Filed under: Cult of Mac, iPad

We've had more than a few inbound requests today, via email and Twitter, asking a slightly obsessive but completely understandable question: When can I pre-order my freakin' iPad?

True to form, the simple answer of "March 12th" is not adequate for the real early adopters, and they ask again: Yes, I know that, but what time can I push the button? When does the pre-order page go live on store.apple.com? Do I need to stay up all night, refreshing the page?

We understand. We know where you're coming from. We asked Apple PR to help you plan your day tomorrow, and they responded:

"Customers can pre-order online at apple.com at 5:30am Pacific time on Friday, March 12."

tweetmeme_url = "http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/11/how-soon-is-now-pre-order-timing-for-ipad/" tweetmeme_source = "tuaw" There you have it. 5:30 am PT, 8:30 am ET, and for those of you who happen to have US credit cards & shipping addresses but are currently elsewhere around the globe, here's the global clock. Now please have a nice cup of tea, sit down with a favorite book, and remember that it's still three more weeks until your new iPad hits your electrostatic digits.

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/flattop341/ / CC BY 2.0

TUAWHow soon is now? Pre-order timing for iPad confirmed, 5:30 am PT originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Safari 4.05 is out. Hit Software Update or go here to update yourself.

Filed under: Software Update, Security

New browser time -- and unfortunately, time to restart your Mac. Safari has been updated (for 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6 on the Mac side, and Windows XP/Vista/7 on the Win side); it includes the improvements noted:

• Performance improvements for Top Sites
• Stability improvements for plug-ins, and for sites with SVG graphics and online forms
• Fixes issues affecting settings changes to some Linksys routers and iWork.com user comments

There are also a slew of security fixes in this update; full list is in the continuation of this post, via the Apple Product Security mailing list.

The update weighs in at 31.8 MB on my Snow Leopard install, but your download size may vary. You can get it in Software Update or via the Safari download page.

Safari 4.0.5 is now available and addresses the following: ColorSync CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0040 Available for: Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Viewing a maliciously crafted image with an embedded color profile may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: An integer overflow, that could result in a heap buffer overflow, exists in the handling of images with an embedded color profile. Opening a maliciously crafted image with an embedded color profile may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. The issue is addressed by performing additional validation of color profiles. This issue does not affect Mac OS X systems. Credit to Sebastien Renaud of VUPEN Vulnerability Research Team for reporting this issue.
ImageIO CVE-ID: CVE-2009-2285 Available for: Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Viewing a maliciously crafted TIFF image may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A buffer underflow exists in ImageIO's handling of TIFF images. Viewing a maliciously crafted TIFF image may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved bounds checking. For Mac OS X v10.6 systems, this issue is addressed in Mac OS X v10.6.2. For Mac OS X v10.5 systems, this issue is addressed in Security Update 2010-001.
ImageIO CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0041 Available for: Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may result in sending data from Safari's memory to the website Description: An uninitialized memory access issue exists in ImageIO's handling of BMP images. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may result in sending data from Safari's memory to the website. This issue is addressed through improved memory handling and additional validation of BMP images. Credit to Matthew 'j00ru' Jurczyk of Hispasec for reporting this issue.
ImageIO CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0042 Available for: Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may result in sending data from Safari's memory to the website Description: An uninitialized memory access issue exists in ImageIO's handling of TIFF images. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may result in sending data from Safari's memory to the website. This issue is addressed through improved memory handling and additional validation of TIFF images. Credit to Matthew 'j00ru' Jurczyk of Hispasec for reporting this issue.
ImageIO CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0043 Available for: Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Processing a maliciously crafted TIFF image may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A memory corruption issue exists in the handling of TIFF images. Processing a maliciously crafted TIFF image may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory handling. Credit to Gus Mueller of Flying Meat for reporting this issue.
PubSub CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0044 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting or updating a feed may result in a cookie being set, even if Safari is configured to block cookies Description: An implementation issue exists in the handling of cookies set by RSS and Atom feeds. Visiting or updating a feed may result in a cookie being set, even if Safari is configured to block cookies via the "Accept Cookies" preference. This update addresses the issue by respecting the preference while updating or viewing feeds.
Safari CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0045 Available for: Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to arbitrary code execution Description: An issue in Safari's handling of external URL schemes may cause a local file to be opened in response to a URL encountered on a web page. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issue through improved validation of external URLs. This issue does not affect Mac OS X systems. Credit to Billy Rios and Microsoft Vulnerability Research (MSVR) for reporting this issue.
WebKit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0046 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A memory corruption issue exists in WebKit's handling of CSS format() arguments. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved handling of CSS format() arguments. Credit to Robert Swiecki of Google Inc. for reporting this issue.
WebKit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0047 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A use-after-free issue exists in the handling of HTML object element fallback content. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory reference tracking. Credit to wushi of team509, working with TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative for reporting this issue.
WebKit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0048 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A use-after-free issue exists in WebKit's parsing of XML documents. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory reference tracking.
Webkit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0049 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A use-after-free issue exists in the handling of HTML elements containing right-to-left displayed text. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory reference tracking. Credit to wushi&Z of team509 for reporting this issue.
WebKit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0050 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A use-after-free issue exists in WebKit's handling of incorrectly nested HTML tags. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory reference tracking. Credit to wushi&Z of team509 working with TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative for reporting this issue.
WebKit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0051 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to the disclosure of sensitive information Description: An implementation issue exists in WebKit's handling of cross-origin stylesheet requests. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may disclose the content of protected resources on another website. This update addresses the issue by performing additional validation on stylesheets that are loaded during a cross-origin request.
WebKit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0052 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A use-after-free issue exists in WebKit's handling of callbacks for HTML elements. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory reference tracking. Credit: Apple.
WebKit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0053 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A use-after-free issue exists in the rendering of content with a CSS display property set to 'run-in'. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory reference tracking. Credit to wushi of team509, working with TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative for reporting this issue.
WebKit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0054 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A use-after-free issue exists in WebKit's handling of HTML image elements. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory reference tracking. Credit: Apple.

