Steam for Mac is Coming… Tomorrow!

That’s right ladies and gents, the day we’ve all been waiting for. Valve is releasing the Mac version of Steam tomorrow, along with launch titles such as Portal and Torchlight. Every Wednesday after that, new games will be released for Mac. Portal 2 will be the first time Valve releases a game for PC, Mac, and XBox 360 simultaneously. After that, every game Valve develops will launch on these three platforms at the same time, so Mac gamers will be playing a new Valve game on the same day that PC gamers do!

Friends, this action by Valve will single-handedly overturn the misconception that “Macs don’t play games.” PC gamers win: they can switch to Mac. Mac gamers win: we get more games. Linux users lose. Everybody wins!

Mac NTFS Solution

So I just got my new MacBook Pro right? No sooner do I hook up my 2TB external hard drive, formatted in NTFS of course, I find that the Mac will read the data, but I cannot edit, add, or delete and files or folders.

Of course I just think something is wrong with the access permissions. I call Apple’s tech support, and I immediately find out (thanks to the friendly tech support guy, who was very nice during the entire interaction) that a Mac cannot write to an NTFS drive larger than four gigabytes.

Weird, I thought to myself (as I often do). If it can be read, accessed, why can’t it be written to? Frustrated, I decided to only use that drive with my PC and wait until I got a bigger drive I could format in FAT32 to move everything onto.

As a last desperate measure, I googled “NTFS Mac” and was surprised to find that a third-party driver for Mac that allows to read NTFS volumes of any size. It was free and installed in about five minutes. And it works.

This got my to wondering, however: if it was so easy for me to set it up, and so simple, why couldn’t Apple just include that functionality to begin with?

I only have one theory: Apple wants to kill NTFS. But why? Wouldn’t it be easier to allow people to use NTFS, but only format new drives in FAT32? That would allow for the phase-out of NTFS, but not limit the use of the drives for people switching from PC’s, which is one of Apple’s target demographics.

Back From the Army; New Toys

So I spent the last 3.5 months in Missouri at US Army Initial Entry Training, during which I had little to no internet access. I’m back now, and I immediately went out and bought a brand new MacBook Pro, complete with upgraded 1680×1050 display, as well as a 64GB iPad. I also got a new cell phone, the Motorola Droid.

Motorola Droid. USA Today website not included.

Apple MacBook Pro 15-Inch. Only the one in the picture doesn't have the HD display that I got for mine!

Apple iPad 64GB. Mine has a bazillion apps though 🙂

I’ll probably be reviewing these, as well as some new games I have and apps for all of the above. Stay tuned!

3 iPhone Apps I Want to See

So far I have loved my iPod Touch to death. That said, there are some apps I’ve looked for that simply weren’t there, and this post is a call-out to some of my favorite websites and online services that I think need to have their own official iPhone apps.

1. Meebo

This site is a great way to run all your IM accounts in a single browser window without needing to install anything on our computer. The simplicity of their design and their ability to constantly add new features and support for more protocols means they need to develop an iPhone app that’s just as easy and versatile.

2. Mibbit

Much like Meebo, this site makes it so you don’t need to install anything on your computer, only this site is for IRC instead of IM protocols. It’s quick and easy to get going, and I think they could design a very nice iPhone app for IRC chatting.

3. uTorrent

There is already a very nice iPhone interface available for uTorrent, but as often as it is updated it still is lacking in a lot of ways. It could seriously benefit from a real dev team instead of one poor guy trying to do everything himself. Plus, it would be nice to have an actual app instead of just a web interface.

My First iPod Touch

Well, I finally managed to get my first iPod touch. I knew if I got anything less than the 64 GB I would regret it. Thankfully, I have a Best Buy card and an employee discount to boot, so I financed most of it interest free.

By far this is the single best investment I’ve ever made. I am so completely happy. It has made life so much easier for me, plus it’s just so much fun to play with!

I’ll paste more info as I play with it.

MICROSOFT OMFG WTF?!?!

For those of you who don’t know, the Microsoft Xbox 360 has the ability to store any files (such as profiles or saved games) on a removable memory card that can then be taken to a different Xbox. Pretty nifty, except Microsoft only makes 512 MB cards, which is about as capable of holding data on it as a peanut shell is of holding the Encyclopedia Britannica. Not too useful.

Microsoft lost to this thing.

So thank God that Datel makes a memory card that holds 2 or 4 GB of data, and can be upgraded via microSD card to hold up to 16 GB! Once again, a third party saves Microsoft’s ass.

But it seems Microsoft isn’t too happy that people are buying a competing product. Instead of improving their own offering, what is Microsoft’s solution? To eliminate the competition by making all “unauthorized” memory cards cease to operate.

So now I have a $30 piece of plastic that can’t do shit. At least I can reformat the microSD card and use it in my phone.

Microsoft: FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOUR MOTHER TOO. I FUCKING HATE YOUR GODDAMN FACE YOU MOTHERFUCKER.

PeerBlock Picks Up Where PeerGuardian Left Off

Those of you who are downloading music and videos illegally (Bad! Naughty!) should know that nearly 100% of P2P activities are monitored by anti-filesharing organizations and government organizations who are perfectly happy reporting your activity to the authorities and getting you sued by the MAFIAA.

For a long time people have been using PeerGuardian 2, a program that uses blocklists that you choose to block your computer’s internet access with specific IP addresses. There are a few lists that are specifically made to keep your torrent client from talking to IP addresses of known P2P monitoring organizations and therefore keeping you out of trouble and out of jail. This way you can avoid anyone having solid evidence of your online activities being less-than-legal.