VMWare has announced the availability of the beta version of Fusion 3.1, and it includes significant enhancements that the user community has been awaiting. Perhaps most eagerly desired are the graphics enhancements for gamers and 3D applications. OpenGL 2.1 is now supported on Windows Vista and Windows 7. They claim better DirectX 9.0 SM3 performance as well (and hopefully that means more DirectX 9.0C app compatibility). Other new features include USB "Easy Connect", a feature that is designed to help Fusion remember your preferred settings for each USB device. You can configure larger virtual machines as well, with the maximum virtual disk expanded from 950 GB to 2 TB. They now support up to 8-way symmetric multiprocessing as well. Boot Camp virtual machines run a but more quickly–especially during the boot process, and they have improved the PC migration process. You can download the beta here , and if you do, it’s a good idea to voluntarily participate in the user experience improvement program so they can use your data to make sure it’s ready for prime time before the final release.

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Section: Mac Software , Games , Reviews Category: Real-time strategy Developer: Firaxis System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.5.8, Intel Core 2 Duo, 1.83GHz, 1GB RAM, 1GB hard drive space, 128MB video card Review Computer: 2.2GHz 13” Macbook Pro, 2GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM Network Feature: Yes Processor Compatibility: Intel Price: $39.99 Rated: E for Everyone (10+) Availability: Out now I might like Civilization IV: Colonization better if it were just called “Colonization,” rather than associating it with probably the best game series of all time . Then again, maybe not; its restrictive gameplay and limited amount of power in a “god game” make it something of a throwback to the early days of graphic gameplay. You are, as you might expect, a colonist who lands in the New World (either North America or the islands of the Carribean). You establish towns, exploit the land and the natives, and sell your goods back to the motherland, where you recruit more settlers to further expand your hold in the west. Your ultimate goals are self-sufficiency and, finally, rebellion. Stir up enough independent feelings, then you can break away from your homeland and, if you can survive the military reprisal, win the game. Colonization is very much a micro-management game, your population is measured by individual colonists who can be assigned specific tasks such as harvesting food or other raw materials (cotton, sugar, silver, etc.) from the land surrounding your town, or converting those raw materials into finished goods. You can assign any colonist to any task, but specialists will do it better. You can recruit colonists and specialists from Europe (or they may offer to come in search of religious freedom), or you can send missionaries to native villages in hopes of gaining converts to live in your towns.  If you buddy up to the natives, you can send your colonists to their villages to get specialist training. Managing your population and keeping them on task will eat up half your time, with the other half being devoted to trade, carting your goods around to the other colonists or shipping them back to Europe. Producing finished goods (which are more valuable) is a multi-step process; you have to have a citizen harvesting, say, tobacco, as well as another citizen working to convert the tobacco into cigars. You add more people to a particular job, or improve the buildings to make them more productive. And that’s the game, really, to try to build up trade while also building up the desire for independence (that’s a job, too; you add workers to your Town Hall). There’s very little exploration and practially no technology research (beyond building new structures that give you access to new units). Raising armies is a matter of assigning colonists to defend a city (or hiring professional troops).

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Square-Enix recently brought its popular Final Fantasy series to the iPhone, and now another heavy-hitter, Capcom, is bringing yet another marquee title to the platform. That title is Street Fighter — and Street Fighter IV, a port of the latest installment in the series, is now available for purchase in the App Store for $9.99. But wait, that’s a fighting game. On the iPhone. Which has no physical controls. Sure, there’s been a few to date, with mixed results, but there must be a reason the genre hasn’t caught on with developers with the ferocity of, say, accelerometer-based driving games, no? That’s definitely what I thought, but I purchased and downloaded the game anyway, against my better instincts, because I love the series, notably Street Fighter IV for the PS3. And because when I was considering a purchase, it had only received five-star reviews, which is rare even in the early going for any iPhone game. Luckily, I was not disappointed

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Almost as soon as the iPad was shown in Steve Jobs’ hands back in late January, speculation ran rampant about whether or not some of the stock iPhone applications were missing in action, or simply consolidated into some kind of secret “widget mode.” MacRumors is letting the air out of the so-called “secret widget mode,” a theory that missing iPhone applications have been included on the iPad, revealed only by way of some kind of Mac OS X Dashboard-style magic (with a five-finger gesture being proposed). Among the missing apps are Stocks, Weather, Voice Memo, Clock and Calculator. But according to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber , his sources dispute that there’s any kind of “secret widget mode” and that the missing apps were in fact scrapped by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. “It’s not that Apple couldn’t just create bigger versions of these apps and have them run on the iPad,” Gruber writes. “It wasn’t a technical problem, it was a design problem. There were, internally to Apple (of course), versions of these apps (or least some of them) with upscaled iPad-sized graphics, but otherwise the same UI and layout as the iPhone versions. “Ends up that just blowing up iPhone apps to fill the iPad screen looks and feels weird, even if you use higher-resolution graphics so that nothing looks pixelated,” Gruber continues. “So they were scrapped by you-know-who. Perhaps they’ll appear on the iPad in some re-imagined form this summer with OS 4.0, but when the iPad ships next month, there won’t be versions of these apps. At least that’s the story I’ve heard from a few well-informed little birdies.” Furthermore, Gruber notes that while iPhone games will work well on the iPad, simpler “non-game iPhone applications” may feel strange on the new device, regardless of which method they are run (blown up to full screen or at native resolution as a small box in the center of the screen). It seems like the iPad will be an entirely new user experience, which will likely require a lot more app tweaking to make enhanced versions of existing apps work well. We’ll all know soon enough, as the Wi-Fi enabled iPad will finally be available on April 3…

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The folks over at Kotaku have really stumbled upon a gem. Twelve shots of the first game made specifically for the iPad have been released. The game is called Zen Bound 2, and the publishing company is regarding it as a "sequel and a revision" of the original iPhone game. The new game will include tons of new levels, more music and graphics that will exhibit the iPad’s capabilities as a gaming platform. According to a press release sent to Kotaku: "The graphical fidelity on the iPad far improves on the critically acclaimed visuals of the first game – the surfaces are brimming with detail, vivid colors and subdued tones." The game is expected will be available in the App Store around the same time as the iPad. We’ve included some of the photos below, but you can see the rest here .

