Just before Christmas, the Clear for Mac team gathered around a box that had arrived from San Francisco. Inside, was a rather intriguing piece of hardware. Over the past couple of months, we’ve been stealthily working on adding support for this futuristic piece of hardware to Clear for Mac - and today we’re thrilled to announce that Clear for Mac will soon support the rather incredible Leap Motion controller.
Leap has an insane level of detection fidelity for a relatively-cheap consumer product, which is awesome, but no one is actually going to use hand gestures to manage todos.
WDSU’s LaTonya Norton asked Mo: “Now, haven’t you run before?”
Clearly perplexed, Mo replied: “Sorry?”
LaTonya went on: “Haven’t you run before? This isn’t your first time.”
Mo then replied simply: “No this is not my first time.”
It’s obvious that she is not used to talking without a teleprompter. Farah is so dumbstruck by the question he interprets it as “Haven’t you run a half-marathon before?”, ending the awkward pause in the conversation.
Jack Tretton, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, sat down for an interview with Forbes and was asked if Sony’s new fleet of cloud services would be available at launch. “I think it’s aspirational on the device, as opposed to us standing up there, pounding the floor and saying the day this thing ships all this stuff will be there,” Tretton replied. “I think it’ll absolutely be there for the device, but I don’t know whether it will be there for day one on the device.”
In hindsight, it is very clear to me that the event on the 20th wasn’t really about PlayStation — it was about being first.
Sony talked a lot about using Gaikai technology to stream old PS games to the PS4, when it really should have been talking about streaming some to your iPhone or Android tablet. It should have been talking about offering indie game developers access to the PlayStation network and, through that, the PlayStation app in people’s pockets. If you want to fight the subsumption of console gaming into handheld gaming, plant a trojan horse on phones that opens a window into your gaming world with the tap of an icon.
Without question, Sony didn’t push the boat out as far as they could. I saw no change in how Sony views the console market and no change to how Sony manages the console games market — indie developers remain shut out. Their announcements boil down to a more powerful PS3 driven by the same traditional, backward, philosophy.
On that underlying point, Panzarino is spot on, but I disagree that pushing Gakai-powered PS3 games on iOS and Android is the right way forward. If Sony had announced a PlayStation app for iPad that streamed games, it would have been seen, retrospectively, as a big misstep.
Streaming console games relies on a persistent internet connection with low latency and reasonably fast download speeds. This just doesn’t match up well with mobile. On cellular data, 3G is a definitive no and LTE would be shaky — the pings just aren’t fast enough for even casual gaming. Even when at home, most people’s broadband and WiFi infrastructure isn’t fit for purpose or available universally in some rooms of their house.
For certain, Sony needs to adapt their stance towards iOS. I just don’t think streaming is the answer, for the short and medium term, and a much better path would be to redistribute resources to bringing AAA titles to the iPad. I mean, assuming the network issue is overcome, what about the controller problem? You can’t adequately play Call of Duty for consoles using a touch screen. When it comes down to it, streaming console games to mobile is a way to circumvent native application development. Therefore, the concept — at a minimum — faces the same issues as HTML 5 apps do.
Other than touch response, though, this is probably the fastest Chromebook we’ve ever used. That’s thanks to an Intel Core i5 processor, which powers the machine and — unfortunately — also seems to join with the display to keep the battery life to a ho-hum five hours. There’s a paltry 32 GB of storage on board, which should serve as a reminder that Google really, really wants you to keep everything in the cloud. To help, the company is offering 1TB of storage for three years along with every Pixel.
This laptop would have been a lot more desirable before Apple cut the prices on the thirteen-inch Retina MacBook Pro. If Apple hadn’t changed the prices of the thirteen-inch Retina MacBook Pro, there would be a $400 difference between the Pixel and the Pro. That’s quite a significant price gap, which might have allowed the Pixel to carve out some marketshare. $400 is a significant price differential to make consumers skip over the limitations of Chrome OS and seriously consider buying a Pixel.
