Tag Archives: iPhone

What would you have needed to carry with you in 1986 to match the utility of an iPhone today?

I’ve always been into electronic gadgets. I’ve also always been into carrying a bunch of crap that I “need” (or perceive that I need) around with me. My dream since I was a kid was always to be able to carry “everything” with me at once, in a convenient way.

It’s hard to get more convenient than a thin piece of glass, metal and plastic that fits easily into a jeans pocket. That’s the iPhone, and that’s today. My iPhone is almost unquestionably my most prized possession. Probably not just now, but of all time. It seems like it can do almost everything, which got me thinking.

25 years ago, I was a 12-year-old burgeoning tech nerd. I loved the Atari 2600 (yes, still) and was just a year away from getting my first computer. I had hundreds of cassette tapes and was already on my third or fourth Walkman. If you’d given me something like an iPhone back then, I probably would have died of ecstasy on the spot. But what 1980s stuff would I have had to lug around in my satchel back then to (roughly) approximate the functional capabilities I now (almost) take for granted in this one little device? I decided to compile a list.

1986 device: Sony Walkman portable cassette radio

In the mid-’80s, the Sony Walkman was the symbol of portable technology. As CDs overtook the popularity of cassettes in the ’90s, and Sony finally figured out how to make a portable CD player that didn’t skip if you so much as breathed on it, the Walkman was gradually replaced by the Discman.

And then along came the iPod, which itself has, ten years later, essentially become an iPhone minus the phone.

2011 app: iPod

1986 device: Microcassette recorder

As cool as the Walkman was, you couldn’t actually record with it (at least with most models). You could always lug a full-sized cassette recorder around, but if you were going for the latest and greatest in portability, that would be a microcassette recorder. Microcassettes never could match the audio fidelity of their full-sized siblings though, and were eventually replaced by digital devices that stored audio on a small hard disk and later on flash ROM. But why bother with one of those today?

2011 app: Voice Memo

1986 device: Nintendo Game & Watch LCD handheld

When I went into writing this post, I really hoped to at least give 1986 the original Game Boy, but my research says it wasn’t actually released until 1989. I never had one, so I didn’t remember. Yes, it’s true… if you wanted a handheld video game device in 1986, the best you could do was one of Nintendo’s single-game “Game & Watch” devices. As rudimentary as they seem today, their design was a clear inspiration for Nintendo’s current line of DS portable game devices.

I’ve owned two Game Boy Advance systems and three DSes over the past decade, but these days my DSi gathers dust in a cabinet while I carry over 50 video games in my pocket everywhere I go… thanks to my iPhone. iPhone gaming is still young, and in many ways the control schemes have yet to be perfected, but considering the significant price difference ($10 or less for almost all iOS games, vs. $30 or so for most DS games), the lack of a need for physical media, and the iPhone’s superior technical specs, it’s hard to see much of a future for the DS. (We’ll see what impact the soon-to-be-released 3DS has.)

2011 app: Angry Birds… or any of the 100,000 or so other iOS games

1986 device: Casio calculator watch

Calculator watches were so cool (at least, if you weren’t) in the ’80s, it’s hard to believe they would ever fade into laughable irrelevance. They were pretty impressive technology for the time though, and were irresistibly futuristic. It’s no wonder Marty McFly conspicuously sported one on his journey back to 1955… it bolstered his “future boy” cred in a way no nylon vest ever could.

2011 apps: Clock and Calculator

1986 device: Portable alarm clock

If you were too cool for a nerdy calculator watch back in the ’80s, your only option when traveling was to purchase a dedicated travel alarm clock. Some of these were pretty well-designed, but such a single-purpose device is anathema today. Besides, I’m sure the sight of one of these in a carry-on would raise a TSA eyebrow or two.

2011 app: Alarm Clock

1986 device: Pocket calendar/datebook

Pocket calendars have come in countless variations for almost as long as printing has existed, some more useful than others. Wallet card calendars like the one shown here are about as useless as they get, but that didn’t stop me from having at least one of them in my wallet at all times as a 12-year-old… especially since I didn’t have any money to put in it.

