Ouch! I know. Its a terrible headline, but it looks great in the RSS feed. Anyway, TI has announced they are upgrading their ridiculously old calculator line this fall with the new TI-nspire line. These nifty looking units can likely handle a great deal of complex equations, and if I was good with math I could probably confirm that. There are some kickarse looking features, though, like Page Sorter, a kind of calculator version of Apple’s Expose´feature, and the swappable button plate which offers the old TI-83 model key layout. Sweet, in a gadget kinda way.

Oh, and on the Mac side, while there is a Windows version of the desktop software now, there will be a Mac OS X 10.4.x and up version coming out early next year. Maybe they should higher some more programmers!

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools

Okay, so the news is that Apple has now sold its 100 millionth iPod. I love this headline over at Fark, “Apple has sold its 100 millionth iPod. Microsoft announces Zune is rapidly approaching fifteen units sold.” Maybe now we’ll see a fourth iteration of Microsoft’s DAP marketing plan in action since the last three failed (general support for 3rd party OEMs, PlayForSure initiative, and now Zune). I’m going to guess marketshare increase for Apple’s iPod this holiday season.

If that weren’t enough, Apple finally unveiled the blazingly, shockingly, abominably, ridiculously, intensely fast 8-core Mac Pro, featuring two 4-core Woodcrest Intel Xeon processors running at 2.0, 2.66, and 3.0 GHz. OMG! What a sweet deal that Apple is now offering a free upgrade to a 10-seat copy of Mac OS X Server with the purchase of one of these bad boys! Hel, they’re even offering the Unlimited version for just $349, the same price as the 10-seat version.

Oh, wait. They’re not offering that in the US or Canada. Ooops.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools

If you love Battlestar Galactica (its ok to love both the new series and the original), you love games, and you are on a Mac, then you’re gonna love Beyond The Red Line. Based on the classic Freespace 2 engine, this free title brings BSG to your Mac in grand style. How much will it cost you? Nothing! That’s right. Its free, as in NO MONEY. These guys are fantastic.

Check out the site here. Its very cool. You may note that there is only one Mac mirror, at least last time I looked. The site does offer a BitTorrent version, but not many people were latching on when I fetched it. With that said, you can download a copy direct from us here. Its a big file, so be prepared for a wait.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools

If you have a need to read digital comics, there’s a sweet tool floating around which gives you power over the often chaotic drawn stories, the freeware FFView. Okay, so its really just an image viewer, but it sports features which make it great for comic scan readers, tools like rotation, antialiasing, scaling, fullscreen, and one of the most comprehensive customizable keyboard shortcut systems I have every seen on any application anywhere. The great thing is, it can be had for the price of a postcard. Be really nice to these guys since they work hard to do this nice thing for Mac people. Fetch it here!

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools

MacWorld has informants? Apparently, as they’re reporting that Apple has informed some early adopters that they will be receiving their orders before the end of the week. Another aspect of this story seems to be that some analysts are predicting that the Apple TV will build a larger market than the iPhone, despite the fact that the latter gets better media coverage. As always, only time will tell.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools

I can’t seem to get myself psyched up for Myst. I goofed around with it when it first came out, but never found it truly compelling. Hell, I don’t even recall what I else I was playing at that time (and my apathy is stretching to researching it as well). What does interest me, however, is that this is coming from GameTap, one of the only good things to come out of Turner Broadcasting. GameTap has so far only been a PC platform, but the coming of Myth strongly suggests that they are working on a full-on Mac version. This would throughly rock! Its not like there aren’t any emulators, which is basically what GameTap PC is. Now all we need is a GameTap2GO! Ooooh! I want royalties!!

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools

In case you hadn’t noticed from the title of this post, I like Parallels. Not because it can run Windows (I HATE Windows) but because its just really damn good. Its a fine program and it runs supported OS quite well. I’m rather severely peeved that it doesn’t run Solaris 10 at all (at least not on my machine) and they have no tool support for Linux. Of course, this is a Mac, so I have access to the BSD tools already. Just jeez, though. Man. [I really sound like adorky kid here. Wow. -Ed.]

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools