Winter Wolves has released Bionic Heart 2 for the Mac. It's a "deep and dark, sci-fi visual" novel/game told from four points of view.

Here's how Bionic Heart 2 is described: "Take control of Luke, Tom, Tanya and Tina. Each character has their own personality, complete with quirky traits that could potentially whip the story straight into a plot twist. Bionic Heart 2 is the only visual novel featuring a scene with TWO talking brains! The game also features beautiful manga artwork, a full original soundtrack, and meaningful choices that will have repercussions on the whole universe."

You can download the demo and buy the game from Winter Wolves website at www.winterwolves.com/bionicheart2.htm . It costs US$19.99 to purchase.

Apple will challenge a November 2012 jury verdict that awarded $368 million in damages to Nevada patent-holding company VirnetX, a filing with U.S. regulators showed -- as noted by "Macworld" (http://tinyurl.com/bwfn5qv)

In a Form 10-Q filed this week with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Apple said it had not yet recorded the millions owed to VirnetX on its balance sheet. "The Company is challenging the verdict, believes it has valid defenses and has not recorded a loss accrual at this time," Apple said in the SEC filing.

VirnetX filed its lawsuit against Apple in August 2010. The company claimed that Apple’s FaceTime and Message, a video chat application and SMS text-replacement, respectively, infringed on four of its patents.

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 76.3 million units in the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13), down -13.9% compared to the same quarter in 2012 and worse than the forecast decline of -7.7%, according to the "International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker."

The extent of the year-on-year contraction marked the worst quarter since IDC began tracking the PC market quarterly in 1994. The results also marked the fourth consecutive quarter of year-on-year shipment declines.

Despite some mild improvement in the economic environment and some new PC models offering Windows 8, PC shipments were down significantly across all regions compared to a year ago. Fading mini notebook shipments have taken a big chunk out of the low-end market while tablets and smartphones continue to divert consumer spending, says IDC. Apple fared better than the overall U.S. market, but still saw shipments decline as its own PCs also face competition from iPads.

PC industry efforts...

Quark says Quark XML Author now supports the Japanese language with a fully-localized and integrated user interface.

Quark XML Author is the add-in to Microsoft Word that enables the creation of structured XML content through the familiar Word interface. With Quark XML Author all content creators, not just technical experts, can create valid XML-based content components.

Now Quark XML Author supports Japanese-speaking content creators as well as users from around the world who create Japanese-language materials. In addition to a fully localized and integrated user interface, Quark XML Author now supports Microsoft IME and Microsoft Office IME (2007/2010) for Japanese, including keyboard and IME Pad support. For more info go to http://tinyurl.com/byjvekf .

A new report (www.soluto.com/reports) from Soluto a Web service company, quantifiably concluded that the "MacBook Pro is the best Windows PC on the market," beating out traditional PCs.

The report based its findings on a number of criteria including application crashes, blue-screens-of-death, long boot times, etc.  According to the report, "if you’ve ever looked for an excuse to buy a MacBook -- now you have it."
 
On a related note, millions of people improve their Windows on Mac experience by using Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac, the No. 1-selling solution for simultaneously running Windows and Mac apps side-by-side without rebooting. Parallels Desktop will even simply move your entire PC to your Mac so you can have everything you need on one computer. 

Parallels Desktop (www.parallels.com) is also a great way for...

A Beijing court has ordered Apple to compensate three Chinese writers for selling their works via its app store without getting their permission, reports "ZDNet" (http://tinyurl.com/avpg77f), translating an article from the "China Daily" newspaper.

The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court ruled in favor of the authors. Apple will have to pay them in excess of 730,000 yuan (about US$118,000) for the infringement. Apple had not gotten permission before selling their books on the Apple App Store, according to the court. The presiding judge, Feng Gang, said Apple has the duty of checking whether the books uploaded by third-party providers are in line with current laws.

Literature & Latte has introduced Scapple, a project planning and organization tool for Mac OS X (10.6.8 or higher).

