I tend not to concern myself with rumours and leaked parts, but I couldn't help notice in these photos that the dual LEDs in what's purported to be the next iPhone revision have slightly different colours. It's a tiny change, but it could allow for more intelligent colour balancing in different situations. This is precisely the kind of small iteration with a combination hardware-software feature that Apple excels at, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it in the next iPhone.
Serious About Games
I've been meaning to post a link to this article on Polygon for the last few days, but the more I read it, the more I didn't know where to start.
Most people who use iOS devices aren't privy to Apple's curation process for its App Store, and very few are aware of the rejections that have taken place. The developers Polygon spoke to believe that the removal of serious games from the App Store is an unfair act of censorship, of sanitizing the App Store and denying video games their cultural status as a medium that can tackle serious issues. They believe it needs to change. And they're not alone.
It's undeniable that Apple curates the apps that it allows into the App Store, for some very good reasons. It's also undeniable that they sometimes get it wrong, both letting things through that they later see fit to remove, and blocking apps for confused or spurious reasons and sometimes reversing those decisions. It's also clear that no single individual will agree with all of the decisions that Apple takes.
What bothers me about this article is the sense of developer entitlement that comes over, unchallenged by the writer. I'd take issue also with the blanket use of the term 'serious', seemingly used to elevate the games that Apple's blocked from run-of-the-mill entertainment games. It's highly subjective and implies a moral right not just to exist, but to be carried in Apple's store (primarily because it's hard to make any money from jail breakers, or from Android users). I know educational developers who'd contest whether these games qualify as Serious Gaming at all.
The implication is also that only games with a contentious political/social point to make are worthy of being deemed "culture". Should we ask whether Nintendo takes gaming seriously, since none of the Mario games were–to my knowledge–about low paid immigrants working in the plumbing trade?
Apple TV will Dominate Console Gaming
Bullish, but still credible overall:
Apple TV will accidentally (though less accidentally than in the case of the iPod touch) dominate the console gaming market. The OS update that brings the App Store to the TV will bring Game Center as well. Games will be the top the store’s charts4. More advanced, console-quality games will follow, but the beauty of the situation is that those aren’t even necessary.
Austin Sweeney's assessment isn't far off my own, though I'd be hesitant to go out on a limb and suggest an explicit Apple TV gaming refresh + API as soon as iOS 7 arrives. The APIs for writing sprite-based games just got a massive push, and the Made-For-iPhone controllers will likely take a little while to appear. I'd put my money on seeing a bunch of SpriteKit-based iPod-to-Airplay games with controller support appear first. Add a third-party controller, or just use the iPod/iPhone's touch screen, and you've got a de-facto home console. From there it's a relatively small step to open up iCloud so you can download eligible "TV-playable" games to run right on the (upgraded?) Apple TV.
The usual suspects will whine that this isn't a serious console, and that Apple's curated store policies are anathema to "serious gaming", but most people won't care one jot. As Austin points out, the lack of serious games didn't hurt the Wii one bit, and Nintendo opened up gaming to a whole new audience. Imagine what happens when consoles cost $99, get annual upgrades, and run the games you already bought for your phone.
Pixar's New Global Illumination
Instead of building reflections and shadows manually, why not do it automatically every time an artist placed a light source? "It was as if every time you took a photograph, you built a new camera," Kalache says. "It takes away from the art of taking a picture. We wanted to stop being engineers and be artists."
Each frame requires 20GB of RAM just to do the ray-tracing, and from what I've seen it's worth all the effort. The Pixar team includes some of the finest artists working anywhere.
The Verge Reviews Monsters University
Monsters University is proof that the company still has that intangible magic, and is able to make movies for children, adults — and the adults of tomorrow.
If JJ Abrams announced that he was releasing a Star Wars film every month until December, there still wouldn't be a movie that I'd be looking forward to more this year than Monsters University.
Xbox One Canceled DRM Features Detailed by Engineer
"We at Microsoft have no one to blame other than ourselves for failing to convince those hesitant to believe in our new system,"
He's right about that.
Microsoft Pivots on Xbox DRM
So, the incomprehensible mess of game licensing on Xbox One that no one thought would work out well didn't even survive a month of publicity, and now you'll be able to swap games, sell them, and take your console offline without your games refusing to play until they phone home. All good, yes? Well Gizmodo doesn't think so, and Kyle Wagner goes into great detail about why it's a disaster for the future of gaming, and why those with nothing to fear shouldn't fear the new face of DRM:
Fair enough. But compare that to the benefits of DRM. It helps build an ecosystem that is easy and convenient and, most of all, affordable enough to draw customers. That's what Apple did with iTunes and music, and it's what Amazon did with books. The content was just too easy to get and too cheap to bother with pirating it. We could have had that with the Xbox One and games.
Except that's not what we had, or at least not what Microsoft managed to articulate. What we had was Plays For Sure, and a confusing jumble of requirements that would have scared most normal consumers away and in the direction of Sony. A complete 180-turn is dumb from a technology standpoint, but this is about marketing. Expect more on this as both Sony and Microsoft try to work out how to take things forward, whilst not terrifying their core audience.
