The handset will be available Monday through Solavei’s retail partner GSM Nation for $999. Orders can be placed starting at 8am EST and if ordered tomorrow Solavei tells Mashable the handset will arrive in customer’s hands on Wednesday.
That is pricey, but apparently Solavei thinks people will pay a premium to get the phone now, rather than in “mid-March” — the timeframe quoted for availability at carriers you’ve actually heard of.
Personally, I don’t think anyone will be buying the Z10 in March at normal prices, let alone today at a ridiculous markup on a tiny carrier.
I’m a big fan of Temple Run; I played the original avidly for almost a year and ended up recording a high score of 27 million. Temple Run was a ridiculously good success for Imangi Studios — Angry Birds successful — so I had assumed that a sequel would arrive at some point. It finally hit the App Store in the middle of last month.
My feelings on it have varied. Initially, I was definitely on the “terrible” side of the fence. The mechanics have strayed considerably away from what I was accustomed to with the first game. I remarked that all I wanted was a Temple Run 1.5 (the same core game but with updated graphics and some new abilities here and there). That is not what Temple Run 2 is — it is different enough to be disorientating.
In particular, the way the path moves put me off. They bend so much visually the instinctive reaction is that the game is expecting you to react with a gesture. It’s a hard reflex to overcome, being so accustomed to the original game’s rigidity for so long. My frustration level due to swiping my finger in response to a bend only to realise too late that it didn’t require a gesture was very high.
It certainly didn’t help that the game launched with some serious bugs. Inherent lag that I found to be consistent every time I played on the iPad. As you might expect from a game that requires twitch reactions in the later stages, the number of deaths I experienced caused by frame drops was not insignificant. There were countless other issues too, such as mediocre hit-detection on the ends of ledges and a glitch that meant I had to force-quit the app to be able to play another game.
In fact, the only reason I kept playing at all was peer pressure; I was competing against a friend for first place in the friends leader-board in Game Center. I was devoting hours to the game, but it would require an elephantine stretching of the truth to call the time I dedicated “enjoyable”. Put simply, death-by-arbitrarily-unbalanced-minecart followed by death-by-lagging-gameplay followed by death-by-getting-two-speed-boosts-causing-an-extreme-increase-to-the-player-movement-but-no-invincibility is not fun.
Anyway, fast forward a few days and the 1.0.1 update was released. Most of the frame rate problems were resolved (albeit many App Store reviews still say that they are experiencing frequent lag spikes) and I realised that my previous grumblings were overly harsh. The performance problems were hiding a really great revision to the franchise. The graphical improvements uncover a beautiful layer of charm (note the increased detail in the path, like the spattered stones, the non-rectangular obstacles, and the shadows refracting from the trees) that was absent in Temple Run. I now have a high score of 17 million and am proud that I haven’t caved and simply bought 500 gems through In-App Purchase.
There are still some gameplay bugs that need addressing, and are detailed thoroughly in the App Store reviews. Personally, my criticisms of the sequel have been distilled down to — essentially — small nitpicks. The following complaints have no meaningful effect on gameplay, but they are nevertheless annoying …
Have Imangi not heard of padding? The score (“333”) is off-centre in its box: there is a margin at the bottom but padding at the top is non-existent. Similarly, the “Restart” text awkwardly touches the left and right bounds of its button.
The same spacing issues can be found in the character selection screen. There is no space to inset the coin count from the coin icon. Notice, too, how the number in the red badge is hanging towards the bottom of the circle. The font isn’t kerned either; the slanting “A” leaves big gaps in text across the entire app.
Also, note the visual inconsistency of the lower-left button. When compared with the previous screenshot, the trailing spacing is wildly different. The “Menu” text is given a reasonable margin, but the “B” in “Back” is practically hugging the edge of the screen. At first, I thought it was the font screwing up the text metrics …
… nope! Look at this screen grab and observe that the left spacing is different again, even though the text matches exactly (“Back”). In a world where scripting libraries encourage code reusability to ensure consistency, Temple Run falls down.
Another big failing of this screen is the gem power-up gauge. Unlike the previous niggles, the ambiguities present in this UI will directly affect user’s enjoyment. Before interacting with the component, it looks like the upgrade lasts forever, because it looks like the other power-ups, which are all permanent. As you can probably fathom from my tone, the actual behaviour contradicts this implication. Every time the magnet is used, one gem of the gauge is consumed.
Losing a gem is not a big deal per se … but imagine how this escalates into a real concern. A normal user will not bother to test the app to determine the actual functionality; the majority of people will just assume the game depleted their gem bank erroneously[3]. As a result, the level of trust the user has with the game will undoubtedly erode. They may avoid this particular feature or, worse, suppress engagement with the game overall — fearing uncertainty.
I could continue describing miscellaneous problems with Temple Run’s UI, but I won’t. The point is made. Relative to the polish of the main game, the menu design is terrible and reeks of negligence. It would only have taken a few hours of QA resources to find and resolve these problems.
