Tag: iPhone

2010.01.28 by room34.com Tags





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Computers & Technology Comments 13

You say you want a revolution? I say you want an iPad, even if you don’t think so yet

By now, lots of people have had lots to say about Apple’s latest revelation: the iPad. Opinions run the gamut from hating it (calling it a big iPod touch), to embracing it as a game-changing, revolutionary device (and calling it, essentially what Apple was working on all along).

The build-up

I’ve been thinking a lot about this device over the past couple of months, pretty much ever since I praised the litl. Even at that point, though I was skeptical that Apple was working on a tablet device, I suspected that, if they were, it would kill the litl. (And, somewhat presciently, I proposed an ideal target price of $499, which is exactly where the entry-level iPad is.)

A week earlier, I had also written about the debacle with the CrunchPad JooJoo. At that point I was still extremely skeptical that Apple was working on a tablet. At the time I wrote:

All the rumors say Apple’s tablet will be based on the iPhone OS, which seems more likely to me than a Mac OS tablet. But there’s too much about the iPhone “ecosystem” that just wouldn’t seem to translate to a larger tablet device, most obvious being the fixed display resolution. No way is Apple going to produce a device with a 10-inch screen and 480×320 resolution (even the original 1984 Macs had 512×384 displays), but by that same token, I don’t see the iPhone OS interface suddenly supporting multiple resolutions when there are over 100,000 apps all built around this one fixed resolution.

Of course now we know that Apple was working on a tablet, and it in fact does run all (well, most) iPhone apps. You can run them either at original size or pixel-doubled. But well before yesterday’s announcement, I had come to accept the general idea that Apple was working on a tablet device, that it would be based on the iPhone OS, and that, in many ways, it would resemble a “really big iPod touch.” At the same time, I also did come to believe that this was the device Apple had been aiming for all along; that the iPhone was just an intermediary step either to establish a market or simply to turn the huge amount of R&D that was going into this thing into a marketable product and bring some revenue into the project to help sustain the additional 3 years of work it required.

I’ve admitted before that up to the very minute of the iPhone’s unveiling I was denying that Apple would make a phone. I knew better than that this time around. The other half of that story is that, by the end of the keynote where the iPhone was revealed, I already desperately wanted one. I’m not so desperately craving an iPad (though I certainly would like one, especially based on first-hand reports of how amazing the user experience is), but that’s probably because I’m not the target of this device. But I know a lot of people who are.

What is a computer, and is that what you want?

Think about all of the things that a computer can do. And then think about all of the things you need to do to make a computer do the things you want it to do. Then think about all of the other things the computer can do that you have no use for. It’s all kind of a big headache, isn’t it? If you’re a “power user” like me — a programmer, a creator, a tinkerer — you’ll probably always want the flexibility, freedom, and power of a full-fledged computer. But think about people in your life who aren’t hardcore tech geeks. You probably have friends or family members who went kicking and screaming into the world of computing, most likely because it was the only reasonable way to access the Internet. The fact remains, plain and simple, that most computer users don’t need all of the things a computer can do; they don’t enjoy the hoops they have to jump through to get it to work; and, ultimately, they don’t understand their computers very well.

This is one of the expressed purposes of the litl: it’s a device techies can give to their non-techie relatives to do all of the basic computing tasks they want without constantly needing to call up the techie relative for support. But the litl falls short of that goal in two key ways: first, it is not designed to live in a household where there isn’t also a “real” computer; and second, at $699, it’s about $200 more than I think this kind of niche device should cost. There’s also an additional problem: it only offers WiFi, no 3G, so it’s not intended to leave the house — one of its creators even said as much in a comment here:

Why no 3G (at least not yet)? Wifi is still the best and most prevalent wireless networking technology at home where our device is intended to live (it’s not meant for road warriors). 3G has severe limitations when it comes to streaming video – wifi is superior here. Most home wifi is on all the time and the litl webbook is intended to remain on also. It’s a designer appliance for your home.

The litl is a designer appliance for your home. And yet it’s also supposed to be what you give Grandpa so he can look at the pictures of the grandkids that you’re posting on Flickr. You can’t have it both ways.

That dichotomy doesn’t exist with the iPad. The iPad has optional 3G, so you can take it anywhere (if you want), but most importantly, I can see the iPad existing by itself in a household that doesn’t own another computer.

Think about the things that most non-power users do with computers: They browse the web and send email. They listen to music and watch movies. They play games and read books. Occasionally they fire up Word (or whatever “lite” office suite shipped with their computers) to write a letter or do a little work from home. Guess what, the iPad does all of those things.

¡Viva la revoluçión!

I think the iPad revolutionizes the average consumer computer experience in a couple of ways. First, it eliminates all of the headaches of maintaining a computer or, for that matter, even learning how to interact with one. More on that in a minute. Second, it completely changes how computer users buy and install software. Everyone, even power users, hates the process of installing software. It’s tedious and slow, confusing and usually is presented in a convoluted and inconsistent way. But browsing the iPhone App Store is fun, and buying and installing software couldn’t be easier. The iPad brings that experience to general computing.

Back on the matter of maintenance and basic computer interaction: The biggest frustration I’ve had in providing support for friends and relatives who are not so computer savvy is the constant struggle they have with the basic interface of the computer. For people who haven’t devoted their careers to computing, like I have, the whole idiom of the graphical user interface (GUI) is perpetually confusing. What’s a window? What’s a cursor? What’s a menu? What’s a dialog box? What’s a scrollbar? I stare at a computer screen all day long; these things are as intuitive to me as the objects I deal with daily in the physical world. But that’s not the case for everyone. Even the process of using a mouse to move a cursor and interact with on-screen objects — arguably the most fundamental aspect of the GUI — is a level of abstraction a lot of users balk at. But the iPhone interface changed that. You acutally touch things with your fingers, move them around, pinch and stretch them. It’s fun, it’s intuitive, and it’s dead simple.