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What are you going to do on your Mac today? The usual–emailing, updating your enemies list, removing the geotag data from all the photos of your secret underground lair? That all sounds pleasant enough, but to really flex your world-domination muscles, we found two turn-based strategy games that ape the classic gameplay of Risk. So whaddya say, after lunch we try to conquer the world?   Lux Delux   Hyperaddictive Lux Delux is different every time thanks to its staggering number of maps. The game starts you off with 10 built-in maps, then its Plugin Manager provides another 600-plus others for download–and more are coming out every day. Most of the maps are made by developers using Sillysoft’s Java-based SDK, but Lux Delux also has a built-in map editor so you can roll your own with no coding required. It’s hard to imagine ever getting bored. This keyboard-shaped map is a good example of the creativity in Lux Delux’s map selection. In each game, you can battle up to five opponents drawn from any mix of players using the same Mac, network players, and computer-controlled players.

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BioWare’s lush, epic role-playing game is huge in every sense of the word.   BioWare doesn’t release a ton of games, but when one is ready to roll, the developer throws everything it has at it–including a native version for the Mac. The company’s latest epic single-player role-playing game Dragon Age: Origins was all that our Xbox-, PS3-, and PC-gaming friends could talk about when it was released in November 2009, and now we get to join the party. As in every RPG, you start by creating a character, choosing their race (human, elf, or dwarf) and class (warrior, mage, or rogue). What’s novel is your character’s origin story. Each of the nine possible combinations of race and class unspool with a different opening story and conclude by sending you off to start training with the Grey Wardens, an elite band of fighters battling the demonic Darkspawn armies. There’s really no negotiating with evil, demonically possessed trees. BioWare has never made a casual RPG, and the robust Dragon Age is no exception. You’ll customize your character and their specialization, leading to variations like a berserker fighting style for your warrior, shape-shifting or healing abilities for your mage, and improved lock picking for your rogue

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Fortune magazine has completing its annual ranking for most admired company, and for the third year in a row, Apple was the highest fruit on the tree branch. Not only did a poll of 4,200 executives, directors and industry analysts rank Apple as the number one most admired company in Fortune magazine’s annual rankings, Cupertino won by the highest margin ever, according to Brainstorm Tech . That’s saying something, since the company has won three years in a row now. “What makes Apple so admired?” asks Christopher Tkaczyk in the magazine’s write-up on Apple. “Product, product, product. This is the company that changed the way we do everything from buy music to design products to engage with the world around us. Its track record for innovation and fierce consumer loyalty translates into tremendous respect across business’ highest ranks.” Particularly noteworthy on the Fortune ranking is that Apple has bested even its current rival for cellphone dominance, Google, who ranked at number two. The top ten list includes: 1. Apple 2.

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Talk about having the brakes applied before things even get going: The Federal judge overseeing Apple and Nokia’s patent violation case in Delaware has put things on hold pending the results of the ITC investigation. Looks like we’ll have a bit of waiting before the patent spat between Apple and Nokia heats up. According to The Mac Observer , the judge overseeing the patent dispute as “temporarily put the proceedings on hold while waiting for a U.S. International Trade Commission investigation to run its course.” Finnish cellphone giant Nokia lobbed the first strike back in October, with a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple over “claims that the wireless technology the company uses in most of its products violate patents the cell phone maker owns.” Less than two months later, Apple fired back with a lawsuit of its own against Nokia for the same reason. At the same time as the lawsuits were filed in Federal court in Delaware, both companies also lobbed their complaints at the ITC, who has agreed to formally launch an investigation into the situation. “Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours,” Apple General Counsel and senior vice president Bruce Sewell commented in December after Cupertino launched their countersuit against Nokia. It’s common knowledge that the Finnish cellphone maker has been hit hard by new competitors such as Apple in recent years, and they have thus far failed to come up with any compelling technology to hold the iPhone’s explosive growth at bay.

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Since when did Gordon Freeman become a Mac head? Actually, he’s apparently just hiding Valve’s really big secret. Tuaw , MacNN and MacRumors are all investigating the purpose behind the Valve-plus-Apple teaser images in their inboxes. Could it be that Valve is bringing the best of PC gaming over to the Mac? The rumor is that Valve has some sort of huge Mac announcement to make this week, though Mac news outlets everywhere are trying to pinpoint what exactly the announcement will entail. Will it be the release of a Mac OS X version of Steam? Will it be an epic port over of every Valve title known to man? Or is Portal 2 going to be released for both the PC and the Mac?  Over here at Mac|Life headquarters, we’d be incredibly happy to hear that any of these scenarios could turn into reality. After all, do you know what this means ? Frag fests with your best buddies still chained to their loud, unchic Windows computers, and more ways to utilize that Nvidia graphics processor in your iMac or MacBook Pro. Check below for a look at the photos in question, head over to the sources for a closer look, and let us know what you think in the comments! We really love this one: Image source: MacNN

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