A Hint In The Steam

If you seen the homepage of Steam, then you saw this little banner about how to join the new Steam UI beta and all the details. What I'm posting this is the Valve icon in there. If you been reading about it, Valve is supposed to be porting most of their games to the Mac with a Steam Mac client starting with Portal 2. What I'm wondering is is the icon a preview of what the Dock icon for Steam will look like?

With Valve announcing that a Mac client was coming in April, we Steam gamers have only 15 days, from today, left in this month. Steam even had a Mac beta signup page but not sure how they are picking people or even if they sent out "invites" for the Mac beta yet.

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Steaming Your Mac

So, the rumors on Valve's Steam game client is that it'll be coming to the Mac soon. Steam released a client beta with a new 2.0-ish interface not too long ago which looks nice. There has been screenshots of Mac icons inside the Windows folder that contains all the Steam files. No one knows if it will be real or not but it's possible they are hinting at a Mac client.

The question is what will this mean for people why have Macs and have a separate Windows pc just for gaming? Well, I guess they will use it for other p.c. gaming. But That would mean no more having to use VMWare Fusion just to play Steam. They will now be able to play it naturally on their Macs without any issues. As someone who plays on Steam (mainly Team Fortress 2) I'm excited about a Mac client. In my opinion, they should of had one seeing as there's not many Mac games out there. I can see this as a huge plus for Valve.

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Thoughts App

Sometime during the last few weeks a new app has been released for the Mac called Thoughts. I learned about this app in development on Flickr. It’s basically an app that you’d use to take notes with. Now, I don’t go into a lot of detail of the app, thus it being a quick review, but MacSlice’s Kevindid a video that tells you, for the demo, you are allowed only 3 books and 3 pages per book. He also notes that it’s $34.52 US (24 Euros). It’s almost similar to Word in a way. You can add photos, export the pages, change font type, size colors and add tables.

You can download the trial at this link: http://tr.im/KOlr.

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Unboxing And Review of Logitech Z5 Omnidirectional Speakers

This is the unboxing

This is the review.

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What Are Your Thoughts On The New Macs?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYPuuPpGfnU

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A Personal Review Of The New Macs

So, on October 10th, 2009, Apple came out with brand spanking new Macs. They made updates to the iMacs, Mac Mini, MacBook, the mouse and remote. Here's my impressions of what I seen on the Apple website.

The new iMacs: I must say, I'm rather impressed by the new design. I love that it has 4 USB ports and now an SD card slot just below the SuperDrive. They now come in 21.5 and 27 inches for a bigger display for watching your HD content. Sadly, no Blu-Ray but if it was added, it would really make the new iMac worth playing movies on it. I don't think I care much for a 27 inch screen or the fact it now has a LED-backlit display. Sounds like a pain in the ass should it ever go out. 21.5 inches should be no bigger than a 20 inch iMac like the one I got. If I had the money, I would get one tricked out but just the 21.5" one. 27" is just too much for myself.

The Mac Mini: Still the same price with more memory and a quicker processor. The new thing is a "special version" of the Mac Mini with Snow Leopard Server installed. Now, a Mac Mini would be perfect for the person who wants a Mac but can't afford the higher priced models. Now, if this is as powerful as they say, you could just make it your Windows machine via BootCamp if you already have a Mac. I would do that since I already have my iMac.

The new MacBook: Pretty much it's the all white MacBook but with a new unibody design. It has more rounded corners, which look better than the older model. The built in 7 hour battery is a slight turn off for me. If I were to have one to use, I don't want to waste the battery if I'm in a stable place. I would use the power cord but the battery is built in so that means that I'm stuck to either risk killing my battery's life via the power cord or just using the battery as the main source. I can tell you now that most of my battery ran electronics tend to never be the best after a short while for some reason. Like the new iMac it has the LED-backlit display and now has the multi-touch trackpad. My only tiny issue is why not offer black again? Or, why not make the body the same as the MacBook Pros? By the way... Do anyone still use ethernet adaptors? They could had put maybe an SD card slit there or something. But, that's me and my thinking.

Magic Mouse and the new Apple Remote: Here are the final two that I have to be honest and say that I hate. I know I haven't touched either one but something about them throws me off to hate them. First, the Magic Mouse. it's wireless and comes standard with all new Macs but I think this mouse is the worse next to the Mighty Mouse itself. Looks like it's way too much work just to click and scroll. I'm used to the physical actions of a 2 button mouse and a scroll wheel. The new Apple Remote... Just ugly. I commend them for making it look like a scroll wheel iPod Nano but I'm sure you have to press buttons. I will say that if the wheel pard was an actual scroll wheel to control the volume or something, I would be impressed. The mouse cost about 70 bucks while the remote goes for around 20. The remote shouldn't even cost that much and as for the Magic Mouse, you could save that money and just get a Wacom Bamboo Touch.

So far, that's my honest thoughts of the new mac stuff. If you agree or disagree, feel free to post a comment below.

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magiccammac.cc:276

If you never encountered this strange error in your Mac's Terminal app, then you're lucky. I, sadly, had made friends with this error gibberish sometime last month. I admit that I only use Terminal to make it talk and say swear words (example here). Yesterday, I figured that if there's no way to find the answer, Google would find one. Boy, did it ever. One of the more reliable links on the Google search was to a post on the Apple forums. Skimming for anything that looked like a solution, someone posted a link saying "more help here". Clicking on it, it went to a site that explains what's causing it. And just what was causing the error? Two Google Talk plugins in the QuickTime folder.

(via: http://timesinker.blogspot.com/2009/05/weird-magiccam-error-message-from.html)

It is coming from the Google Talk's virtual video devices (but it's probably not actually causing any trouble directly - see below) - which are installed here:
/Library/QuickTime/Google Camera Adapter 0.component

And the MacCam related functions are in these two files:
/Library/QuickTime/Google Camera Adapter 0.component/Contents/MacOS/Google Camera Adapter 0
Run strings on it (strings "/Library/QuickTime/Google Camera Adapter 0.component/Contents/MacOS/Google Camera Adapter 0" | grep -i magiccam) and you get:
/Volumes/BuildData/PulseData/data/recipes/320452156/base/branches/googletalkplugin_release_branch/googleclient/talk/magicflute/magiccam/magiccammac.cc

Anyway it's not actually harmful and generally if you've a problem this is unlikely to be the cause of it. You can just [re]move the files as necessary to get rid the messages though your problem may well be somewhere else but at least you can eliminate it as a possible cause.

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