Sure, touchscreen interfaces have been around for years, and Windows-based touchscreen tablets have been available (if not exactly common for most of the last decade. But the GUI has essentially remained unchanged for over a quarter of a century. Just allowing a user to drag the on-screen cursor with their finger rather than with a mouse does not revolutionize the interface. Apple has reinvented the computer interface from the ground up with the iPhone and now the iPad. You were waiting for that inevitable revolution that would finally replace the GUI? Well, here it is.

And, for the geeks among us…

There’s one other, much more technical, reason why I am totally geeking out on the iPad though: HTML5. HTML5 is the “next generation” language of websites, promising new levels of interactivity and integration of multimedia into web pages that have up to this point been a tangled mess of proprietary and inconsistent plug-ins. HTML5 has been on the radar for years, but we web developers have had to drag our feet due to the glacial pace of adoption of new browsers. As long as a majority of users were still running Internet Explorer 6 — an ancient web browser that even Microsoft itself has by now denounced — our hands were tied regarding making full use of these new technologies. But the surging popularity of mobile devices, most importantly the iPhone but also Android-based smartphones, has opened up a huge new market where IE6 is irrelevant and HTML5-friendly browsers are the norm. Sure, you could use Firefox, Safari or Chrome (the only options for Mac users, and many smart Windows users have already made the switch), but here’s a brand new computing platform that brings all of these capabilities to a full-resolution (1024×768) screen.

Apple has wholeheartedly embraced HTML5 with the iTunes LP format, and it’s at the core of iBooks. Up to now, electronic books have typically been PDF-based, or some other, similar proprietary format. PDF is great, but it’s also an old format, and is fairly limited. HTML5 provides an easy way for content creators to enhance their presentations with fully-integrated audio and video, not to mention the interactive possibilities that CSS3, JavaScript, and offline data storage allow. This format makes it possible to create full, standalone applications as easily as creating a website (which, believe me, is easier than creating a full-fledged application in a traditional programming language). Sure, others have embraced this kind of web model, notably Palm, but only Apple has just the right mix of factors — market share, hardware/software integration, and, let’s face it, vision — to push something like this in the way to make it catch on.

You want it, you just don’t know what “it” is yet

There’s plenty of criticism of some of Apple’s practices — the iPad, like the iPhone, is a closed system; there’s DRM all over it; Apple is the gatekeeper for just about anything that goes in or out of the system. I can’t argue with those criticisms, other than to say, no one is forcing you to buy an Apple product. But those limitations are a trade-off for what Apple’s products offer: a uniquely integrated, incredibly polished, revolutionary experience. And, despite Apple’s lockdown of the top layers of the system, there’s openness at the core: Mac OS X and iPhone OS are based on an open source core and Apple is aggressively promoting the use of open standards like HTML5/CSS3 as the way to do things. Could it be more open? Of course it could. But then it wouldn’t be Apple. Open platforms are chaotic platforms. If you want to tinker with the system, or you just fundamentally believe in the principle of open software, then go get a Nexus One (and try to convince yourself that Google, deep down, believes in open systems too).

The arguments over open platforms could go on all day, but in the end I think it comes down to this: it has been Apple’s (and, largely, Steve Jobs’) vision for amazing — in Jobs’ long-echoed words, “insanely great” — technology devices that has driven these markets forward throughout the past decade. Do you think MP3 players would be where they are today if Apple hadn’t produced the iPod? It wasn’t the first MP3 player, but it fundamentally changed what an MP3 player is. Do you think we’d be talking about “apps” and that everyone would be carrying the Internet in their pockets if Apple hadn’t produced the iPhone? It wasn’t the first smartphone with Internet access, but again, it fundamentally changed what a smartphone is.

And now, the coup de grâce: the iPad. I won’t go so far as to say it changes what a computer is, on a fundamental level. But it creates something new: a consumer device that is a permanent replacement for consumer-grade computers. It’s what most people have wanted all along, but settled for a computer because what they wanted didn’t exist. Yet. And now it does.

The good, the bad, and the Apple

Ultimately, is it “all that”? I think the experience of using it, and what it represents for transforming the consumer computer industry, transcends what a list of its tech specs and features can convey. But in basic, concrete terms, it pretty much ended up being exactly what I was anticipating by now in terms of what it looks like, what it does, and how you interact with it. I was least surprised by its name — I had long suspected (though it’s easy to claim so after the fact) that it would be called the iPad, connotations of feminine hygiene products notwithstanding. There were, however, three things that genuinely surprised me, two good and one bad:

The good: 1) Price. I was hoping for, but not expecting, a price under $500. Granted, that’s just the entry-level model; they run as high as $829. But the fact that you can get an iPad for $499 is huge. 2) The A4 chip. I had absolutely no expectation that Apple would be developing a custom processor for this thing; it was not on my radar whatsoever. But from what I’ve read, this custom-built, highly-optimized chip is the key to the iPad’s blazing speed and overall awesomeness.

The bad: AT&T is the exclusive provider of 3G access. Seriously? This is a bit of a double-edged sword. I’m glad 3G is an option at all; the iPad easily could have shipped as a WiFi-only device, like the litl. But I, and many others, expected yesterday’s announcement to include Apple’s long-awaited untethering* from AT&T for the iPhone, and, needless to say, for the new iPad as well. Boo.

The Apple: No Flash. OK, this didn’t surprise me one bit, so I didn’t mention it above when I cited three surprises. But I needed to complete the pun I started in the header of this section, so here you go. No Flash. Never had it, never will. And like John Gruber (and for exactly the same reasons), I believe that’s a good thing. I recognize the seeming contradiction of criticizing Adobe for a closed system like Flash while praising Apple’s own closed systems, but there are some fundamental differences that, well, make all the difference. Apple’s closed systems are at the hardware and (locally-installed) software level. Adobe’s closed system is on the Internet — in the “cloud” in contemporary parlance. Adobe’s closed system is something that floats around out in the otherwise open, standards-based world of the Internet. It’s a way for Adobe to wall off part of the Internet in a bubble that it controls.

