Review: Aquaria

When I was 6, my parents bought me a Super Nintendo. I didn’t know much about video games back then, but I knew that after Nintendo’s Game Boy I wanted the SNES. Sure enough, I got a European SNES for my birthday with some games to go with it, including Stunt Race FX and Super Metroid. Stunt Race FX eventually got reconsidered as a “gem” from the SNES era years later, but I remember I didn’t like it much back then. I did love Super Metroid, and even if the challenge was a little too hard for a six year old kid, I got away convinced that games like Super Metroid were the ones I liked. In the years that followed, I played Super Metroid on an emulator (somehow, I lost my original SNES cables) with a much better understanding of its plot, and all the Metroids that were released on the Game Boy Advance (Fusion and Zero) Game Cube and Wii (the Prime series). I even went through that pain that was Metroid Prime Hunters for the original DS. I loved Metroid.

At the same time, I tried to explore other offerings from the genre that Metroid and Castlevania nurtured. That meant going through Symphony Of The Night on the PSX, and other less inspired titles for Nintendo’s GBA. But I loved the so-called “Metroidvania” games – characterized by large maps with areas that you have to explore and unlock through upgrades to your main character, 2D side-scrolling, crazy hard boss fights and generally decent plots – so I kept playing.

As I grew up and got a job, I found to have less time for gaming. I bought a Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360 but never really got to fully enjoy them. In fact, I’ve only recently started to get back into portable gaming thanks to iOS devices and a Nintendo 3DS, which I acquired last week (but more on this in another story). So it was with a mix of curiosity, excitement and, after years of non-playing, apprehension that I approached Aquaria for iPad, a porting of a popular, award-winning PC game. Would a Metroidvania game for iOS still hold up to my old expectations and renewed interest for multi-touch based adventures and puzzles? Read more

Apple Confirms iTunes Connect Holiday Shutdown December 22-29

In an email sent to developers earlier today, Apple has confirmed that iTunes Connect – the developer portal to manage applications to sell in the App Store – will be closed from December 22 to December 29.

We strongly recommend that you do not schedule pricing changes through the interval pricing system in iTunes Connect that would take effect from December 22 through December 29. Pricing changes scheduled to take effect during this date range will not be reflected in the App Store and the app will become unavailable for purchase.

We also recommend that you do not schedule any apps to go live during the shutdown. Releases scheduled with a sales start date between these dates will not go live until after the shutdown.

As with last year’s shutdown, for the end user this means App Store apps won’t receive updates or price changes for a week, quite possibly the most profitable for iOS developers alongside the Thanksgiving festivities in the US. Access to iTunes Connect, delivery of app updates and scheduled releases as well as price changes will be disabled or delayed between December 22 and December 29. If you’re a developer, plan your Christmas app releases accordingly.

WSJ: NTT DoCoMo Still Negotiating Over iPhone Launch→

WSJ: NTT DoCoMo Still Negotiating Over iPhone Launch

The Wall Street Journal has a story today (behind paywall, but try to Google the URL) detailing some possible reasons why NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s biggest carrier by number of subscribers, still hasn’t launched the iPhone. Namely, the carrier would like to have some of its apps pre-installed on iPhones:

The closed operating system of the iPhone also limits NTT DoCoMo from pre-installing some of its applications—including its e-wallet, which allows consumers to pay for merchandise with their smartphones, as well as its i-mode email service—which Mr. Yamada said are important for Japanese customers.

Apple wasn’t immediately reachable for comment about talks with NTT DoCoMo.

I believe that’s been a common concern among carriers that eventually got the iPhone – not being able to pre-install carrier software (alternative app stores, email clients, general bloatware) on devices sold on contract. But I also remember reading this old piece from Wired, which described how the iPhone destroyed the wireless industry’s standards by providing an integrated experience where the carrier’s only responsibility is the network, and everything else is up to Apple.

Apple will never let a carrier dictate the kind of experience an iPhone comes with out of the box. If true, NTT DoCoMo is hitting a dead spot with these negotiations. As far as other possible points in the talks between the carrier and Apple go, the company would certainly want the biggest carrier in Japan to sell the iPhone, especially considering the kind of growth that Apple is seeing in Asia. The iPhone 4S, for instance, is currently available in Japan through Softbank and KDDI, which recently joined Softbank. From Apple’s perspective, it only makes sense to have the iPhone available in as many places as possible.

