Finally all that video game playing has paid off, I have been mentioned on the CAVE WORLD Official Blog!
Proof in case you think I’m lying about my score:
I am proud to be among the Japanese players and a Dreamcast fan. And if there wasn’t enough goodness, the “possibly related posts” have sexy results:
I AM FAMOUS
Crazy Apple Event Rumor Mongering Time!
Less than a week until the next probably iPod event! I blew my predictions for the iPhone but whatever, there are more exciting possibilites abound for this event. Well not really, just new iPods and maybe AppleTV/iTV. First I say no TV product…cause the invite has a guitar on it. Well maybe but I wouldn’t bet on it.
iPod touch
Cameras! Facetime! Retinas! Maybe GPS and MAGNETOMETER like the iPad, or not. Can’t say I really care about the iPod touch cause it’s just a crippled thin iPhone. With chrome! Whoop de doo.
EXCITING MYSTERY 3X3CM TOUCH SCREEN DEVICE
Some people are saying it’s the new nano, but my wild new rumor is new iPod to replace the nano and shuffle, kill ‘em both off! The current shuffle kinda sucks interface wise while the nano sucks as a camera. I figure they’ll push the new touch as the camera of the family, then this thing as the new tiny flash based iPod to rule them all. If it’s a new iPod, I dunno, iPod micro? Air? EXTREME?
Interface would basically be like the current iPod but with touch control like the iPhone and redesigned/optimized for the small screen. Probably based on a stripped down iOS on a lower power ARM but they won’t mention it unless they open up development for it, like the embedded OSes of old where no one knew or gave a damn.
No clue what the resolution would be but using common round numbers, 320px would be 271ppi, 240px would be 203ppi. Not retina burning, but still sharp. Going lower 160px would be 135ppi, right around the iPad, while 200px gets it to 169ppi, right around the old iPhone.
The biggest deal is that it’d be a return to the fat form factor!
FAT IS FAB-U-LOUS
Then possibly cloud crap, maybe kill or tweak the classic, and possibly AppleTV but whatever. September 1st will be all about the FATCITEMENT!
iPad?
Oh I want iOS 4 for iPad too, damn thing needs folders and multitasking already. And Korean keyboard for the oldsters. Not so wild wildcard prediction: new UI stuff! Some Dashboard like widgety thing, maybe lock screen stuff, different UI for app switching, etc. Bunch of new crap specific to the iPad basically.
White iPhone
AKA the good one. I think the white iPhone is about the only thing that can top FATCITEMENT for me. My prediction has been October 1st for a while now, basically the day after the free case/bumper program goes out.
Bastards.
D-D-D-D-D-DONPACHI!
At last our long national nightmare1 is over, the iPhone version of Dodonpachi Dai FUKKatsu2 is finally out. We may all rejoice in the warm glow of bullets and explosions.
Buy now while it’s still on sale!
FUKKKKK
And get Espgaluda II if you haven’t already, it’s not on sale but it won’t be anyways so just buy it now!
- It was really a GLOBAL NIGHTMARE, everyone in the world was waiting for it to become downloadable! Whatever the case it was fitting that it took the US of A to get it working. Just reiterates the supremacy of this great nation.3
- The actual iPhone name of “Resurrection” is so boring. FUKKATSU!
- Other than making shooting games. And many other games, like Vanquish (preorder for bonus weapons!). Go Japan! I forgive you for raping all the other nearby nations and probably my ancestors4 way back in the day!
- Realistic chance! Lotta inbreeding in Korea to keep the blood “pure,” you know how many “Kim”s there are?
SCISSOR SHODOWN
"EXPLOSION"1
These may seem like plain old scissors for kids (before they went all plastic for “safety”), but these are serious tools for PROFESSIONALS! Electricians to be exact, hence the name “electrician’s scissors.” I assume they’re meant for cutting wires and stuff, and they’re certainly awesome for that, but they cut everything else too. With these you can laugh in the face of those pesky blister packs and anything that regular scissors and knives would struggle on!