This is bad for a hardware maker like Apple, because as Gruber says, it prevents them from being able to fix problems caused by the fact that Adobe’s bubble isn’t sealed up quite as tightly as it should be (and, of course, it is a back door to allow people to bypass Apple’s systems). It’s also bad for us content creators because we’re beholden to Adobe to get our content online (in the form of having to buy Adobe’s high-priced software), and we’re dependent upon Adobe’s continued existence (and goodwill) to keep things running. What if Adobe goes out of business, or just abandons Flash? What happens to our Flash-based content then? HTML and JavaScript will never go out of business, because there’s no single corporate owner acting as gatekeeper over those technologies. And that is a fundamental difference between what Adobe is keeping closed vs. what Apple is.

* Pun intended, and kudos to you, geek that you are, for picking up on it.

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2009.12.09 by room34.com Tags











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Computers & Technology Comments 6

Resolved: All tech bloggers (including myself) are longwinded, narcissistic douchebags (except maybe John Gruber, depending on what he means by his latest post)

Why's it so green?There are some tech blogs I read a lot, and there are others I rarely read.

The ones I read a lot tend to have certain characteristics in common: they’re relatively simple in design; they frequently veer off-topic into tangential areas I also find interesting (meaning they’re written by real people instead of corporate tools); and they usually have few if any ads, usually served by invitation-only ad networks like The Deck. (I’d love to be invited to make ancillary income from an exclusive ad network but for now I am settling for the pittance Google throws my way.) Most importantly, they usually get right to the point.

The ones I rarely read also have certain characteristics in common, and unsurprisingly, most are diametrically opposed to the characteristics of the blogs I do read: they’re cluttered, with too many navigation tabs leading you to related sites in the “network” owned by the same faceless holding corporation; they usually stay within their narrowly-defined topical box dictated by said faceless holding corporation; they’re swimming in obnoxious Flash ads that creep across the text and force you to interact with them, if only to shoo them away. And they blather on and on, clearly paid by the word, with insipid, uninformed (despite their extensive network of industry connections and apparently large readership) opinions.

Now at this point you may be thinking my own blog more closely resembles the second group, save for the corporate overlords and industry connections (and money). And maybe you’re right. But that’s my own failing, and is probably why this blog falls into the “audience of one” category.

Anyway… by now it’s probably obvious to anyone reading this blog regularly (i.e. me) that one of my primary sources of tech news is John Gruber’s Daring Fireball. Gruber is an Apple fan, but he’s also highly insightful and more than willing to criticize Apple when he thinks they’ve screwed up (see the ongoing App Store debacle). I’m less appreciative of Gruber’s enthusiasm for the New York Yankees. But my favorite aspect of Daring Fireball is probably the “Claim Chowder” posts, where he cites foolish claims from the past — often focused on Apple’s perpetually-impending demise — that have since been proven egregiously false. There are two of what I would call “corporate bloggers” who are frequent targets of his ridicule: Rob Enderle and Michael Arrington.

Today Gruber hit the jackpot: Enderle is commenting on Arrington. Well, sort of. He’s actually commenting on the JooJoo: the poorly named phoenix rising from the ashes of Arrington’s ill-conceived and now doomed device concept, the CrunchPad.

I still do not “get” tablet PCs. I especially don’t get the JooJoo: as large as a regular laptop, and priced as high as an entry-level model, but with no keyboard, and a handful of other frustrating limitations for the form factor. What it really comes down to for me is that it’s as big as a laptop, but it can’t do everything a laptop can do. And it’s not cheap enough for price to make a significant difference. What niche is this thing supposed to fill?

I’ll be honest — when I first heard rumors that Apple was going to make a phone, I thought it was a terrible idea. I managed to avoid my own case of claim chowder by not really mentioning the iPhone announcement on this blog when it hit, but suffice to say as much as I thought an Apple phone was never going to happen — even right up to the beginning of the keynote where it was announced — by the end of the demo, I was convinced that the iPhone was the best invention ever. Like the iPod, it filled a niche. Before the iPod, MP3 players… well… they sucked. And before the iPhone, cell phones, even “smart” ones, pretty much sucked too. The iPhone worked because it brought together all of the best qualities of a number of disparate devices that had never previously existed in the same unit, along with a few brilliant new ideas of its own (all while getting rid of most of the “suck”), wrapped up in the first such device designed with the level of polish and perfection to satisfy Steve Jobs.

Ultimately though it was all about the niche. The devices we could carry in our pockets before the iPhone simply couldn’t do the kinds of things we now take for granted, thanks to the iPhone. I just don’t see a laptop-sized device, with a subset of the features of a laptop and a low-end laptop price tag, filling any kind of a niche. The thing needs to be able to do things current, comparably sized and priced devices can’t. And this doesn’t.

The question of whether Apple can produce something that does is another matter. At the risk of cooking up a steaming pot of claim chowder, and with my early disdain for the Apple phone rumors still in mind, I have to say I just don’t see something like this coming out of Apple, despite the incessant rumors of parts orders from Chinese manufacturers.

All the rumors say Apple’s tablet will be based on the iPhone OS, which seems more likely to me than a Mac OS tablet. But there’s too much about the iPhone “ecosystem” that just wouldn’t seem to translate to a larger tablet device, most obvious being the fixed display resolution. No way is Apple going to produce a device with a 10-inch screen and 480×320 resolution (even the original 1984 Macs had 512×384 displays), but by that same token, I don’t see the iPhone OS interface suddenly supporting multiple resolutions when there are over 100,000 apps all built around this one fixed resolution. Though I haven’t worked with iPhone development, I’m willing to bet that enough iPhone app interfaces use bitmapped images (not scalable vector graphics) that they’d appear completely broken at any other resolution — and even if they are vector-based, they’d scale up in a way that would look ridiculous. And this is just the most obvious reason to me that an iPhone OS-based tablet seems far-fetched.

But all of that doesn’t even get to my point. My point is bloggers like Arrington and Enderle, who make their livings spouting nonsense speculation far worse than what I’ve undertaken in the past two paragraphs, and other bloggers like Gruber who make a (more modest) living partially by calling them out on their bullshit. Which brings me back to Gruber’s latest post. I’m not even sure what to make of it:

Further proof that Enderle’s idiot shtick is an act.