TUAWSafari 4.0.5 now available in Software Update originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Floola 5.5

Floola is a freeware application to manage your iPod (any model except iPhone and iPod touch). It requires no installation and runs nicely under Mac OS X (10.3.9 or newer).

With Floola you can copy, rename, delete your music, videos and photos, add artwork and lyrics, manage playlists and keep your favorite podcasts updated. But there's a lot more, like on the fly conversion of incompatible files, support for YouTube and MySpace videos, duplicate detection and now even keep your Google calendars synched. All with one single click.

WHAT'S NEWVersion 5.5:

• nano5G and shuffle 3G support!
• “add this artwork to items in album” feature
• database update when needed
• updated languages
• added scrollbars to smart playlists edit window
• fixed issue where some files would not play entirely after edit operation
• files can be copied over from a network mapped drive

REQUIREMENTSMac OS X 10.3.9 or later.
PRICEFree
DEVELOPERTomas Camin
DOWNLOADS36654
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Devawriter 1.0.8.6Devawriter is a Full Classical Sanskrit (Devanagari) input for Macintosh with RTF, HTML amd JPG export.
WHAT'S NEWVersion 1.0.8.6:

• Floating palette with Transcription information is now complete! Details of composition of Conjunct Consonants now being implemented in the Floating Palette.
• Colourisation implemented for vowels and nukta consonants in floating palette help.

REQUIREMENTS

• Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later.
• Sanskrit2003 font (bundled in application)

PRICEFree
DEVELOPERRichmond Mathewson
DOWNLOADS1902
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Filed under: iPad

Is it too early to think about pre-ordering an iPad? The WSJ's Smart Money website looks at the options for early adopters, and comes to the surprising and novel conclusion that it costs more to buy early.

I'm not sure there's a polite way to put this, so with all due respect to Smart Money, let me say: Well, of course.

According to the writeup, waiting a few months before buying your iPad "could cut your bill substantially." Author Kelli B. Grant quotes Rob Enderle, who points out out that early technology is issued with premium pricing and is often "riddled with glitches." While those might be valid reasons to wait, there's not much evidence for Enderle's assertion that "the first iPhone owners were pretty unhappy." Aside from the price drop, first-gen iPhone buyers (like me and Mike S.) have been pretty darn happy.

tweetmeme_url = "http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/11/im-ok-youre-ok-its-cool-to-be-an-early-ipad-adopter/" tweetmeme_source = "tuaw" The early adopter tax, along with any associated tech risks, has not escaped the notice of most tech enthusiasts. In the end, it's not much of a factor. We don't buy early because it's a good deal. We don't buy early because it's fiscally sound. We buy early because the technology is cool and we simply cannot or do not want to wait for our preciousssssss to finally come home with us.

We are the People Who Stand In Line.