People will be amazed that you can slice through such difficult materials with these scrawny looking scissors, thinking instead that you are truly a manly man that knows how to handle his bizness. Only you (and I) will know that the secret is in the scissors, they are a modern day stealth ninja tool of cutting destruction.
But which brand should you get?
GET KLEIN TOOLS
Well maybe the Wiss ones I got suck and the rest are ok, but generally I’d consider the Klein ones to be superior. They look nearly identical but the difference is in the details. The Wiss ones are too tight and takes much more effort to open and close, the outside edges of the blades feel unfinished and can scape your skin just carrying them around (but may be useful scraping stuff?)…and that’s about it I guess.
They both cut like scissors ON ROIDS, one just doesn’t feel as nice as the other. The shape is pretty much the same other than the outside edge, both have wire stripping notches, similar sharp ass blades, etc. So buy either one really, once you do you’ll feel like a fool for using inferior scissors all these years.
Maybe pass them on to your children so they don’t have to suffer with their crappy safety scissors…although these might be too far on the other end of the spectrum. Some fingers would probably get cut off, but hey, those youngins have some regenerative powers so go hog wild!
- Yes I know “shodown” isn’t a real word, but in this case it’s a clever proper noun reference!
- HINT: If you understand the reference, VICTOLY for you!
NEW STUFF!
HEY GUYS I JUST BOUGHT SOME NEW STUFF WHICH MEANS AWESOME NEW CONTENT!
Or mostly just an excuse to post stuff since I’ve been slacking massively. I choose to blame school finals and stuff.
For now some reflections on the last few posts and recent events:
- S&P2 is hard1. I expected it to be hard, but it’s been over a month since I’ve gotten it and I still haven’t beaten it. And it’s supposed to be a short game. While I’ve been busy I’ve still gotten a good number of hours into it, but I keep…getting…stuck. But it’s a good hard so it’s still awesome.
- Mac mini out of nowhere! Just got one to replace my mom’s crappy HP. I am depending on iPhoto to get her to switch instead of putting Windows on it. Looking through her Picasa library I think it’ll be good for her…there were around 5 gigs in duplicate copies of photos in there spread over god knows how many folders.2
- Where the hell is the white iPhone?
- Where the hell is iOS 4 for iPad?
- MAH RETINAS
- MAGIC TRACKPAD
- Still waiting to see what the new AppleTV will be. At least Cox will be offering TiVos soon supposedly! I’ve been thinking about doing my own DVR setup but apparently anything involving a CableCard is just as expensive.
- I don’t think I ever mentioned it but what the hell, Dropbox is nice. Sign up here and receive an extra 250MB free!3
- Craploads of apps. A bunch suck of course but it’s something I should be reviewing cause there’s some good stuff too.
- VAMPIRE DRAW
PREVIEW OF EXCITING NEW ARTICLES/POSTS TO FILL SPACE:
- A review of electrician’s scissors! Klein and Weis to be exact. Why should you be excited about scissors that look like ones you probably used in elementary school?4
- Stuff about USB power! Like my eneloop Mobile Booster that doesn’t appear to be sold anywhere, and the Griffin Simplifi, Belkin surge protector/USB charger thing, and a dual USB thing I found at Fry’s. EXCITEMENT!
- Possibly a new Mac mini review! After that iPad one I’ve been planning for a few months now. Also ignore that once I set up the mini I probably won’t be using it since it’ll be for my mom.
- Safari Extension MEGAPOST. My many extensions, let me show you them.
- ARTWORK. Or the closest thing I’ve done in a long time. By “artwork” I mean some icons I’m doing for someone’s Safari extensions.
- Some app reviews. There’s some good lesser known stuff that needs more recognition, and some other well known stuff that needs to be knocked down a peg.
Cause they’re AWESOME! At cutting things I mean. Ergonomically and aesthetically they’re nothing to call home about, although they do have the old cheapo looking charm to them, before the blades come a cuttin’.
Exciting times await us. But seriously where the hell is the white iPhone. I blame Mark Papermaster. No one would give a damn about the antenna if they had whiteness to distract them.
- Hard enough that some reviewers apparently reviewed it on easy and never actually finished hard.