I know Gruber has been speculating lately that Enderle is deliberately writing crap (for whatever nefarious purpose one would have to do such a thing, much like how Gretchen Carlson dumbs down her commentary on Fox News, as revealed by Jon Stewart last night), and that’s entirely possible. But I honestly don’t know what Gruber really means by this comment, in regards to Enderle’s specific post on the folly of the JooJoo (which seems right on) and his thoughts on what it might mean for a future Apple tablet. Personally I think this kind of does spell trouble for an Apple tablet, but only because I think the tablet is kind of a stupid idea anyway.

Time will prove all of us right or wrong. If nothing else, Enderle and Arrington (and Carlson) give us an interesting spectacle to watch… just like a train wreck.

Update: In the time it took me to write this post, Gruber amended his original post with the following, which provides some much-needed (though perhaps not enough) clarification:

I mean, come on, no one really believes that the JooJoo is going to affect Apple even one iota, right?

This can be taken in one of two ways. It all depends on whether or not you think Apple is actually working on a tablet.

Comments 6 Comments
2009.11.30 by room34.com Tags




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Miscellany & Minutiæ
Video Games Comments 5

Nintendo DSi vs. iPhone/iPod touch as a portable gaming platform

iPhone vs. Nintendo DSiThis is a topic that’s been on my mind for a while, but only now (as of last Friday) that I own a Nintendo DSi, in addition to my iPhone 3GS, do I feel I’m in a place to write an informed piece about it. The iPhone (and, to a lesser extent, its phone-less cousin, the iPod touch) has been the focus of much techie attention for the past couple of years, but most of the time (other than on game review sites) its capabilities as a portable game system are only peripheral to the discussion.

I owned a Nintendo DS Lite for a couple of years before I got my first iPhone in March 2008, but even though I knew both were, amongst their other (limited or not) features, portable game devices, I never really thought of them as being in the same league. This was mainly due to two factors: 1) their control schemes and 2) their methods of game distribution.

The DS Lite was an “old school” gaming handheld. Sure, it had limited WiFi features, could be made to run a rudimentary web browser, and offered plenty of titles that were not typical video game fare, but essentially it was the latest descendant of the venerable Game Boy, and in many ways even reminiscent of the much earlier and technologically primitive Nintendo Game & Watch systems of the early 1980s.

The iPhone on the other hand was, at least on the most superficial marketing level, a cellphone. A smartphone, to be sure, and one that would reinvent the category and an entire industry. But it was not, foremost, a gaming system. It didn’t have a D-pad or a cluster of buttons, and it didn’t accept cartridges, discs, SD cards, or any of the other, increasingly minuscule physical media upon which games are typically delivered via retail outlets for prices usually ranging between $20 and $40. Instead, Apple brought us the radically different App Store, an entirely online (and even entirely wireless) means of selling and delivering software, at such low prices that $10 is not only the high end, but is often decried as “ridiculously expensive” by customer-reviewers in the App Store.

So, pardon the lame pun, but the DS vs. iPhone was an apples-to-oranges comparison. That is, until Nintendo recognized the potential of the iPhone and iPod touch to eat its portable lunch, and delivered the more iPhone-competitive DSi, a revamped DS Lite that loses the Game Boy cartridge slot (and, sadly, backwards compatibility with a huge and highly appealing game catalog) in favor of slightly larger (but same-resolution) screens, a pair of low-resolution digital cameras, and an enhanced OS with the ability to access an “app store” of its own, the DSi Shop. And with this salvo, Nintendo suddenly made the inclination of gamers to compare these two systems head-to-head much more apt. But are they keeping themselves relevant, or shooting themselves in the foot? That’s what I aim to determine here.

Industrial Design

I haven’t lined up the Nintendo DSi next to a DS Lite to compare their sizes (though others have), but from my tactile memory of my old DS Lite (now property of my 6-year-old son), I sense that the DSi is ever-so-slightly larger. It still manages to fit, not necessarily comfortably, in a jeans pocket — at least while standing — but it’s not really the kind of device you’d carry around loose in your pocket. The iPhone and iPod touch, on the other hand, are expressly designed to be carried in this fashion. Any cellphone that can’t fit in your pocket these days would be pretty worthless, and I find that the iPhone’s form — its dimensions, rounded corners, and smooth surfaces — slides easily into a pocket and is quickly and comfortably forgotten.

A significant market has grown up around both devices for accessories like carrying cases, although ideally both should do well in a pocket without one. I’ve found my iPhone 3GS is actually less prone to scratches without a case than with one, and both devices work better in a pocket without the extra bulk that even the slimmest of cases adds. But the DSi, at least the “metallic blue” model I own, is made of the kind of matte, metalized plastic that collects and shows every fingerprint, smudge, or slightest of scratches. Why anyone would design a device, largely targeted at pre-teens, out of this material is beyond my comprehension.

Winner: iPhone, by a wide margin.

Technical Capabilities

That both Sony’s PSP and the iPhone have far more processing and graphics horsepower than the Nintendo DS has been well covered, but as with the Wii, Nintendo has proven it’s not waging a war of raw tech specs. Nintendo’s angle in this generation of systems is to provide unique gameplay experiences via unconventional control mechanisms, be they the Wii’s motion-sensing controller or the DS’s dual screens (one of which is touch-sensitive) and innovative ways of incorporating its microphone and, now, camera(s) into gameplay. Sometimes these new schemes seem more like gimmicks than innovations, especially with the DS.

The iPhone changes the game (sorry) here, though, because not only does it have more impressive raw technical specs than the iPhone, but it incorporates technologies that allow for the innovative control schemes of both of Nintendo’s systems. So even if you take Nintendo’s side in the argument that it’s not about specs, Apple pretty much has this one covered.

Winner: iPhone, slightly.

