Evernote, the clever cross-platform service that lets users easily collect, organize, and find information, has been around for a couple years now. First existing as a PC client and later introducing Mac, web, and mobile versions, Evernote now enjoys over half a million registered users across all these platforms. What is more interesting, however, is that Evernote's newest client has quickly become its most popular.

According to numbers obtained by TechCrunch, 57 percent of Evernote's users are accessing the service from an iPhone, surpassing access via the web (51 percent), Windows (32 percent), Mac (28 percent), and "other mobile" clients (8 percent). Note that we didn't start drinking early this afternoon, and our math isn't wrong: nearly half of Evernote's users access the service from more than one client, with another nearly 20 percent using three or more clients (I personally fall in the last group; I use Evernote on my Mac, iPhone, and Windows when covering Vista products). All of this Evernoting (yes, a new colloquialism) has produced a total of 13.8 million notes so far.

That the iPhone client has risen to the top of Evernote's charts is, in a way, not very surprising. The iPhone is a perfect fit for an Evernote client, which provides interesting features like automated optical character recognition (OCR) for text in photos for free. Add on other handy features in the iPhone client like audio note recording and, more recently, offline storage, and there is a tremendous amount of potential productivity in this deceptively flexible service. Evernote fits into well over 10 million pockets now and Apple pushes it on its new iPhone Your Life site; this will likely lead to a larger user margin in the device and a better service overall.

I'm about to tell you a true story. It's not about me (honest). I have this friend who submitted an application to Apple for review. After a few weeks, it came back with one of those embarrassingly stupid rejection letters that said more about the person reviewing the application than it did about the application itself. In a nutshell, the application violated one of those user interaction rules that seem to exist in certain pompous minds rather than in the actual Apple Human Interface Guidelines.

My friend wrote to me and blew off a lot of steam. This was not by far the first rejection letter received by said person. And this person had a history of frustration. Apple had, at no time, replied to a single protest letter written by this person or provided any way to appeal rejections. So here's where it gets interesting. After a day or so of calming down, this person decided to go ahead and resubmit the application. And did so without making a single change to the application.

I'm sure you know where this is going. If you think for just a second, you'll figure out the punch line, and you'll be right: that application was accepted into the store, exactly as is, without any changes whatsoever. It is for sale today, and you can go to App Store and buy it.

It's stories like this that highlight the arbitrary and capricious nature of some App Store rejections. And, should you be a developer, it may provide you with some courage to stand by your design, exactly as it is. Because sometimes if you fail at first, you may yet succeed if you try, try again.

Every weekend, we take a time out from our work at the Orbiting HQ and play our new obsessions and old favorites, so we thought we'd celebrate the great weekend of gaming to come by providing you with some ideas about what each of us plans on playing over the weekend.

What are you guys planning to play this weekend? Anything out there that we missed that we should check out? Share your thoughts in the comments and enjoy the weekend of gaming!

My IRC friends have been after me to use github for what seems like forever. I finally got around to building my very first github repository for an upcoming Ars article and I thought I'd share the experience with any readers who have thought about going git (or gitting going) but have hesitated. Here's a really simple how-to to get you up and going with your first repository.

Create your project. For my first, simple project, I went ahead and created a new directory on my computer called helloworld and added a README plus, as you're already expecting, a 5 line Hello World C project.

Install git. As I work primarily on a Mac, I got my copy of git from git-osx-installer on Google Code. Many newer Linux distributions come with git already pre-installed. Type git at the command line to check.

Create a new github account. It's extremely easy to do so. Pop over to github, enter a new user name and your email.

Upload your SSH public key. If you have not yet done so, add your SSH public key to your account. Go to your account page, click add another public key, enter a title and your key. If you have not yet generated one (check in ~/.ssh/ for a id_rsa.pub file), you'll find instructions for doing so at the github site.

More...

With the details on Microsoft's decision this week to discontinue OneCare next year, as well as Symantec's and Kaspersky's thoughts on the decision, it's now time to focus on the product codenamed Morro. Microsoft has revealed very little about Morro so far, mainly because it isn't done. Here's what we know, and what Redmond still refuses to discuss.

 

What we know

Microsoft can't leave the security market altogether; that would go completely against the huge strides Redmond has made in security over the past couple of years. Enter Morro, a free real-time antimalware solution for consumers to be released in the second half of 2009. It will not be bundled with Windows, and will instead be available as a standalone download for Windows XP/Vista/7. It will be "built on Microsoft's award-winning malware protection engine and will take advantage of the same core antimalware technology that fuels the company's current line of security products," a Microsoft representative told Ars. Furthermore, as more people use Morro, Microsoft will gain access to a larger amount of data that it can then use in security research and improvement of other solutions like Forefront.