Whilst this does not prevent Temple Run 2 from being a great game, it does stop it from being perfect. For ultimate satisfaction, perfection should always be the goal.
The third week of Apple’s “Get Stuff Done” Mac App Store promotion began today, dropping prices on a new set of apps. During the first week of the promotion Apple discounted several task management apps, and last week, several organizational apps went on sale.
I hope Apple is planning on doing more promotions like this. As the data is structured around one category of applications, it is much more useful to App Store customers than the seemingly random “App of the Week” and “Editors’ Choice” picks.
Eventually, it would be helpful if these curated repositories can be can be surfaced somewhere in the interface, enabling future users to also benefit from this added layer of curation. For example, searching the Mac App Store for “to-do list apps” could link to this collection, with the assumption that human input will return better results than the store’s search algorithm could.
And we may be getting closer, as Apple has listed a job posting looking for a Siri UI Engineer with a few hints at OS X integration.
Yet, no where in the job posting is there mention of iOS specifically. There is, however, mention of Mac OS X. Under key requirements, Apple asks for knowledge of all of Apple’s development APIs (both iOS and Mac OS X), as well as “familiarity with Unix, especially Mac OS X.”
Well, the application also specifically mentions Android, so obviously Siri is coming to Android as well.
After checking with a couple of App Store developers and sources inside Apple, it sounds like the new vanity URLs will not be able to be configured to whatever the developer wants them to read, but will rather be provided by Apple on the developers’ behalf. This conflicts CNET’s and our original reports on the matter. It’s confusing because of the way the developer documentation reads at present (see excerpt above, for example).
The documentation is only confusing to people who care about being first to the submit button, rather than performing actual research.
In the background, the Ask toolbar installer continues to run, but it delays execution for 10 minutes. If you are a sophisticated Windows user and you missed the initial checkbox, your natural instinct at this point would be to open Control Panel and check Programs and Features. When you do, you will see that only the Java update has been installed. You might also check your browser settings to confirm that no changes have been made to your settings. You might conclude that you dodged a bullet and that the unwanted software wasn’t installed.
But you would be wrong. The Ask installer is still running, and after waiting 10 minutes, it drops two programs on the target system.
It’s bad enough that the Oracle updater toolbar is installed by default. Bott discovered that when it does, it does it deceptively.
There is no reason for the install to be delayed by ten minutes other than an attempt to mislead users further. In fact, the presence of the delay is really an admission that the instigator knew that coercing bloatware onto people alongside a security update is dishonest.
I don’t care who instigated this behaviour — it is disgraceful.
Convertible is one of the most peculiar and fun iPhone apps I’ve downloaded recently. On the surface, it’s a unit converter that uses “nested levels” to show conversions: levels start from the top with type (Length, Time, Currency, etc), then move to category (Metric, US & Imperial, Atomic, etc), and end with the actual unit you want to convert (Celsius, meters, Dollars, etc). The interaction is interesting: you can tap a level to bring up a list (therefore expanding the entire level), but you can also scroll horizontally to avoid taps. The animations are smooth and responsive. There are color schemes to choose from in the Settings, as well as an option to show or hide the iOS status bar.
I’ve thought about converter app UI for a long time. All of the alternatives on the App Store that I have tried are pretty much terrible, with the exception of Convertbot. Convertbot evokes a clear sense of care, but there was still an inherent clunkiness in use that I felt could be removed — I just failed to work out how.
However, today MacStories alerted me to Convertible and I was bowled over by its brilliance.
The funny thing is, Convertible isn’t new. In fact, relative to the lifetime of the App Store it is actually quite old. Somehow, I never found this gem in the App Store before.
It takes the UI metaphor of collapsible panels to the extreme. The interaction is similar to how folders work on the Home Screen. It’s even cleverer though; Convertible guides you through the necessary steps with its interface. The next step is the next panel downwards. Simple. Convertible avoids the default modal picker concept by using a non-modal sliding list. An ingenious little invention which removes even more UI complexity typically found in this category of applications. In the end, the computed result appears logically below the input; simultaneously straightforward and elegant.
Aside from the UI advances, there are some whimsical constants inbuilt that really trigger a smile. It is fun to convert lengths in terms of celebrities’ heights, or lengths of an Olympic swimming pool or whatever. Whilst these additions aren’t practical in any way, they trigger a sense of delight that any exemplar app should. It makes you want to keep it for when you do need it for something useful.
In my view, it’s the closest anyone has got to conversion app utopia on the iPhone to date. I recommend it wholeheartedly.
The problem with the Z10 is that it doesn’t necessarily do anything better than any of its competition. Sure, there are arguments that could be made about how it handles messages or the particulars of its camera, but no one could argue that there’s a “killer app” here. Something that makes you want or need this phone because it can do what no other phone can do. That’s not the case — in fact if anything is the case, it’s that the Z10 can’t yet do some things that other devices can. Or at least, can’t do them quite as well.
