Geneva Auto Show: Lamborghini Aventador

Today at the Geneva auto show Lamborghini finally took the wraps off of their latest super car, and the replacement for the aging Murcielago, the Aventador.

Take a look at it for yourself:

Isn't it beautiful? If you've been following Lamborghini you should be able to make out an un-mistakable resemblance to the Reventon. Unfortunately I can't really delve further into details, drivetrain and mechanicals aren't exactly my specialty. For those details head to Car and Driver.

New Lion Features to Get Hyped Over

Along with the refresh to the MacBrook Pro line, Apple announced a developer preview and a slew of new features that will be found in the next iteration of OS X, fittingly named Lion. Previously revealed in the Back to the Mac event last year were the App Store, LaunchPad, Mission Control, and complete support for full screen applications. Now added to that list are: increased usage of gestures with the trackpad and Magic Mouse, Autosave, Versions, Resume, Mail 5, and Air Drop.

Increased Gesture Usage
If you've ever used a Magic Mouse, you'll know how limited it's functionality is straight out of the box. To really take advantage of the revolutionary Multi-Touch interface you need a third part app like MagicPrefs or BetterTouchTool. Clearly Apple looks to rectify this with Lion, though in the demo video below only a trackpad is used a Magic Mouse was used in the Back to the Mac demo.

Shoot, no more video. Got taken down due to copyright claims by Apple.

Autosave
As you can clearly tell by the name of the feature, you no longer have to consciously save the file or document that you are working on, Lion will handle it for you. There is also a lock feature which means that you can close your documents and keep them safe from unintended changes being automatically saved. You can also choose to revert the document to the state it was in upon opening.

Versions
This is a feature that acts much in the same manner as Time Machine, only for continuously saved versions of your documents. Not only will this allow you to revert to a previous version of the file, but you can also copy and paste directly from those older versions.

Resume
Much in the way multi-tasking works on the iOS devices, this means that when you open up and return to an application, things will be as they were when you lasted used it.

Mail 5
With Lion, as expected, Mail gets a refresh. It now has adopted an appearance similar to that of the Mail found on the iPad. Not only that, mailboxes are now handled in a bar across the top of the application rather than a menu on the side giving the app a much cleaner appearance.

Air Drop
This feature allows easy file-sharing with any Mac. You simply click the icon in the Finder to see who else are using Air Drop and simply drag and drop files onto their name.

All of these newly revealed features are getting me more and more excited for Lion's release this summer. I'll certainly be there on day one to pick up my copy.

The Blisteringly Fast Thunderbolt

Today Apple has released a refresh for the MacBook Pro line, and one of the most notable new features is the Thunderbolt port technology courtesy of Intel. To me this represents a pretty monumental shift in ports and how peripherals will interact with our computers. Consider this: Thunderbolt is twice as fast as USB 3.0. For those of you unfamiliar with USB 3.0, it's the latest iteration of the popularly used port and provides over ten times the speed of the previous generation. Thunderbolt is twice as fast as THAT. To give you a better idea, check out this graph from the MacBook Pro page on the Apple website:

It's pretty insane isn't it? I'm really curious to see how this plays out, and how much a role that Thunderbolt will play in the future of Apple's computers and computers in general.

Game Review - Kingdom Hearts Re:coded

Re:coded is not the first time that Kingdom Hearts has hit the DS, the phenomenon originally came to the DS in 2009 with 358/2 Days. While an overall great game, the story was deep and filled with emotion and the multiplayer Mission Mode was an absolute blast, it had some pretty hard to miss issues most notably repetition through the mission system, gameplay that seriously dragged down the pacing of combat, a character upgrade system that often felt limiting more than anything else and not much in the way of post-game content beyond playing Mission Mode. Now, Re:coded, while it has it's own issues which I will go into detail about later, improves upon and fixes almost every single issue that detracted from Days.