Morro won't compete with other security alternatives (which typically do more than just remove malware); Microsoft has given up competing in the security software industry and is aiming for those who currently don't have any sort of security protection. This is between 50 and 60 percent of Windows users, according to the company, either because they refuse to or can't pay for it. "In addition, we believe that many customers will wish to continue with 3rd party security and PC performance protection suites," the representative told us. In short, this should help the company avoid antitrust issues.

What we don't know

When I asked whether Microsoft would work with security vendors to make sure there are no incompatibility problems between Morro and third party solutions, how the company will promote Morro to consumers currently without any protection, whether Windows 7 will have download links for Morro similar to the Windows Live ones, or whether OEMs will be able to bundle Morro on new PCs, I received the standard "We will announce more details closer to the solution being available" response. What I found the most interesting though is that Microsoft wouldn't discuss how Morro would work with or replace Windows Defender if it is already installed (it can be downloaded and installed for XP, is bundled with Vista, and is supposed to ship with Windows 7). How will the two coexist together?

Morro may be a big story now because it came out of the blue, but a while after OneCare is killed, Morro will likely fall back into the shadows, just like Windows Defender did. Whether Microsoft will be able to make a difference with Morro will become clear as soon as we receive more details on the technology. We'll keep you posted.

Chrome arrived two months ago, and while we had mostly positive thoughts about what Google was bringing to the table, we were also interested to see how the market would change from August to September. Chrome amassed a higher market share than Opera in its first month, stealing market share from the speedy browser, as well as IE and Firefox. Only Safari gained as well. This month, things have flipped around completely, except for Microsoft.

Between September and October, Internet Explorer dropped by a quarter of a percent: from 71.52 percent to 71.27 percent (quite a small drop for IE, compared to other months). Firefox has rebounded, jumping by 0.51 percent (from 19.46 percent to 19.97 percent), Safari dropped a minor 0.08 percent (from 6.65 percent to 6.57 percent), Opera grabbed the number four spot back by gaining 0.06 (0.69 percent to 0.75 percent) while Chrome dropped 0.04 percent (from 0.78 percent to 0.74 percent). The market share pie for October 2008, according to Net Applications, looks like this:

Things at Ars are very different: our demographic is more tech-savvy users. These individuals are more conscious of alternative browsers. Firefox's lead is unmistakable, while IE and Safari's market share are a close call: the default browsers for Windows and Mac OS still show their presence. Chrome at Ars does a lot better than Opera, suggesting that tech-savvy users prefer it and that the average Joe still hasn't heard about it. I'll be looking more closely at how this trend changes over the coming months.

Chrome's explosive growth is slowly settling in, and I don't expect there will be much activity with it until Google releases the next milestone build. With the delay of IE8, third party browsers have been given even more time to do damage to IE's browser market. Chrome's entrance seems to have alternative browsers battling more against each other than with IE. Do you think this, along with the release of IE8, is what the company needs to revert its downward spiral?

Although every App Store product page offers a company and support web site, you can interact better with your users by inviting them to contact you from within the program. You may still get a few cross-eyed, single-starred, annoyed reviews, but opening up lines of communication can help redirect that anger towards concrete bug fix requests and enhancement ideas.

Many developers have found that by adding a mailto: link into their apps, they're not only getting excellent feedback from users who might not have otherwise contacted them, but they're building a relationship with these users that helps guide and direct the application's growth.

It's easy to add a simple contact button to your app. Just drop in a UIButton to your interface, label it appropriately (e.g. "Send comments, feedback" or whatever), and have it trigger a method that launches e-mail with a pre-filled letter.

- (void) emailDev: (UIButton *) button
{
    NSString *content = @"subject=Converter Feedback&body=I have been using Converter! Here are my feature requests and my overall feedback:";
    NSString *mailto = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"mailto:feedback@ericasadun.com?%@", [content stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
    NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:mailto];
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:url];
}

I have received some of my most valuable feedback from users who have not only tried out my program exhaustively but who have a vested interest in seeing it improve. Nearly every enhancement and bug fix in my currently-being-reviewed Converter update is due to user communication. By integrating the feedback option directly into the program rather than making my users seek out my web site, I have increased the number of user contacts by a couple of orders of magnitude.

