I'm very keen to see an Apple take on Nettop/ULC Laptop. I think the Air is a fantastic product and an important part of the product matrix (And let me make this clear, the Air is a portable iMac), but it does leave us with a problem.
The Air is the portable iMac, as I've said. That makes the MacBook the entry-level Mac notebook, the portable Mac mini. That's flagrantly wrong. Apple is missing a cheaper notebook, a MacBook mini if you will. The current trend towards such devices gives Apple a perfect opportunity to make such a device. The components are now fairly commodity but Apple can leverage their iPod line's massive use of Flash and iPod classic's HDD to make those components even cheaper (Economies of scale).
Thus, Apple can compete on price, or else make the device more desirable (Easy enough for them) and charge a premium (I can see it starting at the same prices as the Mac mini or nominally, say $50, more)
This same product matrix issue solution creates another problem which has finally brought me around to the "xMac" standpoint. The MacBook would have no desktop equivalent. As such, Apple would be wise to introduce a headless Mac with some expandability. Likely this would just be an iMac without a display, just the MacBook is very similar to iMac's portable cousin MacBook Air
I should also add: I would buy the Apple 10" notebook to replace my Eee PC. A teeny laptop with the power of OS X is too much to resist.
I recently went nuts and decided to redo my setup once again. I've been doing this frequently since I decided to buy the Mac mini and it's now, with these changes, at a point where I feel like I can be happy. This latest modification followed my moving the 750GB External HDD up high, a shelf above the Mac mini and the VGA switcher, where the Hi-Fi box used to sit.
This time, I decided I wanted to make full use of the superior Panasonic-powered audio of the Hi-Fi for everything as opposed to sharing audio duties between the Hi-Fi and the speakers in the monitor. I want the Mac mini, the Wii and (Soon) the Xbox 360 all to benefit from awesome sound. So, I moved the speakers out and around a bit so they flank the monitor. The major issue was finding a home for the Hi-Fi box itself. After much deliberating and failed experimentation, I opted to put it beside the Xbox 360's eventualy home.
That is to say, it's on the bottom "shelf" of the desk. Where printers often go...That might or might not explain that. Anyway, I unhooked the splitter from the back of the monitor and plugged it into the aux port on the Hi-Fi. Now, that's a 2-way splitter so currently it only has the Mac mini and the Wii plugged into it (Wii via an RCA to 3.5mm converter). However, I'm going to order an additional, identical splitter on Friday. That will split one of the ports on the existing splitter allowing me to plug the Wii and the 360 (Also using an RCA to 3.5mm convereter, I'm ordering the second one at the same time as the second splitter) into that.
So far, this is an unqualified success. iTunes sounds freaking awesome and I have Home Theatre qualty (Though not class - no surround but meh) audio for EyeTV. I've never heard The Simpsons sounds so madly, insanely good.
Additionally, I'm buying a Wireless Access Point. This sub-£30 wonder will sit happily behind m monitor, connect wirelessly to the BT HomeHub and serve internets to two Ethernet ports. One will eventally give my Xbox 360 access to Xbox LIVE, the other is going to make my Internet Phone work. My Internet Phone is awesome by the way, I'm using a Cars one. Yes, my desk phone is Lightning McQueen and he's going to be serving me up VoIP.
So, Giant Bomb have now launched the Community Image Moderation Engine. This is fantastic because the more images the community deals with for The Bomb, the more time the staff at The Bomb Shelter (They don't call it that) can spend moderating our text submissions, like my awesome writeups for kids' games.
But, naturally, not everyone knows what to do 100% of the time, and some of the rules can be confusing. There are also some reasons to reject an image which are not listed on the Community Moderation page and you may not be sure if your reason for wanting to reject is okay or not. I've been community modding like an addict for as long as I've been able. In fact, damn, I really need some more Pepsi Max.
Anyway, let's go over some of the basics for now and I'll come back later with some of the more complex stuff in a Part 2 post if need be.