Now, not only does the iPhone’s calendar provide all of the capabilities of even the most overstuffed datebook, it can update automatically and even beep to remind you that you’re running late for that important business meeting.

2011 apps: Calendar and Contacts

1986 device: Pocket compass

I admit, I’ve never really had much use for a compass. I don’t spend a lot of time out in the wilderness, and I think a compass would only confuse my natural sense of direction in the city. But I recognize the importance of these devices, and thanks to the iPhone’s various internal sensors, all of the capabilities of a real magnetic compass can now live in software.

2011 app: Compass

1986 device: Mead memo book

Ah, the trusty Mead memo book. My dad wrote a thousand grocery lists in these while I was growing up, and the little bits of paper that tore off the spiral binding over repeated openings and closings were everywhere. These days there are more sophisticated alternatives if you still like to put pen to paper and then stuff it all in your pocket, but I prefer not to have to try to decipher my own handwriting.

2011 app: Notes

1986 device: Minolta Talker point-and-shoot 35mm camera

Sure, there were plenty of pocketable point-and-shoot cameras back in the ’80s, and of course the venerable Polaroid instant camera was still going strong. But no camera — truly, no device of any kind — epitomizes pointless ’80s novelty technology better than the Minolta Talker. I wasn’t able to verify that the Talker existed in 1986 — I think more likely it dates to 1987 or 1988 — but we had one, and I’ll never forget such helpful photographic advice as “Load film” or the classic “Too dark… use flash.”

Even at that credulous age, I wondered, if it can tell you need the flash, why can’t it just turn the flash on automatically?

2011 apps: Camera, Hipstamatic, Instagram, etc.

1986 device: JVC camcorder

Ah yes, the JVC VideoMovie. That distinctive red and black camcorder, immortalized by my hero Marty McFly. We owned one of these. It was the stuff of legend. It also, despite its considerable size, used the bizarre VHS-C format tapes. These were about 1/3 the physical size of a regular VHS cassette, but the tape itself was the same width and was compatible with regular VHS VCRs… with the help of a VHS tape-sized adapter that the VHS-C tapes would snap into. Unfortunately, since the cassettes were so small, they only had enough room to hold 20 minutes’ worth of tape. I hope Doc packed a couple of cases of blanks along with his plutonium.

(And, yes, übergeeks, I know Doc forgot to pack the plutonium. What, you think you’re the only ones who’ve watched the movie 500 times?)

2011 app: Camera

1986 device: Motorola DynaTAC mobile phone

When you look at early cell phones, it’s a wonder the devices ever caught on. Of course, they didn’t really catch on when they were the size of a small refrigerator and emitted enough radiation to make your head glow in the dark. But the fact is, you could own a cell phone back in 1986 and, well, that’s saying a lot right there, isn’t it?

OK… I really can’t come up with anything to justify the existence of this monstrosity. Incidentally, the guy in the picture is Martin Cooper, inventor of the modern cell phone. Depending on your definition of “modern.” Note his seeming reluctance to get it too close to his head.

2011 app: Phone

1986 device: Rand McNally pocket road atlas

I recently watched the classic 1964 James Bond movie Goldfinger, and was amused by the GPS-like device Bond had in his car. (GPS was just becoming available to civilians in the ’80s, and it looked like this.) As far as I know, not even Her Majesty’s Secret Service had anything approaching this kind of technology in the ’60s. In many ways it seemed as futuristic (or more so) as some of the stuff that would appear on Star Trek a couple years later. And yet, it’s now something that is not only common in a lot of ordinary cars, but we even carry it in our pockets.

Back in the ’80s, though, the only way to carry road maps in your pocket was with a little book like this, which was only useful if you were willing to limit yourself to freeways and a lot of guessing.

2011 app: Maps

1986 device: Newspapers, magazines, books

No industry is reeling from the iPhone (and the iPad) the way publishing is. Newspapers, magazines, books… publishers of all kinds are trying to discover viable business models in the world of paperless publishing. (And here I thought we’d already worked all of this stuff out with the web over the past 15 years.)

One thing is certain, though: however you like to get your news, information and entertainment, with an iPhone it’s already in your pocket.

2011 apps: Reeder, Instapaper, newspaper/magazine apps, iBooks, Kindle, etc.