Here at Nobel Intent, we applaud any effort that gets the public interested or enthused about the scientific endeavor. From time to time, we get made aware of a program designed to do so, but the past few weeks have brought a number of excellent to my attention, so I'm going to share them all in a quick rundown.

Northrop Grumman puts teachers in the vomit comet: The vomit comet is the semi-affectionate nickname for a jet that performs a series of climbs and dives in order to simulate a gravity-free environment, generally for astronaut training. But Northrop Grumman is putting teachers on board, giving them a chance to experience the flights, and bring a bit of the experience (and a bit of the sense of fun) back to the classroom, as the teachers get to videotape experiments and demonstrations while on the plane. Surveys of the teachers afterward say it works—the teachers say their enthusiasm is infectious, and students are more likely to be considering science and engineering studies post-vomit comet.

NASA wants you to name the next Mars rover: Right now, the Mars Science Laboratory is being constructed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The rover is significantly larger than Spirit and Opportunity, and will be using the heat of radioactive decay to power itself through the Martian winter instead of simply riding it out. When it gets to the red planet, though, it is going to have a catchier name, as NASA is running an essay contest for students in grades K-12, with the winner getting to name the hardware.

Toshiba USA sponsors public school science projects: The Japanese electronics giant's US division funds the Toshiba America Foundation, which provides grants that support teachers trying to add some math and science projects to their classrooms. In conjunction with the National Science Teacher's Association, it also sponsors the ExploraVision contest; entries for that are now being accepted. Students can compete for up to $240,000 in savings bonds.

The National Academies wants to help Hollywood do better: The National Academies of Science have created a Science and Entertainment Exchange, designed to help connect people in the media with experts in the scientific fields that are the subjects of scripts. It's easy to groan when movies and TV tackle a scientific topic, but it's hard for people who don't actually know science to get it right without bogging down a plot line. Hopefully, the the existence of this group can at least help those in the entertainment business get a bit more of it right.

Dance your PhD: Now an annual event, AAAS and Science just announced the winners of their dance contest, where entrants translate their PhD into fancy footwork. This year's winning entrants included a number on the role of vitamin D in beta cells, a comparison of PET scans, hemoglobin getting down in the bloodstream, and DNA being measured. You can watch the winners, and the other entrants, to get some inspiration for next year.

Rock Band is nearing the 500 song mark for downloadable content, and Harmonix seems intent on meeting that mark before the year is out. For the second week in a row, Rock Band will see a deluge of downloadable content including new tracks from The Killers, Soundgarden, Yngwie Malmsteen, and Lamb of God. Peep the tracks for next week:

The Killers Track Pack Yngwie Malmsteen Track Pack Singles

Each of the two track packs runs $5.49 (440 Microsoft Points), and individual songs run $1.99 each (160 Microsoft Points). As a special exception this week because of Thanksgiving, the content will be up on both the Xbox Live Marketplace and the PlayStation Store next Tuesday. Though I'm the furthest thing from a death metal fan, I'm excited to get Lamb Of God going in Rock Band: I liked shredding to it in Guitar Hero 2.

While the Xbox 360 Arcade model is only $200, it doesn't come with a hard drive. That may not bother casual gamers, but the heavy downloader or the Rock Band fiend won't be happy at all. Luckily, Tiger Direct has the deal for you: the refurbished Xbox 360 Premium system with the 20GB hard drive is now on sale for $150.

While Tiger Direct isn't our favorite retailer, and I can see how some people may be a little hesitant at buying a refurbished 360, you can't deny that price... it's a great deal. Be sure to read up on the information Tiger Direct provides about refurbished products to make sure you're comfortable, but I can see these moving very quickly. 

It's great to see so many great deals on hardware out there right now; being a gamer on a budget is getting easier and easier. Should we use this as an excuse to say that Sony needs to lower the price on the PS3 again? 

Yes, I think so. 

If anyone orders one of these, let me know when you receive it; I've seen a wide range of refurbished products in my time, and if these are worth looking out for, that would be good information to share. 

Eidos lost a lot of credibility among gamers with the way it handled reviews of Kayne & Lynch. But it looks like the publisher is up to its old tricks again and has been trying to temporarily block low reviews scores for the upcoming Tomb Raider: Underworld.

The news was revealed via a Twitter post by GameSpot UK editor Guy Cocker, which said "call from Eidos—if you're planning on reviewing Tomb Raider Underworld at less than an 8.0, we need you to hold your review till Monday." Public relations company Barrington Harvey—which represent Eidos—then confirmed to videogaming247 that it was true.