To start off I'll discuss everything, and that's pretty close to absolutely everything, that is fantastic about Re:coded. Most notable and worthy of discussion is the gameplay. It's an absolute blast. There is an  incredible amount of variety, a level of variety that any game will have difficulty matching. You certainly hack and slash away at Heartless as you typically do in a Kingdom Hearts game, but with Re:coded things change up in the boss stage for each world. Traverse Town becomes an auto-side-scrolling platformer, Wonderland becomes a shooter of sorts, and most impressively Olympus Colosseum takes the form of a turn-based RPG of old. With this shift in gameplay from world to world you're forced to stay on your toes, and it's absolutely fantastic. While this shifts in gameplay from world to world occupy most of the spotlight, you shouldn't overlook the regular gameplay whose improvements over Days make it just as fun and impressive. Where with Days to use magic or items you needed to sift through menus, drastically slowing down the pace and the ultimate enjoyment of the combat, Days is a breath of fresh air with the Deck Commands system lifted straight from PSP title Birth By Sleep. Now all commands, attack, magic, and items are all in one streamlined flow that is navigated via the L trigger and the D-pad. This does take away the L trigger's responsibility from camera control as in Days, but it is a necessary and welcome sacrifice. Also worthy of mention are keyblades and their functionality in the game. Where in Days they had stats tied them, ultimately making earlier keyblades obsolete and useless the further you got in the game, in Re:coded they have no effect on your stats and the overclock ability tree, as you battle a gauge fills up and grants you new abilities, means that each has it's own use in different situations.

Stats and character growth proved to be somewhat frustrating with Days, as previously stated feeling limiting and frustrating more than anything else. Re:coded turns that completely around with the stats matrix. The stats matrix is an inventive and enjoyable new way to manage character growth, taking inspiration from from computers and motherboards allowing players to place stat chips on the board and giving them freedom to choose which direction that trhey want to go and unlock new abilities as they go and in awesome bonus connecting two CPU's activates "Dual Processing" which doubles the benefit of the chips between the two. This effectively makes the placement of chips very strategic and important and if not properly utilized can negatively effect the player later in the game.

Another area that Re:coded excels in is replay-value and post-game content. As stated earlier, the only real source of replay-value that Days presented to the player was Mission Mode and while an absolute blast with friends is limited in value to those playing solo. While Re:coded lacks that multiplayer element, it has numerous post-game activities to occupy the single player. From trophies and the Avatar Menu, there are hours of enjoyment to be had after the credits roll. Trophies encourage the player to complete worlds below certain times, collect and complete different items and tasks and more. There is even incentive to collect trophies, with an unlockable secret ending that sets up the next title in the series, Dream Drop Distance. The Avatar Menu brings a more social element to the game and series, utilizing the tag mode feature where player exchange avatars, system sector layers and scratch cards. With literally hundreds available, collecting avatar parts has become somewhat of an obsession for me. In fact, I am about 134 hours into the game, and there is still plenty left for me to do.

Now onto the slightly problematic elements of the game. The two that really stick out are the re-usage of worlds already visited in the series and the overall story quality and length. While I don't find much issue with either of these seeing as the only other Kingdom Hearts game I've played in 358/2 Days, they are issues large enough in the community to warrant discussion. When considering the worlds used in the game, it needs to be remembered that this is essentially a revisit of the original Kingdom Hearts so it should be no surprise that it uses much of the same worlds from that game. I do understand frustration over the repetition, Re:coded and Days share some of the same worlds in fact, but seeing how relatively new I am to the series I can take no points away for that. The story issues on the other hand I can understand a little more. In relation to the rest of the series it really makes no contribution and does very little to move the story along, and tied in with that lengthwise the story is somewhat lacking, I myself clocking in at about 15 hours by the time the credits rolled. Though insignificant and short, I still found the story incredibly enjoyable and the wealth of post-game content (as discussed earlier) more than makes up for those length issues.

Overall, Kingdom Hearts Re:coded proves to be a fantastic game. Though it has it's own share of small problems, it makes great strides over Days and proves to start of the year for the DS off with a bang.

Overall Score - 9/10

Apple Knows It's Way Around the Mouse and the Trackpad

I've noticed that when a couple of my friends at UWT whip out they're wireless mice to use with their laptops in place of the trackpad (which I fully understand, especially seeing that they're using PCs which almost certainly means an unpleasant trackpad) that they have to use a USB dongle to connect the mouse to their computer. I got to wondering why this is. Do they're computer not have bluetooth? Do the mice use a totally different radio frequency? Whatever the answer is, it just doesn't make sense to me. Why take up a USB port when it's possible to just connect straight up to the computer via bluetooth just as my Magic Mouse does with my MacBook? And then, as I brought up earlier, there is the trackpad. On my Mac Book it's one large panel of touch-sensitive glass, the entire trackpad is the button. Where with PC's the trackpad is small and ugly with two buttons of course for left and right-click. On my MacBook the trackpad does so much more than any other, as well, thanks to multi-touch. I can switch applications with the swipe of four fingers, I can move back and forth in any web browser with the swipe of three fingers. Swiping down with four fingers shows me all open applications with expose and swiping up clears the screen and displays the desktop. In fact, having the experience of both the MacBook's trackpad and the Magic Mouse I find using PCs (whether desktop or laptop) incredibly unpleasant as it feels archaic and primitive. When it comes down to it, Apple certainly knows it's way around the mouse and the trackpad. They were the ones to pioneer the mouse after all.

