A little while ago we reviewed Asphalt 6 from the Mac App Store and said that it would tide us over until we got a true high-definition racing game for Mac, and now we’re happy to say that it has been delivered. DiRT 2 has been converted from the home console versions to run on your home machine, unlike Asphalt, which was converted from the iPad to Mac. This means that the game not only features stellar graphics that will push your Mac but reap rewards, but it also has a much longer lifespan than shorter, ‘pick up and play’ iPad games.

At the heart of the game is the Career mode, which throws you in as a rookie driver. You’ve got an RV, a single car to start with, and the numbers of your competitors in your phone. Once you’ve inputted your name and nationality, you’ll receive a call from a famous driver and you can start your first race. From here you’ll jetset around the globe, entering competitions, earning winnings, buying new kit and ultimately competing in the X Games in Europe, Asia and America. There is a huge number of competitions to take part in, and it will be several hours before you get close to the end of the Career mode.

It’s quite a looker too – we played on the standard settings and everything was very smooth on a Core i5 2.3 GHz entry-level MacBook Pro. The tracks are detailed and as there are normally eight competitors on screen at once the mayhem is unbelievable. Cars flip and roll, dust and water flies at the camera and your car becomes more crumpled and damaged as you bump other drivers, hearing their angry radio complaints in your ear when you do, which is a nice touch.

When you have a Mac that is used by the whole family, it’s easy to forget just how much your kids can do on your machine when you’re not around. While there’s always a danger that files and folders could be lost, the bigger risk is that the kids venture onto the internet and access sites that are inappropriate for them. If this could be the case in your family, it’s time to start thinking about setting up Parental Controls on your Mac.

What you can do with these controls is surprisingly detailed – if you simply want to limit the webpages that your kids can access, you can add a list of allowable sites and nothing more. But you also have the ability to control how long they are allowed to use the computer for each day, set limits on specific applications that they can use and monitor what they do when they’re on the Mac. The idea is that you can let your children have what they think is a free reign on your Mac while keeping them safe.

1: Unlock

Click the lock in the bottom-left of Parental Controls in System Preferences and enter an administrator Username and Password to make changes.

2: Add controls

You should now see a list of all the users of your machine on the left-side of the window. Choose the right name and click Enable Parental Controls.

3: Limiting apps

You can choose to limit the Finder for users, as well as choosing which apps the user will be allowed to use. You can also set an age limit for downloading.

4: Dock limitation

If another user changes the Dock, losing quick access to applications, you can stop them altering the Dock entirely by checking this box.

5: Application logs

You can see what your other users have been doing by clicking Logs at the bottom of the window, and restrict certain applications if necessary.

6: Limiting websites

If you want to restrict what sites users can access, do so in the Web tab. You can limit access to adult sites automatically, or select sites that a user can access.

7: The right people

If your child has access to applications like Mail and iChat, you may want to make sure they’re not contacting anyone they shouldn’t.

8: In good time

In the next tab you can limit how long the computer can be used for each day, and set a Bedtime for both school nights and weekends.

9: And the rest

Finally, this section allows you to limit features like CD and DVD burning, as well as ensuring inappropriate words are hidden in the dictionary.

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Taking photos is becoming less specialist with ever-increasingly straightforward and compact solutions. However, these devices have to do something to set themselves apart from competitors, beyond the ‘easy to use’ tag. The COOLPIX S100 goes some way in doing so, by streamlining functionality that is powerful yet simple to understand.

The simplicity of this camera’s guts is personified by its exterior shell design. Smooth and slimline, it’ll easily slot right into your pocket at 18.1mm. This will appeal to those interested in ergonomic design and is complemented by a choice of three contemporary colours: classic black, Ferrari red, and hot pink.

The COOLPIX S100 looks to match competitors through its powerful HD screen, with multi-touch taking it a step further. This experience is personified through a nice big application space of 3.5 inches, allowing you to tap to take a snap (touch shutter). It’s extremely responsive (8 fps) and far more comfortable in operation than we thought it would be.