"That's right. We're trying to manage the review scores at the request of Eidos," a company spokesperson said."We're trying to get the Metacritic rating to be high, and the brand manager in the US that's handling all of Tomb Raider has asked that we just manage the scores before the game is out, really, just to ensure that we don't put people off buying the game, basically."

It doesn't look like the tactic is working though, as the game currently has a Metacritic average of 78%. This includes sub-80% reviews from publications like IGN, 1up, Eurogamer, and Official Xbox Magazine UK. But given the negative reaction that the Kayne & Lynch incident inspired, it's surprising that Eidos would even resort to these kinds of tactics again.

Ben's thoughts

This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard... what is Eidos going to do, stop sending review copies to sites that don't comply? Do they really think reviews of Eidos games bring in enough readers for this to be a valid tactic? 

It most cases being told you can't review the new Eidos game is something of a relief more than it is a punishment. Here's a hint at the best way to "manage" review scores: make good games. It's just that easy. 

I was overjoyed to find a copy of Metal Slug 7 on my doorstep yesterday, and I spent last night dutifully chugging through the campaign. Metal Slug 7 is like getting your favorite dish at your favorite restaurant: you're rarely surprised by the flavor, but you're also rarely left hungry. 

So why, with the latest Metal Slug title, do I feel so unsatisfied? 

Maybe because there is no multiplayer... at all. Metal Slug games are a blast when played with a friend, and the top graphics and shooting action are easier to enjoy when you're shooting the enemy soldiers in co-op. The fact that an arcade game, a 2D shooter, doesn't have a two-player mode is somewhat criminal. What the hell were they thinking? 

I'm also a little let down that the game, for the moment, is only available on the Nintendo DS. I love Nintendo's portable, and I'm not going to argue that SNK Playmore should have shoehorned in a minigame or two where I have to blow into the microphone, but the mini-map on the bottom of the screen is basically useless. What's more, the animation and detail is often lost on the small upper screen. It doesn't look bad, of course; I just wish for an Xbox 360 or PS3 release with high-definition sprites so I can enjoy the art. 

This is a game that belongs on the big screen, and you should be able to play it with a friend. If you're a Metal Slug fan, this new adventure is a by-the-numbers sequel in the series, but for $30, it's hard to recommend a buy. A $15 Xbox Live release? That would have been more like it. In many ways Metal Slug 7 feels like a game that was released with the absolute minimum amount of work put into the title, and that's a disappointment. 

IBM won a preliminary injunction barring Mark Papermaster from working at Apple as the company's new senior vice president of devices hardware engineering. But according to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the injunction comes with a requirement to post a bond that could reasonably cover damages if the injunction is later stricken. A federal judge then ordered IBM to post $3 million in order to grant the injunction against Papermaster.

Rule 65(c) says, "The court may issue a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order only if the movant gives security in an amount that the court considers proper to pay the costs and damages sustained by any party found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained." The amount determined by Judge Kenneth M. Karas was $3 million. Though actual damages may be less, depending on the eventual findings of the court, that $3 million is the maximum IBM is liable for if it is determined that Papermaster was "wrongfully enjoined or restrained."

Court documents entered into record this week show that IBM has posted the bond as ordered by Judge Karas. A status conference was held this week, but no arguments have been heard regarding Papermaster's counterclaims. It could be some time before this issue is resolved if IBM and Apple can't reach a settlement out of court. If the case gets tied up in court for very long, though, the $3 million dollars might not seem like such a large amount.

Like Sony's SingStar franchise, Microsoft is hoping to bolster its recently released karaoke game Lips with a steady stream of downloadable songs. Now that the game has been released, Microsoft has outlined what aspiring singers can expect to belt out over the coming weeks.

Week of November 21:

Week of November 28:

The songs will be available worldwide and will run gamers 160 Microsoft Points ($1.99). Microsoft has promised that new songs will be available regularly, but hasn't yet committed to released songs on a weekly basis. Hopefully it is able to keep up with this pace, because as Rock Band has shown, new songs are a great way of maintaining interest in a music game.

The iPhone dev team has posted details and recommendations about the new iPhone 2.2 firmware release, which hit iTunes last night. Both PwnageTool and QuickPwn updates are under way and will be released in due time. The team writes that they are modifying the tools for the new firmware and that it needs to test and validate the changes. The Pwnage/QuickPwn efforts are produced entirely by volunteers.