In my case, this is a hereditary condition. I blame my father, who would bring home the latest gadgets to an adoring family. We'd gather around the latest technology, glowing in its radiance, having an utter blast using toys that no one had ever heard of, let alone bought. We were the first family on the block (and possibly in the state) to have a microwave, a fax machine (the size, may I point out, of a small car), a personal computer, or a hand-held programmable calculator.

It wasn't just cool. It was awesome.

Thank you Dad, for being an early adopter. Thank you for showing me the way of the technology geek. Thank you for teaching me that you have to live life in the moment -- because if you don't seize today and play with it, tomorrow will never come.

Sure, something better and cheaper is always going to come along some day. Sure, the bugs will work their way out and the prices will work their way down. But if you don't hop aboard the adoption train, you're never going to get to Techsville.

Me? I'm going to buy a first-day ticket and have my fun from the get-go.

TUAWI'm OK, You're OK: It's cool to be an early iPad adopter originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fontcase 1.5Fontcase is a font management application that provides an elegant and powerful workflow to help you organise the fonts you have installed on your system. Designed to be an iPhoto for your fonts, Fontcase has a powerful tagging system, which is designed to let you control your fonts like you control your music.

Fontcase can preview every font for you, whether it is activated or not. There's no need to burden your system with thousands of fonts; you keep them all in Fontcase and activate them only when you need them. Other applications instantly recognise a new font without you having to restart them.

You can now share your fonts with other people just like iTunes pioneered this for music. There's one big difference: Fontcase lets you preview, then download fonts from shared libraries. A company no longer needs a centralized server to distribute new fonts through, it's all built into Fontcase.

WHAT'S NEWVersion 1.5:

• New: Auto-activation
• New: Duplicates Detection
• New: Automatic import of missing fonts
• New: Incremental export of both fonts and metadata
• Improved: Speed, launch time and cache size
• Fixed numerous bugs

REQUIREMENTSMac OS X 10.5 or later.
PRICE$56.00
DEVELOPERBohemian Coding
DOWNLOADS5870
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AutoSave4iWork 1.1AutoSave4iWork is a simple background process that checks for any unsaved documents within the iWork \'09 suite and asks their corresponding programs to save any changes.

When run, AutoSave4iWork will sit in your menu bar as a small diskette. You may click on the icon to bring down a menu and configure various options:

• Minutes Between Saves: This option sets the time interval between saves. By default, it performs a save every 5 minutes.
• Archive Saves: This option will create a zipped, time stamped archive of your document every time AutoSave4iWork requests a save. This will allow you to access previous versions of your documents as they are saved by this program.
• Auto Save Enabled For: These check boxes allow you to enable or disable which iWork applications will be checked by AutoSave4iWork for unsaved changes.

WHAT'S NEWVersion 1.1:

• Code completely rebuilt exclusively in Objective-C. "Save Now" menu item added.
• AutoSave4iWork no longer automatically saves new documents (AS4iW will of course notify you of this), as the save dialog will prevent other documents from auto-saving.
• New documents must be manually saved the first time.
• This minor issue will be addressed in a future release.

REQUIREMENTS

• Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later.
• Apple iWork \'09

PRICEFree
DEVELOPERRobert Finn
DOWNLOADS524
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Filed under: Gaming, Software, Developer, App Store

Julian Farrior hosted a panel here on day two of the 2010 Game Developers' Conference here in San Francisco, and he told a room of press and developers about his last year in the App Store. He had attended last year's conference with a partner while considering starting up an iPhone company, and that idea became Backflip Studios. Since the company was founded in April of 2009, they've gotten five apps in the top five, and made (Farrior said he'd be honest, because it was more interesting) $2.5 million in revenue so far.

tweetmeme_url = "http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/11/gdc-2010-backflip-studios-year-in-the-app-store/" tweetmeme_source = "tuaw" He revealed that a full $1m in that actually came straight from ad sales -- he's made deals with AdMob and other companies to put ads in his popular Paper Toss app, and he uses those ads both for straight revenue, as well as to promote his own games (more on that later in the talk). Farrior offered up a frank and honest look at what it was like to run an iPhone app company for a year.

First, he talked about what Backflip did right last year. He said that he'd hired a talented team to work on his applications, and that the company had focused on distribution, which they'd "leveraged heavily" -- the more people playing their games, the better. They'd kept production cycles short, kicking out apps in no more than 12 weeks, and he said they'd made the good decision to "design for the medium" and the audience, making shorter, casual games that took advantage of the iPhone's hardware and touchscreen.

