Monthly Archives: October 2012

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Mac switchover

So this generation I’m mostly running Mac stuff while my laptop ages; I’ll be waiting for next year to pick up PC stuff so I can run PSO2.

I’ve unintentionally ended up being a total convert partly due to work supporting iOS devices exclusively.

Some impressions:

  • Macbook:  Engineering is phenomenal.  Keyboard is great.  OS works well and I’m very happy that XCode runs like a charm, plus a ton of dev stuff is available out of the box due to its BSD underpinnings.  Beyond that I’m not exactly blown away; I managed to kernel panic the machine twice in the first day.  Office is slow as shit on this machine.  Apple’s iWork suite is nice, esp. Keynote, but I’m not exactly shitting my pants in excitement here.  I could buy two good Windows laptops for the price of one MBP.  This is not insignificant.
  • iPad 2:  Apple has the tablet market under wraps.  This much I am convinced of.  Keynote on a projector is the best fucking thing ever.  Add a bluetooth keyboard and I don’t even usually bring a laptop around with me anymore.  Apple is just too far ahead in the app market department, and they know it.  Also, as you may be aware I play a fuckton of Miku Flick and the various Cave games, and they’re even better on a full-size tablet than they were on the iPod.
  • iPhone 4S:  Apple does not have the phone market conquered, as far as I’m concerned.  Android and Win7 are shaping up to be great competitors in this class of device, and as much as I like iOS, I like Swype even better.  I’ve found that the primary differentiator between my iOS and Android phone is that I play a lot more games and listen to more music on the iOS device.  Being able to load Keynote slides and give presentations off the phone is also amazing, but at the end of the day, I rarely do this since I’m usually carrying the iPad around.

I guess what I’m concluding is basically this: the iPhone isn’t as impressive as I was hoping it would be, nor the macbook, for the price; the iPad is still where it’s at and I expect Apple will be dominating the tablet market for some time.  I’m actually thinking about switching over to a next-gen Nexus phone when my contract is up, but I doubt my workplace will support it, sadly.

Gaming

Seasonal update

Down the rabbit hole…

  • Persona 4 Arena (PS3)!  I decided that I liked Aigis, the character, enough to try to learn Aigis, the fighting game character, and have been training hard to become non-shitty at the game. So far, I’ve managed to climb the ranks to a PSR in the mid-200s, which actually is probably pretty bad, but the game is fun, so I’d say I’m getting my $60’s worth.
  • Chrono Trigger (iOS):  After watching a Japanese let’s-play on niconico, I thought I’d swap my iPhone over to Japanese language and pay the Squeenix tax for some nostalgia.
    • I’d conclude that Ted Woolsey is the man who made Chrono Trigger the phenomenon that it was.  The game is good, sure, but it’s not the same without Woolsey’s translation.
  • Miku Flick/02 (iOS):  I haven’t been posting about this very much, but I did buy the game and all the DLC packs.  I’m irritated that the leaderboards are swamped with cheaters, but it’s pretty obvious who’s genuine and who’s not, and let’s face it, I’m using the game to work on my Japanese sight-reading skills and to enjoy some Vocaloid songs.  I’m currently sitting at #30 on the global total leaderboards (including cheaters) but this is probably mostly because I bought the DLC packs; my position for initial songs is closer to #100.  I don’t have any top-10 scores this time around, but this is because there are no livetune songs in the initial packs.  I’ll be shooting for the S-rank on livetune’s Yellow eventually.
  • Petit Rock Shooter (iOS): Uh, it’s Angry Birds with incredibly expensive DLC. Fun, mind you, but no way am I buying into this DLC stuff…actually I’m sorta angry about this; it’s just a giant cash-in.  You know what would be amazing?  Scorched Earth with BRS characters.

Incidentally, I didn’t buy Mushi Futari’s Black Label release because the price and DLC cost was … underwhelming.  I spent that money on buying music albums from Amazon/iTunes instead.

…Meanwhile, I’m waiting for Torchlight 2 to be released on Mac, but I don’t have time for it right now — priorities, priorities!

Also there hasn’t been much interesting Android/iPhone stuff lately to post about.  There was a game where you roll the phone to swing a hula hoop around random illustrated characters, but most everything else has been uninteresting, uninspired tile puzzle, block-kuzushi, random-pantyshot type crapola.  I swear, I should get involved in the Android shitware business, I could make better and more hilarious games than these fuckers.