Appletell | Apple, Mac, iPhone, iPod | News, Rumors, Reviews, How-Tos

I sometimes worry I’m too easy of a reviewer; that I dish out fours and fives by default, remember only the good parts of games, glossing over the rough edges, and just generally giving designers the benefit of the doubt. Then I run into games like Pitz and Pang, now out for the iPhone and iPod touch. It’s not that they’re bad games, it’s just that the controls are so wonky—for both of them— that I feel like I’m fighting with the interface rather than the game itself.

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Keep Defenders is a real-time strategy game where your disturbingly-cute warriors attempt to prevent their clubhouse-like castle from being destroyed by wave after wave of equally cute enemy armies. The whole thing would be adorable if it weren’t for fact that they’re beating the crap out of each other with bladed weapons. It’s like watching Hummel figurines in a pit fighting competition.

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Microphone maker Blue may have hit on the secret formula for success; create an easy-to-use product with a great design that also works really well. The first thing you notice about the Snowball is its physical design. It’s fun without being goofy—a white and chrome ball atop a shiny tripod (also available in brush metal and black). It’s professional without being intimidating. In fact, it looks friendly.

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“Time to upgrade…to a Mac” is the theme of the latest Get a Mac ads. Targeting Windows users who hope that the new operating system will solve the problems of the widely-derided Vista, the new commercials suggest that owning a Macintosh might be the real solution to their problems. As always, John Hodgman plays the long-suffering PC, trying to convince frustrated users that Windows 7 will be different, much to Justin “Mac” Long’s subdued skepticism.

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Yesterday’s video of Star Wars: Trench Run for iPhone left a lot of unanswered questions, the most notable being, “Is this fake?” Well, I’m happy to say that Star Wars.com has posted an article not only confirming that the game will be launching “soon,” but also detailing some of the gameplay, as well as its system compatibility and cost. The game will retail for $4.99, and is “optimized” for the 3G, with “... special graphical features for the 3GS, iPod Touch 2nd Gen and future devices.”

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We know virtually nothing except for a YouTube video—a rather good looking one at that, but it appears that THQ Wireless will be bringing a new version of the classic Star Wars game to the iPhone. As in the original, you’ll dogfight with TIE fighters above the Death Star before racing along the trench, dodging lasers and obstacles before trying to drop a photon torpedo down a 2 meter target, a shot which Appletell Editor-in-Chief Kirk Hiner dismisses as “impossible.”

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If you’re a Civilization addict (like me), you’ll be happy to know that the Beyond the Sword (BTS) expansion gives you exactly what you want: more of Civ 4. There are new civs, new leaders, and new technologies (most of which are just refinements of previous techs). In fact, refinements is a good word for what BTS brings to Civ 4, most of them focused in the post-gunpowder era.

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As we all know, the kind of cover you put on your laptop says a lot about you; everything, in fact. It gives people exactly the kinds of deep insights into your personality that are normally reserved for years of close friendship or Twitter feeds. “Who are you, Mac user? What mysteries does your MacbookPro hold? What kind of screenplay are you tapping away at as you drink your dark mocha latte, soy, no whipped cream?” People are thinking this, I know.

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With Apple’s famously restrictive and irregularly enforced standards of morality for iPhone applications, I’m surprised it’s taken this long for the makers of “adult” games to realize what everyone else knows: you can easily get porn on the iPhone by using Safari. True, you can’t use Flash in Safari, but one plucky startup hasn’t let that deter them from creating a game where you pay to stimulate cartoon women by rubbing your finger furiously along a touch screen. For points.

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Apple Insider is reporting that Apple is preparing a new multitouch mouse for release, and that it will feature several improvement and changes from the current Mighty Mouse. “Apple’s next mouse is expected to do away with the Mighty Mouse’s problematic mechanical roller ball, using expanded touch sensitive housing and ‘multipoint touch detection mechanism’ technologies described in recent patent filings. ”

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