Windows has shipped with a decent solitaire since time immemorial, but if you’re a Mac user you’ve typically had to go out and find one. When I switched from Windows to Mac several years ago I embarked on a quest to find (if not the best than at least) a decent version of the classic 52 card game for one. Solitaire was a cutesy collection of solitaire games, but it got annoying quickly. I also tried my hand at multiple variants of, the venerable Open Source solitaire game engine, but they were too Linuxy (you know, ugly) for my taste. After years of searching, I finally found the perfect solitaire implementation for Mac— by longtime Mac Developer,.
Ambrosia has been making quality Mac apps and games for nearly 20 years and they really nailed it with Mondo. The game is beautiful. The animations are effective without being distracting.
Card decks are good looking and playing surface is too. Mondo ships with hundreds of solitaire variations—not that you’ll be playing more than a handful of them. From familiar favorites like Klondike, Golf, and Spider to some more obscure gamestyles like Devil’s Garden, and Will o’ the Wisp there are plenty of options to keep you busily entertained.
Mondo Solitaire is available for and can be purchased via the or directly from and costs $9.99. A version of Mondo Solitaire is also available for the and and sells for $5.99 and $4.99, respectively. Forgive the hyperbole, but Apple should license Mondo Solitaire and bundle it with every Mac, iPad, and iPhone they ship. They’d sell a lot more devices to grandparents than they currently do.
What’s your favorite Solitaire game? Sound off in the comments below. All images are from my, unless otherwise noted. Related articles. (laurieanichols.wordpress.com). (howtogeek.com).
Image via my. Processed using for Mac.
Long before (or for that matter), Polaroid cameras brought generations of us. Image via my. Processed using for Mac. I loved my grandpa’s Polaroid when I was a kid. There was something magical about the hazy, off-color images they reproduced. Image via my. Processed using for Mac.
Apps like on the, Mac app, and photo-sharing site are bringing back the glorious look and style of the analog imperfections of yesteryear. Image via my. Processed using for Mac. If you still haven’t bought Flare, now’s the time you really should.
At its regular price of $19.99 it’s a must-buy—at its from the it’s a steal. Image via my. Processed using for Mac. What do you think of the current state of retro photography apps?
Sound off in the comments below. Related articles. (thepulsemagazine.onsugar.com).
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(slightlyinsightful.com). In 1993 there were two compelling reasons why everyone needed a computer with a drive—getting lost in the imaginary world of and using to learn all about the real world. Before I was online, Encarta provided me with hours of educational info-surfing. It was the first non-game I ever remember using on a computer (with the possible exception of ).
For nearly a decade I relied on Encarta as my encyclopedia of choice. Along with the rest of world, I abandoned Encarta in favor of sometime in the early 2000s. The increasingly ubiquitous nature of the combined with Wikipedia’s ability to stay current helped it kill off Encarta by 2009. Lately, however, I’ve noticed a few apps pop up in both as well as in for offline Wikipedia browsing. I’m not convinced that this is a good thing. Image via my.
The second these apps gain traction Wikipedia becomes a snapshot of itself—Encarta minus the multimedia. If you’ve been looking for something like this you should check out either Wikipedia Offline (available for $14.99 for a limited time or devices for $9.99) or All of Wikipedia – Offline (available for devices only for $8.99). Were you an Encarta user back in the day? If so, what for (I have memories of cranking out country reports with it)?
Do you think there’s still a market for offline encyclopedias? Should Microsoft resurrect its trusty reference software? Sound off in the comments below. This entry was posted in, and tagged, on.
There isn't too much you can say about solitaire on its own. It's the card game your coworker plays instead of writing formulas for Excel spreadsheets on Windows, but that doesn't mean we can't turn solitaire into something more than a time waster. Proof of concept: from Ambrosia Software is solitaire done right. You aren't just playing the same game of Klondike over and over - instead you're offered over 300 variants of solitaire madness to choose from. If you include the beautiful game board that looks like it should bundled with Apple's own Game Center, then you have yourself one premium handful of card games. And what a handful it is!
Ambrosia put a lot of attention to detail in, from the gorgeous game interface to the card stylings and animation, you'd never think something as mundane as solitaire could be made fun when a little Mac magic is tossed in. As you play through Mondo, you can drag cards to their proper location or simply click on them to automatically have cards move to their appropriate spots. It isn't quite cheating, but I do love how decks are unfurled.
Traditionally, only three cards at a time are shown in solitaire games, but Mondo will reveal the current three cards and all previous cards unveiled from the deck, allowing you to keep better tabs on what's in the deck. If you really want to cheat, you can show hidden cards from the menu, but you won't do that right? The sounds are all realistic, although some can get slightly irritating as a woman hums, 'no-no' when you can't make a move. As the game doesn't follow a traditional aqua interface there is some weirdness as the board flips and resizes when you select a different game of solitaire to play, but can you blame Ambrosia? Not only are they telling you how to play each variation of solitaire the world's greatest ship captains and nannies have created in their free time, but the give you all sorts of meta information from difficulty, to game length, and will even average your wins & losses.
There are so many games to choose from, you can organize variations of solitaire by popularity, difficulty, the number of decks needed to play, and how long the game takes. You can also search for specific titles if there's an ol' game passed down from the Netherlands.
Free Solitaire For Macintosh Computers
If you don't like the default themes for the games you wind up playing (possibly for the yet unmentioned random option), you can head on over to the preferences and choose your own background, deck back & face style too choose from. You can further customize Mondo Solitaire to your heart's content by disabling cheating, hiding guide lines, and setting animation speed in the general settings as well. Offers a suite of solid solitaire titles that's been hand crafted just for OS X. If you have an affliction for card games or just want to show off to your Windows counterparts, then you'd be well advised to pick a copy up for yourself for $9.99, or download a to try it yourself.