He also talked a bit about the balance he ran between "house ads" (using ads in their free apps to try and create paid app sales) and outside ads -- during the months of December and January of this year, he pointed out how he'd balanced house ads to try and take advantage of the "holiday jump" in sales. As you can see in the slide below, even though he had to take a hit in actual ad sales, he saw a huge boost in App Store sales by using his free app to encourage sales of the paid app Ragdoll Blaster. Farrior said this was important: as an App Store developer, you have to leverage everything you can, not just depend on sales numbers for revenue.

He showed another interesting slide as well about "download catalysts" -- specific events in the life of his app that encouraged major boosts or drops in downloads and sales. Apple's "What We're Playing" section in iTunes gave a big boost to app sales (which is something we've heard echoed from many developers here at the show), but the biggest boost actually came from when he used the free app to advertise the lite version of his paid app -- the spot marked as "RDB Lite House Ads in Paper Toss" below. Users downloaded the free app, saw that there was another free app to download, picked it up, and liked it enough to buy the paid version. Again, he made it clear that even if you've got a paid app on the App Store, using "free impressions" in a free app can encourage sales.

One more thing to note from the chart below: the app's price drop did almost nothing. Farrior again echoed something else we've heard: price on the App Store doesn't necessarily matter as much for sales as most developers think it does. The main factors seem to be quality and promotion -- if people know about your app and like it, they'll buy it almost independent of price. Farrior also went over what went wrong in the past year. His company had a lot of problems with Harbor Havoc 3D, a paid app that they intended to be a "deeper, better version of Flight Control." Unfortunately, development ran a little long on the game, they missed some key features (there was no saving of the game's state when you kicked back out to the homescreen -- "I don't know how we missed that," Farrior admitted), and by the time it finally came to market (after an Apple rejection that wasted some press coverage they got), it got lost in the mix of line drawing games.

Additionally, Harbor Havoc actually suffered from the lite version release: Farrior said the lite version cut sales of the paid version in half. He says they're still working on figuring that one out -- there are a few levels in the paid game, and he mentioned possibly "picking the wrong one" for the lite version. But at any rate, Harbor Havoc, he said, shows that you "can't make an OK game and count on impressions" to pick up the slack. Before you even start thinking about splitting up revenue streams, the product has to support it.

For the future of Backflip, Farrior says he wants to grow the company -- this year, they hope to release five to ten free apps per quarter "to keep the pipe wide and the impressions high." They also want to test out in-app purchases, from adding extra content for players to possibly a model where they offer "a 99 cent buyout" to completely remove ads from their apps. He's also interested in turn-based gaming -- he says that Zynga and other companies have experimented with that form elsewhere, but that they're not quite there on the iPhone, and there's room for someone else to be. And he's also interested in licensed content -- even a simple game that would otherwise be anonymous can benefit from having a name or brand attached to it.

The panel was a very frank look at what Backflip Studios has done on the iPhone in the past year. Farrior mentioned that one of the things that drew him and his company to the platform was that he'd seen people who'd never played games before (his mom and sister) looking for game experiences on the platform. Clearly, their success is a result of providing exactly those experiences for customers.

TUAWGDC 2010: Backflip Studios' year in the App Store originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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GalleryExport for iPhoto 1.0.18GalleryExport for iPhoto... For the past two years, Ubermind has redefined how pro photographers work. Now we\'re bringing that same technology to iPhoto \'08!

Feature List

• Support for Gallery versions 1 and 2
• Support for multiple galleries
• Navigate albums on remote gallery using a Finder-like browser
• Create new albums in remote gallery
• Upload selected images to existing or new albums
• Map metadata to Gallery fields
• Fully multi-threaded for a very responsive user interface
• Keychain support
• Exports to both pre-defined and custom image sizes
• Built-in support for customized naming based on image title, file or album name, and more

WHAT'S NEWVersion 1.0.18: Release notes were unavailable when this listing was updated.
REQUIREMENTS

• Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later
• iPhoto \'08
• Gallery v1 or v2

PRICEFree
DEVELOPERÜbermind, Inc.
DOWNLOADS1627
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jalada Comrade Stalin 1.2.1

jalada Comrade Stalin is a historical real-time strategy game.

While playing you, in the role of Comrade Stalin, have to turn the Soviet Union into a mayor power and defend it against its enemies.

Upon starting your mission you land from your transport and organize your base. Here you conduct research, design and manufacture vehicles, build new structures and prepare your plans of global conquest. If the game goes badly you'll end up fighting last ditch battles here to defend your base from enemy attacks.