Doom Ray Frontiers, and the Return of Re:Sleeves
While we've been quiet on the Futurilla blog front, we've had a busy few days over on Futurilla Radio, with a two-part Doom Ray and a new episode of Ben Waddington's Re:Sleeves, and both shows have great guests this week.
Doom Ray played a bit of a blinder by scoring Renton, WA-based Lars Simkins for a wide-ranging chat to co-incide with the launch of his Kickstarter campaign for Frontiers–an amazing-looking massive-world RPG explorer that's already raised $30,000 (in 4 days!). It's a great show, split into two halves for your listening convenience.
Also great is the return of Re:Sleeves with a fascinating deep dive into the world of demo-cassettes and the posters of Birmingham's legendary Catapult Club, in conversation with Birmingham Music Archive's Jez Collins. This is exactly the kind of stuff that Ben does best; pouring over details that others would consider unimportant to piece together fascinating social and cultural histories from disposable music ephemera.
Have fun listening, and remember you can get all the shows from the Futurilla feed on iTunes.
iOS Productivity, or How iCloud Saved My Ass, Again
After posting the Matt Smith piece on tablet productivity this morning I'd been considering how his measures of productivity compare with my own. In some ways it's similar: I need to email, take notes, fill in Pages/Word documents, look up things in spreadsheets and make changes, give presentations (and increasingly create them on the go), post to Futurilla, and keep my calendar updated. I rarely, nowadays, need to edit graphics or images, save cropping an image or two, and so it's unimportant how long that kind of stuff takes on a small touchscreen device. I've already nailed recording audio on the iPad (thanks to the amazing Auria), though I've yet to find a workable means for posting podcasts to Squarespace.
Now and again I find that my iOS devices solve a problem for me that I can't fix quickly any other way. This morning I found myself with a bunch of PDF files that needed printing, but that simply wouldn't open on the iMac (not mine) that I had access to, let alone print (corrupted, most likely). The original multi-page Pages files were in my Dropbox, but the iMac didn't have Pages, and I didn't have the permissions to install it from the Mac App Store. Stuck and frustrated, with the clock ticking on needing the printouts, I turned to my iPhone. Downloading the Pages files in Dropbox and sending them to Pages meant they showed up seconds later in iCloud.com, from where I could download them as PDFs and print them out. It's nothing compared to the web app version of iWork Apple previewed at last week's WWDC, but it solved a problem I couldn't see my way through without a trip back to my own iMac (and probably some more issues hunting down the cause of the corrupted files).
iOS is far from a done deal. Productivity on the iPad is still a work in progress for most of us. Still I'm reminded almost daily of how far we've come, and just how much I rely on the computing power of advice that was—until only a few years ago—good for little more than making voice calls and sending SMS.
Trying to Replace a Laptop with a Tablet
Does this mean you don’t need to own a PC? Not exactly. There are still tasks that tablets struggle with: editing photos on the iPad is possible, for example, but generally easier and more enjoyable on a PC. The point isn’t that a tablet completely replaces a laptop, however; the point is that it obscures the need to buy a new one.
Matt Smith (not that one) spends three months with an iPad to see how much of his daily work he can do without a laptop. His results are mixed but positive.
Bringing Bauhaus ideals to UI Design
iOS is no longer in the position of having to teach anyone about touchscreens. Even three-year-olds get them. The smartphone’s greatest problem today isn’t teaching people that there’s a virtual space for doing everyday tasks. Rather, it’s teaching people that they no longer have to use their computers anymore. The functions of phones themselves are growing even as the actual size of a phone screen is approaching its natural limit. Smart phones have, in many ways, exceeded the metaphors that used to define them. Thus, in order to do more complex interactions on the screens, and to keep those interactions uncluttered, you have to strip down the design language.
Cliff Kuant's piece for Wired chimes with what I wrote last night. In the new, modernist, design language, pixels are pixels and the UI metaphor has a different job to do. The headline is rather sensationalist (it is Wired after all!), but once you get past that, it's definitely worth a read.
A Screen is not a Sheet of Paper
We have been trained over many years to look at interfaces whose cues for depth come from a simulated ambient light from the front. This is the case not just in iOS before version 7, but all OS user interfaces. In short, the interfaces from yesteryear have not acknowledged that the true light source of those pixels come from the back, not the front.
The idea that an on-screen UI should behave like it's made of pixels rather than paper isn't a new one, and it makes a lot of sense. Still, it's unsurprising that we've spent so many years attempting to give those pixels the illusion of a physical reality that's anchored in previous technologies. It comes from the same impulse that gave us folders, a desktop and a trash can, from the necessity of providing understandable metaphors for unfamiliar environments. It's a powerful notion that has gripped us for thirty years or more.
This is different. Perhaps the time has come for us to shift our expectations and accept that the language of the screen is its own metaphor, a more appropriate one for an age when children will grow up more familiar with the glowing matrix of LCDs than with the shadows cast on textured paper books. In many ways it's the opposite of skeuomorphic, though it's anything but flat.
