My Clockwork Universe

iMac Speculation

Many hardcore Mac fans are unhappy. They believe that they’ve been forgotten about as Apple continues to become a mobile computing powerhouse. 530 days since the last iMac update, and 125/636 since the Mac Pro was refreshed these disgruntled Mac users may have some legitimate concerns. 

MacRumors.com reported today that the internals of a possible iMac update have been found and photographed on a WeiPhone.com forum post. The photo and forum comments suggest a thinner “water droplet” design, a better quality display and an increased price. It took me by surprise that this news seems like the worst thing in the world for many MacRumors’ users. They want more power and expandability, which makes me wonder why they are on an Apple website in the first place. Apple doesn’t want their users to be messing around with the innards of their devices, especially when having this option results in bigger computers. The amount of people who will swap out the parts of a computer are a tiny, dwindling minority. If you are interested in that sort of thing then you already know the iMac isn’t for you. Apple probably isn’t for you either.

What I’m going to guess will happen is a repeat of the MacBook Pro refresh that happened in June. Both iMac versions will be given decent spec bumps, USB3 ports and the like. However there will also be a 21.5inch retina iMac released. This version will be more powerful, and thinner. It will do away with an optical drive, use SSDs instead of spinning hard disks, and may even have soldered on RAM. You won’t be opening up this machine.

Next year when the Haswell processors are released a 27inch retina iMac will follow in the new design, and the year after that it will be a surprise to find a non-retina Apple product.

Regardless of what happens, the internet forums won’t be happy.

Bug Fixing

So as you may/should know, I’ve been working on a game and making it ready for release. Over the past few weeks I’ve gathered this list of bugs, and crossed them out when they were fixed. I’m still fixing bugs, but now they get fixed straight away rather than going onto a list, which hopefully means the end is a little bit nearer.

• Doesn’t Reset after being stunned - “Fixing this” can cause Tooth to look healthier than it really is
• Need Red Menu
• Need moustache with tooth
• Dali Moustache doesn’t look right
• 3rd Moustache is too high
• MOUSTACHES ARE BLURRY
• 2nd Moustache has a white pixel
• Moustache doesn’t come back for last 2 lives
• What happens when player loses one life then goes back to full health?
• Attribute Main Menu might be useless
• Can the Tooth hide after clicking restart, currently just moustache disappears
• TOOTH HEALTH AND PLAYER HEALTH MIGHT BE DOING THE SAME THING
• Going to Menu causes highscore to flash? MIGHT BE DARKENER PROBLEM I THINK DARKENER
• SWEETS CURRENTLY TURN INTO COINS when hitting bottom DURING MENUS
• Coins don’t look enough like coins
• Toothpaste sometimes appears before lid
• Crown should die if everything else dies
• 100000 is probably too much for moustaches
• After level some sweets spawn in front of darkener
• Now the sweets go through the teeth
• Game might now be too easy
• Top Banner appears again even when it’s already there!
• Menu Music doesn’t react to music volume
• Dying while stunned causes flashing
• NEED TO IMPLEMENT STATS PAGE
• Take out touch movement, it is too easy and looks bad
• Tooth wobbles, may just be with button controls (Perhaps acceleration is so high that it keeps going afterwards?)
• Replace all Change Image to Change Attribute
• Invincible should be gold to cut memory usage
• Invincibility animation doesn’t work with buttons
• Destroy Lives after gone?
• Is the about page finished?
• Constrain on pause needed?
• Certain image of tooth turning near full health is broken
• I need to find the correct X & Y for the moustache selectors
• Stats page has too many 0s
• Stats banner header moves back at different pace
• Store header doesn’t change when clicked
• moustache selectors need to enter and leave the screen
• store needs the coins to go back to zero when it leaves
• moustache 3 isn’t correct
• Bought isn’t remembered, until something is clicked
• Break up and animate background
• Make Lives only size of Tooth?
• Am I spawning more lives every time one goes?
• tiny piece of pink on tip of tooth lives?
• Paused constrains itself to being unpressed
• Menus use contains, but may not need to
• Lives come back when menu is true, but check if menu is always changing in main menu
• Flipped isn’t going off as much as it needs to, everything that shouldn’t be flipped should turn it off
• Invincible movement is messed up
• Head banner attribute delays top banner leaving, need to add to complete and paused
• Widen entire lid, the overhang doesn’t work right
• Do i need to constrain the sweet speeds?
• Can’t shake screen after being hit by lid twice, why?
• Need to ease in everything on the final menu
• store & options banner moves at different speeds
• Save controls type
• Implement Flashing highscores, requires art
• teething isn’t coming back
• Is all SFX using SFX volume?
• Make reset work
• Toothpaste lid isn’t divisible by 2 and 2 again
• Make sure sound changes when paused, and stops when unpaused
• Give walls a position
• Sweets aren’t coins for long enough
• Sweets don’t go back to rotating quickly
• Teething is always coming back
• Menus look weird when art comes in with them
• Make build up sound start at first frame of animation
• Pause Darkener isn’t in right place
• Implement Tutorial