Author: iandick

Rugby World Cup

Well done to South Africa – well deserved winners over the whole of the tournament. Unlucky England who I think did well to reach the final and played well. As for the England try…it always looked like the players foot touched the line and then lifted in the air. I just hope ITV don’t labour….who am I kidding. There going for it big style but well done Martin Johnson for calling it correctly and stuffing one to smarmy Jim Rosenthal.

Leopard

One week to go until Leopard is launched for the Mac. I shouldn’t really but I’m considering popping along to the Glasgow store after 6 next Friday to pick up my copy. If I don’t get it then it will probably on Sunday with Shakeel who’ll be up for the weekend. It’s odd – never looked forward to Windows O/S launches this much.

The Finder improvements look to be welcome along with the small improvements to Mail, Address Book and iCal. Spaces and Time Machine look useful too although there’s some smaller things that caught my eye like using expose to turn off the display and stacks to quickly get to common files and folders. The updated Front Row with new Apple TV front end should be a nice addition. iChat has a ton of new features as well…but I hardly ever use it!

However there is quite a bit of fluff in there. Mail Templates look like all that was wrong with Outlook stationary and extra photo booth settings aren’t really my thing.

The big question – how to upgrade. Take the easy route and install on top or format and start fresh. I’ll probably choose the latter even though it will take a bit more work. If your interested a new guided tour of Leopard has just been posted at apple.com.

Scotland 3 – 1 Ukraine

It’s early days but a brilliant start to the game. To be two goals up within 10 minutes is unbelievable. Hopefully they can keep a clean sheet until half time. Two set pieces, two goals. Fantastic.

Update – another great win! It was looking a bit dodgy at 2-1 but McFadden stepped up again to give us a third. 24 points with two games to go. An unbelievable position but heartbreaking that we will likely need more than 3 points out of Georgia away and Italy at home to go through. The run of form has been tremendous and never did I think we would top a group containing Italy, France and the Ukraine.

Around two and a half years ago we were ranked 88th in the World. 18 months ago that had risen to 72. February this year saw us break into the top 20. We’re now ranked 13th which will make a massive difference to the World Cup qualifying campaign…but never mind that – there’s a Euro Championship place in our hands. Roll on Wednesday night.

In Rainbows

It’s out and I’m enjoying it more than i thought I would although the bare bones Videotape from iTunes was better IMHO. The 160kbps was disappointing as was the lack of cover art. Tut tut. Step in Jon Hicks and friends with alternatives to the naked cover art. Some of them are fantastic.

The 160kbps will be sorted when the discbox is shipped although delivery will be dependant on the workshy communists getting their act together.

Cheaper PS3

Announced today, there’s a new PS3 for £299 with no backwards compatibility, a smaller hard disk and only 2 USB ports, no media card drives. A pretty good price. The 60GB model drops to £349 and includes two first party PS3 games. So that’s what they are doing with Lair then!!

It’s a good price drop and takes it into 360 range especially as the features dropped aren’t essential in my opinion. However it leaves just one little question. Where’s the fecking games?

Metacritc PS3 Top 20
1 Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, The 93
2 Ninja Gaiden Sigma 88
3 NHL 08 88
4 Resistance: Fall of Man 86
5 Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 86
6 Virtua Fighter 5 85
7 Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 85
8 Sega Rally Revo 85
9 MotorStorm (JPN Import Version) 84
10 Warhawk 84
11 Super Stardust HD 84
12 SKATE 84
13 NBA 2K8 84
14 DiRT: Colin McRae Off-Road 83
15 Fight Night Round 3 83
16 MotorStorm 82
17 Gran Turismo HD Concept 82
18 Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection 82
19 College Hoops 2K7 81
20 NBA Street Homecourt 81
Metacritc Xbox 360 Top 20
1 BioShock 96
2 Halo 3 94
3 Gears of War 94
4 Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, The 94
5 Guitar Hero II 92
6 Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 90
7 Forza Motorsport 2 90
8 Call of Duty 2 90
9 Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 89
10 Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 89
11 Burnout Revenge 89
12 NHL 08 88
13 Project Gotham Racing 3 88
14 Project Gotham Racing 4 87
15 Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles, The 86
16 Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 86
17 Fight Night Round 3 86
18 Elder Scrolls IV: Knights of the Nine, The 86
19 Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 86
20 SKATE 86

The table show the top 20 games on the PS3 and XBox 360 according to the average ratings as shown on Metacritic. I thought this would be the fairest way as biased reviews would be averaged ut across platforms. Doesn’t make very good reading for the PS3, does it? Where are the AAA exclusive titles for the PS3? They’ve been and gone and weren’t that good. It’s poor that the best rated exclusive title is Resistance which was a release game. It was good but that review score was very generous. Compare with the top 3 on the 360 and it makes for a compelling reason not to pick up a PS3. Even cross platform games are picking up the same score if not better on the 360.

If Sony wants to pick up sales it needs to address the games. If the PS3 had the AAA titles that the 360 has enjoyed then price wouldn’t be an issue and there wouldn’t be an entry level console launched today.

Lyon 0 – 3 Rangers

What an amazing result. One of the best from Rangers in a long time, and easily their best result in Europe in recent years. Certainly the most surprising result in the Champions League tonight and also the best performance by a British team. We rode our luck at times but good defence and clinical finishing won the night.

So we’re joint top of the group with Barcelona. Suddenly talk is of qualification and what results we need to go our way. Great times that will hopefully lift their domestic performance. Bring on Barca…gulp!

Breaking Free

Piracy. It’s feared by major record labels who failed to see the potential of the digital market and instead tried to block it. Official downloading is taking off but so many now see music as a free commodity.

Radiohead announced last night that their new album would be available from October 10th as a download only. You have two ways of buying the new album, In Rainbows. You can visit the website, pay £40 and receive the discbox on or before the 3rd December which includes the new album, a bonus CD, 2 12 inch vinyl records, artwork and lyric booklets plus a code that allows you to download the new album on the 10th of October.

The second option is to visit the website, choose download only and pay…whatever you like to receive the download code for the October 10th release date. Yes, that’s right. Choose your own price. You can enter £0.00 if you like and get the album for free. Amazing. Now I’ve no idea whether the album is any good but with an offer like that can you really go wrong? Even if your not a fan it must be worth at least trying?

All this while Radiohead are free from any studio ties as they aren’t signed to any label. Could this be a new way of selling music? Surely this will remove any need to pirate as people will pay what they want for the album even if it is nothing? I can only see them making more money this way despite having to pay for their own server bandwidth. No labels, no distributor cuts and lot’s of people paying quite a bit for the download or like me ordering the discbox for £40. Never did I think I’d pay £40 for an album that I could get for free. Is this another nail in the coffin for the traditional large record labels?

Roll on October 10th. It’s been a long time coming.