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Quake 3 on iPod Touch

Posted April 8th, 2008 at 1:45pm

This is way too cool.

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The iPhone vs the desktop…

Posted March 26th, 2008 at 9:21pm

John C Dvorak's latest article in PC Mag, entitled "The iPhone Is No Desktop", starts off with "People are willing to make a device that you can drop in the toilet or leave in a taxi cab the next desktop computing platform. Ridiculous." ...and already I disagree with his basic thinking here (but I usually do where Dvorak is concerned). As the iPhone is emerging as an interesting and unconventional gaming solution (though it's not there yet), I took interest in this story where Dvorak, known for his hatred of and wildly inaccurate predictions about Apple, basically claims the fundamental philosophy of the iPhone is a mistake. His premise is that smaller devices are, in fact, the antithesis of effective personal computing because (as the above quote points out) he predicts people will be dropping them in toilets all over the world.And it's only going to get worse. Everyone thinks that the iPhone is going to be the next major computing platform. Some even hope that it will replace the laptop as the primary PC platform. And what if it does? What are folks going to do when they spill coffee on their iPhones? They've already done a lot worse--they drop them into toilets over and over. PodShow's Adam Curry lamented having this happen to him, as did Leo Laporte on a TWiT podcast. And these devices are poised to become the next desktop replacement platform? Splash. Splash. Splash. I'd love to come up with a good response to this,


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iPhone SDK Poised to Shake Up Mobile Gaming

Posted March 6th, 2008 at 7:51pm

I was reading Macworld's coverage of today's iPhone event (yes, I know, second-hand coverage of a live event -- but I trust Macworld), and was pleased as punch that Apple really and truly released their iPhone SDK today for developers to try out. Apple trotted out a couple of their own developers to say how wonderfully easy it was to develop a fully OpenGL enabled app for the iPhone complete with touch and accelerometer controls, but the real master stroke of the show was when they trotted out other company's developers to talk about developing for the iPhone. See the thing is that these smarty-types were given a crack at developing an app for the iPhone with little to no prior experience developing for the iPhone or the Mac in general. The stuff these kids were able to pull off in a matter of days to weeks is stunning. EA showed off a little version of Spore with multi-touch controls. The Sega guys made a version of Monkeyball that uses the accelerometer controls of the iPhone. Choice quote from the Macworld coverage: "If anything, we underestimated what the hardware was able to do," Sega guy says. He says this is not a scaled-down cell phone game. It's a console game. They had to bring in an artist to up-scale the resolution of the graphics on the iPhone. Let me add a little plug for my friends at Freeverse, who are already on the verge of releasing a Wii Sports type

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Spore coming to the iPhone. Yeah, that’s right. The iPhone.

Posted March 6th, 2008 at 4:13pm

Wil Wright's upcoming Spore game has the gamer world buzzing with excitement, but Apple's Steve Jobs threw a curveball today that had us all saying "Whoa": Spore is gonna be available on the iPhone. Gizmodo reports from Apple's press event announcing all sorts of iPhone doo-dads (including details on the long-awaited SDK), and has pics of Spore and Super Monkey Ball running on the iPhone. According to El Steve, these titles are iPhone bound...EA is bringing the insanely anticipated game Spore to [the iPhone]. All 18 levels. Yes, this is real. Oh mercy. Sega is also bringing Super Monkey Ball, and the App Store looks like it'll have a bunch of casual games available as well. Gizmodo brings up an interesting question about whether or not this brings the iPhone up to a level where it can compete with the DS or PSP. Clearly the answer is: No, not yet... but the "not yet" part is every bit as important as the "no" part, I'd reckon. My point? Love or hate Jobs, but you gotta admit: He's always got a plan for the next step.

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