Macs tend to be a bit underpowered when it comes to the GPU, but information gleaned from the firmware of the most recent Mac mini suggests that future iMacs and Mac Pros may be getting a beefy spec bump soon. Specifically, the latest Mac mini OpenGL firmware reference support for the NVIDIA GeForce 480 and the

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Mac mini Firmware Leaks Future Desktop Mac GPUs

Section: Macintosh / Apple Hardware , Desktop Macs , Mac mini , Operating Systems , Mac OS X , Snow Leopard Instead of simply allowing today’s iPhone 4 pre-order to keep us Apple fanboys happy, Steve also felt it necessary to unveil the new Mac Mini. This new desktop computer now comes with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 320GB memory, and NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics. However, that’s not the best part. At only $699, the cheapest Mac available (although it doesn’t come with a screen, keyboard, or mouse) also comes with an HDMI port and SD card reader on the back. Quite impressive. While you can up the specs on that machine, you are also able to purchase a dual 500GB Mac Mini that runs Snow Leopard server edition, depending on what you plan on using the machine for. Both models come with a complete redesign to look much more like the existing MacBook Pros and Macs, with an aluminum enclosure and removable bottom panel for access to memory. If you feel so inclined as to purchase one, head over to Apple’s online store . They’re turning away iPhone 4 buyers to make room in the store for you

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Apple announces new Mac Mini with HDMI port and SD slot, new design

Section: Macintosh / Apple Hardware , Desktop Macs , Mac mini , Operating Systems , Mac OS X , Snow Leopard Instead of simply allowing today’s iPhone 4 pre-order to keep us Apple fanboys happy, Steve also felt it necessary to unveil the new Mac Mini. This new desktop computer now comes with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 320GB memory, and NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics. However, that’s not the best part. At only $699, the cheapest Mac available (although it doesn’t come with a screen, keyboard, or mouse) also comes with an HDMI port and SD card reader on the back. Quite impressive. While you can up the specs on that machine, you are also able to purchase a dual 500GB Mac Mini that runs Snow Leopard server edition, depending on what you plan on using the machine for. Both models come with a complete redesign to look much more like the existing MacBook Pros and Macs, with an aluminum enclosure and removable bottom panel for access to memory. If you feel so inclined as to purchase one, head over to Apple’s online store . They’re turning away iPhone 4 buyers to make room in the store for you. Full Story » | Written by Josh Holat for Appletell . | Comment on this Article »

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Apple announces new Mac Mini with HDMI port and SD slot, new design

Section: Macintosh / Apple Hardware , Desktop Macs , Mac mini , Operating Systems , Mac OS X , Snow Leopard Instead of simply allowing today’s iPhone 4 pre-order to keep us Apple fanboys happy, Steve also felt it necessary to unveil the new Mac Mini. This new desktop computer now comes with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 320GB memory, and NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics. However, that’s not the best part. At only $699, the cheapest Mac available (although it doesn’t come with a screen, keyboard, or mouse) also comes with an HDMI port and SD card reader on the back. Quite impressive. While you can up the specs on that machine, you are also able to purchase a dual 500GB Mac Mini that runs Snow Leopard server edition, depending on what you plan on using the machine for. Both models come with a complete redesign to look much more like the existing MacBook Pros and Macs, with an aluminum enclosure and removable bottom panel for access to memory. If you feel so inclined as to purchase one, head over to Apple’s online store

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Apple announces new Mac Mini with HDMI port and SD slot, new design

Section: Mac Software , Games , Reviews Genre: Puzzle Format: Download Developer: Ludosity Mac Publisher: Ludosity System Requirements: OS: Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later, CPU: Intel Mac, Memory: 1 GB System RAM, Graphics: 128mb video RAM and Shader Model 2.0 Hard Drive: 500mb or more free space Review Computer: 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo aluminum MacBook, 2GB DDR3 memory, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics Network Feature: None Processor Compatibility: Intel Only Price: $9.99 ESRB Rating: None Availability: Out now Demo: Try It Many games on a Mac are designed to be non-stop thrill rides, while others are all about using your analytical skills to get to the goal. Bob Came in Pieces is much more a game that makes you use your brain. As a physics based puzzle game, it provides you with a series of challenges, many of which focus on your analytical and visual skills. The challenges get progressively more difficult. While some of you may find that advancing level to be a good thing, many players will be frustrated by needing to try and re-try a task before it is complete. If you do not like repetition then you should consider trying a different title.  The story itself is a little light. You begin crash landed on Earth, a stranded alien on a strange world. Any potential drama this situation may have created is completely glossed over, and we get right down to the task at hand. Your job is to get your engine back together, re-assemble your ship and get back on the road. Of course, this is a puzzle game, so we can forgive the lack of drama and assume that our hero is merely extremely pragmatic in nature. In standard video game fashion, things are never simple. Your crashed ship is in about 50 pieces scattered through a variety of worlds. You will have to navigate your way through the dark depths of caves, trek through the jungle and make you way through endless plains of ice. On the whole, there are 14 different levels you will need to complete to finish the game. Most of these levels will be little more than fodder for the game, and a chance to build your skills up. It is the last five levels that will really be of interest to players over the age of 12. As a matter of fact, players who are over that age limit will quickly realize you are playing the same levels over and over again with a different skin. This can be quite annoying given that this is a puzzle game, and that the bulk of the challenge should be coming from level design. The in-game physics are fairly good, but there is one notable exception—sometimes, you will get stuck in front of a wall, or in it, for no obvious reason.

