Cool software

Although I have sold my soul, I took a break today to browse the Internet a bit. In doing so, I found myself watching the Steve Jobs keynote at the WWDC from this year, which I wrote a bit about. I watched the parts about Mac OS X v.10.4 Tiger, and caught the piece about some unknown developer who wrote an application called Orbit. It roused everyone’s curiosity because it calculated precise orbits of unclassified satellites in real-time and rendered them in very cool OpenGL with stunning views of Earth updated live from what else but satellite imagery. The author of this program wrote it with the Mac OS X developer tools and XCode in three months on his Powerbook. Not bad. He promised a screensaver version called Freefall that would be available on his web site (which he failed to mention) and Apple’s web site soon after the keynote.

Days passed, and users in Mac forums claimed to find nothing at all. So, it was quickly forgotten, and life went on as usual in the Mac world. Tiger is progressing rapidly inside the sacred halls of the Apple campus, per rumors of internal beta releases and seeds to select developers. There have been few announcements from Apple lately, amounting to a silent lull in the news space. Users are restless and the oft-touted new features of Tiger have worn off their appeal. We crave any little piece of gossip, new software, or a nightly build of some cool application like Adium or OmniWeb. Then, after slipping into the ethereal darkness of vaporware, Orbit has been reborn as Freefall just last week.

For $29.95, you can watch satellites orbit at your hearts content, knowing that your computer is calculating their trajectories based on a highly complex set of equations, or so the software claims. Although this software has many cool features, the screensaver meant to suck your hours away as your stare at the regularity to the mess of white dots dancing around the planet, thirty dollars seems a bit steep for such a novelty. Few people have need for such a program on a practical level, but enjoy having such information with moving pictures to show friends and family. I do not think that I would ever spring for it, but if it were given as a gift, certainly I would not complain.

I wish it showed satellites in the irregular orbits like some of the space observatories. Maybe it does and I have not looked enough, or they are not to be seen in the trial version, which is crippled. I think people should check it out, regardless of the crippled features and high price.