All iPhone jailbreak users are still cautioned against applying the update. iTunes offers two ways to apply a firmware change: you can "update" your iPhone, which leaves your personal data intact, or "restore," which does not. The team says that updating to 2.2 may allow the phone to remain activated, but that restoring to 2.2 will likely kill any current pseudo-activation. Deactivating your phone renders it unusable for certain users. This applies to both users who have unlocked the phone to for out-of-network use as well as those who applied the activation feature to allow the phone to work with AT&T SIMs outside of the normal iPhone contract.

3G users may be particularly hard hit by the update. The 2.2 firmware for 3G phones contains a baseband update for the 3G iPhone that may prevent a future software unlock. There is currently no software unlock available for the 3G iPhone as of yet, but the dev team has made great strides in the past weeks toward that end. (There's no equivalent baseband update included in the first-generation 2.2 phone firmware.) SIM-proxies are small circuit boards that offer a hardware-based solution for using a non-standard SIM with a locked iPhone. The team writes that SIM-proxies may also fail to work with firmware 2.2. 

Third-party jailbreak applications—i.e., those not purchased in App Store—will stop working with the 2.2 update as well. Jailbreaks, as you know, allow the iPhone's underlying OS to permit third-party software launching and execution. You will lose this feature should you update, even if your apps remain physically on your phone's media partition.

The final question is: should you update your iPhone? If you are using a standard non-jailbroken iPhone, there's absolutely no reason not to. If you have jailbroken your phone, we recommend that you wait things out. Although completely unpaid, the team has reliably delivered jailbreak updates within a few weeks of each firmware release.

You've got to hand it to Rare. When it comes to the company's recent efforts, no risk has been spared in the attempt to create a different kind of experience for the Xbox 360. In spite of less-than-stellar sales, the company continues to chug forward with refreshing, casual-friendly titles that are the only bright colors in a sea of "next-gen" browns and grays. And finally, with Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Rare has hit the sweet spot between casual and hardcore: the elusive "bridge" title.

The company's latest title, which revives the famed N64 franchise, focuses on a series of worlds home to challenges that, when completed, further progress the story and unlock content. These challenges are bite-sized game play set pieces which players play through to unlock jiggies, which then unlock more levels with more jiggies and so on. There are more than one hundred different challenges to explore, 97 time trials to best, and 131 jiggies to find, so there's quite a bit of content in this $40 game.

Where Nuts & Bolts succeeds in hitting the sweet spot—and branching off from the well-worn norms of the genre—is in the universally enjoyable sandbox-style game play. Unlike previous Banjo-Kazooie games, on-foot segments aren't the norm; the vast majority of the challenges involve using vehicles. You'll be able to harness cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats, and even planes to tackle the game's varied and (mostly) fun challenges. 

Much like the infamous "Gummy Ship" section of Kingdom Hearts, Nuts & Bolts includes a rather robust vehicle editor which lets you create your own vehicles. New parts are everywhere: you can collect "Mumbo" crates, win them from "boss" battles, or buy them. It's all a part of the quest for your perfect vehicle. A full painting system and a seemingly infinite number of combinations makes this the game's strongest feature, as you can spend hours upgrading and perfecting your ride before taking on some challenges with your own, custom-made machine.

The vehicle creation system really gets interesting as you progress in the game; there is rarely only one way to complete a given challenge. Thanks to some of the more interesting vehicle parts, you'll have a ton of options that reward experimentation with the vehicle design. For example, one challenge requires you to navigate through a number of floating rings before time runs out. You could go the easy way and build a plane, or you could just as easily add a spring to your car to bounce through them. There are many places where the game lets you decide how you want to play, and this is the epitome of good sandbox design. It's completely up to you, and no one way is inherently better than the other.

Sadly, the game's Achilles' heel happens to be on its strongest leg: the vehicles just don't control that well most of the time. Most feeling clunky and slow even after numerous upgrades. The "fun factor" of driving in an loosely-realistic environment, like the infamous e-brake turns in Grand Theft Auto 3 or the power-sliding of the Halo warthog, just isn't there with Nuts & Bolts. Were the driving just a little bit tighter, the game could easily have been one of the best vehicular titles on the system. Instead, driving can sometimes feel like a chore and it saps a bit of the fun out of the experience.

