Well the iPad reviews are starting to trickle in. I liked this one from PCMag.com enough to let you see it here.

It takes you through, quite quickly I might add, the features of the iPad and it is done very well.

PCMag: Apple iPad video review from PCMag.com Reviews on Vimeo.

Here is an excellent review by Stephen Fry. If you’re Aussie or English you will know who he is, especially if you are a Black Adder fan. If you are American you will know his voice at least from the latest Alice in Wonderland film as the Cheshire Cat.

It’s about 4 pages long but well worth your time.

Time Magazine Review

You can get Mixcraft 5 HERE at the Acoustica Website

[flv:http://www.gearwire.com/media/acoustica-mixcraft5-wnamm2010.flv 460 284]

You can get it HERE at the Acoustica Website

It looks like the rumors are true. Valve is bringing Steam to Mac OSX and soon.

How soon? How does next month, April 2010 sound?

Valve announced today it will bring Steam, Valve’s gaming service, and Source, Valve’s gaming engine, to the Mac.

Steam and Valve’s library of games including Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series will be available in April.

“As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients,” said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. “The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.”

“Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac,” said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve. “Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge. For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play.”

*** Update The Beta is coming to a close and Steam for Mac should be available in two days on May 12th 2010. ***

With Mac growing in market share to well over 10% it is becoming a much more viable target for software and entertainment.

I’m sure there are some companies that currently specialize in Mac Ports that won’t be as happy that this is happening.

For the rest of us who have been struggling with Wine, Cross Over and other ways of getting Steam working on our Macs, it is excellent news.

Sounds like the additions to the Source Engine will make Mac development integrated with the PC development.

Portal 2 will be Valve’s first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows. “Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step,” said Josh Weier, Portal 2 Project Lead. “We’re always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac.”

Bring it on!

Ciao,

Shane

I am Rooster hear me Rawk!

Every now and again a viral video comes along that is sooooo cool, you just have to spread the love.

With deep guttural growl and pumping beat, I have friends who use this to wake their kids. ( You know who you are )

I give you … Death Metal Rooster.

Mixcraft 5 allows you to record and mix like the best producers and DJs at just a fraction of the price. Remix songs, score your videos, record your band, create MIDI compositions or make your own backing tracks or songs with our built in sound library and virtual instruments. Focus on your creativity and not on technical details! Cut, paste, edit and shape your sounds the way you want! Use built in effects like reverb, flanger or EQ or install a variety of DirectX or VST effects to add tremelo, distortion, chorus or even remove the vocals from a song! This flexible software can be used in many ways, from recording your first solo album, remixing a song mash-up, pod-casting, editing commercials and video scoring! You can even export your mix to MP3, WMA, OGG or WAV, or simply burn it on a CD!

Features include:

• Clear, colorful, and intelligently designed interface to streamline your work.
• Custom loop library includes thousands of royalty-free sounds in dozens of musical styles. (Works with Acid(tm) and Apple Garage Band(tm) loops.)
• Record multiple MIDI and audio tracks simultaneously.
• Score your own videos.
  
• Piano roll and notation view to edit MIDI.
• Includes a General MIDI library, Hammond B-3(tm) emulator, MiniMoog(tm) emulator,  Lounge Lizard (Rhodes and Wurlitzer emulation),  Messiah (Jupiter 5 emulation), and the Alien 303 bass synth.
• Create mega presets that layer and split multiple virtual synthesizers and effects.
• Add unlimited VST(tm) and DirectX(tm) effects. (Includes 20 high quality effects, including the Shred Guitar Amp Simulator and Pulltronic Tube EQ.)
• Mix down to MP3, WAV and other audio file types.
• Burn CDs of your mix with just one click.

You can get it HERE at the Acoustica Website

You can get it HERE at the Acoustica Website