iDope (v0.3.3)
In an obvious response to our less then stellar review, a new version of iDope was released this week. Offering at least two new features, this update is sure to make the game last at least 5 minutes longer.
All uncalled for harshness aside, here’s the changes we noticed:
Limit on carrying capacity. Where as before you could carry any number of drugs in your jacket (737928 units of LSD? That’s a freakin’ huge jacket!), 0.3.3 imposes a 100 unit limit on the drugs you can carry. This is a great idea, but there’s one small problem. It doesn’t work. Sure, when you press the “Buy All” button the dialog box tells you you’re buying 100 units, but when you go back to your Jacket you will have bought the maximum amount that your money could buy. One has to wonder if any of these things are actually tested before they’re put up for download.
Jacket Store.
With the attempted limit on carrying capacity, you can now buy expanded bag space at the Jacket Shop. Choose from Pockets (+50), Minimal (+100), Bulk (+250), and Professional (+500). Once you start buying more slots the prices of the additions scale up. Of course, none of that matters since you can still buy unlimited units of drugs. Nice try.
Subways are dangerous!
To add to the authentic atmosphere of New York, you can now be mugged in the subway. I’m not sure why I’m in the subway when I’m traveling everywhere via airport, but that obviously doesn’t matter. Mugging amounts to a small amount of cash and a medium to large amount of health being taken away from you.
Hospital and health regen.
The local hospital as taken lessons from the new jacket store, and healing yourself scales up every time you buy their services. To offset the rising healthcare prices, you’ll now automatically regain 5 health every time you travel to a new location.
That’s all for this Week in Updates. Stayed tuned for more (and hopefully better) updates next week!
Pros: Good concept, one of the first true 3D games for the platform.
Cons: May ruin your childhood memories of Pac-Man. Also, the onscreen control interface is less than reliable.
Joining the masses as yet another Pac-Man clone, comes iPac3D. Based off the Yeti3D engine by Derek John Evans, this latest reincarnation barely resembles the Pac-Man you grew up with. It is however a fairly polished and stable game, it does have a few quirks of course, but it is free after all.
As my fellow blogger Fred has recently pointed out, we have a new reviews section and rating system for mobile applications for the iPhone/iPod touch. In honor of that, I decided I’d post a quick top ten list of the best apps in my opinion for the iPhone (this list only includes apps that I currently have installed).
Installer.app - I know it’s a cop out, but without it installing apps is rather frustrating.
Fring - Support for VoIP, GoogleTalk, Twitter, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, and ICQ.
Touchpad - Awesome app for controlling your computer from across the room.
iPhysics - Countless hours of fun
Tris - The most polished version of Tetris available for the iPhone.
MxTube - Easy to use application for downloading and saving YouTube videos.
Someone recently asked me if I knew of a free Usenet newsreader for Mac OS X, I do in fact. Pineapple News 0.9, it’s free and lightweight. Check it out if you’re in need of one.
From MacUpdate:
Pineapple News is a USENET newsreader for Mac OS X. It is primarily an offline reader, but it has features and user interface conventions that make it easy to use online also. As you can see, it uses the traditional three-pane paradigm. Pineapple News can decode binary attachments in several formats: yenc, uuencode, MIME base64, and MIME inline. If an attachment is spread across two or more message files, it will automatically search through all downloaded messages in the current newsgroup, find the necessary parts, and stitch them back together. Currently, the program can’t deal with RARs, PARs, or NZB files, but I’ll likely add support for them, if there is enough interest.
Mozilla announced that Beta 5 will be the last beta for Firefox 3, the next release will be Release Candidate 1 (RC1) which should be out in early May. Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla’s vice president of engineering also noted that they are currently on-track for a June release of Firefox 3.0 Final.
Firefox holds a 17.83% market share according to Net Applications latest report, with Internet Explorer taking 74.80%, and Apple’s Safari trailing with just 5.82%. Both Firefox and Safari have seen significant gains in market share over the past 6 months, while Internet Explorer has seen a nearly 4% decrease in market share since October 2007.
When Firefox 3.0 hits final, I believe it will have a very postitive effect on Firefox’s market share.
The guys over at MacHeist have put together another great bundle this year. Check out the list of apps below.
Snapz Pro X and Pixelmator have yet to be unlocked, but if you purchase the bundle now you’ll still get it when it become unlocked. You can pick up a copy here for just $49.
Being the evil and sneaky person I am, I thought I’d put up download links to the applications given away during MacHeist that do not require a serial number to use. So now you can enjoy some free Mac software without even registering an account @ MacHeist (though you really should).
