First Things First
Thanks to a couple of astute readers who pointed out a rather dubious error in last month’s column. It turns out that Apple’s Speakable Items have been around awhile (since the days of System 7.5, according to those who wrote in). The oversight on my part was probably a combination of the fact that before this past year I didn’t have a Mac with the horsepower to run the speech recognition software, and that Apple’s new installer made it easier for me to spot custom installation items in Mac OS 8.5 that I had previously missed. Anyway, the rest of the information in my article remains accurate, and knowing just how old the software is makes me even more disappointed that Apple hasn’t been able to refine it in the last three or four years. Now that Apple’s financial situation has improved so dramatically, I hope it’s not too late for them to devote some R & D money to improving Speakable Items. But I digress…
My “What’s Hot” Mac List – College Edition
College life is interesting. I wouldn’t trade it for very many things, and anyone who has experienced living in a college dorm would agree that it is truly unique. But in addition to the midnight pizza deliveries, loud stereos, and impromptu wrestling matches in the student lounge, there is something that effects every student’s life–computers. I don’t doubt that my campus is very typical when it comes to computing; all students have their own email account and free Internet access, and spend many hours typing term papers, writing email, and checking the latest scores in the NCAA Basketball Tournament (don’t even ask me about my personal entry into the dorm pool; March Madness indeed!). Of course, there is much more to computers in college than word processing and Internet access; there are lots of games to play! Network games of first person shooters are a common study break activity (in honor of the upcoming Star Wars movie, Dark Forces is currently the game of choice), and there’s plenty of single-player action in every game genre, as well.
My own computing habits have changed a bit in college, too. So, without further ado, I give you my own “What’s Hot” list in my personal computing life and the college computing scene in general, and in no particular order:
Swoop, Apieron, and Mars Rising — Yes, all three of these games are Mac-only, and I’ve mentioned in the past that Apple computers are sadly not very prevalent on my campus. But everyone who lives near me in the dorm (myself included) would like to thank Ambrosia for this great triumvirate of grade-point-average-decimating shooters. As cool as Unreal, Tomb Raider II, and Starship Titanic are, the trouble with commercial games such as those is that they are so big. This is normally considered a good thing, and for good reason–no one wants to pay $40 for a game that they will finish in a couple of hours. But all too often, I need a quick fix, not an expansive level that will take the better part of an hour to complete. These three games do just that-keep my trigger finger happy, and do so in a reasonable amount of time. Fifteen minutes to spare before I have to leave for class? Sure, I could cram a few extra minutes for that quiz, but I could also try for a new Apieron high score… What, the pizza’s getting delivered in twenty minutes? Great, just enough time for another go at Mars Rising! You get the picture: they’re fun, addicting, and quick enough to keep the interest of a college student, whose attention span is only slightly longer than the average three-year-old’s. (And I don’t want anybody writing in and telling me their average Apieron game lasts 45 minutes. If that’s the case you’re too good for your own good, and I don’t want to hear about it! 🙂
AOL Instant Messenger — This one surprised me a little but, but personal chat clients like this one have caught on big on campus, and AOL’s seems to be leading the pack. Like many college freshmen, last year all of my friends were obsessed with forwarding every email joke in the world to everyone they knew, checking every web page in existence, and spending hours in chat rooms. However, this year we’re sophomores, and of course more refined. We understand that forwards get annoying to their recipients very quickly, that it is more efficient to only bookmark the really cool web sites instead of several hundred, and that 99% of all chatting done on the Internet is incomprehensible. Using a program like AOL Instant Messenger, though, we can all chat with only the people we want to chat with: high school friends, relatives, each other, etc.–and leave the “a/s/l” checks for other people to waste time with.
Video Game Console Emulation — I claim partial responsibility for this one. It started when a friend of mine walked into my room one day and saw me playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on my Mac. Now, my PowerBook doubles as a Nintendo, Game Boy, and Super Nintendo, and there are tons of my friends hunting down emulators for their PCs. Truthfully, I’m getting bored with old 8-bit Nintendo games, especially given the high quality of new Mac games, but that doesn’t stop me from getting the newest versions of my favorite emulators the day that they’re released. 😉
MPEGS — By the time you read this, I will probably have finished converting all of my favorite songs from my personal CD collection into MPEG format on my Mac’s hard drive. (Hey, what good is a 6 gig hard drive if you don’t fill it up?) The tools needed are easy to use and cheap: MPecker is freeware, and it’s used to convert audio CD tracks into MPEG format; MacAmp Lite is a great, fully functional MPEG audio player that only costs $10. The advantages to doing this (besides being just plain cool) are numerous: for example, now I can create a playlist with as many songs from as many different CDs by as many different artists as I want–I’m no longer constrained by the 3-CD limit of my shelf stereo system. It also makes it a lot easier to enjoy my favorite tunes when I’m in the library with my PowerBook. Now I don’t have to worry about packing all of the CDs in my laptop bag and taking them with me, and I can use the CD-ROM drive for something else. The sound quality of the PowerBook 1400’s speaker isn’t that great, so when I’m in my room I still crank up my stereo, but whenever I want to listen to music using a pair of headphones, I turn to my PowerBook.
Finally, as an honorable mention, I’ve got to say that the excellent, hilarious trivia game by Berkeley Systems, You Don’t Know Jack, was made for college. Every dorm floor should have a copy.
That’s going to do it for this month. I realize I was a little bit random this month, but such is the life of a college student. Thanks for reading, everybody, but I’ve got to run. And if I hurry, I can make one more run at the Swoop high score list before my Statistics class.
Mike Wallinga
mikew@mymac.com
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