1986 device: Citizen portable LCD TV with 2-inch B&W screen

Yes… a portable LCD TV in the mid-’80s. Don’t believe it? I had one of these, exactly as shown. It had a 2-inch black-and-white screen. And, strangely, the screen was in the top of that flip-up lid. The bottom part had a mirror, which was what you looked at to view your program. Why? Well… backlight technology was feeble and battery-sucking. The lid was translucent, and if you were in a bright enough environment, the ambient light would shine through, illuminating the screen. There was also a bulky snap-on backlight attachment for use in dimmer surroundings, but if this was in one of your pockets, the rest of them better be filled with AAA batteries or you wouldn’t be watching much.

True, TV tuner technology doesn’t exist in the iPhone. But what the iPhone has is better… with iTunes, Netflix, PBS and more, you’ve got on demand TV… in full color, backlit, no snap-ons or AAA batteries required.

2011 apps: iPod, Netflix, PBS, etc.

1986 device: Flashlight

OK, OK. This flashlight is from the 1960s. But my grandparents had one exactly like this when I was a kid in the ’80s. The big black thing on the side had magnets in it, allowing it to stick to the side of the refrigerator, which is where they always kept it.

If you don’t have an iPhone 4 (which I don’t, but which has an LED flash for the camera), the only source of light is the screen itself. Pretty dim for a flashlight, but it works in a pinch. There are flashlight apps out there, but unless it’s one that powers on the camera LED, I think just turning the thing on so the screen lights up is as good as any of the dedicated apps.

2011 app: Any one of the countless flashlight apps

1986 device: TRS-80 Model 100 portable computer

It’s a bit of a stretch to call the iPhone a portable computer, at least when compared to modern portable computers. But considering the capabilities (and perhaps I’m using that term ironically) of the portable computers that existed in 1986, the iPhone is like having a Cray supercomputer in your pocket. A 3.5-inch touchscreen is never going to replace a full-fledged computer for serious work, but still, if you really have to, you can get some work done. I’ve managed to do some emergency sysadmin work from my iPhone sitting in a gas station parking lot while traveling.

2011 apps: Documents To Go, AirSharing, iSSH, etc.

All of this just barely scratches the surface, of course. But I think it demonstrates the huge impact the iPhone has had on me as a manifestation of all of my childhood fantasies about futuristic technology. You can keep your flying cars. Just let me keep my iPhone.

Image sources:
Marty McFly with JVC VideoMovie camcorder and calculator watch
Sony Walkman portable cassette player
Aiwa microcassette recorder
Nintendo Game & Watch handheld LCD video game
Casio calculator watch
Braun travel alarm clock
Coca-Cola pocket calendar
Pocket compass
Mead memo book
Minolta Talker camera
JVC VideoMovie camcorder
Cell phone inventor Martin Cooper with a Motorola DynaTAC
Rand McNally Pocket Road Atlas
Time magazine cover featuring Space Shuttle Challenger explosion
Citizen portable LCD TV
Rayovac 1960s flashlight
TRS-80 Model 100 portable computer
1980s GPS equipment

Addendum, April 2, 2011: If you’re hoping to truly recreate that 1986 experience on your iPhone, check out this Game and Watch-inspired iOS game, Monkey Labour!

What sort of person buys an Android phone?

This post will not be as sardonic and Apple-fanboi-smug as the title suggests… I promise. Well, maybe.

As a long-term Apple obsessive, there was never any question that I would fall into the iPhone camp, even when there was no real competition (and, seriously, there was no real competition until Android 2 and Windows Phone 7). But still, I wonder: what makes a person who is fresh to the world of smartphones choose Android over iPhone? This article on Macworld (reprinted… er, re”printed”… from Network World) raised the issue for me again. While it’s talking about a survey that shows most owners of “dumb” phones (a.k.a. “feature phones”) plan to replace them with another “dumb” phone, the author herself is an Android user, and the whole article skews in that direction.

Respondents to the survey cited high costs of data plans and the adequate capabilities of their feature phones as primary reasons not to switch, but then there’s this:

Others said they weren’t tech smart enough to have a smartphone, believing the apps and setup too complicated.