This affords you the luxury to scrutinise more clearly than the viewfinder – the camera’s wide-viewing angle with Nikon’s Clear Color Display technology means
you can see what you’re shooting in all conditions. Users can also touch-swipe through on-screen photos, as well as pinch to zoom in and out.

Other cool functions include HD Movie options that record at Full HD 1,080p – choose either to film fast or slow, and the camera records at speeds from 15 to 240 fps. To be honest, that is advantageous for such a camera size, but you will only have around 20 seconds of shooting time at the Full HD capacity (VGA is at 1.5 minutes). This also eats up a lot of camera memory, so an additional Flash Memory card is essential. With this extra capacity you can then make the most of the camera’s built-in HDMI connector with HDMI-CEC support for output to an HDTV.

The NIKKOR wide-angle 5x zoom lens system provides you with precision and sharp resolution, and the camera boasts a number of resolution settings suitable for varying displays – up to 16 megapixel, assuring users of outstanding high-quality for a range of scenarios.

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If you’re a true audiophile who regularly uses a MacBook as their primary computer, it can sometimes be difficult to get the most from your music without a pair of external speakers. The Cubiks are only the second product released by the Californian company Palo Alto, and we have to say that we love the design. Each speaker’s casing is made from a soft plastic with a texture similar to that of a matte black golf ball. The beautiful cubes each sit atop a metal stand that holds it firmly a few centimetres off your desk, and the speakers feel very solid.

Unfortunately, you will need to plug these speakers into the mains to get the powerful sound you’re after, but the Cubiks connect via USB to your computer, and thanks to this they are able to avoid the drop in quality that occurs when using a standard 3.5mm adapter. The sound is transferred digitally to the speakers and is then converted into an analogue signal within the casing, meaning the clarity of the sound is incredible. More on that later.

We were a little disappointed by the connection that was required between the two speakers, which uses a proprietary jack on a relatively short cable. Of course these are computer speakers, so it’s likely you won’t need it to stretch much further than to each side of your Mac, but the option would have been nice. In terms of sound, the Cubiks do, as we said, produce sound of such clarity it genuinely feels like the artist is in the room with you. Sitting at the desk and pressing play on the first track we experienced an odd feeling that the sound was surrounding us, as if we were wearing headphones. We could hear every note of the music, and the quality shone bright.

It was a shame, then, when we reached a particularly bass-heavy track. The small speakers, though powerful, couldn’t deal with the lower frequencies nearly as well. The Cubiks have a bass-boosting button that works relatively well, but causes tracks to distort at high volumes. It’s a shame that Palo Alto didn’t include a sub-woofer in the package, as it would have solved the problem completely. Sadly, though, the small speakers will not be powerful enough for lovers of deeper tracks despite their specially designed speakers. Still, if you’re more interested in clarity, and can afford the hefty price tag, the Cubiks will absolutely blow you away.

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Since Apple made the move to Intel processors, Mac users have had the unique ability to run Windows on their machines. It can be done natively on any Mac using a process called Boot Camp, but requires shutting down your machine from one operating system and then booting into the other. As a result of the painstaking nature of this system, virtualisation software came along offering users the ability to run both systems simultaneously, even allowing users to access apps and files from Windows. VMWare has been at the forefront of this particular branch of Mac software since its inception and has now, in its fourth version, delivered a product that is not only compatible with Lion but helps users take advantage of its best features, like Mission Control and Launch Pad.

Setting up is much the same as it has always been, with users needing a working licensed copy of a Windows operating system (or a Linux build) and a copy of Fusion 4. Upon launching Fusion, you select the boot disc for Windows, select a partition size for the operating system to live on and then wait for your new operating system to load. If you are an existing user of VMWare or, alternatively, have a copy of rival software that contains a virtual machine, you can import them, rather than going through the task of re-installing and importing odd files and documents.