However, this is not the first time we’re hearing of failed negotiations between Apple and carriers recently. China Mobile, for example, was reported asking for a part of the App Store’s revenue in order to sell the iPhone.

Permalink

My Must-Have iPad Apps, 2011 Edition

Last year, six months after the release of the original iPad, I published an article called “My Must-Have 20 iPad Apps” in which I collected my favorite iPad applications – the ones I used and enjoyed the most – as of September 2010. Fast forward thirteen months, the iPad’s software ecosystem has matured into something completely different from last year’s “experimentation” stage, when third-party developers, and quite possibly Apple as well, were still trying to figure out how, exactly, the iPad would change our digital lifestyles. Looking back to the iPad 1 and the App Store in 2010, it’s no surprise the list of apps I have today is so much different.

In the past year, Apple has sold millions of iPads and has seen the device being used in far more variegate scenarios than they initially expected. The whole point of the iPad: Year One video presented at the iPad 2’s introduction in March was, in fact, to showcase not only the hardware and software capabilities of the device, admittedly improved over the past months, but to demonstrate how the iPad has entered more markets than “consumer technology” alone. The iPad is being used by pilots, doctors, teachers, parents and artists who have found a whole new dimension through the tablet’s multi-touch screen. If the demographics of the iPad expanded to new segments and usage scenarios, so did the kinds of apps that are available on the App Store.

Once again, Apple itself has set new standards for developers to write their apps against. With iOS 5 and iCloud, released in October, the company is providing third-party app makers with powerful new tools to optimize their software and make it interconnected across devices and platforms. But I believe that there’s been a shift in “iPad development mentality” among developers and users alike that goes way back prior to iCloud’s announcement and launch. Sure, iOS 5 and iCloud will lead towards a future of invisible cloud backups and app connections, but Ambitious iOS Apps started making their way to the App Store before iCloud and all these latest, greatest software updates. It was immediately after the 2010 holiday season and the “second wave” of iPad apps that developers realized the iPad could be so much more. And so they wrote great, innovative, standard-setting apps that shaped the past thirteen months and are helping us transition to the next great revolution – the cloud and the post-PC device.

It’s always been about the apps. And I’m fairly certain that as long as Apple doesn’t focus on hardware specs alone and stands at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, it’ll always be about great software, rather than processors and RAM amounts. And more importantly, it will be about the people creating the apps that we use every day.

So here’s my list of “must-have” apps that have improved my workflow and ultimately made it more fun to use the iPad in the past year. And here’s to another year of iPad. Read more

IconSettings Offers Quick Home Screen Access To iOS Settings

Just two weeks ago we covered iPhone URL schemes, those native URLs specific to iOS applications like Facebook or Twitter that can be used to launch an app’s section (Facebook’s Messages view, Twitter’s Mentions tab) with a single tap. As it turns out, however, URL schemes aren’t exclusive to third-party apps that have implemented them, as Apple is using the same system to assign a unique URL to specific sections in the iOS Settings app. Which means that, in theory, you should be able to easily launch Bluetooth settings or iCloud’s control panel by tapping on a link.

Of all the solutions that have surfaced in the past weeks to create Home screen shortcuts for Settings without jailbreaking a device, I’d say IconSettings is the most clever, nicest and easiest to use. As noted by Engadget, you just visit this webpage, decide which settings panels to turn into Home screen icons, and manually add a webpage to the Home screen using Safari. That webpage will turn into an icon, which will launch the settings panel you chose from the list. Quite simple.

There’s a catch: whilst jailbreak apps like SBSettings really put iOS Settings’ in another location (in SBSettings’ case, a dropdown menu), IconSettings simply creates visual bookmarks for URLs that redirect to the Settings app. And by “redirect” I mean that you’ll briefly notice Safari launching before you’re brought to the selected settings panel you need. This should be no big deal as the animation is very short, but this method will still leave an open tab in your Mobile Safari (remember, you’re still launching a URL). So yes, IconSettings is a pretty cool web-based trick to create Home screen shortcuts for commonly accessed Settings, but keep in mind that Safari will keep track of these URLs.