Interface

This is the aspect of the DSi that most compelled me to write a review comparing the two systems. It’s obvious, when comparing the original DS interface to that of the DSi, that Nintendo took lessons from both the iPhone interface and its own Wii in designing this new DS user experience. The new DSi interface is pretty slick, but cheesy-looking icons and bad text anti-aliasing only serve to highlight the DS screen’s low resolution (even lower on the DSi than on the DS Lite, because the screens are larger without adding any pixels, meaning the overall perceived resolution is worse than before). The DSi’s interface looks not just second-rate, but last-century compared to the iPhone.

Winner: iPhone, by a mile. Make that a light-year.

Gameplay Experience

Here’s where Nintendo shows its strength. For all of the “innovative” control schemes possible with the DSi, the thing I like most about it is its adherence to the old school D-pad-and-buttons controls. Take a look at the number of iPhone games with on-screen “virtual D-pads” and buttons as control mechanisms, and you realize just how important this is. And unfortunately, no matter how well iPhone developers implement these virtual controls — and they’ve gotten much better at it over time — there is simply no way that the iPhone will ever be able to replicate one critical aspect of the DSi’s controls: the tactile sensation of the buttons under your fingers. You never have to look at the controls to know your fingers are in the right places on a DSi. Not only is this lack of tactile feedback an inherent problem with the iPhone’s controls, but the ergonomics of holding the smaller iPhone’s form and pressing these on-screen “buttons” are a recipe for wrist strain.

The thing is, there’s no reason you’d have to use a D-pad for controls on the iPhone, and I’ve found that most of the D-pad based iPhone games I’ve tried, assuming I’d love them because they’re like the DS games I enjoy, have just left me frustrated and disappointed. Some of my favorite DS games include venerable franchises like Castlevania and The Legend of Zelda. Translating these kinds of games to a virtual D-pad just doesn’t work. But there’s no real reason why these types of exploration/action games need you to move your player around with a D-pad. Dungeon Hunter is a great example of an iPhone game that takes a new approach — you can simply tap on the screen where you want your character to move. It works much better than the D-pad, but it affirms the one aspect of touch-based controls on the iPhone that Apple will never be able to work around — you have to obscure your view of part of the screen in order to control the game.

Winner: DSi, for keeping it real, old school.

Software

Nintendo’s DS platform had a three-year lead on the iPhone, and in that time a lot of fun, engaging games have appeared, making the DS the world’s top handheld game system in the latter half of this decade. But the iPhone App Store has exploded like nothing before it. The fact that most iPhone games sell for 99 cents, and $9.99 is considered an absolute top end for premier titles like Madden 10, has made the prices of DS games — where even closeouts on shovelware typically run at least $14.99 — seem absurd. On the other hand, it’s almost impossible to find iPhone games with the depth and polish of the best DS games, such as the aforementioned Castlevania and Zelda series, to say nothing of Mario and Pokémon.

But those top-tier franchises are just a small part of the DS picture. The most successful games on the DS platform, “casual,” puzzle-type games, are equally, if not better, represented on the iPhone platform as well, usually at a small fraction of the price. The good is overwhelmingly outnumbered by the bad on both systems, but the best of the iPhone is catching up fast to the quality of the best of the DS, and price is not a factor to be overlooked. (In fact, the somewhat higher price of the iPhone/iPod touch hardware is quickly offset by the relative costs of building up game libraries for both systems.)

Winner: toss up, but leaning more towards the iPhone every day.

Online Stores

No comparison. Apple’s iPhone App Store is revolutionary, and huge, and despite its increasing notoriety for the abusive way Apple treats developers, a rousing success. It’s well-established that there are over 100,000 apps for the iPhone, and even though most of those are buried beneath a poorly-conceived interface, they’re still there. Granted, games are only a part of that 100,000, but my anecdotal observations suggest that games are possibly as much as 40% of the total. But let’s be conservative and cut that in half. 20,000 games available on the App Store.

How many games are available for download to the DSi, via the DSi Shop? I decided to check for myself, and the number I came up with is 75. Not 75,000. 75. And that includes some non-games, like a web browser and quasi-productivity apps.

Winner: Are you kidding me?

Conclusion

When I first got my iPhone, I was a somewhat avid DS player. I own a few dozen DS games, and have logged hundreds of hours playing them. Initially, the weak selection of slapdash, shallow, awkward games on the iPhone kept me committed to the DS platform. But over time, as was to be expected, iPhone developers have learned how to take best advantage of the unique properties of the platform, not to mention the fact that additional time and the promise of serious profits have brought tremendous commitment on the part of some “big guns” mobile developers (such as EA and Gameloft). As the iPhone has become a lot more competitive as a gaming platform, Nintendo has responded with the somewhat ill-conceived and tepidly-received revamps of the DSi.

The DS Lite is still on the market, for $40 less than the DSi. After a few days putting it through its paces, not only do I think the additions to the DSi are not worth the extra money, but the loss of backwards compatibility with Game Boy Advance games makes the system a lateral move if not an outright downgrade. Meanwhile, the iPhone/iPod touch just keeps moving on up.

Winner: iPhone.

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2009.11.03 by room34.com Tags






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Computers & Technology Comments 9

There’s an easily misinterpreted map for that

I’ve been meaning to write about Verizon’s “There’s a map for that” commercials since I first saw them, but now that AT&T is suing, this seems like a good time to remedy my oversight.

The issue AT&T has with the maps in this commercial is, in my opinion, a legitimate one: Verizon’s entire network is 3G, so the gaps on the red map really are gaps. But AT&T maintains a large 2G (EDGE) network, in addition to its rather spotty 3G network. So the white parts of the AT&T map don’t necessarily represent dead zones for AT&T customers.

But there’s another issue with this map, and it’s the same problem I have with election result maps: the U.S. population is not evenly distributed across the physical landscape. It certainly looks bad that AT&T offers no 3G service anywhere in the four-state region of Montana, Wyoming and North and South Dakota. But the collective population of those states is under 3 million — representing about 1% of the total U.S. population — distributed over 393,000 square miles — representing 10.4% of total U.S. land area. That’s less people than in the St. Cloud/Twin Cities/Rochester blob of blue across east-central Minnesota in the map, and it’s far less than the over 4 million people in the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn — an area under 100 square miles.