The game follows a rate based economy. This means, units are built while consuming resources at some rate. Production also happens at some rate. When production and consumption are at the same level, everything goes fine. If the production rate is higher than the consumption rate, then the extra produced resources can be stored in storage units. On the other hand when the production rate is lower than the consumption rate and there are no stored resources left, the functioning rate of the consumers is decreased in order to match the rate of the production.

Features:

• Historical missions,
• Large game maps to conquer,
• Intelligence Display sets objectives dynamically,
• Fast Play Interface,
• Quick Screen Navigation,
• Intranet multiplayer game,
• Challenging Computer-AI,
• Original sounds,
• Everything runs in real-time,
• And more …

WHAT'S NEWVersion 1.2.1:

• This update includes general application fixes.

REQUIREMENTSG4 1.5 GHz (or better) or Intel Mac
PRICE$19.99
DEVELOPERjalada GmbH
DOWNLOADS247
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jalada Children of Arisia 1.1.0jalada Children of Arisian is a futuristic real time strategy game.

Boskone formed an alliance with the Overlords of Delgon, and through a hyper-spatial tube the combined forces again attacked humanity. You landed upon the planet Medon, whose people had been fighting a losing war against Boskone. We must defeat the enemy...

You have to combat your enemies while developing your own war economy. Everything runs in real-time, as opposed to turn-based games where you always have to wait for your turn. The trick is to balance the effort put into building your economy and building an army to defend and attack the enemies.

The game features 10 large game maps to conquer, intelligence display that sets objectives dynamically, fast play Interface, quick screen navigation, fast find system for units and structures, multiplayer modes, challenging computer AI, many sound effects, gorgeous OpenGL graphics, and much more.
WHAT'S NEWVersion 1.1.0:

• This release delivers 4 brand new maps to conquer, as well as specific fixes or compatibility updates.

REQUIREMENTS

• 1.5 GHz PowerPC G4 or faster, or Intel Mac.
• OpenGL-supported graphics card.

PRICE$19.99
DEVELOPERjalada GmbH
DOWNLOADS543
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Filed under: OS, Software, Developer, iPhone

Developers have found further evidence of multitasking support for 3rd party iPhone apps in the latest beta (3.2 beta 4) of the iPhone SDK, and suggest that it will become a reality this summer.

9to5 Mac reports on a new line found deep within the latest iPhone SDK. Specifically, SpringBoard.js has a reference to a "multitasking dialog box" that did not appear in version 3.1.3 of the SDK; it seems that it's new to version 3.2. Of course, there's no assurance that this refers to 3rd party support for multitasking, but it is new.

Additionally, Appleinsider's souces with "proven track records" state that Apple has developed "a full-on solution" for 3rd-party multitasking which will be a part of iPhone OS 4.0. No specifics were given on how it will be pulled off or how it will address the two main concerns: battery life and security.

Let's assume that Apple's plan addresses the security issue, but battery life still presents a problem, one that was supposedly addressed by Push Notifications. Apple's remote notification service allows applications to offload polling processes to web servers. By keeping the update algorithms working off the device, the iPhone's battery is spared. Certainly the iPhone itself must take on the task of keeping all of those apps up and running.

It should also be noted that iPhone OS does not use a paged memory model. That means, multi-tasking applications must compete for the same memory space, making it more likely that apps will receive memory warnings and even crash when they use too much memory. That's not an issue in the one-app-at-a-time space, but a real problem with multitasking

Of course, the iPhone OS is already fully capable of multitasking. In order for non-Apple apps to participate, Apple must lift the current restrictions within the OS. That's something the company won't do until the iPhone engineers have devised the best and safest method. As for iPhone OS 4.0, Appleinsider notes that it's got "a ways to go." Hopefully we'll have an answer in July.

TUAWMore suggestions of multitasking in iPhone OS 4.0 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WriteIt! 4 4.2.2.1WriteIt! 4... After lots of time spent planning and collecting ideas I’d like to introduce my new Rich Text Editor. It features various tools that make text editing easy, such as templates, full screen text editing, live wordcount and more.
The Demo Tries Issue has now been fixed and increased to ten tries.Sorry for the inconvenience!
WHAT'S NEWVersion 4.2.2.1: Release notes were unavailable when this listing was updated.
REQUIREMENTSMac OS X 10.5 or later.
PRICE$12.00
DEVELOPERDavid Schiefer
DOWNLOADS332
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