That really got me thinking, because it sounds like those users were imagining an Android phone in their future, not an iPhone. After all, one of the biggest selling points for iOS devices of all kinds (iPod touch, iPhone, iPad) is their ease of use, and specifically, the ease of purchasing, installing and using apps.

Much has been made of spurious comparisons between the iPhone/Android rivalry of today and the Mac/Windows rivalry of the ’90s. I don’t really find the comparison that relevant. While there are certainly some similarities between the “open” Android and the “open” Windows versus the “closed,” Apple-owned iOS and Mac OS, there are too many differences, both between Android and Windows, and between the Apple of the ’90s and the Apple of today: the specific nature of the licensing of Android compared to that of Windows, Apple’s status today as the world’s largest technology company and most iconic brand compared to its “niche player” status in the ’90s, etc.

So, I don’t really see Android as analogous to Windows in making the argument that history is destined to repeat itself and iOS will fall into a small — if highly profitable — niche. Apple’s in a much different place than it was when the desktop wars were raging, and Android presents a much different type of competition.

And yet, there are still some factors that remain relevant in the comparison, which I’ll get to in a minute. First, let’s consider the reasons a person upgrading from a feature phone to a smartphone would choose Android over iOS:

Carrier availability. More than anything else, the argument I’ve heard from people choosing Android phones over the iPhone was that the iPhone wasn’t available on their carrier of choice — usually their current carrier, and usually, specifically, Verizon. For the most part, people seem to like their carriers, and only switch if they’re having problems. And, from what I’ve heard, the only network that’s really had a lot of problems in recent years was, ironically, the only one that carried the iPhone in the US: AT&T.

There’s no question that the iPhone brought customers to AT&T, and little question that the iPhone is the only reason AT&T is still #2 in the US. Anecdotally, I myself switched to AT&T (from T-Mobile, which I was quite happy with) specifically to use the iPhone.

Now that the iPhone is coming to Verizon in a couple of weeks, it will be interesting to see how this changes things. But I am sure there are still customers who are loyal to Sprint or T-Mobile (or other carriers) who will choose an Android phone to avoid switching to either AT&T or Verizon. (And then of course there are the AT&T iPhone users who plan to switch to Verizon as soon as their contracts are up. But that’s for another post.)

Android is “open.” I say “open” in quotes because there has been plenty of discussion (just google “Android open site:daringfireball.net” for a taste; here: I did it for you) about how Android’s open licensing really just means it’s open for carriers to load up with crapware that can’t be uninstalled; or open to exploitation by hackers, viruses and privacy-invading stealth apps. But I’ll acknowledge that it is, also, open — to some extent — in the way its champions mean: users are not inside a “walled garden” as they are with Apple’s iOS. You can install apps freely, bypassing any officially sanctioned “app store”*, and you can tweak the system to your heart’s — or at least your carrier’s heart’s — content. But most users do not want to tweak their systems. They want something that just works, that they don’t have to think about, and that they are not afraid they’ll break. Which leads to…

Recommendations from “tech experts.” In other words, non-techie people asking their techie friends or relatives which phones they should buy. And here’s where we get into the territory where I see relevant analogies to the Mac vs. Windows era of the ’90s. Imagine a person who doesn’t know anything about smartphones but who is interested in entering this slightly daunting new world of technology. They have a friend or relative who they perceive as a tech expert — the person they’d call 15 years ago for help hooking up the free Lexmark printer that came with their new Gateway PC. Which they bought because they asked the same tech expert what kind of computer they should get. Today, that tech expert may be the main reason this person ends up with an Android phone.

The point here is: “tech experts” have different needs and different goals with technology devices than “average” users. They’re not afraid of getting “under the hood” of the system — in fact they want to do that — and they have little understanding or patience for people who don’t get technology. (Trust me, aside from my preference for Apple products, I’m there myself.) But both because of a general disdain for whichever technology they don’t use, along with a very real understanding that in making this recommendation they’re, willing or not, committing themselves to providing ongoing support, the tech experts are most likely to recommend whatever platform they’re most familiar with.

This is one of the reasons so many tech novices bought Windows computers the first time around, and I can see a very real possibility that this will be a factor in the growth of the Android platform, especially among new and technically inexperienced smartphone buyers.