There are some other minor issues that aren't as central to the game play, but can test one's patience. A touch of slowdown here and there mars the otherwise-gorgeous presentation. Worse yet, the game gets a bit too "hand-holdy." Nagging text overlays in some places and poor instructions at other make the game a frustrating affair for any gamer with at least reasonable gaming skills, and the lack of voice acting makes the game feel much older than the visual presentation would have you think otherwise. And though this may not a negative for some, the game is entirely too easy. In fact, the only real difficult moments of the game are largely the result of clumsy vehicle controls. 

But these inconveniences aside, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is a great game and easily the best title Rare has produced in years. It's decidedly old-school in its high-level design, but the new vehicle twist does make for a great deal of variety and an addictive quality that goes beyond the "drive" to find all the items and beat all the time trials. If you're looking for something other than a shooter or a sports title this holiday, Nuts & Bolts is a great bet—especially at $20 less than a normal game.

Verdict: Buy
Developer: Rare
Publisher: Microsoft
Platform: Xbox 360
Price: $39.99
Rating: E10+ 
Other recent reviews:  

The Hackulous pirating site is dedicated to cracking and distributing iPhone applications without paying any money to their developers. In what can only be described as hilarious irony, a beta version of that application was itself pirated and released (cached) before it could enter a full open-source distribution.

SaladFork, the author of Crackulous, called the leak "absolutely disgusting, and downright insulting." He writes about his pride of development, saying, "[I] have released a new version of Crackulous almost every day or two, fixing all the bugs that had been reported up until that day. I was proud of Crackulous, and put a large majority of my free time into ensuring it will be the best application it possibly could be. I responded to beta tester feedback, and each version of Crackulous was better than the last."

Alas, one of his pirate compatriots betrayed him, allowing the Crackulous beta to be freely downloaded. After a time of reflection and calming down, SaladFork announced that he would not, after all, be abandoning the project (cached) and looks forward to a public release. He asked, however, that bloggers and forum members not spread the leak, putting his faith in their humanity and goodness. He wrote, "Several of you had noticed the irony in me complaining that a tool used to steal from other developers was stolen, but I hope you realize the difference in situation. iPhone developers almost always (99% of the time) develop applications for the App Store in hopes of getting money."

Leaving aside the obvious jokes about honor among thieves, it's a shame this experience was not more of an ethical learning opportunity for Mr. SaladFork and his friends.

I'm sure you, like me, furiously downloaded the iPhone OS 2.2 update this morning and immediately began checking out the Google Transit features added to Maps. In that case, you might have missed some other updates from Apple—one for iTunes, and one for Final Cut Studio 2.

iTunes 8.0.2 includes, in Apple's words, "a number of important bug fixes," as well as improvements to "stability and performance." Specifically, Apple mentions that iTunes 8 is now accessible with VoiceOver, including iTunes U content. Also, MP3 quality is improved on some computers, and connecting to the iTunes Store over a proxy should be more reliable. The 57MB update is available via Software Update or direct download.

Pro Application Update 2008-004 updates four pieces of the Final Cut Studio 2 package—specifically, Final Cut Pro 6.0.5, Compressor 3.0.5, Color 1.0.3 and Shake 4.1.1. The note in Software Update merely state that the update "addresses general performance issues and improves overall stability." Thankfully, Apple includes more detailed information on its website. If you use Final Cut Studio regularly, then the phrases like, "Application of Display LUT Now Indicated Consistently," probably mean a lot more to you than to me. The update is available now via Software Update. The direct download wasn't available at the time of publishing, but I expect it to show up soon.

It has been a tough few years for Midway. The company that once dominated the arcade-style gaming scene with giants like Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam has come upon tough times as it struggles to keep up with an evolving industry. Even the company's blockbusters, including the likes of Unreal Tournament 3 and Stranglehold, didn't perform as well as expected. As a result, the company now faces delisting from the New York Stock Exchange.

The notice served by the NYSE gives a company six months to rectify its poorly-performing stock. The standard for continued listing requires a minimum average closing price of $1.00 per share maintained over 30 consecutive trading days, and Midway unfortunately has not met that standard. Though business operations are unaffected by the decision, this isn't a good sign for the hurting company, which quietly shuffled the press release under other news last Friday afternoon.

Last time we heard about a company threatened with delisting, Atari was on the verge of disappearing forever. Now Midway faces those same challenges, with layoffs and cancelled projects to boot. Even with its recently-released Mortal Kombat vs. DC on shelves, one of the most significant titles in its portfolio at the moment, the company definitely has its work cut out for it if it wants to stay afloat and free from the "boomshakalaka" of shareholders.