First, I'll address a huge issue: yes, it says "disaprove", yes, it should be "disapprove". We will eventually tell the team and have that fixed, for now, ignore it or laugh light-heartedly.
Remember:
IF IN DOUBT, SKIP THE IMAGE
Okay, now, here are some reasons to show an image the door you might not think of:
If it has a broken background (For example, a white background on art which has back boxes around the art, you'll know this when you see it)
If it is a model (Character model, car model etc.) and is being submitted to screenshot. If in doubt, look for an environment. If there's no environment or the background to the subject is a block colour, show it the door.
That might look like HUD, but it's a watermark. A particular culprit for this is a dragon with an X, it sometimes seems like HUD, but it's a watermark. Also look out for small watermarks and those which are just transparent text. This works both ways. Some games have pretty ganky HUDs. If in doubt about a HUD element check another screen or ask someone who has played the game.
It's concept art and it's being added to screenshots (Or vice versa). This is common, check.
You see a bunch of shots in a row which are very similar. For example, the character has walked a couple of steps. These are a waste.
At your discretion, show any images of menus the door unless the menu has some notability (Character screens are usually fine for example, but a shot of a screen for selecting the number of players would have to be pretty impressive not to warrant the door)
Reject any screen attached to more than one game, it's obviously wrong somewhere
Fanart can usually suck it
A lot of people upload screens to both screenshot and box art galleries. This is a variant of a reason higher up the list but it's easier to miss. Always check for this.
Boxart (More common) or any other image which has been stretched or squashed into the wrong aspect ratio
Scans of manuals are a no
Consensus amongst some of the hardcore CIMs is that wallpapers need to be shown the door
Someone, possibly more than one person, has decided it's okay to upload a watermarked image if you censor the mark. It's not, show those the door
Recently, the editorial team at The Bomb Shelter (They don't call it that) informed their fans that the Giant Bomb pre-launch blog was no longer available and all its content now visible elsewhere only.
To address this issue right now, the image on my profile is the Beta Preview of the cover to my upcoming Crowd Sourced video games magazine called Multiplayer Magazine. The content on it's all made up.
It looks way cool though, eh? Like the logo font? It's called Synchro LET and I think it looks fantastic.
So everyone loves LittleBigPlanet apparently. Seriously, the game's not out yet and everyone seems to love it. Everywhere I look, it's heralded as the second coming. And I can't see why. Okay, it lets you make your own levels. It's not that big a deal. I see people rave about every little thing. People call me weird for not being interested. I'm sorry folks, it's just not that interesting an idea. I'd never play it long enough to make anything I really liked with the editor, so I'm not interested.
It bugs me that in an era when everyone complains about the hype of games like Halo 3, Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4 (Games which were awesome, get over it folks), all those same people don't have a bad thing to say about LittleBigPlanet. I get it, you're interested. Doesn't mean the idea is particularly amazing or that the game's that original. Doesn't mean I have to like it too.
So add me to the minority not in the least bit interested in LittleBigPlanet.
Now Black Rock's Pure? There's a game I can get behind. Mindless off-road fun? Hell to the yes. 16-Player online races? Oh yeah.
Yes, I think Pure's going to be better than LittleBigPlanet. And for me, it will be. I might be alone in that. Does that mean you need to come here and tell me how wrong I am and list all the features of LittleBigPlanet which have still not made me think it's god (Yes, I ave heard about them)? No, it doesn't.
I'm immue to Little Big Planet's power. Even if I have to be the lone critic, I will be.
Since this profile is getting more reads than my Blogger blog, I'm toying with the idea of making this my primary blog and mirroring the posts back to that one...It has basically no readers. I have a couple of diehards, but that's about it. Yeah, I think it makes sense. This is gonna be my main Blog. I suppose I better put a link back to the old one so if you ever need to check back it's easy enough.
Oh dear. The site goes down and then comes back. I check my submissions queue and all the pendings are gone, so I resubmit the important one and then the original returns to the queue. Twice this has happened now I think.
Oh, and now all my pendings have disappeared for no apparent reason. Terrific.
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