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Appletell reviews Bob Came in Pieces for Mac OS X

Section: Mac Software , Miscellaneous / Other , System Utilities , Reviews Provides: File compression and archiving Developer: Smith Micro System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.4 for basic functionality Review Computer: 2.2GHz 13” Macbook Pro, 2GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM Network Feature: Yes Processor Compatibility: Universal Price: $79.99 Availability: Out now Do we still need Stuffit? OS X can generate .zip archives. Gmail can handle attachments up to 20 MB. Dropbox allows you to share up to 2GB. The real issue is that bandwidth is readily available. Storage is cheap. You get a high-speed connection with your cup of coffee. And while we once had to compress all our JPGs on to a diskette and contend with 1 MB file transfer restrictions, I regularly email print-quality photos and just assume Google will store them forever, for free. So, what does Stuffit Deluxe 2010 have to offer? The big add is automating the compression, transfer, and organization of your files. If you’re someone who does a lot of backups and stores them via FTP, you’ll like Stuffit Deluxe (SD). Casual users, however, simply won’t need these many options, or can find ones just as good or better for free. Stuffit Expander is the Grand Old Man of the suite, and it still works in the same way; drop just about any compressed file into it, and it expands it in the same location. The program was so ubiquitous that it was practically system software. Now, of course, OS X handles most of the common file formats itself.

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Appletell reviews Stuffit Deluxe 2010

Section: Mac Software , Audio / Video , Reviews Provides: Video transitions and filters Manufacturer: Boinx and Noise Industries System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.5.6, Final Cut Pro/Express or Adobe After Effects, ATI or NVIDIA graphics processor (integrated Intel graphics processors not supported) Review Computer: 2.2GHz 13” Macbook Pro, 2GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM Network Feature: No Processor Compatibility: Universal Price: $49 (15 day free trial available) Availability: Out now Lisa: Okay, I finished editing the gardening sequence. Homer: Okay, from here we star wipe to a glamour shot of Flanders paying his bills, then we star wipe to Flanders brushing his teeth… Lisa: Dad, there are other wipes besides star wipes. Editing is “the invisible art” because the better it is, the less the audience notices it. But there are times when maybe you want to add a lot of energy to a transition, or call attention to an edit for dramatic or comedic reasons. Or maybe you’re trying to recreate a music video from the 80s . Boinx FxTiles are a set of splashy transitions and video filters that give you just that. Breaking the image down into a set of squares and rectangles, they allow you to shatter, rotate, and flip the image, breaking it up and reassembling it as the next shot. They’re not subtle; more along the lines of adding 200 point type to the head of a chapter. There are several presets included, but they’re mainly variations on a theme, allowing you to control how many rows and columns you want to break your image down to, and how the transition will be handled (like, say, spinning them on the Y axis, or having them flip around in random order). FxTiles gives you a great degree of control, though, over the details of the transitions; in addition to the rows and columns, most feature controls over which axis, angle, and other aspects of the transition, allowing you to tweak it to whichever degree you need. You can view a video of the various effects in action at the FxTiles website . I mentioned music videos earlier, and FxTiles is perfect for that sort of work: big, flashy cuts designed to keep the audience dazzled for short periods of time. Or, in small video packages with a lot of excitement, like a sports wrap-up.

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Appletell reviews Boinx FxTiles for Final Cut and After Effects

