Last week’s review is here.

The Applications reviewed this week

1. Pixelmator
2. OmniGraffle
3. Money
4. Racer
5. Battle for Wesnoth

Pixelmator:
This is an interesting program I picked up.  It has an interface very similar to Photoshop, but it’s not quite like Photoshop.  It’s covered in hundreds of features and advance editing tools.  One big bonus for this application compared to Adobe’s Photoshop, is the fact that this program is a native Cocoa app, while Photoshop is Carbon.  For those who don’t know about Cocoa or Carbon, it means that Pixelmator is much faster, more efficient, and less bug prone. Saying this I do have to point out a few problems I’ve encountered.  The first one is the image browser,  I have yet to ever get this working.  Every time I open it it freezes not just the application, but the whole system, making me have to do a hard shutdown.  It is also very limiting when trying to create an image from scratch, rather than tweaking one.   Overall it’s a fairly nice alternative to Photoshop.

Latest Version: 1.1.3; 4 March, 2008
Price: $59, shareware
Developer:  Pixelmator Team Ltd.

• Type: Image Editor
• Efficiency: 4/5
• Features: 3/5
• Graphics: 3/5
• Stability: 4/5
• Ease of Use: 4/5
• Modern Mac Look: 5/5
• Price: 4/5

Total: 27/35;  77%

OmniGraffle:
If you need a graphical representation or diagramming software, this is about the best program I’ve used whether on the Mac or PC.  It has many different categories for the job you need done.  It even contains pre-made graphics to design a user interface sketch (if your making an application).  In fact there are so many features and assets within this program that at times it can be a little hard to navigate through to find what you were looking for.  After a while though it becomes second-nature and a great full-featured application.

• Latest Version: 5.0; 5 March, 2008
• Price: $99(Standard) and $199(Pro)
• Developer:  OmniGroup

1. Type: Diagraming Software
2. Efficiency: 4/5
3. Features: 5/5
4. Graphics: 3/5
5. Stability: 5/5
6. Ease of Use: 3/5
7. Modern Mac Look: 5/5
8. Price: 5/5

Total: 30/35;  86%

Money:
This is a little nifty program for people that like to organize their personal finances.  This application is like a database that keeps track of spending and even your bank accounts.  It has a very intuitive feature that actually will connect to your bank account and update automatically with it.  I have found this program to be extremely simplistic, so it’s not for advance usage, but it is fairly nice.  In truth I think the price is a little high, I believe it should be donate ware or maybe $14.99.

• Latest Version: 5.0; 5 March, 2008
• Price: $99(Standard) and $39.99(Pro)
• Developer:  jumsoft

• Type: Diagraming Software
• Efficiency: 4/5
• Features: 2/5
• Stability: 5/5
• Ease of Use: 5/5
• Modern Mac Look: 5/5
• Price: 2/5

Total: 23/30;  76%

Racer:
This is a pretty nice racing game.  It’s a multi-platform online game which uses the mouse to accelerate and turn the cars.    For a free game it has really nice graphics, and great game play,  Saying this, it is very very easy to drive and doesn’t completely follow real physics.   Along with this, just a tab from another car will send you spinning like crazy.

• Latest Version: 0.5.4.3; 6 March, 2008
• Price: Free
• Developer:  Ruud van Gaal

• Type: Racing Game
• Efficiency: 2/5
• Features: 3/5
• Graphics: 3/5
• Stability: 4/5
• Ease of Use: 5/5
• Modern Mac Look: N/A(Opengl Based)

Total: 18/25;  72%

Battle For Wesnoth:
A very addictive game.  It’s similar to Civilization or Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, with a turn based RPG style simulation.  The theme in this game is fantasy as you build up your army of warriors.  There are many different sagas with in it and a lot of replay value.  The graphics aren’t the best, but I love the music.

• Latest Version: 1.4; 8 March, 2008
• Price: Free
• Developer:  The Battle for Wesnoth development team

• Type: Turn Based Strategy Game(fantasy themed)
• Efficiency: 3/5
• Features: 4/5
• Graphics: 2/5
• Audio: 3/5
• Stability: 5/5
• Ease of Use: 4/5
• Modern Mac Look: N/A(Opengl Based)

Total: 21/30;  70%

How the applications are rated:
I first have a small summary of the application, and a tidbit of my experience. Then I put down the latest version of the program, along with the price and the developer. The next part is a list of relative items, which are scored from 1 - 5, or N/A. These change depending on the application. After that the total is added up from the scores, and then a percentage is made. In this way of reviewing, it is just about impossible to get 100%, and about 85% is extremely good. To get 100%, the application has to pretty much be perfect in every way, and I have yet to ever find an application like this.