So, as I’ve said before while studying election maps, the colored areas don’t really tell the true story. Maybe AT&T has a lot of gaps in its map, but there aren’t very many people in those gaps, either.

Now, this is not to go too far in defense of AT&T in this situation. I haven’t had any significant problems with AT&T’s 3G coverage in Minneapolis (although I have noticed my iPhone occasionally dropping down to the EDGE network — a situation that reminds me of Mitch Hedberg’s joke about escalators), but as the Engadget article notes, there are apparently major problems with their network in the most densely-populated areas of the country — San Francisco and New York.

Perhaps the most interesting thing for me in this article, though, is the following claim from AT&T:

Verizon’s misleading advertising tactics appear to be a response to AT&T’s strong leadership in smartphones. We have twice the number of smartphone customers… and we’ve beaten them two quarters in a row on net post-paid subscribers. We also had lower churn — a sign that customers are quite happy with the service they receive.

It’s no secret that much of AT&T’s recent success, especially where smartphones are concerned, is due solely to the iPhone. And it’s also no secret that it’s the iPhone hardware/software combo, not AT&T’s service, that iPhone owners are overwhelmingly satisfied with. Consider AT&T’s exclusive rights to the iPhone, and that pretty much negates any value in AT&T’s claim to customer satisfaction.

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2009.10.21 by room34.com Tags







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On the Nook and “lending”

NookTo say I’ve been baffled by the appeal of Amazon’s Kindle would be an understatement. It’s not that I don’t like the idea of e-books (or, more specifically, the as-yet unrealized promise of e-paper as a general technology); it’s just that I don’t think the Kindle nails it. Even in its redesigned form, it’s too big and awkward. But most importantly, I’m generally disposed to dislike single-function devices. For $60 less than the cost of a Kindle you can buy an iPod touch, which can read Kindle e-books and do 85,000 other things too, in a much more convenient form factor. Good luck sticking a Kindle in your pocket.

Which brings us to the Nook, Barnes & Noble’s answer to the Kindle. While both products have questionable names — although “Nook e-book,” said fast, would make a third grader (or Derek Powazek) titter on Twitter, I still think “Kindle” evoking book burning is worse — I think Nook is catchier and less of a head-scratcher.

So, what of the Nook? Another e-book reader. Seems like a Nintendo DS-inspired mashup of a Kindle and an iPhone, actually… right down to (inexplicably) using AT&T’s 3G network for wireless access when Wi-Fi is unavailable. It looks to me like B&N took the weaknesses of the Kindle to heart in delivering what looks to be a superior device, but it’s still just an e-book reader, which once again leaves me wondering why anyone would spend $259 on a one-trick pony. It also leaves me wondering even more about the long-rumored Apple tablet device. The one complaint I could theoretically see Kindle (and now Nook) lovers leveling against reading e-books on an iPhone or iPod touch is that the screen is too small. But if Apple were to deliver a device with a form factor on par with Kindle or Nook, but with the full technical capabilities of iPod touch, I think it would be a no-brainer: goodbye, Kindle; goodbye, Nook.

The one thing about the Nook specs that does intrigue me, at least a little bit, is the idea of lending. As stated in the New York Times:

One of the differentiating factors of the Nook is that customers can “lend” books to friends. But customers may lend out any given title only one time for a total of 14 days and they cannot read it on their own Nook while it is lent.

Well, yes, I would say that this does quite literally fit the description of “lending.” And it’s a reasonable way around the inevitable complaints from publishers about copyright and illegal redistribution of their intellectual property. But… come on. This is an absurd hobbling of technology masquerading as a throwback to the model of a physical book. While these arbitrary limitations on lending may be a helpful analogy for non-technophiles, and I certainly can’t argue with a mechanism that forces your friend to return a lent book in a reasonable amount of time (I’m sure we all have friends who’ve been “borrowing” books from us for years at a time), this is at its core the same sort of unwillingness on the part of copyright holders to adapt to an evolving technological world. Rather than finding new ways to be properly compensated for their works while simultaneously embracing and propelling forward new technologies, they’re dragging their feet, and holding the rest of the world back with them.Ultimately it matters not for me. I won’t be buying a Nook, so I won’t need to worry about “lending” my e-books. Despite my enthusiastic embrace of the latest-and-greatest technology, I still prefer plain old paper and ink and glue when it’s time to read a book. That’s a medium pretty well perfected, and despite these recent advances, the technology still doesn’t compare to the tactility, and utility, of a real book. Plus, they never need to be recharged.

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2009.09.23 by room34.com Tags






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Pocket Sysadmin

I’m leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again. External link

Actually, that’s not true: I will be back on Sunday. But the point is, I’m going on a trip… and more importantly, I’m not taking my laptop. Gasp! Can it be true? I’ll answer that for you: yes, it’s true.

OK, enough with this absurdly bad writing. On to the matter at hand: traveling sans laptop. Since I began freelancing in mid-2008, it’s been a given that I would always have my laptop with me. Not because I am a workaholic (not true) or because I’m an Internet junkie (true), but primarily because I needed to have a way to monitor and troubleshoot web server performance in case any of my clients had technical problems while I was gone.

But for this trip, I’ve decided I want to make it a real vacation. I want to remove the temptation to work when I really shouldn’t. I need a break. But I still need to be accessible if an emergency arises, and I need to be able to do something about it. Accessibility has been a non-issue ever since I got a cell phone: just call me. Or, since I got an iPhone: email, text, or call me (preferably in that order). But heretofore, the best I could do with a phone/iPhone was become aware of a problem. I still needed a full-fledged computer to actually do anything productive.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been preparing my iPhone to become an all-in-one tool for managing my business on the road. That meant setting up all of the diagnostic and troubleshooting tools I could, to ensure that I can adequately monitor the performance of the web servers I’m responsible for, and fix any problems that come up. Here are the tools I’m using to make that possible:

iStat

iStat

iStat is a very polished little utility for monitoring system performance. Its main feature is that it provides detailed stats on your iPhone itself: battery capacity, memory usage, storage available, IP address, uptime, running processes, and MAC address. But what’s really cool about it is that there are remote monitoring tools that allow you to monitor your Mac from your iPhone, or, more importantly for me, you can monitor a Linux, BSD or Solaris server. It requires a fair bit of command-line mucky-muck to set up (including compiling from source), but in a matter of minutes I had multiple Linux servers set up, sending their performance data to my iPhone wherever I go. With iStat, I can be proactive in monitoring server performance.