But there are definitely some differences. First, I think Android represents an even more technologically remote territory for novices than did Windows in the ’90s. It’s more like the DMZ between Windows and desktop Linux. And aside from the staunchest supporters, few reclusive, bearded übergeeks are still trying to convince their grandmothers to run Linux on their home PCs. Second, technology isn’t as intimidating as it used to be. Computer use is far more widespread now, and getting into a smartphone after already learning (or, well, sort of learning) to use a computer is comparatively simple.

And finally, we come back to Apple. Apple is not in the position it was in back in the ’90s. For one, Mac market share has grown considerably, especially in the US, along with the growth of Apple as a general consumer technology brand. The success of first the iPod, and more recently the iPhone and iPad, has translated into success for the Mac. (Check Horace Dediu’s asymco blog if you need numbers and graphs to back that up.) Most importantly, more “tech experts” are now using the Mac than ever before. Part of this is because at its core, Mac OS X is Unix-based, just like Linux**. Which is a big part of why desktop Linux is doomed (again, a topic for another post). And as more “tech experts” become familiar with the Apple ecosystem, they embrace iOS devices along with the Mac, and they recommend iPhones to their friends and relatives who ask them for help.

So… where does that leave Android? I see all three of the above rationales for choosing Android over iPhone as diminishing in importance… some much more rapidly than others. I especially see the effects of #1 and #3 diminishing together, especially once the iPhone comes to Verizon next month. I’ll say it more explicitly, with extra emphasis: I expect Android to take a huge hit once the Verizon iPhone becomes available. I’d go so far as to predict that within a matter of months — certainly before the end of 2011 — the number of Verizon iPhone users will be as much as 10 times the number of Verizon Android users. Compound this (likely) huge and sudden impact with the ongoing effect of #3, and it paints a pretty clear picture for me. I think Verizon’s iPhone commercial says it all. The iPhone on Verizon is what people have really been anticipating all along, not an “iPhone killer” Android phone from Verizon. Verizon knows it.

Of course, all of this doesn’t mean Android will go away, nor should it. Ongoing competition from a strong alternative like Android is (probably) essential to keep Apple on top of their game. But I see two main (and increasingly marginal) reasons people will continue to choose Android over iPhone: either they are on Sprint or T-Mobile and don’t want to change, or because they are hardcore tinkerers who will never be satisfied with the kind of controlled operating environment Apple offers. But for everyone else, the choice is about to become a whole lot more obvious.

As Marco Arment insightfully observed, the primary choice has been iPhone vs. (Android on) Verizon. Now users will have more options, with iPhone and Android (and Windows Phone 7) available on both AT&T and Verizon. But I think the choice is mainly going to become AT&T vs. Verizon, with the implication being that it’s (probably) the iPhone on either network. And since Apple has ensured that the carriers can’t significantly differentiate the same device with apps or features, the way they do with other manufacturers’ phones, it’s really all going to come down to the network. AT&T is probably going to take almost as big of a hit as I anticipate Android taking.

That too is a topic for another post.


* Registered trademark by Apple pending.

** Yes, reclusive-bearded-übergeeks, I know neither Mac OS X nor Linux is technically Unix. But the difference is irrelevant to everyone but us.

A brief rant against “mobile” websites, and in praise of CSS3 media queries

This morning, as I do on most mornings, I eased the transition between my peaceful slumber and the mayhem of conscious life by lying in bed, catching up on the goings-on of humanity on planet Earth with the help of my iPhone and the Internet.

This usually consists of checking Twitter, Facebook, and my Google Reader feeds, but when that isn’t enough, I’ll occasionally search the web for whatever random piece of information crosses my stream of consciousness. Today that happened to be the Tim and Eric comedy tour that’s currently underway, since I’ll be seeing it when it arrives in Minneapolis on Wednesday. So I googled Chrimbus Tour review and one of the first links that came up was a review on BuddyTV.

BuddyTV is not a site I think of often. I believe I was vaguely aware of its existence before today, but I didn’t know what it was all about and I never had any inclination to visit it. But I was certainly happy and willing to click the Google link and read its review of the Chrimbus Tour.

