Why is it that every friggin' game is un-mac-like? It seems so unnecessary to reinvent the wheel.

(In many cases — not in the case of MacPool but common enough to stick in my craw and make me indulge in catharsis here — something as simple as "quit" demands several mouse-clicks in unexpected places. Grrr.)

In the case of MacPool, what should be pull-down menu items are instead at the top of the game window. Click "Settings" (which would, in a compliant Mac world, be "Preferences") and you see several fields in the window. Some are "Click to Show" so you are forced to click again to see a pop-up list of choices. Damned annoying. Specially when the sort-of intuitive click-away does not close that list. One field is "Country" but only USA is possible. Irritating nationalism.

Your licence will, in theory, apply to only the first computer. The developer requires you to "re-set the registration" if you ever want to shift it to another computer. Fortunately, savvy users will easily discover for themselves how to avoid the nuisance of sending and receiving emails.

This app can never be called "realistic". Yes, the balls collide more or less as expected and they roll more or less as you want but, somehow, the movement is not realistic. I can't put my finger on it (he he) but it might be that there is inadequate friction with the table-top. Maybe a variable control setting would fix this. The balls just seem to float over the table, coming to a stop slower than I expect although they probably travel the correct distance. I really don't know what to say about this deficiency but it is so annoying i feel like not playing the game again.

I've returned here to update this comment: I have now decided that, indeed, the problem is insufficient friction. After a collision, say, the balls keep drifting longer than real life would suggest. And slowly, so the many milliseconds you must wait are annoying.

The balls are way too big for the pathetically-small table. And the graphic of the table itself is childish. The appearance in no way simulates a real table. And the balls have a strange "halo" around them. Why? If it's a simulated shadow, the lamp must be only a few centimetres above the ball.

I'm viewing the game on a quality two-monitor set-up. G5 dual, 4.6GB ram, OSX 10.5.6 and third-party graphics cards. The monitors are calibrated by sophisticated hardware and set, of course, to millions of colors. Yet the overall appearance of the game window makes it look like a 256-color configuration. Terrible.

Applying spin to the white ball is complicated. It should be possible to relocate the "line of attack" to reflect a wish to hit off-centre. At present, you must click-drag-and-hold the cue then use the arrow keys to relocate the strike position. Well, the click-drag-and-hold of the mouse is done by my right hand. So is the use of the arrow keys!

When a ball rolls down into a pocket, again the video is childishly unlife-like.

I've seen my kids play a competing game online where the illusion is vastly-superior. Furthermore, as well as a line of attack from the cue to the white ball, there are also guide lines showing where the white will travel. This might be undesirable for an experienced player but is surely helpful for either a learner of pool/billiards in general, or a learner of this particular game in try-out mode. Even-better would be further guide-lines showing where the balls will travel after being hit!

Sorry, this game is not ready for prime-time. How can it possibly be version 10? Beta 1 is more like it.