Sounds like the predicament Windows Phone has experienced since launch. Being “good” isn’t enough.
Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablet, due on February 9th, will have a smaller amount of storage space than expected. A company spokesperson has confirmed to The Verge that the 64GB edition of Surface Pro will have 23GB of free storage out of the box. The 128GB model will have 83GB of free storage. It appears that the Windows 8 install, built-in apps, and a recovery partition will make up the 41GB total on the base Surface Pro model.
I think Apple’s decision to release a 128 GB iPad is a bit strange. However, Microsoft’s decision to ship an OS — targeted specifically at space-constrained devices — that weighs in at 41 GB is downright insane.
Apple® today announced a 128GB* version of the fourth generation iPad® with Retina® display. The 128GB iPad with Wi-Fi and iPad with Wi-Fi + Cellular models provide twice the storage capacity of the 64GB models to hold even more valuable content including photos, documents, projects, presentations, books, movies, TV shows, music and apps.
Still confused by why now, but hey — it’s here if you want one. Prices follow tradition, $100 above the 64 GB models. This does confirm, though, that the fifth-generation iPad won’t be here very soon, suggesting an autumn release timeframe.
That’s what the analysts at Detwiler Fenton think is happening. They contend that checks find that Apple is working on “a new product” aimed at the low-end of the market that will be built around a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.
Whilst it would be very weird for Apple to go back to using third-party processor designs, in light of their investments into their own SoCs, I suppose it isn’t an impossibility.
At the end of the day, Apple would rather sacrifice its personal pride to create a better product. Also, Apple’s own processors are designed to hit ever-higher levels of performance. In a lower-end product, that kind of power (and cost premium) would simply be a waste.
In the clip, Jobs (played by Ashton Kutcher) is raving about the operating system that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (played by Josh Gad) created. While Jobs is certain that this will become a ubiquitous product for mass consumption, Wozniak needs convincing.
“Nobody wants to buy a computer,” says Wozniak.
“How does somebody know what they want if they’ve never even seen it?” Jobs replies.
The actor playing Wozniak is a bit off-the-mark, in my view, but Kutcher is fantastic. The last line of the clip is delivered perfectly.
On an even better note, the film’s director has finally seen sense and dropped the downright stupid working title (“jOBS”) for a much less cliché, albeit a bit bland, “JOBS”.
The future may not exactly be password-free, but it will at be least free of those complex, hard-to-remember passwords, says Grosse. “We’ll have to have some form of screen unlock, maybe passwords but maybe something else,“ he says, “but the primary authenticator will be a token like this or some equivalent piece of hardware.”
I’ve pondered Apple’s AuthenTec acquisition ever since it was revealed. Last week, on rumours of a fingerprint sensor in the iPhone 5S, I thought that AuthenTec technology combined with NFC could form a clever solution for mobile payments.
But, also, I suppose it makes sense as a general password. Strong passwords are not meant for mobile devices. They have to be long, and require tedious character entry. Biometrics match up with this problem really well — you can authorise very securely near instantly. Fingerprint to replace PIN phone unlocks, fingerprint to provide strong security for your mobile services.
Now that I think about it properly, I don’t know why fingerprint sensors haven’t already proliferated our smartphones. It fits so well with the usage cases for on-the-go mobile devices, especially if they can integrate it into the Home Button.
Imangi Studios today announced that Temple Run 2 was downloaded over 20 million times in its four days of availability on the App Store. The game rocketed to #1 Free App just eight hours after release, and is currently the #3 Top Grossing App.
Shame that it lags on the iPad 3. It’s not an occasional annoyance, but a consistent frame drop during gameplay.
In December, the Google Nexus made by Taiwan’s Asustek Computer Inc. accounted for 44.4% of all tablet sales by volume electronics retailers. That’s according to a survey of 2,400 stores nationwide by market research firm BCN Inc., released Wednesday.
Google’s figure beat Apple’s 40.1% share, dethroning the iPad for the first time since it went on sale in May 2010.
Impressive. Fluke, seasonal Christmas surge, or an example of an underlying trend? The Japanese market is a dwarf compared to the US and China, with sales of four million tablet sales total across the entire of 2012, but the fact that the Nexus was able to beat the iPad in any market is noteworthy, especially a quarter in which the iPad lineup was updated.
He called in a few favors and got a meeting with the leadership at Apple. He explained that he had offers from the largest mobile OS competitors and that they wanted to acquire his music startup. Cue knew if Google obtained Lala the ownership of the service coupled with search dominance could be disruptive to their stronghold. Bill was notorious at getting great deals with the music elite, usually through Lala’s investor, Warner Brothers Music.
At the time, everyone on the outside — including myself — thought the Lala acquisition was part of a master plan for a streaming music service …
It’s funny that, in reality, the reasoning was very bland and monotonous; a defensive move to protect the iTunes ecosystem.