Unfortunately, the site did not reciprocate that happy willingness. Instead of taking me to the desired review, it detected I was arriving via iPhone, so it shunted me off to an annoying splash page imploring me to download the BuddyTV iPhone app. No thanks, I really just want to read the article I came here for in the first place. Oh, great! You’ve provided an “Or continue to BuddyTV.com” link at the bottom. Thanks!

But — and this is so often the case in this scenario — that link did not helpfully take me to the article I wanted. (And as a web developer, I can tell you it is not at all difficult to make it do that.) Instead it just went to the BuddyTV home page. Now what? I’ll tell you now what: I closed Mobile Safari and got out of bed. Not only did I not download their app; I didn’t expose my eyeballs to any of the ads that pay for their website; I didn’t get to read the article I was interested in; and I was left with such a negative impression of the site that it drove me to this public rant.

All of this is not really to single out BuddyTV for its bad behavior, though. BuddyTV is just one site among many I’ve encountered over the past couple of years that all adhere to this same pattern of deplorably ill-conceived UX design. Surely this is not the reaction the owners of these sites hope to elicit. But it’s exactly what happens with me, every time, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

There is a solution.

We frequent users of web browsers on mobile devices just want to see your site. We want to see the same pages we’d see on our computer. The same content. But it doesn’t hurt to have that content optimized for the mobile browsing experience. Resized to the smaller screen. A streamlined layout that’s easier to navigate with a touchscreen. But, fundamentally, the same experience.

While there are some tools out there to help turn a regular website into a mobile website (most notably Mobify), there’s a far easier solution: CSS3 media queries.

CS-what media what now? CSS3 media queries are, simply, a set of stylesheet definitions that are applied to a web page selectively depending on certain characteristics of the media the page is being viewed on, most notably, screen size.

With CSS3 media queries, you can define an entirely separate set of stylesheet attributes to be applied only when the user is visiting the site from a small screen. Or an extra large screen. Or you can describe a bunch of intermediate sizes, so with the exact same HTML content the user will see a perfectly laid-out page, optimized to their screen, whether that’s an iPhone, a netbook, a “standard” computer monitor or a 30-inch Apple Cinema Display.

I’ve begun working more extensively with CSS3 media queries on some of my own projects lately, and I am very excited about the potential. If you’re a web developer or designer, you should learn about CSS3 media queries now. And if you’re a website owner, you should know that “mobile” sites are sooo 2008. Now you can have your cake and eat it too. You can have the best of both worlds. Insert cliché here. Just don’t subject your site visitors to any more obnoxious plugs for your iPhone app, or dump them thoughtlessly on your mobile home page with no way of tracking down the article they were coming for. It’s not fair to your users, it’s not fair to your public image, and if you’re supporting your site with ads — or, for that matter, if you’ve been convinced to drop a ton of extra cash on developing a separate mobile site, or an iPhone app that just displays your site’s content anyway — it’s costing you money.

Chaos Rings: an iPhone game review

I’m not a super hardcore gamer. I don’t spend any time in MMORPGs, I’m not on any XBOX Live leaderboards, and I’m able to balance my interest in playing video games with other things like work and family. (When something’s gotta give, that something is, invariably and rightly, playing video games.)

And yet, I guess I’m a pretty serious gamer. I’ve been into video games since I first got an Atari 2600 in 1982. I’ve been collecting both vintage and modern games since I had a resurgence of interest in 2002, and I now count among the game systems I own: Panasonic Tournament 2000 (a mid-’70s Pong-style console), Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Intellivision, NES, GameCube, XBOX, Wii, XBOX 360, Sega Game Gear, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. And all told, across those systems I own a total of around 500 games. And, oh yeah, there’s the iPhone. But… is the iPhone a game system or not?

I’ve explored this issue before, and come to the conclusion that not only is it a game system, but it’s arguably superior to the Nintendo DS, at least in two key ways: 1) its technical capabilities, and 2) its portability. To paraphrase Chase Jarvis, the best game system is the one you have with you.

The iPhone’s technical capabilities far outshine those of the Nintendo DS (the main strength the DS has working in its favor is its physical controls), and it also has the big advantage of the fact that I’m far more likely to have it with me at any given time than my DS, even considering how much more often I carried the DS with me before I had an iPhone.