TouchTerm SSH

TouchTerm SSH

So, great. iStat lets me see how my servers are doing. But what if there’s a problem? That’s where TouchTerm SSH comes in. When I work with servers from my computer, the main application I use is Terminal. The SSH protocol allows me to connect securely to my servers with a command-line interface, where I can do anything I need to do: check running processes, modify configurations, restart services, etc. TouchTerm SSH is a fully-functional SSH terminal on the iPhone. With it, anything that I can do via SSH from my computer, I can now do with the iPhone. I just installed it today, so I haven’t completely put it through its paces, but I am sure that before long this will be one of the most indispensable apps I have installed on my iPhone. Even more than Ramp Champ.

Slicehost

Slicehost Pro

This one’s a bit more specialized, obviously, but since Slicehost’s iPhone app was one of the main selling points for me to go with them in the first place, it’s worth acknowledging.

Slicehost is a VPS hosting company based in St. Louis. They offer great service at unbeatable prices. Running a VPS is not for the feint of heart, but if you’re not afraid of taking full responsibility for your own server, Slicehost is the way to go. Their simple web-based admin interface makes it a snap to set up your own server with one of any number of Linux distros (Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, CentOS, Fedora, Arch or Red Hat), and once it’s running, to monitor its performance and reboot if necessary.

The iPhone app’s functionality is pretty limited, but it has the one critical function I need: if the slice becomes unresponsive, you can reboot it. Sure, you can do that from their mobile website too, but it’s always fun to have another app on your home screen.

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2009.09.17 by room34.com Tags






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Stuff that sucks: Griffin and HP edition

I hate stuff that sucks. And these days, it seems like more stuff sucks than ever. The era of things being built to last has long since passed. Even the era of planned obsolescence is obsolete. We are living in an era when most things aren’t built to be any good in the first place. Printer companies, in particular, seem to have adopted the Gillette model of disposal razors: give the printer away for free (well, almost), and reap huge profits on ink cartridges. Now, you’d think that in order to keep their customers in need of ink cartridges, they would at least ensure that their printers work. But they’ve learned that’s not even necessary. It’s cheaper to just swap the duds with “refurbished” replacements than to ensure that no duds leave the factory in the first place.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My gripe today did not start with my HP Photosmart C4580 all-in-one inkjet printer/copier/scanner. I have a perpetual low-level gripe with it, to the point that I’ve become numb to the absurdity of having to restart the supposedly always-on, Wi-Fi enabled printer to get it to actually recognize commands from computers on my network. No, today’s gripe began with the Griffin Reveal case I purchased along with my new iPhone 3G S three weeks ago.

At first the case seemed fantastic, but within a few days I noticed little bits of dust/grains of crud/whatever were getting down inside. I removed it, cleaned away the crud, and replaced it. But the crud came back, and as the days went on it got worse.

Now, just three weeks after I bought the phone, the Griffin Reveal has left permanent, deep pits in the back of my iPhone. Observe, in this pathetically blurry picture that — for reasons I’ll explain in a bit, though you may already be able to guess given the rant that started this post — I took with my old iPhone (which now belongs to SLP).

The pits.

Now, if you could see any detail at all in this picture, you’d see that there are dozens of little pits in the back of the phone, like I stabbed it repeatedly with a drafting compass. (Which I assure you I did not. I haven’t owned a drafting compass since geometry class in tenth grade.)

Here’s the culprit, which I am contemplating returning to the Apple Store for a refund:

The culprit and its stupid box.

And, yes… the blurry photos. I was going to scan the back of the new iPhone with my HP all-in-one, but the flippin’ thing won’t scan for some reason. I just scanned some stuff with it last week, but now the HP Scan Pro software crashes each time I try to use it. The scanner will kick in, scan a few inches, and then bail out with a pointless error message.

Translation: We suck.

Bear in mind that this error message appeared after my clicking of the “New Scan” button in the software caused the scanner to sputter to life and begin (but not finish) scanning.

I tried restarting the scanner. I tried restarting the scanner and my computer (twice). I tried deleting preferences and I tried opening HP Scan Pro directly instead of letting HP Device Manager fire it off and I tried using a USB cable instead of Wi-Fi and I tried standing on my head and chanting dark incantations by the light of the full moon. Nothing worked.

So much suck in such a small package.

Update, the next morning: Having “slept on it,” I recognize how much Apple is to blame here. Aesthetics do often trump practicality in Apple’s industrial design. The shiny black plastic on the back of the iPhone sure looks nice, at least when it’s new, but it’s way too soft and scratch-prone. My old iPhone had a brushed aluminum back, which I loved. And to be honest, the plastic back was a big deterrent for me with the first iPhone 3G. I shouldn’t need a case for my phone. A device that goes in people’s pockets and purses ought to be made from materials that are suitable for that environment.

That said, the pits caused by the Griffin Reveal case are far worse than the superficial scratches it would have received without it. I suppose the case does still provide extra protection if the phone gets dropped, so now I’m debating putting the case back on, despite the damage it’s caused so far.

Another update, later in the day: Well, there will be no returns… I checked my Apple Store receipt and it needed to be returned within two weeks. It has a one-year warranty (WTF?) though, but it seems more trouble than it’s worth. Unless I can get a new iPhone 3G S on the spot, I’d rather just live with the damage. Which is just what they’re hoping I’ll do. Sounds like HP.