Scapple is designed to help you get ideas down quickly and make connections between them. More like a freeform text editor, it allows you to make notes anywhere on the page and to connect them using straight dotted lines or arrows.

Creating notes can be done by double-clicking anywhere on the canvas and then typing. Making connections between ideas involves dragging and dropping one note onto another. Notes can also be dragged from Scapple into Scrivener, Literature & Latte's content-generation program.

Scapple is now available for purchase from www.literatureandlatte.com/scapple.php for US$14.99. A fully-featured, 30-day trial is also available for download.

Native Instruments has released Pulswerk, a new Maschine Expansion designed for minimalistic house and techno. It was created by sound designer Denis Gökdag, the creator of NI's Maschine Expansion Transistor Punch, and the name behind Surround SFX and Zynaptiq.

Aside from its 30 drum kits, Pulswerk contains 20 Special Kits created exclusively with pitched sound sources. The Expansion also features an array of Multi-Effect Kits containing pre-sequenced, tempo synced effect chains and 60 new Massive presets.

Pulswerk is available at the NI Online Shop for US$49. A compact version of Pulswerk is also available for iMaschine in the in-app store for $0.99. For more info go to www.native-instruments.com/Pulswerk .

AT&T, in announcing the results of its first fiscal quarter, said it had activated 4.8 million iPhones during the period. The Apple smartphone accounted for 80% of AT&T's six million total smartphones.

During the fiscal quarter, AT&T reported strong earnings per share and cash flows in the first-quarter driven by strong mobile data growth, solid postpaid net adds and continued strong gains in U-verse services, says Randall Stephenson, company chairman and CEO.

"Our wireless network performance continues to be terrific," he adds. "And that helped drive our best ever first quarter for smartphone sales, improved wireless churn and strong growth in mobile data revenues. We also posted record sales of our U-verse high-speed IP service. Across all of these areas, we’ve built a solid foundation for future growth in mobile Internet and IP broadband, which will only expand as we progress with Project VIP.”

For the quarter ending March 31, AT&T's...

Alien Skin Software has announced Exposure 5, the new version of its flagship photography effects software. The tool is designed to help digital photographers achieve accurate film simulation using a range of creative effects.

Exposure 5 can be used as a plug-in with popular host software or as a stand-alone program. The upgrade brings creative tools of traditional film photography to the world of digital, such as the look of discontinued films, darkroom tricks, and trendy lo-fi camera quirks, according to Terence Tay, designer of the new Exposure 5 software. Classic films like Kodachrome, Polaroid and even Panatomic-X are accurately simulated, he adds. Hundreds of preset effects can be applied with a mouse-click. Exposure 5 includes both Color and black-and-white processing so there's no need to switch between tools.

Exposure 5 will be available in June at www.alienskin.com for US$199. Owners of any...

Apple will hold its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) June 10 through June 14 at San Francisco’s Moscone West. At the five-day conference, developers from around the world will learn about the future of iOS and OS X.

WWDC will also feature more than 100 technical sessions presented by over 1,000 Apple engineers, hands-on labs to help developers integrate new technologies, as well as the Apple Design Awards, a showcase of the most outstanding apps available through the Apple App Store and Mac App Store. Tickets for this year’s WWDC go on sale Thursday, April 25, at 10 a.m. (Pacific).

"We look forward to gathering at WWDC 2013 with the incredible community of iOS and OS X developers," says Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "Our developers have had the most prolific and profitable year ever, and we’re excited to show them the latest advances in software technologies and developer tools to help them create innovative new...

MPEG2 Works (www.mpeg2works.com) -- a Mac OS X tool for video formats re-conversion, encoding and manipulation -- has been revved to version 5.0.1. The upgradoffers faster conversion and encoding, improved audio handling and some minor interface changes.

MPEG2 Works 5 is available at the product web site. It costs US$25 and requires Mac OS X 10.5 or higher.