However, Apple did drop prices. The base thirteen-inch Pro was reduced from $1699 to $1499. As a result, I think the Pixel is a much tougher proposition. The “Mac penalty” is now just $200, and for that you get an actual computer where you can get actual Office, actual Pages, actual games, actual video editor, actual photo browser, etcetera etcetera …
I do want to thank Google for their generosity with bundled storage, though. One terabyte is plenty for anyone who will use this machine, as you will be constrained by network bandwidth caps long before you hit your storage limits. Granted, it only lasts for three year but still — it is a million times better than iCloud’s free tier.
Apple and Samsung accounted for $6.5 billion in increased sales in 2012, while the remainder of the consumer technology industry declined by almost $9.5 billion.
Apple tonight posted two new television spots for the iPad and the iPad mini on its YouTube page. The two ads, titled ‘Alive’ and ‘Together’, highlight some of the 300,000 apps made specifically for the iPad, using a variety of words to describe them.
I can’t find a source for the music behind these ads, so I’m assuming it has been custom made for this campaign. Unfortunately, I think the flaw in these ads is the sound.
The visuals are great, and the pace is quicker and more engaging than Apple’s previous ads of this ilk, but the sound is very cheesy. The backing track is okay; it’s the voices, which have blatantly been synthesised to emulate a large crowd, that kill it for me. “DEEP!”. “LOUD!”.
In my view, the magic of Apple’s commercials originates from their subtlety. The incumbent strength of Apple’s brand means they can ignore the tacky ploys that most companies use. The faked cheering in these two ads go directly against this; there is an implied idea that Apple thinks people aren’t intelligent enough to read. It’s cheap marketing reminiscent of infomercials, albeit to a much lesser extent.
I think if you got rid of the voices, these ads would be a lot better.
My biggest struggle with using the iPad for “work” is the awkwardness of switching between apps. Not fluid enough.
…
Even if just 2 apps, say Evernote and Safari, switching takes a moment because they both lag for a second before they respond. Not on Mac.
This. The lag is minimal, less than a second, but it is extremely agitating. If you try and use the app immediately, your first string of touch input will most likely be ignored. From then on, it is as responsive as ever. The first second, though, is an infuriating user experience.
The reason for this delay is linked to how iOS ‘freezes’ background applications; the period of inactivity experienced is relative to the time it takes to unfreeze the desired application. For the Settings app, the time necessary to become active is negligible, so it feels instantaneous, but for more complicated apps (like Mail) the thawing process takes longer and becomes noticeable in use. Until that point, touches do nothing because you are effectively looking at a screenshot of the application when you were last open — the app doesn’t receive any touch events at this stage.
This delay isn’t normally an issue when using the multitasking tray, as iOS can start to transition the app into the foreground as soon as you tap on its icon, with the ‘carousel’ animation making it feel like there is never a moment of unresponsiveness. This trick isn’t possible when using the gesture navigation, though. iOS doesn’t start the unfreeze until the swiping animation ends, just in case you gesture to go back at the last instant.
As the iPad becomes increasingly powerful, this lag will minimise automatically. However, I don’t expect this problem to go away that soon, because the unfreezing process will often rely on slow disk IO as well as CPU. The increasing complexity of iOS applications prolongs the attainment of this goal, too.
Therefore, it may be time to consider a change to the multitasking manager in iOS. Multitasking in iOS was introduced with iOS 4, designed with the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 in mind. It was built with the assumption of severe RAM constraints.
Nowadays, iOS devices have much more RAM; the latest generation of iPad and iPhone have 1 GB in their SoC’s. Hence, I think Apple should consider taming the aggressiveness of iOS’ multitasking policies — the devices can handle it now. At the moment, the OS backgrounds any app that isn’t the one currently being used. If instead the OS kept the last-used app alive in addition to the foreground app, the delay when swiping would be eliminated as the unfreezing step would no longer be necessary.
Obviously, going back further would still require unfreezing to occur, but the user experience for the most common scenario — returning to the last used app — would be much improved. It’s not a revolutionary change, it doesn’t require any “relearning” from users. It’s just a small evolutionary advancement to utilise some of the power of Apple’s latest devices.