Awesome Mac Apps (Updated)

Once I had my own computer, I gained the freedom to download any and however many apps I wanted without my dad being all paranoid. With this newfound freedom, I really started to pay attention more to Mac|Life and they're occasional articles about great apps for the Mac. Thanks to them I have found, and now currently use, several fantastic applications. And I branched out from there, I began browsing Apple's OS X downloads site and I now make full use of the Mac App Store. With that said, here are some excellent apps that 'd like to share with you:

iTunes Controllers
This category is pretty full, so I thought I'd make a general category and share the best that I've encountered. I have gone through several, and I have to say that the best I have found are: Bowtie, Tunesbar, and TunesArt. Each one has it's share of positives and negatives: Bowtie is great in it's customizability but I just don't like how the often it gets in the way, Tunesbar is fantastic in that all you have to do is scroll up to the menu bar and it pops down but that creates issues when making normal use of the menu bar. By far the best out of these three is TunesArt. It offers features of both Bowtie and Tunesbar without getting in the way or becoming an annoyance. To check what song you are listening to all you have to do is hover your cursor over the menu bar icon and a drop-down appears showing you the information and artwork for the track and this dropdown displays itself whenever you start listening to a new track. It even integrates functions that you often need another app for, most notably finding and placing lyrics in the ID3 tags of your songs. Last.fm integration is pretty standard fare with iTunes controllers, but TunesArt goes even further and allows for iPod scrobbling. I have yet to encounter another controller that actually lets you do that. I'll stick with the official Last.fm app but it makes me happy to know when I want to scrobble from my iPod I'm no longer stuck to just one application.

BetterTouchTool/MagicPrefs
This application can't quite be as universally recommended seeing as it is an enhancement of the Magic Mouse's abilities, but it deserves mention for what it does. Right out of the box, or more like plastic container, the Magic Mouse does do a whole lot. Looking at it's preference pane, all you can do is toggle tracking speed and basic functions. There is next to zero utilization of the numerous possibilities afforded by it's multi-touch interface. MagicPrefs fixes this wonderfully, allowing full customizability of the interface. You can set different functions to different fingered clicks (as in one, two, three fingered), different taps, two and three finger swipes, and dragging and pinching actions. While it can become a bit of a mess when you have several functions set, it's absolutely amazing what you can make the Magic Mouse do with MagicPrefs. There is another application of this category that deserves note, BetterTouchTool. It offers the same level of customization as MagicPrefs (if not perhaps a little more) in a different interface where you set up and add gestures to a list, it even allows you to customize the multi-touch trackpad. And as an odd bonus it allows you the function of window snapping. A welcome feature, though more than a little out of place.

EDIT: I now condemn MagicPrefs, after making things overly difficult I thought I'd try out all my set gestures in BetterTouchTool and what do you know, they all work without any of the trouble that they had in MagicPrefs. How could I have been so blind for so long?

Anxiety
This is a great little app that lives in your menubar that allows to easily add and manages tasks on your to-do list across both iCal and Mail. You can set it to open up and appear at start-up, giving you a constant reminder of what you need to get done.

iExtractMP3
This is an excellent little app I found thanks to Mac|Life. If you've ever wanted to have only the audio of a Youtube video, this app will do just that. It accepts any .flv files that you've downloaded, and as the app is named, extracts the audio for you and drops it into your source music folder. Definitely a nice little utility to have on hand.

Caffeine
Have you ever been reading a PDF or watching a video and frustratingly have your MacBooks backlight auto-dim on you after an extended period of inactivity? This has happened to me more times than I can count, and thanks to Mac|Life I came across this excellent utility. It sits up in the menubar, and when you want your MacBook's backlight to remain on just click on the coffee cup icon and it holds off that energy-saving feature.

Album Artwork Assistant
Every now and then when I import an album into iTunes, iTunes will fail in retrieving any artwork. If you're OCD about how tidy your music library is like I am, this is an annoying and frustrating inconvenience. Album Artwork Assistant others a nice and simple solution, you just highlight the songs that you want to add artwork to and open the application and it will search Google for you to find the artwork.

Soon to come:
TrashMe, AppFresh, HyperDock, Growl