Month: December 2009

NES Emulator Slips into App Store

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Sweet Moses, I’ve been waiting for this:

Kick it old school with games for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Nescaline allows you to play a wide range of NES games on your iPhone and includes five public domain games developed as freeware. You may also use the download feature to add games to your library from any URL. Nescaline is not crippled; it will play a large number of games, both homebrew and commercial; it is up to the user to determine whether they have appropriate licensing to download and play any licensed titles.

Emulators are banned from the App Store, so I went ahead and dropped the $7 before Apple yanks it from iTunes. I added a few games easily — including Super Mario, which consumed several childhood years for my brother and I.

Sadly, the play is laggy, even on my 3GS. Sadly, I don’t think there will be many updates for Nescaline.

[iTunes link]

Touch Users Not Upgrading to OS 3 Quickly

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Chitika:

Yes, we know it now costs $5, but looking at the numbers, it appears that users of devices with iPhone OS on them aren’t willing to pay for it. iPhone users, who have always been able to upgrade to OS 3.0 for free, use the more recent versions 94.4% of the time. iPod Touch users, who are required to pay between $5 and $10 depending on timing, only use 3.x 55.24% of the time.

[…]

If you take into account the number of iPod Touches purchased between iPhone OS 3.0’s release (June 17th, 2009) and the time of this report, the 55% becomes even more indicative of iPod users’ unwillingness to pay for OS updates. All iPod Touches over the past six months have had OS 3.x pre-installed on them already. Perhaps it’s time for Apple to give iPod Touch users the latest OS for free.

‘As Necessary as a 73-wheeled Bicycle’

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John Welch on Adobe Reader and Apple’s Preview:

I don’t think that Adobe understands that there is a market for a lightweight application that does a minimum beyond viewing, and does so with a clean UI.

It’s not like all Preview does is let you view. You can do annotations, notes, add links, simple shapes, bookmarks, etc. You can combine PDFs or add pages from another file, (something you can’t do in Adobe Reader) delete pages, (can’t in Reader), etc. You can even add files in other formats that Preview supports, such as PNG, JPEG, etc., again, something Reader doesn’t support. (At least not in a generic not-tied-to-an-Adobe-server-farm configuration. You know. The way normal people would use it.)

Preview doesn’t support the collaboration or Adobe server tricks that Reader does, but again, if you’re that big of an Adobe customer, why aren’t you just licensing Pro or Standard? (On Windows at least. Mac users only get Acrobat Pro.) Preview doesn’t support PDF portfolios, but so what? For one thing, PDF Portfolios are rather counter to the idea that PDF should be a universal format. Right now, even the ‘big’ alternative to Acrobat, FoxIt, is still working on integrating Portfolio support, so if you use Portfolios, you’re requiring everyone who wants to read your work to ONLY use Adobe Reader 9.

So much for PDF as a pseudo open standard. So much for Adobe not trying to make PDF an Adobe-only standard. Pull the other one guys.

AP Stylebook for iPhone Gets Reviewed

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Macworld:

Unfortunately, the AP left some of the stylebook out of this mobile edition: some entries are less complete than those found in the paper version, and at least one refers to the stylebook’s Briefing on Media Law, which is not included here. Some entries with tables or graphics didn’t translate well, and URLs are not hyperlinked.

It’s not a full replacement for the printed version, but for quick things, I find myself opening it before I hunt down my Stylebook.

Fake Steve Jobs May Be a Pansy

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Fake Steve, on Operation Chokehold:

This was meant as a joke. My blog mixes fiction and non-fiction, and the item on Monday was fiction. So were all the items yesterday about Obama calling me, and Sarkozy being mad about me sleeping with his wife. Right? All made up. But some people took it seriously and now the joke has taken on a life of its own.

[…]

A few thousand people are not going to make a dent in a wireless network. If you participate, you’ll most likely be wasting your time.

Totally disappointing.

On Carriers, Android and the App Store

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Gizmodo’s John Herrman:

Android’s most serious problem right now is fragmentation: with each new phone, it seems, comes a different version of the OS. In theory, these differences are superficial, and come down to handset manufacturers’ and carriers’ custom interfaces, which sit atop a mostly unchanged Android core. In practice, it’s much worse.

Just look at the current top tier of Android devices. The Motorola Droid runs Android 2.0. The HTC MyTouch 3G and G1 on T-Mobile run Android 1.6. The HTC Hero, a newer phone than the MyTouch and the G1, is still stuck on 1.5, along with the even newer Motorola Cliq, which shares one parent—Motorola—with the 2.0-loaded Droid. Why is this something to worry about? Remember Google Maps Navigation, the free turn-by-turn app for Android? It only works on Android 2.0 and 1.6. An app written by Google doesn’t even work on every new Google phone. Imagine how things are with third party apps. (Spoiler: it’s a shitshow.)

Apple’s relationship with AT&T marked the first time the phone manufacturer — not the carrier — was in control. AT&T didn’t even see the iPhone before it was announced at Macworld 2007. That’s a huge deal in a world where phones are developed in conjunction with carriers. Apple’s holding all the cards — and the cash — when it comes to the App Store.

Of course, it’s not always been smooth sailing. Just look at the MMS and Tethering Debacle of 2009. Apple’s device is capable of tethering, but the company’s hands are tied by AT&T and their on-going issues.

But Apple isn’t the only smartphone maker with issues. Google is caught between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, Android’s openness is it’s biggest strength, and is attracting more and more people who are tired of Apple’s iron fist over the App Store. On the other hand, that openness is tearing the platform apart. HTC writes their own interface, Verizon and Motorola teamed up on the Droid and there are currently Android 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0 devices shipping across several different carriers. While the wide variety of devices is great, it’s weakened the platform as a whole. And Google needs to get that under control — and fast.