On April 30th, we will turn off posterous.com and our mobile apps in order to focus 100% of our efforts on Twitter. This means that as of April 30, Posterous Spaces will no longer be available either to view or to edit.
The original incarnation of this blog resided on Posterous for nearly two years. This blog was a product of their acquisition by Twitter. At the time, they said that “Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption”. Myself, and practically everyone else, didn’t believe them and — although it took longer than I had estimated — the inevitable is happened. Spaces are now down and running with permanent disruption.
An extremely reliable source has confirmed to us that Google is in the process of building stand-alone retail stores in the U.S. and hopes to have the first flagship Google Stores open for the holidays in major metropolitan areas.
I expect a souring of relations between Samsung and Google. A presence in retail will give Google an opportunity to instate the “Nexus” brand into the minds of normal people. I don’t think Samsung will want to let that happen.
The Briton who left Dixons for a short stint as head of Apple’s global retail stores is returning to the UK high street as the new chief executive of Monsoon Accessorize.
Browett was awful at Apple, but excelled in his previous role at Tesco. There’s a chance, albeit slim, that he might fit in to retail fashion.
I won’t be taking bets though on how long he lasts at Monsoon Accessorize, as I have zero knowledge about the fashion market. Moreover, I have near-negligible levels of interest for what Browett does going forward. All I care about is that he is no longer at Apple.
Currently Tweetbot lets you show the name of a Tweet’s author one of two ways: their full name (Mike Beasley) or their username (==@MikeBeas==). The iPad and Mac versions also include a third option that shows both in the form of “Mike Beasley @MikeBeas“. Only third option is allowed by Twitter in the new Display Guidelines. The other two will need to be removed.
The whole article is a comprehensive — and thus — saddening look into the future of Twitter clients. What’s odd about the design guidelines is that most are completely arbitrary and seem to have no impact on helping Twitter maintain control of its brand. They just seem to be purposefully annoying. The quoted rule is a perfect example. To Twitter, why does it matter if you only show their username? What possible benefit arises from that?
It’s like a war of attrition: Twitter doesn’t want the bad PR from openly killing third-party clients, so instead they are making developers’ lives harder and harder to make them give up and quit.
As noted by Mac4Ever, Adobe has recently updated its end-user license agreement for Adobe Director 12 requesting developers publishing paid iOS apps provide Adobe with 10% of earnings above $20,000. The recently released Adobe Director 12 introduced the ability to publish games directly to iOS, but developers in Adobe’s forums are not too pleased with the company’s decision to take 10% of earnings from iOS apps published to the App Store. At least one game published with the software is already available on App Store: Rally Point 3 by Xform Games.
Adobe can do whatever they want, but I can’t wait to see how they police this. Are Adobe employees really going to be able to find all the iOS apps in the store made using Director, ask developers how much money they make, and then — if more than $20,000 — chase said developers for payment?
Channel checks indicate Apple has a product event in March that is Apple-TV related (possibly an iTV SDK introduction). We think a Sep/Oct iTV launch is being targeted.
“Channel checks”? What on earth? You can’t manufacture an event at a Foxconn factory.
Aside from that anomaly, I have a problem with the idea that Apple is going to announce an SDK for the iTV without announcing the iTV at the same time. If they do announce an SDK in March, for the current Apple TV, then you are forging an ecosystem of apps around that device. You are limiting developer imagination to the constraints of the cheap-and-not-particularly-powerful $99 set-top box that exists today.
The biggest issue is with the remote. I’m assuming that the iTV will not use the same basic D-Pad remote that the Apple TV uses. Using Misek’s theory, though, the apps developed in the time between March and the iTV announcement will be based on the existence of a D-Pad. It doesn’t make sense.
Unlike the Vertus of old, the Ti runs Android, but although it comes with the addition of the company’s 24-hour concierge service, it’s still the 16-month old Android 4.0. The Ti also has dated specs: for around $10,000 (and that’s just the starting price), you’ll get a 3.7-inch WVGA display and a dual-core SnapDragon S4 processor.
… and I thought paying $1000 for the Blackberry Z10 was ridiculous.