- Yes this is a thinly veiled mocking of Google products vs Apple’s. And yeah I know Picasa wasn’t originally theirs but it is now.
- I get 250MB too! You can sign up others and get 250MB using your own referral once you sign up, it’s like a massive pyramid scheme! It’s genius!
- Well if you’re in your late 20s at least, before they gave all the youngin’s plastic safety “scissors” that were more like two sticks of plastic that rub tightly together but don’t have the ability to actually cut anything.
Sin & Punishment 2 First Impressions
I’ll go over blowing WWDC predictions another day, today is S&P 2 day so here’s a thorough first look at the game to celebrate.
HOLY.
SHIT.
BUY:
Last Second Wild iPhone Predictions
This is something I’ve thought about for a while but completely forgot in my last post. The common thinking with the pricing for the new models would be to just replace the 3GS, while bumping the 3GS down to the $99 spot and killing off the 3G.
My crazy thinking is that there’s a possibility they’ll kill off the 3GS too. I figure one reason the 3G survived for so long was that it looked identical to the 3GS. The new one probably isn’t going to look anything like it.
They’ve done similar stuff before, like keeping the old white MacBook around when the unibody model first came out, or shipping G4 towers for a while when the G5 came out (for customers that needed to boot OS 9), but shipping different generations of the same product is pretty rare for Apple.
While I don’t think it’s likely, I figure there’s a chance that they come out with a $99 version of the new model.
And one other one that doesn’t really matter much for the US, unlocked iPhones…just cause. Hell the iPad is completely unlocked, why not the iPhone too? If they’re still standard 3G GSM then there’s still no other carrier that could use 3G, but desperate T-Mobile customers may put up with that limitation. It’s not like they’re Verizon, and the only other thing AT&T would lose out on is their exorbitant international roaming fees (that a lot of people avoid in the first place).
Crazy Apple Predictions, WWDC and Beyond
Just throwing out a bunch of random crap now so if anything actually turns out true later on I’ll look like a genius.
iPhone/iPhone 4/iPhone HD
Different case than what we’ve been seeing! Do I really believe that? Not really, but it’s worth a shot, and at the least I’m hoping for all the seams and ridges to get cleaned up, if not some subtle beveling along the edges like the iPad.
Everything else has pretty much been covered with it, but one crazy thing I’ll throw out there that I haven’t seen, a new dock connector (or at least electronics) with digital video output. The current one can’t output protected content in HD (such as HD iTunes store videos), a digital output is needed for that.
iPhone/iPad OS 4.0
Other than new hardware based features (video chat) I’m gunning for new notification handling for both devices, and some sort of widget system for the iPad, maybe for the iPhone. The timing of the recent pulling of widget apps seems convenient. I figure it’ll be the lock screen that gets overhauled, but it has potential in the home screen as well. Other parts ripe for changes are the status bar and the double tap screen, previously the iPod controls screen, and fast app switcher as of 4.0.
Maybe expanded Bluetooth and USB support, or at least official support of certain USB devices. WiFi tethering could be possible with everyone else doing it.
Printing! I’m guessing it’ll require a print server of some sort to handle the driver mess, but maybe they’ll use the magical auto download and install stuff of Snow Leopard to lessen the pain.
Last two I’d like, better inter app file support (rather than individual file stores) and official Mac Screen Sharing support rather than the regular VNC crap out there now.
AppleTV
I’ve pushed for an ARM + iPhone OS based machine for over a year now, and going by recent rumors it may finally be coming. I don’t know if I expect it to be shown or even mentioned at WWDC, but at the latest I would expect it around the time of or at the yearly iPod event.
If they release a new dock connector with the iPhone I could see the AppleTV having that rather than the current component and HDMI setup, even if it would be a kind of a pain having to depend on Apple cables (with authentication chip!). It could be powered by USB too, kind of neat for a clean setup if the TV has a USB port somewhere hidden away, otherwise requiring a little USB power brick like the iPhones. Wireless only would suck (for high bandwidth media or bad connections) but that’s another possibility if they just stick iPod guts a standalone box.
