Inside Mac Games News: WoW Interview Mentions Next MMO

Inside Mac Games News: WoW Interview Mentions Next MMO

Even though I play WoW and really like the concept (and the complexity), the whole fantasy LoTR-ish theme has always struck me as childish and, to be honest, dumb. It's all bright colors and orc chicks with boobs and really fierce-looking trolls with big bad clubs. I mean c'mon - I've outgrown my Piers Anthony/Terry Brooks phase (and oh lord, did I have that phase). Give me something aimed at grown-ups. Didn't I already cite that article that says we spend more time gaming than the kids? We've got the money, too - just look at the Burning Crusade sales.

Let me be more clear. By "grown-up" I don't mean more sex, though that might have a place. I mean give me sci-fi. Give me mecha-droids or futuristic air power. Give me Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica with a modern, intelligent flavor. I want lasers, dammit, and I want science-based magic, not spell books and enchanted girdles and cheesy potions. I'm not 14 anymore, don't insult my intelligence.

There. I've said it. Blizzard, man up and make it so. Remember that this is the 21st century and we like science. Even throw in a little relativity and string theory, or galaxy-scale distances. Make it reality and beyond, not some alternative fairyland. Planetary, metallic, and technologically badass - that's the theme. Go.

Infinite Loop: Macwelt gets more iPhone details out of Apple

Infinite Loop: Macwelt gets more iPhone details out of Apple

Agh, what's the use of a smartphone if you can't install software you want or download software/songs via the wireless connection? I'm really sick of mobile provider politics and their fiefdoms crippling the potential of these devices. And if Apple, who has a good history of aggressively breaking down barriers like these (see iTunes Store, in re music and movies) still can't manage to convince Cingular (or Motorola, see ROKR) of the benefits of opening up the iPhone, where's the hope?

Someday someone is going to get it all right - powerful device, usable interface, open platform, no restrictions - and of course I want it to be Apple. Too bad it's not, this time.

Netflix to Deliver Movies to the PC - New York Times

Netflix to Deliver Movies to the PC - New York Times

But Netflix, my PC is a Mac, and it's in my office, where only one person can watch at a time. If I can't save or burn the movies, what good is this to me? Get thyselves over to Comcast, Cox, DirecTV or some such thing and get this added to their On-Demand offerings. Then you'll have me, big-time. Until then, its appleTV (maybe) for me, or the fantastically lame selection of "new releases" that Cox shovels in my direction. Feh.

Study finds adults spending more time gaming than teens

Roughly one-third of adult gamers spend 10 hours or more per week playing console or PC games compared to just 11 percent of teens, according to results from a new study released by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA®).

It's nearly year-old data, but I love this! Totally validates my Masters' Thesis, too, about how games are taking over popular culture. I wrote it because I was tired of feeling ashamed about being an adult gamer. Now I can feel like part of the majority.

On a related note, just hit level 22 in WOW. Character name? MacDoug, of course. :) Orc Hunter in Twisted Nether, if anyone's interested.

Naming the iPhone

Lots of people have mentioned that the name "iPhone" is a bit...constricting when it comes to describing all the things this device does, er, will do, er, is supposed to be able to do. I was thinking this morning that the move away from the "iPod " convention is an interesting and not entirely obvious decision. It was probably driven by the fact that Apple can't sell this thing itself, but instead had to contract with a mobile provider to distribute it. Calling it "iPod Phone" would be clunky at best, but why not something more generic like "iPod Communicator" or "iPod Link"? To me, putting "phone" in there at all kind of skews the perception of the device as something that is primarily for talking. Perhaps that's how some would use it, but from what I can tell the thrust of the keynote was not to focus solely on that capability.

If (when!) the iPhone's design and OS migrate to a non-phone package, it won't be a huge change - some buttons lost, a portion of the software excised, but otherwise the same device. It's already pretty thin for a phone, and removing the comm chipset and antenna that are no doubt adding to the "bulk" would make it a pretty cool iPod/PDA indeed. In fact, if the wi-fi were kept in, it would be arguably the best stab yet at the Xerox PARC "pad" concept that was dreamed up so very long ago in the Ubiquitous Computing project.

Seems to me that the iPhone is just the first shot at an entirely revised iPod line that throws the "wheel" concept nearly out the window in favor of buttonless multi-touch and widescreen form factor. I wouldn't be surprised if the big sellers in this new design family aren't the phones at all, but the non-phone devices spawned off of it. Or perhaps they'll always have cellular capabilities, or morph into Skype phones, or something along those lines. Now I'm just spitballing, but you get my point. "iPhone" amounts to a pretty nifty misdirection away from the true promise of this design.

Response to Ars Technica "Nine Things Wrong" with iPhone

This is a very good list of perceived shortcomings and criticisms, and responding to it pretty much covers all my thoughts, so here goes, point by point:

1. Cost: Yes, the price point is high, and of course it will come down in a year. But remember that this is more than a phone - it's a phone/ipod/PDA rolled into one. Not that this doesn't exist elsewhere, but as with the iPod, it doesn't exist in an Apple-designed package, and in this case it rolls in one of the most successful consumer gadgets ever, the iPod itself. If I'm in the market for a new iPod and the iPhone is available, I'm interested in replacing 2-3 gadgets with one. 8 GB is a bit smaller than I'd want, though. Hope those flash prices come down quick-like.
   
2. Cingular-only: Deal-breaker for me at the moment, and probably for lots. I've got a year left in my Verizon/RAZR contract and I'm not willing to pay via olfactory bulb to get out of it. I live in hope that the phone will eventually be with multiple carriers, Verizon in particular. That said, there may be a huge rush to get these when they're available, and Cingular had better be ready. Not a bad problem to plan for...
   
3. No 3G: An iPhone 1.0 issue, and reason enough to wait for 1.5 or 2.0. Any phone that touts such cool apps like Safari and Google McGuffins needs high-bandwidth capabilities beyond Wi-Fi.
4. No WiFi sync to iTunes: See above. Most likely coming in 2.0 or with a software update. I don't see why not...
5. No over-the-air iTunes downloads: I agree with Ars - coming when 3G is added. It's the kind of "it just works" feature Apple would make a priority.
   
6. (skipping 6, too stupid)
7. Battery life: I wonder what happened to Kevin Rose's "leak" about separate batteries, one for music and one for phone?? Definitely an issue with a screen this big, and the kind of spec Apple will reluctantly revise in real-world usage scenarios. I'm guessing they're pulling out the big techie guns to figure out ways to minimize power usage, like the proximity sensor turning off the screen.
8. No Exchange/Office support: Since when is this supposed to be a business phone? I heard no mention of that. Apple's first market is (almost) always consumers, and while smartphones are obviously targeted at businesses, the OS X core of this phone that they were so careful to mention indicates that they want to open it up eventually to third-party developers, much like widget development. As Ars notes, this could be where Exchange/Office compatibility comes in, but I'm not sure Apple is that concerned about it. iPods don't play well with others, and look how poorly they've sold...
9. Not extensible: It will be. Oh, it will be. Why else would they take such care to note that it runs OS X? They could easily have kept that under their hats, never sharing the proprietary UI layer or kernel APIs or whatnot, but I don't think that's where this is headed. Remember that this is a 6-month pre-release announcement - many more details to follow in the months and years ahead.

I'd like to add that there's no way this widescreen, multi-touch format isn't going to find its way into the next-gen iPods as well. Macworld's post-keynote podcast said that they wouldn't be surprised to see these announced before the iPhone hits the market, and I tend to agree. Awesome.