I Wonder How the Audiobus Team Feel About This?
Inter-App Audio - With Inter-App Audio, apps are able to share audio streams with other apps, an API that will make it even easier to use Apple's iDevices to create music.
Apple recently added Audiobus support to GarageBand on iOS, and it seems to have picked up a lot of industry support. Now we have a home-grown API for letting music creation apps communicate. I look with some interest to seeing how this one plays out.
UPDATE:
Thanks to Jamie Bullock over at uiux.io for alerting me to the Audiobus team's response on their blog. They sound positive, but there must be a question mark hanging over the future of the technology.
Gaming in iOS 7 is Becoming a Bit of a Theme
Sprite Kit - The Sprite Kit framework is designed to allow developers to create high-performing 2D games, controlling sprite attributes like position, size, rotation, gravity, and mass. It includes built-in support for physics to make animations look realistic and it also includes particle systems for additional game effects.
I've been looking with interest at this API myself. It's another piece of the puzzle for a TV-connected iOS device focused on gaming.
Support For Game Controllers in iOS 7 is a Big Deal
The game controller spec for MFi partners is a framework, according to those familiar with Apple's plans. It's a template for one of two specific sets of controller types: a "standard" controller with a d-pad, four buttons, and left/right shoulder buttons, and an "extended" game controller with two analog pads and two sets of shoulder buttons. You can see examples of each above. Either spec could be designed as a snap-on case accessory connected via Lightning, a stand-alone wireless AirPlay controller, or whatever other design an accessory-maker saw fit.
I'm surprised that this hasn't been more widely reported, but it's certainly a big deal, and appears well-thought-through from what we know so far. I've said before that I think an upgraded iPod nano could work great as a Bluetooth remote for the Apple TV, but this offers the hope of real gaming controllers for a future—App enabled—iOS device hanging off our HD TV screens.
iOS 7 Support Coming to Xamarin
We’re diving into the iOS 7 beta, and plan to have a release available in our alpha channel shortly. Xamarin is unique among cross-platform development tools in offering timely support for new iOS versions. We have issued same-day Xamarin.iOS releases for the last several major iOS updates, a tradition that intend to continue with iOS 7.
This is good news. One of the concerns with using third-party development frameworks is that you might end up writing to a kind of lowest-common-denominator set of APIs that the framework can deliver cross-platform. It's great that the Xamarin team seem determined not to let that happen.
iOS 7, Land of Opportunity
Marco Arment has a much more positive spin on the opportunity provided by Apple's root-and-branch redesign:
Apple has set fire to iOS. Everything’s in flux. Those with the least to lose have the most to gain, because this fall, hundreds of millions of people will start demanding apps for a platform with thousands of old, stale players and not many new, nimble alternatives. If you want to enter a category that’s crowded on iOS 6, and you’re one of the few that exclusively targets iOS 7, your app can look better, work better, and be faster and cheaper to develop than most competing apps.
I'm with Marco. The iOS project I'm working on is going to be reconsidered in light of iOS 7, and not a moment too soon. When the iPad version lands I'm installing the beta on a development device.
Let it all out, Linus
You claim that this is the biggest release since the first iPhone, but what you’re doing is sabotating for the users. Yes, you heard me right. First, let’s run through the basic stuff you managed to screw up. I’ll rant them in no specific order: Wallpaper, Statusbar, Dock, Icons (yes, all of your 1 million apps need an update), Notifications, Fonts (device wide), Folders, Phone locking, App launching, Navigation buttons (looks like freaking Zune), In-app navigations, Photos,Camera, Mail, Notes, Weather… You even managed to screw up Reminders.
I think it's fair to say that Linus Ekenstam doesn't like iOS 7.
iOS 7 Looks to the Future
A lot will be written in the upcoming weeks about iOS 7, Apple’s decision to change an OS that allowed them to sell over 600 million devices, and designers’ taste for new system icons and interface. Change is always scary. When it comes to devices we use every day, major changes such as iOS 7 will need time to get used to. I see some iOS 7 design elements as a work in progress, subject to be tweaked and refined as betas are released throughout the summer. After six years of iOS, the new Home screen feels strange and unfamiliar. I’m sure that, even after iOS 7 will be released publicly later this year, it’ll take weeks to assimilate the changes and start thinking of iOS 6 as an odd past that won’t be familiar anymore.
Federico Viticci's epic look at iOS 7 is everything you might expect from him: Thorough, perceptive and thoughtful. Highly recommended. Viticci, puts the changes into context, and offers up some very interesting ideas about how Apple is readying its mobile OS for the next five years' evolution.
Apple's Ads are at the Top of their Game
Apple's always been rightfully lauded for its ads, though there have been low points (perhaps the recent "Genius" ads could have been better). The "Photos" and "Music" ads that have recently aired though show a company back at the top of its game with truthful, important advertising that reflects the essential values of the company. The pre-keynote video, and the Ben Affleck-narrated "Designed by Apple" tv spot are even better.
At its worst, advertising is hateful, negative lying. These ads show that it doesn't need to be that way.