If you don’t have a jailbroken device and you’re willing to compromise to have Settings shortcuts on your Home screen, check out IconSettings here. Its icons are fairly good-looking, too.

iCloud Status In iTunes 10.5.1→

iCloud Status In iTunes 10.5.1

Jason Snell at Macworld has a good overview of the different iCloud status icons that you can find in iTunes 10.5.1, released earlier today with support for iTunes Match. In particular, iCloud has a “not eligible” status for songs that can’t be uploaded to iTunes Match:

Some iTunes-compatible file formats are not allowed in iCloud at all. Digital Booklets, podcasts, bookmarks to Internet radio streams, and the like are marked Not Eligible. A few people on Twitter are reporting that low-bit-rate MP3s (perhaps below 96 kbps) are also considered ineligible for use in iCloud, though we haven’t been able to confirm that.

In our overview of iTunes Match for Mac and iOS devices, Don took a look at the scanning process of iTunes libraries and the performances of iCloud music over WiFi and 3G. Understanding iCloud’s status icons might come in handy if you’re having initial issues with iTunes Match, which went live only a few hours ago.

Permalink

iTunes Match Hands On

 

It hardly seems like it has been almost 2 years since Apple acquired LaLa.com back in 2009. Since then there has been no shortage of rumors for how Lala would be utilized until Apple officially announced iTunes Match at this year’s WWDC Keynote. iTunes Match is the future for your iTunes Library. This is an exciting time for Apple fans and music lovers alike as iTunes Match aims to make it as simplistic as possible to move your music into the cloud with native applications you are already accustomed to using, all for a price that rivals every other music storage service currently available.

iTunes Match is just one feature of the new iCloud services currently rolling out. Think of it as an optional extension to your iCloud storage. The basic premise of iTunes Match is that iTunes will collect information about each song on your computer and send the data back to Apple through iTunes. Apple then checks each one of your songs to see if it can find a match between your song and one that is already on the iTunes store. If a match is found, you will be able to listen to the iTunes version. If your music is not matched then iTunes will automatically upload the music to your online music storage.

iTunes Match is available as an automatically renewing subscription of $24.99 per year and allows you to store up to 25,000 songs on Apple’s iCloud servers. On top of that, songs purchased from iTunes do not even count against your 25,000 song limitation. Your music library is accessible from an iOS 5 device, Apple TV, or any computer running the latest version of iTunes 10.5.1. The songs matched by iTunes will not need to be uploaded from your computer and will be accessible to you in 256 kbps AAC file format regardless of your songs’ previous formats. iTunes Match only deals with songs and excludes audiobooks, ringtones, iTunes LPs and iTunes Extras. Read more

Apple Launches iTunes Match

Apple today released iTunes 10.5.1, a software update that enables iTunes Match, a new music service integrated with iTunes in the Cloud that allows customers to “scan & match” their local music libraries, and store their songs and albums in Apple’s cloud. iTunes Match is currently available to U.S. customers only, and it costs $24.99 per year via iTunes subscription; iOS 5.0.1 and iTunes 10.5.1 are required to use iTunes Match.

Unlike other cloud music services, iTunes Match uses a scan technology that enables Apple to match songs in a user’s library with the ones the company already has on the iTunes Store, whilst the ones that aren’t recognized in the scanning process are directly uploaded to Apple’s servers. Because the iTunes Store offers more than 20 million songs, Apple believes most user libraries will be matched in seconds with the catalogue Apple already has, thus avoiding uploading an entire music library, which could take weeks on an average Internet connection. Furthermore, while the songs that aren’t matched with Apple’s iTunes Store are uploaded “as they are” (the exact file that a user has on a computer), matched songs are automatically upgraded to 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality, even if the original copy was of lower quality.

iTunes Match isn’t a streaming service like Spotify and Rdio in that it requires users to go through a “scan & match” process before they can start using the service. It is, however, deeply integrated with OS X and iOS 5: on the desktop, iTunes can download and play songs from iTunes Match, and the native Music app on iOS device is capable of downloading any song or album stored in your iCloud account, provided you’ve enabled iTunes Match in the Settings. iTunes Match doesn’t come with a huge catalogue of artists and genres available for streaming right away, but it allows users to scan & match their libraries, and download their songs (matched or not) at any time, on any device, with deep system integration.

At the moment of writing this, iTunes 10.5.1 includes iTunes Match but the service is still mentioned as “beta” within iTunes:

We will have a complete overview of iTunes Match later today on MacStories. iTunes 10.5.1 is available now on Apple’s website or through Software Update.