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2009.09.10 by room34.com Tags







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My favorite new feature in iTunes 9

Yesterday Apple released iTunes 9 and iPhone OS 3.1, and this new version of iTunes addresses one of my biggest few frustrations with the iPhone: organizing your apps.

I cringe at saying “apps,” fearing I sound like Michael Scott talking about something they sell at Dave & Busters. But, given that it’s known as the App Store, I guess that’s what to call them.

Anyway… this is not about what they’re called, it’s about how they’re organized. And up to now, the only way to organize them was to go to your iPhone’s home screen, hold your finger on an icon until they all start to wiggle, and then drag them around. Not bad, when you only have one screen’s worth of apps, or even two or three. But I have seven — and that doesn’t even count the apps I downloaded but deleted from my iPhone.

Trying to keep seven screens’ worth of icons (16 per screen) organized by this finger-dragging method is tedious to say the least. And now that even the default configuration includes two screens, Apple realized they had to do something about it.

But now, we have this:

iTunes app syncing

Brilliant. I love it. The only flaw now is that this layout is too big to fit into the iTunes interface on my MacBook without having to scroll the entire thing, since the iPhone screen is represented at actual-pixel size. (I had to take two screenshots and stitch them together in Photoshop to create the image you see above, which is scaled down slightly from the actual size.

Then again, it’s always something, isn’t it?

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2009.06.17 by room34.com Tags


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Computers & Technology Comments 1

Copy and paste, now on an iPhone near you

If you don’t own an iPhone, you’ll probably fall into one of three categories regarding the topic of this post:

  1. You assume the iPhone already has copy-paste, and are surprised to learn it’s just been added as part of the new iPhone 3.0 software, released today.
  2. You think everything Apple makes is overhyped and under-featured, and the prior lack of copy-paste is a perfect example of that.
  3. Huh?

But for those of us who do have an iPhone, it’s been a long time coming, and now we can experience it. To understand the philosophy at Apple, and why this feature was previously unavailable, you need to realize that Apple thinks big, and “big picture.” They want the iPhone to be a success for the long haul, and they want to transform the very nature of the smartphone. Deny Apple’s impact if you like, but I think it’s hard to argue that they haven’t done exactly what they set out to do. The iPhone isn’t intended to do everything, and, if you want to tinker with the system, you already know Apple products are not necessarily for you. But what the iPhone does, and does well, is provide a consistent, polished, and intuitive interface, and it uses that interface to deliver a “game-changing” experience.

With that in mind, we can begin to understand why Apple hesitated to offer copy-paste. The iPhone completely breaks from traditional user interfaces in a number of key ways. And if that new interface is going to be a success, it demands a radical rethinking of how certain things work. There simply is no straightforward way of adapting a mouse-centered activity like copy-paste to the touch screen interface. So Apple decided to take their time to get it right.

Did they? I think so. Let’s take a look at how it works.



iPhone copy-paste #1

In the first image, we see the article I was reading — an RSS feed from Brand New, displayed on the Google Reader website in Mobile Safari.



iPhone copy-paste #2

One cool feature the iPhone interface has always had — but that you may not know about — is the magnifying glass. When you’re typing, you can touch and hold your finger on any spot in the text to bring up the magnifying glass, which makes it possible — and easy — to place the cursor in a particular location. Now the magnifying glass appears in text you’re reading as well. As you move it around, it highlights individual words.



iPhone copy-paste #3

When you release your finger on a particular word in the text, the magnifying glass disappears and is replaced with the copy block. Note the blue dots in the upper left and lower right corners. These are your drag points.



iPhone copy-paste #4

When you start dragging, the magnifying “strip” (as I’ll call it) appears, allowing you the same character-level precision as the cursor in the magnifying glass when editing text. Let go, and the copy button reappears. Just tap that button to add the highlighted text to the clipboard.

To paste the text (for example, into an email), you use the same touch-and-hold technique to bring up the magnifying glass. When you release, a new set of buttons (like the copy button) appear, allowing you to select, select all, or paste. Tap paste, and your copied text appears.



Overall, it’s pretty good. I’m not the most imaginative when it comes to things like this, so I would never have envisioned this solution, nor can I immediately think of ways to improve it. It feels perhaps a bit clunkier than I would like — and appears to still be a bit buggy; when I tried to recreate the process I had gone through taking these screenshots, I found the magnifying glass stubbornly refused to appear.

Assuming the problems I had getting copy-paste to work were a fluke (maybe a restart is in order), I would give Apple an A- for this implementation. If it is in fact buggy and not quite ready for prime time, I’d drop that to a B+. Still, if I had to come up with a solution for this problem myself, it would be worthy of an F-.

(Yes, I know there’s no such thing as an F-. You don’t need to point that out.)

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2009.06.15 by room34.com Tags




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Computers & Technology Comments 5

I have a “Hunch” that I’m an Apple fanboy

Daring Fireball tipped me off to an interesting new site, Hunch.

Hunch is a site to help you make decisions. Naturally the first question I tried out with it was one of Gruber’s suggestions: Should I buy an Apple iPhone or a Palm Pre?

It became pretty clear to me as I answered the dispassionate, objective questions, what the answer was going to be. And I was right:

Hunch thinks I'd prefer a Pre.

However, the reality is that I own an iPhone, and have scarcely even considered looking at a Pre, even for the sake of simple curiosity. So while the questions Hunch asked seemed dispassionate and objective, and let’s for the moment assume that they are, the experience leads me to a few questions of my own:

  1. Who wrote the questions? And how did they verify the accuracy of their answers?
  2. What criteria led them to choose the questions they did? Were there any other suitable questions that were omitted? Do the questions asked reasonably cover the scope of factors that may go into the decision?
  3. How are the questions weighted? Assuming they are not weighted at all, should they be? And should the weight of the questions be left to the user, rather than the author?

These are just a few of the many questions not answered by the Hunch experience.

I’m not at all suggesting that the site is a bad idea, or that it’s necessarily poorly implemented. This is just some food for thought on the merits of taking someone else’s advice when making a personal decision. It also reminds us to be wary of fully placing our trust in the All-Powerful Oz Internet. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

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