Leopard
Get Address Book Bluetooth dialing back with Nova Media Phone plugins
One of the the stranger changes in Leopard was the loss of the ability to dial (and send text messages) from the Address Book to a Bluetooth paired cell phone. Fortunately, however, Nova Media has released its Phone plugins to return this functionality to the Leopard Address Book and other applications through a system-wide Service.
When installed it allows you to call a number or send a text message just by right-clicking on the number in the Address Book (or selecting it elsewhere and invoking Phone plugins from the Services menu). It works with a number of phones from Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson; check the compatibility list for details. Annoyingly the iPhone is not compatible.
Nova Media Phone plugins is $9.95 and a demo is available.
[via Hawk Wings]
Popularity: 14% [?]
Spore Creature Creator now available
EA has made the Spore Creature Creator trial available for download on both Mac and PC. A while back EA promised simultaneous release for Mac and PC, and they seem to be on track with the Creature Creator which is available for purchase at $9.95.
The Spore Creature Creator is a preview and demo for the full Spore game, which is scheduled for release on September 7. As you might expect from the name the Creature Creator allows you to build and customize creatures which you’ll later be able to use in gameplay once the full game is released. I’ve been playing with the trial this morning and it does look very promising.
The Spore Creature Creator is Leopard and Intel Mac only. It requires at least an ATI X1600 or NVidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100. It will apparently not run on computers with the GMA 950 integrated graphics chipset on OS X (though, it will on Windows). The trial version can be downloaded directly from the Spore trial site.
Thanks, Shiraz! Read
Popularity: 6% [?]
Houdini 9.5 3D software coming to OS X
Side Effects is bringing Houdini, their professional 3D software, to OS X for the first time with the release of the Houdini 9.5 beta for OS X, Windows, and Linux. According to the company, Houdini “brings the 3D industry’s first node-based workflow to the Mac ensuring that 3D artists can collaborate seamlessly in a multi-platform environment.” This modeling and rendering platform has been used on a number of high profile projects like Spiderman 3 and Resident Evil: Extinction.
Houdini will come in four editions:
- a free Apprentice edition for learning that includes watermarks
- a non-watermarked Apprentice HD for $99
- Houdini Escape “with modeling, animation, characters, lighting, rendering and compositing” for $1995
- Houdini Master “with all of Escape’s features plus particles and integrated dynamics such as rigid bodies, wire, cloth and fluids” for $7995.
Right now only the Apprentice and Apprentice HD editions are available for download, with the others expected July 15. Houdini is 64-bit Leopard-only. Thanks eze! Read
Popularity: 4% [?]
Install & Boot OS X Leopard from a USB Flash D
If you’re one of those people that continually adjust system settings, make changes in terminal, and try new and experimental software then you’ve probably done something in the past to your OS X installation that has compromised performance or made things stop working completely.
On the other hand, you may have installed the latest updates to OS X and various programs just stopped working. If either of these sound like you, you may find it handy to have a back up OS X 10.5 Leopard install that you can boot to and make adjustments to your system.
Installing OS X Leopard on a USB Flash Drive is much easier than expected. In fact it is almost the exact same experience you had when installing the device on your Mac originally. For a complete install you’ll need at least an 8gb Flash drive or a larger external USB Hard Drive. Read the rest of this entry
Popularity: 18% [?]
Snow Leopard to drop PowerPC support?
PowerPC users, your days could be numbered. According to an alleged screenshot of Snow Leopard’s system requirements, only Intel CPUs will get to take a ride on the 10.6 train as of now. The grab comes from an early version of the OS seeded to developers at WWDC this week, though given that Jobsy said we’re a year out from an actual release, these things could change. Still, it’s not looking promising for those of you who’ve stood by your older models — but Apple shutting out legacy users doesn’t come as a real shock, does it?
[Via Mac Rumors; Thanks, Kiwi616]
Popularity: 7% [?]
