iTunes 12 Days of Christmas

For the 4th day of iTunes 12 Days of Christmas, a free song is provided. The previous day we could download Trivial Pursuit for iPhone/iPod Touch.

Unreal Engine 3 on iPhone 3GS

While Unreal Engine 3 (or at least UT3 that is based on it) isn’t yet available on mac, an iPhone 3GS version of the engine has been presented ! We can then expect porting of even more complex games than NOVA.

iPhone : Inferno free today / PacMan CE discount / FAST free

Inferno game (that reminds in some way Gauntlet) is provided for free today at the AppStore. It includes 50 levels, and was priced 0,99$. We can watch a video here.

Pac Man Championship Edition is now priced  0,99$ (base/extendable version), Seed 1-Rise of Darkness’s RPG is free, and F.A.S.T is also provided for free (downloadable content can be purchased).

NI HOLIDAY SELECTION 2009

Native Instruments provides HOLIDAY SELECTION 2009 (Compilation Vol. 2 Library once installed), a selection of 40 free patchs for Kore Player (661 Mb of samples). The installer requires an Intel mac, however we just have to modify the script in distribution.dist file (open the package) in order for it to install on PPC mac.

We can listen to audio demos here and watch a great video there (28 minutes length, that demoes all of the 40 patchs, with great stereo sound quality and large image size).

Pro Tools HD 8.0.3 : Snow Leopard support

Pro Tools HD 8.0.3 update is available here for Intel mac. It brings support for Snow Leopard, however it still run with 32 bits kernel mode only. In fact 64 bits kernel mode doesn’t provide significant performance gain, and larger memory adressing can be achieved using a separate 64 bits cli Unix process (memory server), as used in Kontakt and other players. Moreover 64 bits kernel requires updated audio cards drivers.

Bryce 3.5 update

A 6.3 update to Bryce is available. It brings the following features : many bug fixes, now supports Snow Leopard, full universal binary (previously some PPC code was left and had to be emulated through Rosetta on Intel mac).

StarWars Force Unleashed mac version preorder

The mac version of Star Wars The Force Unleashed : Ultimate Sith Edition is in preorder (5$ discount), and will then be available very soon (before late December).

iPhone : NOVA released

NOVA game has been released at the AppStore. First user reviews are all great, and it is priced 6,99$ only (5,49 euros). We can watch a video here. That looks really close to Halo on a G4 !

Vue 8 : PLE / Pioneer / Artist demo

E-on Software provides 3 demo versions of its Vue 8 suites : Vue 8 Pioneer (for personnal use only, renders a logo, files are compatible with full versions), and Vue 8 PLE (full version of Vue 8 Infinite/xStream, however renders a watermark – sill for non-commercial use -, and files aren’t compatible with the full version). We can also buy Themes Packs for Vue 8 Pioneer (Science Fiction, Fantasyn Fairy Tales, priced 46,95$ each, whose render does not include a logo). Finally we can download a demo of Vue 8 Artist (no scenes save, rendering limited to 640×480, animations restricted to 5s, limited content, and 30 days trial only).

As we can see in this comparative charts, Vue 8 Artist demo (corresponds in fact to either Vue 8 Esprit, Sudio or Complete – the choice is provided at install time – all 3 products are from the same family, Vue for 3D Artists) includes more features than Vue 8 Pioneer (these ones can be purchased as additional modules). Vue 8 PLE is the demo version of Vue 8 Infinite/xStream, that belongs to the Vue for Professionals products family.

Chrome and Jetty : Websockets

Latest developer versions of Chrome (at least for Windows) include support for WebSockets. Moreover a Jetty extension is available, that adds support for this communication mode on the server side.

Adobe migrating to WebKit ?

While Adobe AIR 2 solution is based both on Flash and WebKit, its Creative Suite will use WebKit as default for extensions development. Following Apple, Google, Nokia, and Palm, Adobe now understands that WebKit is the future of web applications, and prepares migrating.

To remember, Adobe made great softwares in early 90’s, on mac System 7 (exclusively, as they couldn’t do such things on Windows… 3.1), then bought Cyberstudio’s GoLive in late 90’s (was cancelled in 2008…), developed PDF (the basis of the MacOSX Quartz rendering/compositing engine since 2000), and SVG standard.

Later Adobe acquired Macromedia, starting the decline of Director and Freehand, and focused mainly on Flash (that Macromedia hadn’t originally targeted to application development solution – Flash has been used mainly for ads and animations, that is non pro level). They even put aside their own SVG !

TC Electronic M30 Reverb : 1.0.2 update

A 1.0.2 update to TC Electronic M30 Reverb plugin is available (through a link in a sent email). This version is aimed at fixing problems on some macs, and decay time parameter display. The Audio Unit plugin is now listed in Logic 9 on PowerPC (G4), and works fine.