Or it could just be like the current one, standard ports and all, maybe even a hard drive at that point. On the crazy end of the spectrum would be my dream stuff like Blu-Ray playback and CableCard for DVR functionality. Whatever the case the software and control interface is where things become interesting.
A lot of people are speculating stuff like “200,000 IPHONE APPS ON YOUR TV!” which kind of ignores a whole boatload of interaction issues.
One simple one is that most of them depend on directly touching objects on screen, which doesn’t exactly translate well from a touch screen to a TV out of arm’s reach. The usual reply to this is to have a touch screen remote like a cheap iPod touch. The problem here (other than cost) is that it…doesn’t really address the problem. You have a multitouch surface to interact with everything sure, but unless you’re looking down at the remote you can’t be sure of what you’re going to be touching. And if you’re looking down at the remote to use the apps it kind of defeats the purpose of running them on the TV outside of presentation purposes. It’s a horrible compromise in terms of usability and experience.
Another option is a screenless multitouch surface like a trackpad, but it runs into the same issue of not really being usable for iPhone apps, unless a cursor is on screen…which would be pretty damn ghetto so I doubt they’ll do that. Interesting stuff could be done with a new interface at least, like a gesture based one. Scroll around in any direction, tap for select, hold for more options, etc.
Another common one along those lines is the Wii remote type setup, probably the best of the “direct” type interfaces for TV, and Apple has similar stuff patented. The main issue I see with this one is that the setup can be pretty cumbersome. It could technically be done with just gyros and accelerometers, but the accuracy would probably suffer, and an accurate setup would require an IR bar like the Wii or some camera/sensor setup like Natal or Move, which is a bit clunky. If they can get over the setup hurdle I could see it happening. Like the touchpad I think there would still be issues with iPhone apps, like anything that would require multitouch, so I think it’d require a new interface here too.
(There’s also the combination of Wii remote with touch surface, same issues as both with respect to iPhone apps)
Lastly is the dark horse most people are ignoring, the current remote. This is my most likely candidate just cause it’s simple and the easiest to use (the gesture based touchpad is pretty similar actually). I’m guessing everyone has missed it because they’re stuck on the “RUNS IPHONE APPS” jock. New apps can be created around the interface with familiar iPhone OS developer tools. Other possibilities in this vein would be modified remotes, like accelerometer built in, and/or touch integrated somehow, like turning the directional pad into a click wheel. The main drawback with something like this is that it has no good “direct” control of any sort, so it would suck for something like web browsing if they decided to include that. In general the web kinda sucks for TV so I could see them leaving it out intentionally anyways.
Whatever the case my common theme is just that it won’t run iPhone apps…unless they don’t give a damn and just want to leverage them that much. God knows that’s a distinct possibility. I just think that the experience would blow enough for them to throw that idea in the trash.
The main thing people seem to be missing is that the hardware and base OS doesn’t have to determine the interface. The current AppleTV is based on Mac OS X…yet there is no mouse based UI at all, not even a desktop or any semblance of standard Mac OS X! The most likely outcome is that it’ll remain being it’s own platform regardless of the architecture and OS change.
Crazy AppleTV prediction addendum: new displays with AppleTV built in. They can work standalone as TVs and as regular computer displays.
Mac
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear nothing at all about Mac software or hardware. Maybe a blurb about 10.7 but nothing substantial. iWork is getting pretty long in the tooth and isn’t really compatible with the iPad one, but I’d really be surprised to hear anything about that, unless it’s related to the iPad or iPhone, same goes for iLife. Final Cut is supposedly getting revamped, but again I doubt it’ll be mentioned. Outside of 10.7 (and Xcode) no other software has any relevance at a developers’ conference. If they exist they could make an appearance online sometime after the iPhone launch.
Hardware does have some relevance, particularly since the top of the line is really long in the tooth…but I don’t see it being mentioned. The Mac Pro, iMac, MacBook Air, and Mac mini are all ripe for an update, so whatever ones that are ready will probably launch sometime after the new iPhone. I’m guessing hexacore for the Mac Pro, bumping 9400Ms to 320Ms, and maybe bumping the low end 27″ iMac to i5, basically nothing major other than the Mac Pro. The cinema display could use an update too, damn thing is still on DVI.