For most Mac users, Unity Mode is going to be the most efficient way to run Windows. It does so as if all the apps from the other system have been installed natively. In short, you don’t need to think about where the apps are, you can just use Launch Pad as you normally would and everything is right there. New applications that you download will also appear there too.

Another boon for the software is its ability to run several versions of Lion. This is a new feature made possible by a relaxation of Apple’s licensing laws. While for the most part this applies to developers who might want to test newer versions of the software, everyday users could take advantage of loading two different versions of Lion to run different versions of software. Sadly, users aren’t allowed to run Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion on the same machine to solve problems when older software hasn’t been updated to run on newer operating systems. A classic example of this would be the dropped support for Rossetta in Lion and the resulting apps that won’t now work. Apple’s licensing laws prevent this and, if you try to do this, you’ll be promptly greeted with a message from Fusion stopping the action.

While the installation and use of this system is pretty fluid and we found responsiveness to be good, we did see a big drain on battery levels with virtual machines running. Admittedly not as much as we’d seen in previous incarnations, but the increased number of machines able to run and the options available lead to a situation where multiple virtual machines running at once took a severe toll on our MacBook Pro’s battery. Desktop users are of course free to run as many machines as they wish.

Users who would prefer to keep their machines separate can of course do so and operate each machine in an individual window. The coolest way to do this is to run each in the new Lion-enabled full-screen mode, which would give you the opportunity to swipe through virtual desktops using the multi-touch gesture on your Magic Mouse or trackpad. This is a great system and it makes brilliant use of the multiple desktop opportunities in Lion.

Perhaps the biggest selling point of the latest version of Fusion is the price. As a new user, you can get it for the price quoted on the previous page until the end of this year. Existing customers who bought after 20 July will get a free upgrade.

So, if you’re looking for a complete solution to help get the most from multiple operating systems while running the latest version of OS X, VMWare’s Fusion 4 may be the answer.

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If you’ve recently invested in one of the new Thunderbolt-enabled Macs, you may already be looking for the best way to upgrade, espcially if you went for the MacBook Air. The tiny laptop is somewhat lacking when it comes to the ports included on its diminutive frame. With a Gigabit Ethernet, a FireWire 800 and a Thunderbolt port all being included on the back of this 27-inch display, it seems the Thunderbolt makes up for the Air’s shortcomings.

Of course, these are additions to an already impressive product. The large screen manages the same 2,560 x 1,440 resolution. It also includes the same IPS technology that Apple now includes in its iMacs and iPads, which gives you fantastic colour reproduction no matter what angle you’re viewing from. This works brilliantly, giving you a perfect picture – it’s truly stunning.

It’s worth mentioning one thing at this point; if you don’t have a Thunderbolt- enabled Mac, then this display is not for you. The ports on the display only work thanks to the Thunderbolt cable’s two-way signal, and with no USB adapter included on the connection cable for this display, a Thunderbolt port is the only way to send and receive the signals you need for the display to work properly. Thankfully, Apple is continuing to ship its LED Cinema display at the same price as the Thunderbolt display, so if you still want to upgrade but don’t want to buy a new Mac to do so, you still have options open to you.

Apart from the ports on the back, the only real improvement here over Apple’s LED Cinema display is the FaceTime HD camera that allows you to record in 720p and have high-quality video FaceTime calls with your friends and family. Again, this is technology we’ve seen before, and it works as well as we’ve come to expect. Otherwise, there’s nothing new to shout about.

The real issue for this display is not any of its features, but the price. Everything it does, it does absolutely brilliantly, and we would argue this is much better value than the LED Cinema display. However, at £899/$999, it’s difficult to justify such expenditure when you can get fantastic 27-inch displays for less than half the price. If you can afford the luxury, it’s the perfect expansion for your workspace. If you can’t, look elsewhere.

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