Since I got the iPhone, I’ve spent far more time playing games on the iPhone than on all other systems put together. And yet I’ve mostly played casual games like solitaire, Scrabble, or, when I’m feeling particularly… erm… risky, Strategery. But the deeper, more engaging adventure style games I really like, especially games like the ones in Nintendo’s Metroid and Zelda franchises, or Konami’s recent Metroid-esque entries in the Castlevania series, just aren’t there.

Why not?

It’s pretty clear that we’ll never see a Metroid or Zelda game on the iPhone. Frankly I’m a bit surprised Konami hasn’t released a Castlevania game for the iPhone yet — they’ve made a few other iPhone games — although one may be in development and I just don’t know about it.

For the most part the iPhone seems to have become a magnet for casual games. It’s easy to understand why, to some extent. The iPhone is owned by a lot of “non-gamers” and casual games are most appealing to them. I think the iPhone as a gaming platform shares a lot of its audience with the Wii. But the Wii does have Metroid and Zelda and other “hardcore” titles.

To be fair, the types of adventure and action RPG games I enjoy on other systems do exist on the iPhone, but in my experience so far… well… they all kinda suck. I’ve been lured in many times by the promise of “Zelda-like gameplay” and impressive-looking graphics, but although I’ve found a few to be of passable quality, almost all of them are so buggy, or so riddled with grammatical or spelling errors, or just so ill-conceived and sloppily-executed, that I play them once and then delete them off my iPhone, consoling myself in the fact that I only wasted $3 instead of $30 (the going price on new Nintendo DS titles).

As for the big question — why this particular genre of games has never delivered a satisfying experience on the iPhone, that’s the big mystery. There are plenty of casual games on the iPhone that demonstrate a tremendous amount of polish and great execution: apart from the aforementioned Strategery, there’s quite possibly the best casual game ever — Plants vs. Zombies, and of course an assortment of popular card, board and word games.

Up to now, the best 3D adventure game for the iPhone was the Halo-meets-Metroid-Prime clone N.O.V.A. It’s pretty good, but there’s still something I just can’t pinpoint about it that just makes it seem a little rough and just not totally engaging. Still, it’s been the most promising game I’ve seen yet for the platform. Until…

And now, on to the review…

Chaos Rings is a new Japanese-style RPG from Square Enix, developed specifically for the iPhone. It’s not the first Square Enix game for the iPhone — a few of the early Final Fantasy games have been ported, for instance — but it’s their first full-blown, brand new all-out effort on the platform.

It’s the most expensive game I’ve ever bought for the iPhone. But at $12.99, it’s still less than half the price of a standard new Nintendo DS game. (Most Square Enix games for the DS retail for $39.99.) But there’s a reason for the extra price: the depth, quality and polish is unmatched by anything I’ve yet seen for the iPhone.

The game looks fantastic: the art is highly detailed and is consistent with the established and popular Square Enix style, and it’s technically impressive — the iPhone’s 3D graphics capabilities are stunning. The musical score and sound effects are great, too. Gameplay-wise, Chaos Rings is a traditional 3D RPG dungeon crawl: you explore a diverse variety of worlds, battling monsters with both attacks and magic, and there are also a number of puzzle rooms. The puzzle rooms feel a bit tacked on, although they’re a fun diversion from the level grinding characteristic of the game style.

Something that cannot be underestimated in terms of what makes the gameplay in Chaos Rings engaging in a way that so many other, otherwise good iPhone games (Hero of Sparta and Dungeon Hunter come to mind) lack is the control mechanism. It’s become standard practice for iPhone games that require “traditional” movement schemes to employ a “virtual” (on-screen) direction pad and buttons. Typically, mimicking the controls on traditional handhelds, the D-pad is placed in the lower left corner of the screen, and the buttons in the lower right. The big problem with this approach is that you don’t want to have to look at where you’re placing your fingers: when the D-pad and buttons are physical objects, there’s a tactile experience. You don’t have to look, because you can feel that your thumbs are in the right place. Not so with virtual controls on a glass screen.