Section: Mac Software , Games , Reviews Category: Real Time Strategy Developer: The Creative Assembly Mac Publisher: Feral Interactive System Requirements: Intel-based Mac (PPC support forthcoming), Mac OS X v10.5.8, 1.6GHz processor, 512 MB RAM, 128MB VRAM, 5GB Hard drive space, DVD drive Review Computer: 2.2GHz 13” Macbook Pro, 2GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM Network Feature: Yes Processor Compatibility: Intel (PPC support forthcoming) Price: $30 Availability: Out now Rome: Total War (RTW) is an interesting mix of real time strategy and city management. You spend part of the game controlling the units of a mighty army, smiting your enemies in the field, and another (smaller) part of the game managing your cities, populations and, of course, money in order to support the men in the field. The meat of the game is in the battles, of course, as I doubt few would pay for a real time strategy game based on bartering for the price of wheat. RTW’s combat is unit-based, each with its own strengths and weaknesses which you’ll need to learn to field properly. Archers can wreck havoc on spearmen, for example, but are easily wiped out if forced to fight hand-to-hand. There’s a great variety of units, all based on actual Roman legions. Place them properly and the legendary Roman discipline will allow you to crush a much larger force. Several of the units also have special attacks, such as flaming missiles that can cause an enemy to break and run away from the battle or that can set buildings on fire to distract town defenders. You control the POV with a camera that can zoom down to give you a grunt’s-eye-view of the battle or fly up to watch the units muster against each other. Indeed, morale is just as important as combat strength; the best units in the game won’t do much good if they’re running away from the enemy. There are a lot of factors that contribute to this: the size of their force against the enemy, how many casualties they’ve taken, and the presence of a nearby leader. But RTW isn’t just a series of battles, it takes place in a larger scenario of your personal quest to gain power in the Roman Senate and to manage your resources. You do this by capturing enemy cities (either by siege or by defeating their defenders in a battle). Once you’ve captured the city, you have to build it up, investing in military structures that will let you train better troops, buildings (like temples) to keep your citizens happy, or government buildings and roads which will contribute to the growth and prosperity

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Appletell reviews Rome: Total War Gold Edition for Mac OS X

Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iPhone , iPod touch , iPod , iPod Family / Legacy , iPod classic , iPod shuffle , iPod nano , iTunes , Mac Software , Audio / Video , Reviews Category: Music Developer: Equinux System Requirements: PowerPC G4 or Intel-based Mac, OS X 10.5, Internet connection Review Computer: 2.2GHz 13” Macbook Pro, 2GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM Network Feature: Yes (required) Processor Compatibility: Universal Price: $39.95 (Cover Scout 3) $29.95 (SongGenie 2) Availability: Out now SongGenie 2 (SG) is the sister program to CoverScout 3 (CS), automating the tasks of searching the internet for missing data on your music files. While CoverScout searched for album art (natch), SongGenie 2 is the other half of finding missing song info—and to my mind the more important—identifying the title, artist, and album, and also searching for lyrics, in case you need to use your iPod as an impromptu karaoke machine. Like CS, you select the song (or group of songs), tell it to identify, and off it goes onto the internet to find the missing info. Nine times out of ten, it worked flawlessly. Obviously, the more information it has to work with, the easier it is to find the missing data. In a few cases, SG even replaced incorrect information—like the mix playlist I titled as all coming from one album—but for the most part it only deals with blank data or things that are obviously computer filenames. There were a few oddities, however, when identifying a group of songs that came from one album. On certain tracks, it would correctly ID the album; on others it would suggest they came from a greatest hits or compilation track. On Quiet Riot’s “Cum on Feel the Noize,” it decided the song was performed by “Various Artists.” These oddities, however, were few and far between. It was also unable to identify and retitle the more obscure songs and radio shows in my library, but I expected that…though it would be nice to think that somewhere out there an audiophile had taken the trouble to enter Phil Harris’s “Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens” into a database of lyrics. If you want to check the search results against the song itself, SG includes a helpful button that will play the file. If you have a lot of music, CoverScout 3 and SongGenie 2 take a lot of the repetition out of finding song info, automating the searching, copying, and pasting. You’ll need to spend just a little time making sure the results are perfect, but if you care enough about your music to use this program, you’re going to do that, anyway

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Appletell reviews SongGenie 2

Section: Mac Software , Games Virtual Programming continues to be one of the most prolific Mac game publishers, this time bringing us The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. This 11-hour chapter—which also includes an HD remastering of Escape from Butcher Bay—serves as a prequel to the movies “Pitch Black” and “The Chronicles of Riddick,” starring Vin Diesel as the anti-hero Richard B. Riddick. A first-person shooter, Assault on Dark Athena also features the same enhanced graphics as the Escape From Butcher Bay remake, as well as improved artificial intelligence. Escape From Butcher Bay details Riddick’s attempt to break out of a prison called Butcher Bay, during which he acquires his distinctive eyeshine ability that lets him see in the dark. Assault on Dark Athena finds Riddick unwillingly taken aboard a huge mercenary ship, the Dark Athena. Both games emphasize stealth combat as Riddick sneaks through a variety of environments and uses any means at his disposal to eliminate enemies. Fans of the movies will be happy to know that actor Vin Diesel reprises his film role to voice the main character, but the list of sci-fi names doesn’t end there. Lance Henricksen (“Aliens”), Wade Williams (“Prison Break”), and Michelle Forbes (Syfy’s “Battlestar Galactica”) all make appearances

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The Chronicles of Riddick released for Mac