Instead of one sentence explanations buried in emails to obscure customers, Steve Jobs has finally written a proper open-letter that explains Apple’s position on Flash. Frankly, I’ve had an iPad since launch day and have yet to miss Flash.
Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.
I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.
I received my new Apple iPad on April 3rd, a Saturday morning, delivered by an obviously exhausted UPS driver whose day was not yet half over. Taking quick possession of the package, I wasted little time in using an abandoned door key to slice through packing tape, eventually exposing the Apple packaging within. Like everything else Apple does, even the packaging shows clear signs of design and thought. Whereas it probably took you an hour to open the plastic shell of a recent tech purchase, including time spent devising new curse words, the Apple iPad is freed from its cocoon in under 5-seconds, with no curse words required or primed.
I’m A PC, With Apple Tendencies. Does That Make Me Bitechual?
I’m a life-long PC user. I’ve never owned an Apple product, save for a brief stint with an Apple II+ in the 80s, and that was only to play the original Wolfenstein and the Pinball Construction Kit. Since that brief interlude, I’ve been PC the entire way, even casting aspersions on Apple owners when my allegiance shifted towards the Amiga 500 and 2000 computer for many enjoyable years.
Like most PC loyalists, I have gazed upon Apple products over the years with much envy, though no true PC-enthusiast should ever admit such a feeling, lest he lose his tech-cred, but truth is truth. One cannot argue with Apple’s design philosophy or the quality of their products. One can argue about Apple’s Nintendo/Disney-like control of the platform and its schizoidal treatment of developers; all valid concerns.
Two central issues have prevented me from securing an Apple computer over the years: expense and lack of quality video games. I’ve built every computer I have used for the past twenty or so years, computers that were incredibly cheap to compile yet extremely fast, with the latest 3D cards and whatnot. Buying a pre-built computer like an Apple that sells for 4-8 times what I can build for the PC platform just didn’t seem like a wise move. Less wise considering I didn’t see much in the way of Apple software that couldn’t be found on the PC. When it came to video games, Apple wasn’t even trying very hard to penetrate the market and this was a deal-killer for me. Even today, Apple computers are still lagging behind in the video game market, though it has made some serious inroads over the past few years.
I freely admit: I drank the legendary Apple Kool-Aid. As a life-long PC owner, save for the several years my allegiance shifted towards the Commodore Amiga, I have never succumbed to the magnetic pull of an Apple product. It hasn’t always been easy. If most PC loyalists were completely honest, they would admit they love Apple’s design sensibility and its unique library of creative software. What they don’t like, and I include myself in this clique, is Apple’s Nintendo/Disney-like control over its universe.
I knew that at some point, Apple would create something so cool that it would short-circuit my PC-loyalist chip and, tail between legs, I’d become a PC/Apple guy, a hybrid, shunned by both tribes. Such is the case with the iPad. Questionable name aside, it’s the kind of product I have fantasized about for two decades.
So, on the first day of pre-order availability, I ordered my first Apple product at 5:30 A.M. I will be receiving the basic model, a 16GB WiFi iPad. I’m a recluse who seldom leaves his home, so 3G would be useless, nor do I need a ton of storage space as movies and music are handled by other devices. Hence, the basic model should be perfect for my needs.
I knew it was going to suck and reality has proven me correct. The newly launched Arcade Room for the Xbox 360 had its high point yesterday when it launched and wouldn’t work. MS should have left well enough alone, as the downloading and installing of Arcade Room was more entertaining than the games on offer.
I’m sure Arcade Room seemed like a great idea at some point but something went terribly wrong along the way, leading to an environment that doesn’t have a single compelling element. It looks like a 3D environment, similar to Sony’s Home, but you can’t interact with anything, nor can you even move freely within this environment. You simply swivel your view around and pick a section of game room that houses whatever game you want to play. There you see some very uninteresting arcade cabinets, followed by even worse versions of classic titles like Asteroids Deluxe.
I examined quite a few of titles on offer and was shocked to discover that many games are actually worse, in terms of graphics, than the original games. Asteroids Deluxe looks like a mess, verified by myself when loading up MAME, the arcade emulator, and checking out the original ROM, which has noticably higher resolution than the half-assed 360 version.
So, in the end, you have a bunch of lame classic games that are grossly over-priced. Why people would want to pay to play crappy Intellivision games is beyond me, especially when every Intellivision game can be found freely (and legally) on the net using nothing more than a JAVA emulator.
Arcade Room is really nothing more than a front-end for game emulation. Problem is, the front-end horribly designed, big, bulky, slow, unwieldy…and the emulation aspect is a joke. Do yourself a favor, go download a real PC front-end like EmuLoader, get yourself some ROMS, and enjoy these classic titles as they were. Better yet, with a front-end like EmuLoader, you can add great high-res shots of the original arcade cabinets, original gameplay fliers and historical information that puts Arcade Room to shame.
I have no idea what MS was trying to accomplish with Arcade Room, but if embarrassment was their goal then it is a resounding success.
Advertising wars in the video game industry always amuse me. Perhaps it’s my overwhelming sense of nostalgia from the heated 16-bit war between Nintendo and Sega. Or perhaps I just like seeing blood on the floor.
Either way, Sony is coming out with both arms swinging (no, really, watch the video) in its new commercial for the PlayStation Move controller apparently launching in November. The video takes a few jabs at the competition (*cough* Wii, Natal *cough*) by mocking waggle and catching red balls that fall from the sky. The commercial claims to come from the distant future of “December 2010″ wherein Move is a success, and Sony would like to thank you for making it so successful. A bit of a bold claim, eh?
The video doesn’t really try to market to new users, instead falling back on amusing existing PS3 owners and touting allegedly superior hardware specs. But it is an interesting watch nonetheless, and we’ll all have to check back in December to see if Sony’s marketing prediction was really as insightful as it claims.
In the mean time, you can probably bet on Microsoft launching its own marketing counter-attack soon. That should be even more entertaining.
Today’s gamer question is a tough one, one that can be debated until the end of time and even then a clear answer may not be attained.
Which is more lame?
Above you see the recently introduced Sony Motion Controller. It looks like something your girlfriend or wife would use to stimulate their nether-regions; facts are facts. It is also known that the simple act of holding this horribly designed controller will reduce your testosterone and drain you of any remaining machismo.
The above video includes what has to be one of the worst ideas in sound design for a video game EVER. Whoever thought this was a good idea should go work at Infinity Ward, get fired, and be escorted out of the building under armed guard. I mean really, the warning siren in Bad Company 2 is so loud, so overbearing that it requires a volume adjustment every time it starts. Hell, it’s so bad there is a petition up on the EA boards to have it removed, a petition that now stretches 75 pages. Now, one could argue that if you don’t want to hear it then you shouldn’t lose. Valid argument. What say you?
Which is more lame? Submit your answers in the comments below!
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