OK, this *is* described by CCP on the EVE forum, but it's spread around over several posts and pages and doesn't clarify that some steps may not be required. In any case, it's a bit of a clumsy process. The most critical point is that you may not need to run a patch.

So here's what worked for me:

Notes; TQ refers to Tranquility, the "live" server. SI is Singularity, the primary "test" server.

1. Rename your existingEve Online.app to Eve Online - TQ.app (or similar). (This is to protect it from overzealous patching).
2. Copy that app to Eve Online - SI.app
3. Go into your EVE settings folder:
   /Users/yourMacUser/Library/Preferences/EVE Online Preferences/p_drive/Local Settings/Application Data/CCP/EVE/c_program_files_ccp_eve_tranquility/settings.
4. Copy the prefs.ini file to prefs.ini.TQ
5. Open the original prefs.ini file in a text editor and add the following final line:
   server=87.237.38.50
6. Copy this new prefs.ini file to prefs.ini.SI
7. You can now start the Eve client app. Make sure it's the SI copy.
8. The login area should look something like this: (The important thing's that it says "Server: Test Server (Singularity))."
   
9. Various things can happen at this point:
   • If the display is as shown, you can log straight into the test server. Enjoy.
   • If server status is Offline, Singularity's down (it's a test server after all and downtime varies). See the Eve Servers Status page to confirm.
   • You may get an "Incompatible Protocol Version" message. This means your Singularity copy of EVE needs to be patched. Chances are it'll offer you a patch download automatically. Accept it only if you've got two copies of Eve Online.App as above.
   • You may need to patch manually. If so, visit the Mac Singularity Patch Page and download the patch application. Make sure you run it on the Eve Online - SI.app not the TQ one!
   If you run a patch, either automatically or manually, it will rename your Eve Online - SI.app back to Eve Online.app! This is what we in the software industry technically call DUMB. Make sure you rename it back to Eve Online - SI.app straight away. Otherwise the copies will collide at some point.
   Note that any time you patch your live copy it'll also do this. Make sure you tidy up after it!
10. If you've run the patch and renamed the app, you can now run it and connect to the test server.

IMPORTANT NOTE! You now cannot connect to Tranquility even with your Eve Online - TQ.app copy! To do that, you'll need to copy prefs.ini.TQ back over prefs.ini (or just remove the server line from it, and then run Eve Online - TQ.app
You will need to copy or edit prefs.ini every time you change servers!

Now, in my professional opinion as a software developer and sysadmin, that's a lot of hoops to make your testers jump through. No doubt CCP wonder why they get so few early bug reports from Mac users... I hope they'll make this process simpler soon; if not I may try to provide an automated tool to do the above for you.

Back when I was an RAF cadet, we had to study Aircraft Recognition, presumably on the premise that we'd one day have to know which ones to shoot down.

In Eve, it's often vital to recognise ship types and threats instantly from their names, so I'm working on a flashcards app. This can now be found at http://www.phase.org/Eve/showRandomShip/view/flashcard (or jog your memory at http://www.phase.org/Eve/showRandomShip/ first).

So far it's a click-to-view toy with no scoring - that will follow shortly.

Questions - should this include Rookie ships? Polaris? Jovian? There are 124 "special" ships in the DB which I could filter out. (NB: The Orca's already in there, but with the Rorqual's description).

For some time now I've been playing the MMOG "Eve Online"; a game of epic space battles and warring factions in the far future (and so on). Think "Massively Multiplayer Elite with Babylon 5-style graphics".

Eve is famous for various key ways it differs from most other MMOGs:

1) It's unsharded. All players (0.25 million at the last count) play within one server cluster, and any player can (subject to not getting blow up in transit) travel to, and play with or against, any other player.

2) It's extremely free-form. you can choose to mine, build, invent, explore, run missions, fight solo, run megacorps, carry freight - there's a vast in-game economy - and change roles as rapidly as you can train new skills.

3) The learning curve is incredible (although there are no shortage of newbie-safe areas); it can literally take years (of real time, not in-game time) to qualify to fly the largest ships, and months for some of fairly common intermediate ones. The skill tree is colossal.

In other words, it's a highly complex game that occasionally causes you to reach for a spreadsheet (or dedicated app) to work out what to buy, how to equip a ship, or what to study. Fortunately, there are very good tools - and, even better (for my purposes), there's a good supply of data through an API and periodic DB exports.

The DB and API (and a certain degree of transparency in sharing key formulae) allow the use of skill planning apps such as EveMon and ship fitting tools such as the Eve Fitting Tool. They also allow very simple tools as Skill Monitors, and more complex tools that let you search and analyse all your in-game assets.

At the moment, there are some very good tools for Windows, a few less-great ones for the Mac, a decent range on the web, and no iPhone apps. So, I'm looking to fill that gap.

I'm not a Mac coder; I've never written a line of Objective C or cocoa; I'm a PHP developer. But that also means I've a decent object-oriented programmer, and I've got a reasonable C/C++ background. So, I'm initially experimenting with the (XML/REST) API in PHP, while I learn enough about it and Objective C to move to the desktop or the phone.

So far, I've got a crude skills monitor (was there a shortage?), and, more interestingly, a complete asset viewer that also lets you see complete fittings and cargo of all your ships. These tools are currently web-only (hosted at phase.org) and currently open to a very small closed alpha test. However, they will grow, so if you're interested in access or have suggestions, comment here. Priority for alpha/beta access will go to members of my Corporation (Ominous) and Alliance (Ethereal Dawn).

(For what it's worth, the other thing I'm looking to write for the iPhone will be a decent LiveJournal client).