Hello again! It's been a month since our last newsletter, believe it or not, and we've been busy over here. Those of you who have been using the Mac since the early days will probably remember a game called Solarian II. In fact, we get email from you folks about that game all the time. Well, we've finally caved in to popular demand, and Solarian II, long incompatible with the latest system software, has now been ported to OS X!

That's the big news, which you can read more about below. Also, we've released version 1.4 of PhotoReviewer, also described below. Besides that, I've been working on some secret stuff that I can't talk about 'cause it's secret. More on that next newsletter, I hope. :->

Solarian II was first written about 15 years ago, and was one of the first color games for the new color Macs that came out in 1988. It ran happily for years, but Mac OS X broke it — it never ran well under Classic. But now we've ported it to Mac OS X. It's now a native Cocoa app (!), and should be good to go for another 15 years, we hope!

We made this port as faithful to the original as we possibly could. All the sounds are the same (but cleaned up to have less hiss and noise), the graphics are untouched (but it can now switch your display's resolution so it fills that nice big monitor you have nowadays), even the user interface is preserved in all its archaic wonder! Here's a screenshot of the game in action (click for the full-size version):

Solarian II is shareware, with a cost of $10. Folks who paid for the old Classic version are not registered for this version of Solarian II. Usually we provide free upgrades for registered users, but this is not just a new version, it's a complete port to what is effectively a new operating system. The amount of effort expended seems to us to justify a new registration fee. Additionally, we don't have any payment records from the old version of Solarian II, so we could not verify who had already paid. We hope nobody is outraged by this; please keep in mind you had more than a decade of playing paid for by your first $25.  :->

Solarian II's new icon is courtesy of SOHO/EIT consortium and is used with permission. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA. They produce amazing images of the sun, worth checking out.

Please note that Solarian II 1.1 requires OS X 10.3 to run.

PhotoReviewer is a photo management app that helps you to sort through your incoming photos, whether from your digital camera (including raw images!), your scanner, or your internet connection. Quickly view your photos and choose which ones are "keepers", sort them into different folders, delete duplicates, and more. PhotoReviewer belongs between your digital camera and iPhoto, weeding and sorting your photos before iPhoto gets bogged down by them. And now, with support for QuickTime, you can do the same with sounds and video!

New in 1.4:

• Added support for QuickTime video and sound
• Made the key controls user-configurable for greater ease of use
• Reorganized PhotoReviewer's menu structure for more intuitive operation
• Added new voting and navigation commands to better support subfolders
• Improved the rename-while-sorting function with better name generation
• Broadened the support for thumbnails and dragged images for greater cross-compatibility with other apps

If you'd like to hear about Stick Software news as soon as it happens, instead of waiting for the next newsletter, you might want to try the Stick Software RSS feed. It's easy to use, and it'll keep you on top of all our latest updates and news!

We hope we've made some of you long-time Stick Software fans very happy this month with the re-release of Solarian II. Things have been busy over here — my wife now has a new job as a chef, and she and I will be moving to Menlo Park (just a few miles down the road from our current house) soon to bring her closer to her work. It's going to be my birthday this month (the 26th). And the day after my birthday, the 27th (or early on the 28th for those of you on the other side of the Atlantic), there's a total lunar eclipse. This is the last good total lunar eclipse for those of us in North America until 2008, so don't forget to go outside on the 27th and check it out!

If you've got ideas, comments, bug reports, or anything else you'd like us to see, send a note to our support email address.

Thanks for your support. Word of mouth is essential to our survival as a shareware developer. If you can help spread the word to your friends, your co-workers, or your favorite Mac OS X websites and newsletters, it would be greatly appreciated!