Other Stuff
CLOUD! They shut down Lala finally, the big ass data center in North Carolina is probably operational by now, so I figure something cloudy is coming soon. Some sort of streaming based iTunes service is the obvious choice (…even with the new capped data plans), but one new thing I’ll throw out there is some sort of free service, like a limited version of MobileMe with stuff like Find My Phone, while data storage stuff (iDisk, mail, calendars, contacts) would be part of the pay service, or some other combination. Maybe some other combination of stuff to get freeness, like Mac and iPhone under contract = free stuff!
WHERE THE HELL IS THE MAGIC TRACKPAD? Hopefully mixed in the middle of the Mac launches like the Magic Mouse was a few months back.
Steve Jobs has Something Against Bloggers
Not that he’s alone or anything, I think most of us hate bloggers, it was just a recurring theme I noticed while reading quotes from Jobs at his D8 appearance. In particular I thought this was reasonable, since really, a lot of blogs are horrible:
7:01 pm: What does the iPad mean for the publishing industry, Kara asks. Is it the savior that some are touting it as?
“I don’t want us to see us descend into a nation of bloggers,” says Jobs. “I think we need editorial oversight now more than ever. Anything we can do to help newspapers find new ways of expression that will help them get paid, I am all for.”
This one was a bit more interesting cause it seemed to come out of nowhere:
7:25 pm: What do you imagine the next 10 years of your life is going to be about?
Oddly Jobs replies with a comment about Gizmodo and the lost iPhone prototype. “When this whole thing with Gizmodo happened, I got a lot of advice from people who said you’ve got to just let it slide…you shouldn’t go after a journalist because they bought stolen property and tried to extort you….And I thought about that and I decided that Apple can’t afford to change its core values and simply let it slide….We have the same core values as when we started, and we come into work wanting to do the same thing today that we wanted to do five years ago.”
I don’t know if the “five years ago” part was in the thought as going after Gizmodo…but the time frame is in line with when they sued Think Secret in 2005. Five years ago they wanted to crush a blogger that leaked their secrets, it sure seems like they want to do the same thing now.
And for reference they succeeded in taking them out for good in 2007. Maybe Gawker will be dead by 2012.
And You Wonder Why Some People Hate Flash
Sure I may have a Mac, where Flash has blown for well over a decade across ten major releases of the Mac OS1. I may have an iPhone and an iPad where Flash isn’t viewable. I may be an Apple shareholder and would probably benefit long term if Flash died tomorrow.
Does that give me reason to have an agenda against Flash? It sure does!
But generally I don’t care too much about it normally. I do think it has legitimate uses like animation2 and games in particular…sure they could be done with crazy HTML and whatnot, but with the state of browsers and not completely consistent rendering among them3, I can understand using Flash for now.
What really bugs me is horribly pointless uses of it. Hell I can understand even using it in place of simple stuff that could be only be done in newer browsers (like fancy layouts and transitions) for compatibility’s sake, but there are more uses that could be replaced with crap we’ve seen in the 90s. Apparently some people are too good for image maps these days. Or animated GIFs. Or basic forms! Are you designers really that retarded?!
Going by the level of most Flash implementations on the web I’m assuming you all pirated it, cause I’m sure you didn’t pay $700
Here’s an example I ran into today while taking an online class for my insurance license4:
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
I figured maybe the example link had something useful…
OH COME ON
A lot of times you can argue that something is good, and it’s just a few people that ruin it for everyone else. With Flash, it’s the majority that ruins it5. The good designers should move on to something else, Flash should burn in hell but I wouldn’t want the few talented people to disappear along with it.
- I actually have no clue if Flash 1.0 was for System 7.x, all I could find was that it came out around 1996. Also a bunch of pirate download sites.
- But not videos! By animation I mean stuff animated/rendered live in the browser.
- This is why I think WebKit should take over the world. Everyone wants standards, make the renderer itself a standard!
- Uploaded in WordPress…which uses Flash for uploads.
- Conveniently ignore that this also applies to most of the internet.