Three future Lion-compatibility updates to look forward to

Microsoft Office
As reported by MacLife, an update for Microsoft's suite of productivity applications is coming that brings full support of the new features that Lion incorporates into OS X. Frustratingly, the update is apparently still a few months away despite the clear amount of time Microsoft had to work on the update prior to the full public release of the operating system. What I most anticipate with this update is the utilization of Auto Save and Versions in Word, also notable is the full screen support in Word. I will certainly get more mileage out of Word's full screen mode with that button in the upper right-hand corner of the window than I ever had previously.

Rockmelt
Having recently been updated to improve Lion stability, it was announced that a further update would follow adding more complete support of Lion features like full-screen mode and the hiding of scroll bars. Also to be looked for in the update is the support of the dictionary look-up gesture, which upon my testing clearly is not supported in the applications current version. This is definitely a higher anticipated update of mine, the thought of having Rockmelt integrate seamlessly with Lion new features and capabilities is definitely a great one.

Last.fm Desktop Client
While the current version of the Last.fm client is compatible with Lion, it is not compatible with the latest version (10.4) of iTunes that brings compatibility with Lion features and full 64-bit and Cocoa support. That transition to 64-bit breaks the compatibility between the two apps as the Last.fm app is strictly 32-bit. Because of this, I and I am sure many other Mac Last.fm users, have used the brilliance of the Time Machine to restore the previous version of iTunes and regain full scribbling ability. This update will allow Last.fm users to update to the newest version of iTunes and enjoy the performance improvements brought by 64-bit and Cocoa support as well as that Lion functionality.

EDIT: The Last.fm update is now live. Go and download it now.

Mac App Store Picks: Games

The Mac App Store has been available for a couple months now, and the selection of games keeps increasing. Whether they're iOS ports or full-fledged console title ports there is a lot that the App Store has to offer. In this post I will give a quick overview of some of the gems that I've managed to find:

Rainbow Blocks

A simple and quite addicting little puzzle game where the objective is to match and eliminate groups of blocks of the same color, the larger the group the more points you get. Each update generally adds features and makes the app overall slicker, but beware of a few bugs in the latest update.

Minesweeper

As the app is titled, this is minesweeper plain and simple. As with Rainbow Block with each update more feature and polish are brought to the app. Now you can open up an Inspector while you play to keep track of various stats.

A Monster Ate My Homework

This is a rather charming game that is based upon an iOS game. The objective of this physics-based puzzle game is to fire ball and topple the monsters off of the platform while leaving only the homework left. Multiple difficulties, plenty of challenge and future packs of levels promise plenty of replay value.

Flight Control

This is an iOS classic brought to the desktop. The addictive aim of this game is to guide aircraft into their respective landing areas while avoiding collisions. Online and local leader boards provide plenty of drive and motivation to keep on pushing for an ever higher high score.

Asphalt 6

Another game originally of the iOS platform, Asphalt 6 flawlessly makes the transition and takes the top spot as the best racing game currently available through the app store. The graphics are pretty top-notch, the gameplay is incredibly fun and addictive, the tracks are well-designed and offer plenty of variety, and the selection of cars is absolutely drool-worthy. The inclusion of online multiplayer and leader boards round out the impressive package.

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