Great post by Ethan Kaplan on the struggles and challenges of the music industry.
If ever Apple published a “guidelines to success” manual, creating a joyful experience would probably be at the top of the list. Microsoft and Google could use such a manual.
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Article found through MG Siegler
Watching the Nintendo e3 keynote yesterday, it’s amazing that I’ve never realized sooner how much contempt the gaming industry has for it’s users. Most of the conference, beyond the glitz and excitement, is all just a big tease.
Imagine if at WWDC all the demos we saw of Lion on Monday were just artist renderings that looked wildly better than what the actual product was going to be. Or that iOS 5 was just a tech demo of the iPhone hardware, not something you could actually use. What if, upon introducing the amazing new features of iCloud, they announced that it was only shipping in two years, probably three.
This is the gamer’s reality. Console and game announcements made so far in advance that the product changes dramatically by time they actually appear on store shelves. At their keynote, Nintendo showcased a bunch of third party titles for it’s upcoming new console, Wii U, presumably to alleviate critiques that Nintendo continually lacks third party support. Turns out the game footage they showed were for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 games!
Lucky for them, gamers, especially Nintendo fans, are sheepishly loyal and nostalgic. Announcing a new Mario and making a passing mention of Super Smash Brothers is all it took for them to ignore that the company just passed off another product as it’s own. No one cares that Nintendo they just announced a bunch of games mostly resembling games they already released in the past, adding a few marginal new features to justify charing the cost of a new game for what’s essentially an old one. Not too mention every game now has the words 3D tacked onto the box, regardless of whether people want that or not.
The Wii U is certainly an interesting concept, but it has so many lingering questions. Can you leave the room with it? How do you play games that were using Wii remotes on the television once you start playing on the Wii U? WHAT ACTUAL GAMES WILL YOU BE ABLE TO PLAY ON THIS AND WHAT DO THEY LOOK LIKE? Why buy a Wii now that you’ve announced the next console, over a year in advance? Wait, did they announce any new games for Wii other than another Zelda?
Unfortunately, whatever it’s potential may be, the Wii U is stuck existing in an industry that like films, is addicted to sequels and sure things 1, meaning we’re probably never going to see anything truly innovative or of substance on it. The gaming industry has long been overrun by PR and marketers who, unlike Apple, aren’t interested in creating products they want to use. They just want to have something that’ll get you to reveal your wallet to them.
Fortunately for Nintendo, with their customers who love being bamboozled into buying the same thing year after year, there’s no pressure to deliver anything really innovative anyways. Who’d want that over a new Mario game?
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1. Brief List of Games announced or shown at e3, all platforms.
Dear,
We just announced our new OS for all our iOS devices. We think there’s something for everyone in iOS 5. Hope you like it.
Cordially,
Apple
P.S. : Godspeed.
I was going to make a full list of predictions for WWDC tomorrow but there are so many articles on the subject that there is no point trying to subjugate you with detailed predictions of my own. Instead, I’ll make 10 guesses in no particular order and tomorrow afternoon we can all have fun picking me apart on how wrong I was. 1 Without further delay:
1. iCloud includes a tiered payment plan. Free for a small amount of storage, say 2GB. Pay for more.
2. iCloud will sync versions and autosaved files on Lion. Dropbox probably dead for most people.
3. Media streaming in some fashion. Only over Wi-Fi. See here.
4. Users will now be able to perform initial and future syncs of apps and data on iOS devices over Wi-Fi.
5. Speaking of iOS, there will be a developer API for syncing data, games saves etc…Not necessarily linked to iCloud.
6. MobileMe rebranded to focus on email, calendar and contacts only. Gets cheaper.
7. iTunes purchases moving forward are either stored in your iCloud for streaming (over Wi-Fi) or downloaded as usual with the device restrictions currently in place.
8. Revamped notifications on iOS 5 and app integration. Twitter, I’m looking at you.
9. Lion and iCloud ship within a month. iOS 5 in time for arrival of new hardware. Lion GM beta highly likely available tomorrow.
10. Cold water on Time Machine conspiracy theories. Refresh probably only to include some sort of simil-iOS and ARM chip powering the device. More likely to see it include AirPlay media streaming than iCloud server functionality. 2
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1. Or I can gloat about how right i was. Whichever.
2. It would be really surprising to me that you could use a Time Machine as your own server. It would imply that users be able to specify where iCloud should sync data to and from. At that point, Apple might as well just let you use your own external disk or your home computer to do the same thing. Besides, picking where to sync your data would add a layer of complexity for the average user that I’m convinced Apple is trying to avoid in the first place. What happens if you’ve already paid for a year of service and decide to get a Time Machine afterwards? Or what if you start with a Time Machine and then switch only to the online service? What if you have more data on the TM that you can get with an online account? How would the two sync together? That’s just more layers of complexity.
John Gruber, in an interview with Brent Simmons and Daniel Pasco:
What I remember about NetNewsWire back then is that it single-handedly made me spend more time in Mac OS X. At the time, and for a while after that, I had two machines: one running Mac OS 9 and one running Mac OS X. OS X was the new frontier, shinier, the one with a future. But it was slow. Mac OS 9 was clean, fast, and familiar. And most of my favorite apps at the time ran on both, making it relatively easy to switch or dual-boot.
But not NetNewsWire.
Another bit of symbiosis was Daring Fireball’s inclusion in NetNewsWire’s list of default feeds. New NetNewsWire users became new Daring Fireball readers just by launching the app. That was the biggest and most consistent driver of traffic growth in Daring Fireball’s early years.
What’s most striking about this interview is the conviviality of the three parties as they reminisce about the history of a software application. There’s something about NetNewsWire that seems to strike a chord specifically because it seems to have been around so long and part of the personal history of many a people from Gruber’s generation. It’s fascinating to think how much impact something as simple as an RSS reader can have.
10 years from now, I’m pretty sure people from my generation will be talking about Instapaper with that same sense of fondness and appreciation.
All Together Now - June 4th - D9 Edition
1. Stephen Elop
2. Reed Hastings
3. Jack Dorsey
4. Steven Sinofsky
5. Léo Apotheker
All Together Now is a collection of quotes picked from the web this week and curated together into a particular perspective of my own.
Episode 1 : How To Get TypeKit on Your Tumblr
Introducing the first SmarterBits screencast!
For this first installment 1, I’ll be going over how to add TypeKit to your Tumblr blog. I’m no expert at HTML and CSS so I’m just showing how I did it for those of you in similar situations as myself.
Hope you enjoy it!
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1. I’ll get better, promise.
Seems inspired by this.
Or maybe this.
Or this.
I guess this is their “laser like” way of trying to prove to Apple they’re legit enough to get press passes now.
John Gruber:
But I think it’s a fundamentally flawed idea for Microsoft to build their next-generation OS and interface on top of the existing Windows. The idea is that you get the new stuff right alongside Windows as we know it. Microsoft is obviously trying to learn from Apple, but they clearly don’t understand why the iPad runs iOS, and not Mac OS X.
Watching the D9 liveblog, I got the same sense of despair and bewilderment one feels seeing the prettiest girl in school date the school’s biggest jerk. Expanding the Windows Phone UI over to tablets and the desktop proper is a brilliant idea. The Metro UI is clearly something Microsoft can build a future with but unfortunately, the decided to layer it on top of the ancient carcass that is Windows 7.
So frustrating.
4 notes