For many of us, Super Mario Brothers was one of the first Nintendo games or Famicon games we owned. That was the epitome of the 1990’s gaming scene and had only one aspect to the game. Now there is a new Super Mario Brothers game, Mari0 which introduces a host of elements including portal gun mechanics. The open source game is available for Windows, Linux, and Macintosh and the complete source code is also available. Some of the new features…
In 2011, Apple opened a temporary Apple Store at the South By Southwest Interacive Festival, a gathering of social media, music and other media types. The iPad 2 was released on March 2nd just as the festival was beginning and Apple made out handily. However, Apple is confirming that there will be no such temporary store at this years SXSW event. This year’s South By Southwest Interactive Festival is due to start on March 9th and go until March 18th. …
CouponBuzz has announced the immediate availability of Apple Inc. specific coupons on their website. The Coupons which are available on the CouponBuzz website are specifically attuned to the special sales which the Apple Store offers. According to CouponBuzz’s Senior Director, Justin Bowen, “The Apple Store is a wonderland of information and user-friendly interfaces that will walk the customer through every aspect of their new purchase. Shopping online at the Apple Store is a truly enjoyably experience, one that is even…
Apple has release a list of their top 25 Best selling Apps and at the top of the list is Angry Birds. The Rovio produced game has been at the top of the list on most iPhones and iPads for a good long while now, with several renditions of the game available, however, the original still tops the list. Rovio also holds two more slots of the top 10 with Angry Birds Seasons coming in at 5th and Angry Birds…
After a meteoric rise over the past week, Apple Inc. (AAPL) shares fell from a record high of $548.21 USD per share to close today at $533.16 USD per share. Shares had been up in expectation of the latest rendition of the Apple iPad which is due out in a scheduled Apple event on March 7th. It is also expected that Apple will introduce the 3rd version of it’s Apple TV product at the same event. The fall of the…
Apple Inc. has released an update to the latest release of its Mac OS. Mac OS X 10.7.3 was released last month, however some users were reporting issues with the Time Machine backup system on the latest version of the OS. Apple has released a Supplemental Update to the OS, version 1.0, to address that particular issue. Whether the update addresses another known sleep issue bug or not is not yet known. The update does not require a system reboot…
Apple has finally announced that a user in China was the winner of the Apple Inc. sponsored prize for downloading the 25 billionth iTunes App. The user, one Chunli Fu of Qungdao, China downloaded the free Disney app, “Where’s My Water” to push the download mark over the 25 billion mark. He will receive $10,000 USD in the iTunes App Store int he form of a gift card. Currently, there are more than 550,000 apps in the iTunes App Store…
This is a generic sort of article… I have only tried it on one type of machine but this advice may prove useful in other situations. As regular readers know, I volunteer at an educational non-profit organisation every Friday as a systems administrator.One of the privileges is I get to borrow a computer every so often for one of my projects. In this case I had a computer I was using as a file server (using FreeNAS v7.x). Since I…
David Schmenk has released his new Proto Language ASsembler for Apple or PLASMA for short. This latest language release is the second for the creator of Java for the Apple ][. According to the introduction on David’s website, “PLASMA is a combination of virtual machine and assembler/compiler matched closely to the 6502 architecture. It is an attempt to satisfy a few challenges surrounding code size, efficient execution, small runtime and fast just-in-time compilation. By architecting a unique bytecode that maps…
Apple has updated the Application Loader for iTunes Connect. iTunes Connect allows those authors using the iBooks Author Application to publish their books in the Apple iBookstore. The Version 2.5.1 update of the Application Loader includes the following enhancements and fixes: Improved error messaging Creating and sending In-App Purchase details for apps directly from Application Loader Send to Apple command now creates logs for troubleshooting delivery issues Updated system requirements and newly supported formats Updated server IP addresses and port…
Apple has released an update for the Graphics Firmware on the iMac. Version 3.0 of the Graphics Firmware targets an issue that causes the iMac to hang. You can download the firmware update through the Software Update function under the Apple Menu or from the Apple Support Page at: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1444
Apple has taken a whack at fixing the flickering of the internal display on the late 2008 MacBook Pro. A new EFI Update for the 15 inch model is supposed to resolve this issue. Version 2.8 of the EFI Firmware for the MacBook Pro should be available in you Software Updates or you can download it directly from the Apple Support site at: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1502
The United States Air Force has granted Apple, Inc. with a $9 Million USD contract to provide 18,000 iPad 2’s. The iPad 2’s will be used by pilots and other pertinent staff in lieu of the normally carried heavy pilot bags and reams of flight maps. The air force is getting quite the deal on the iPad 2’s with the price per unit being $520 USD per unit compared to the normal $599 USD. They have contracted to receive the…
More than 25 Billion Apps and counting have been downloaded from the Apple App Store. Apple held a contest for the mark, giving the person who downloaded the 25 Billionth app a $10,000 USD gift card to the App Store, however, who that lucky person was still has yet to have been announced. This mark was reached in just over 3.5 years with the current pace of downloads reaching a staggering 15 million apps per year. There are currently 550,000…
March 2012 The Spy has become a cautious adopter rather than an early one. As the reader of this space well knows, he has been unwilling (and unable) to upgrade from Excel 2004 because of his very heavy dependance on macros, which the 2008 version lacked. This in turn meant that he could not use Lion, as 2004 would not run at all in that environment. Nor was he willing to convert all those macros to one of the open…
Invitations for the next release of the iPad went out to the media today, with Apple proclaiming “We have something you really have to see. And touch.” The event for the iPad 3 release is scheduled to take place on March 7, 2012 at 10:00am PST at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. The event has been talked about greatly throughout the media rumor circles for the past several weeks with this event being the worst kept secret of…
Apple has released a new update for Mac OS 10.7.3 for Late 2009 and newer iMacs’ Wi-Fi. The release resolves an issue with the iMac not re-connecting to networks automatically after the are waking. You can download the update through the Software Updater under the Apple menu or from the Apple Support page at: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1501
A posting on Mobileread.com is suggesting that Version 3.3 of Requiem by the hacker “Brahms” is capable of removing Apple’s DRM from iTunes and iBooks. While the software has been capable of iTunes DRM removal for some time, this is the first time that it can also crack the iBooks format as well. This type of hack does not bode well for Apple or those authors who are trying to make money from the Apple Book Store, as users would…
Neat Designs has put together a new collection of vintage Apple advertisements show Apple’s progression from the garage startup created by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ron Wayne, to the corporate conglomerate that Tim Cook runs today. The collection spans the years 1977 to 1999 and contains many advertisements not seen before. the display and the variety show the tenacity and way the company we know as Apple, Inc. thought the world should see them. You can view the entire…
An 8-bit exhibition is scheduled to be put on by two Universita Degli Studi Di Trento professors from 18 April to 19 May in Trento Italy. Professor Damiano Cavicchio and Professor Ugo Mase are the curators of the exhibition. The exhibition will cover the entire history of the 8-bit computer, including the machines, the documentation, the advertisements and other related paraphernalia. The exhibition will be held at the Biblioteca Universitaria del Polo Scientifico “Fabio Ferrari” in Trento and will run…
