Mac|Life - August 2010

TRIPPO VOICEMAGIX

Bridge that language gap with an app Those of us with serious bouts of the travel bug tend to hit the road with a light load, which means leaving the phrase book at home and foregoing any possibility of real communication overseas. Fortunately, Trippo VoiceMagix is a language translation app that can help you overcome the language barrier without the extra weight in your carry-on.

You’d be better off piecing together words from a Romanian phrase book.

languages that can be dictated to you, so you can hear exactly how words are pronounced. You’ll need to rely heavily on this feature for languages that use non-Western characters, for example.

Despite the app’s potentially useful features, we still wouldn’t trust it as our primary translator on an excursion around the world. For starters, it doesn’t work without cell service or a Wi-Fi connection. Worse, VoiceMagix occasionally couldn’t figure out what we were saying, especially in a noisier setting. Translation from English was usually way too literal, and grammar and conjugation were not always up to par, which could cause some communication issues if you’re trying to converse with non-English-speaking natives.

The bottom line. As a utility, Trippo VoiceMagix proved itself extremely essential. However, for your trip around the world we’d suggest the added weight of a paperback phrase book.

—Florence Ion

Trippo VoiceMagix 1.0.0 Cellictica Ltd. cellictica.com $24.99

SOLID

PINBALL HD

Looking and feeling like real pinball, Pinball HD is perfectly suited for the iPad and its controls. Tap the left side of the screen and the left flippers activate, opposite for the right. Pinball wizards can also shake their iPad for that essential ball-saving nudge. Players can view the entire table in landscape mode or follow the ball in portrait mode. Both are usable options, but portrait mode is slightly more risky because the flippers aren’t constantly in view.

The game includes three tables to choose from: a table modeled after the Wild West, a jungle table with a gorilla named “Big Kong,” and an impressive underwater table. They vary in size and complexity, but each is enjoyable and graphically striking.

The bottom line. At a rock-bottom price, Pinball HD is a must-have for enthusiasts of the silver ball.—Nic Vargus

Don’t shake the iPad too hard, or you’ll tilt.

GREAT

iPAD
Pinball HD 1. 3
Gameprom
gameprom.com
$2.99

CHAOS RINGS

Action-packed role-playing game Chaos Rings crams the same animation, engrossing storyline, and game mechanics of Square Enix’s videogame titles into a smaller form factor.

To play, choose a two-person team and guide them around the perilous dungeons with the intuitive touch-anywhere joystick controls. Most of the game is spent engaged in turn-based battles that can become a little tedious, though the item-drop and level-up systems give you something fun to strive for. And during duels, you can control both characters in your party separately or in a paired attack. The game is fairly easy for newcomers to the RPG genre, though there is no autosave feature, which gets frustrating if you forget to save before a difficult battle starts.