The applications reviewed this week:

1. TextWrangler
2. Stellarium
3. Get Tube
4. Return To Dark Castle
5. Cheetah3D

TextWrangler:
Summary - This is a nice, simplistic text editor. This is not something you would normally use for word processing or typing up a review like what I am doing now. It is designed primarily for programming languages and scripts. TextWrangler understands and helps organize over 35 languages, from the ancient 68k assembler cod, to the more modern C++ and Objective-C languages. Overall it’s a fairly nice application having everything a developer needs but a debugger. There is a con to it however, one being that it feels like a Panther (10.3) application. It still seems to use many old controls and frameworks, which today are obsolete.

• Latest Version: 2.3; 12 Jan, 2008
• Price: Free
• Developer: Bare Bones Software

• Type: Text Editor
• Efficiency: 4/5
• Features: 5/5
• Stability: 5/5
• Ease of Use: 3/5
• Modern Mac Look: 2/5

Total: 19/25; 76%

Stellarium:
Summary - If you’re a person interested in astronomy, then this program is a nice asset to your collection. It’s not as full featured or as nice as a starry sky, but hey, it’s free! Stellarium lets you view the stars, constellations, planets, and even clusters in the sky. It also has a nice zoom features to get even closer to the objects, just like you have a telescope. I find myself very entertained by this little widget, but there are a few setbacks. I do wish you could position yourself on other planets instead of just on the Earth, but how can I complain if it’s free?

• Latest Version: 0.9.1; 17 Jan, 2008
• Price: Free
• Developer: www.stellarium.org

• Type: Software-Based Planetarium
• Efficiency: 3/5
• Features: 3/5
• Graphics: 4/5
• Stability: 5/5
• Ease of Use: 5/5
• Modern Mac Look: N/A (OpenGL based)

Total: 20/25; 80%

Get Tube:
Summary - For the past year or so I’ve been using TubeTV to get videos from YouTube. However, I’ve just recently found this new program, Get Tube. Well I can say, it has a very very basic interface all consisting of a window. There in fact is no menu bar for it, just a small window containing an icon for Firefox and another for Safari. This means no customization. Now what happens is you open up either Firefox or Safari, then you go to the video you want. After you find it, you switch back to Get Tube and click on the appropriate icon. In the preferences, you can tell where the file goes and the format to convert it to. You can choose mp4, mp3, or avi. Overall, the quality of compression is excellent, and with a very small file size, however the resolution was quite low (cut in half of what YouTube recommends).

• Latest Version: 2.2; 2 Mar, 2008
• Price: Free
• Developer: Simon VREL

• Type: Downloader (YouTube videos)
• Efficiency: 4/5
• Features: 2/5
• Graphics: 3/5
• Audio: 3/5
• Stability: 3/5
• Ease of Use: 4/5
• Modern Mac Look: 4/5

Total: 23/35; 66%

Return to Dark Castle:
Summary - This is the 3rd installment of the classic Mac game Dark Castle. It was first released in 1986; the sequel soon followed in 1987. This new version, the second sequel, was announced in 2000 and is now about to be released. They have just recently released the demo of the game, which so far mimics that of the original game. This game, like the original, is full of puzzles, twists, and bad turns. This is not an easy game, mind you - it’s not one that starts off easy and slightly gets tougher. It’s like any classic game - it’s hard throughout. So far I have really enjoyed it, and it actually makes me want to start playing the original game once more. If you care more about game play than graphics, this is a game for you.

• Latest Version: 3; 28 Feb, 2008
• Price: N/A
• Developer: Z Sculpt Entertainment

• Type: Video Game
• Efficiency: 4/5
• Game Play: 4/5
• Graphics: 3/5
• Audio: 5/5
• Stability: 5/5
• Ease of Use: 3/5
• Modern Mac Look: N/A (OpenGL based)

Total: 24/30; 80%

Cheetah3D:
Summary - One of the very rare 3D modelers built exclusively for the Mac. I’m personally familiar with a profession model known as Maya. Maya is the most famous application for “Hollywood” films to clarify a little bit about what it is. I have found Cheetah3D it be a very good program and a very good start. It’s still no Maya, but for $129, it’s adequate enough to get the job done. It has many professional features, many of which are usable with the unregistered version. If you own a Mac and want to get into 3D graphics, especially for developing video games this is a perfect asset.

• Latest Version: 4.4; 9 Jan, 2008
• Price: Free (very usable), $129 (fully featured)
• Developer: MW 3D-Solutions

• Type: 3D Modeler
• Efficiency: 5/5
• Features: 3/5
• Graphics: 4/5
• Stability: 5/5
• Ease of Use: 2/5
• Modern Mac Look: 5/5
• Price: 5/5

Total: 29/35; 83%