But somewhere along the way — N.O.V.A. is the first game I encountered with it — an important advance was made: the D-pad only appears when you touch your finger to the screen, and it appears wherever you touch. So you no longer have to worry about putting your thumb in the right place — just put it down, and it’s always centered on the D-pad. Likewise, there may be “buttons” on screen, but usually just one, and a tap anywhere counts as a button press. This change makes a huge difference in playability and delivering a satisfying experience. As I said, N.O.V.A. uses this kind of control scheme, but that game had other problems that have kept me from really getting into it. But Chaos Rings offers a near-perfect execution of this evolved virtual control scheme, and it may be the single most important factor in my enjoyment of the game.

Chaos Rings is not a masterpiece — it’s not the kind of seamless, immersive world I loved so much in Metroid Prime (my favorite video game of all time), but it’s so far beyond every other iPhone game I’ve seen, in every imaginable way, that it seems to be an introduction to a new era in iPhone gaming… real iPhone gaming. It’s the first adventure/RPG game I’ve seen on the iPhone that I genuinely can’t put down. I’m sure there will be better iPhone games in the future — especially as the platform evolves with the iPad — but I truly believe this game will stand as a milestone in that evolution.

Random observations about the iPad now that I’ve actually used one

Tonight I visited the Apple Store at Mall of America (and, while I was at it, the Best Buy at Mall of America), and here are some things I observed or thought about during the experience:

I expected the Apple Store to have maybe 3 or 4 iPads on display. In fact there were at least a 16, and there were still crowds gathered around them waiting for a turn. The Best Buy had 3 of them, and a proportionately smaller crowd of waiters.

It’s simultaneously smaller and bigger than I expected. The physical form is maybe 80% of the size I envisioned, but the screen seems bigger, and the bezel is less… erm… excessive than it seems in photos.

The screen is just… wow. It’s a thing of beauty. Even though the ppi is lower than on the iPhone, it seems higher. The extra screen real estate makes an incredible difference. I played a round of my favorite iPhone game, Plants vs. Zombies, and was totally amazed at the difference visually.

This is how a touchscreen interface should be. The iPhone was just a warm-up.

When I first lifted it, I was surprised at how light it was, but before long it started to feel heavy. If I were to use one regularly, I’d definitely want to prop it up in some way.

iPhone apps look surprisingly good in double resolution. They’re intelligently anti-aliased in a way that reminds me of the DVD “upconvert” process on a Blu-Ray player.

Both the Apple Store and Best Buy had the demo units displayed on clear, angled, cylindrical acrylic blocks with a white rubberized ring on top. It put the iPad at a perfect angle for viewing at demo stations, and the rubber kept it in place while still allowing it to be lifted easily. They should sell these.

Apple might be singlehandedly responsible for another H1N1 outbreak. Just think about how many hands are touching these things. They should’ve had Purell dispensers at the front door.

This feels like a new beginning. Sure, the iPad has flaws. But this is the first of something new, and I think it’s an order of magnitude bigger than either the iPod or iPhone. (And not just in terms of the physical dimensions.)

I know it’s too early for me to get one — I want a camera, or at the very least 3G (the latter of which is actually coming, in a few weeks). I also don’t want to pay $829 for a 64 GB, 3G model. But I know by now that eventually… eventually… I will own (or have owned) multiple iPads. I can see buying the $499 entry-level model now, and then buying a higher-end model in a year or two, when the features I want are available at a better price, and keeping the old one around the house too. I bought an original iPhone 9 months after it came out, which I passed on to SLP a little over a year later when I upgraded to a 3GS. I can see the iPad following a similar path — but one slightly less painful, since I paid $200 more for the original iPhone than for the 3GS, and I don’t see the iPad following the same rapid price reduction path.

I cannot put into words just how much it pains me that I walked out of Best Buy, not with an iPad under my arm, but with DVDs of High School Musical 3: Senior Year and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel along with two reams of printer paper. These are the sacrifices we make as parents. (Granted, if I were really being a good parent I’d refuse to let them watch this tripe — the Chipmunks movie, anyway; I have to admit I actually kind of like the HSM trilogy — but… well, OK, I won’t try to justify it.)

More to come…