Super Mario Run

Nintendo Disappointed by Super Mario Run Profits

I'm in the minority, but I think it hurt Super Mario Run more that it wasn't a regular Super Mario game than that the in-app purchase was seen as too expensive. People will pay more than $10 for a good Mario game on any platform.

It also didn’t help that you had to sign-up/log-in before you could play. And that that whole process was awful. And that once you did that, it still took way too many taps to go from launching the app to actually playing the game. This is exactly the lesson that everyone should have taken from the success of Flappy Bird.

Controls are arguably an issue on iOS. I’m not fully convinced since there are controllers available. We haven’t seen enough developers willing to make games that require them, though.

But I know that just falling back on “one touch” isn’t a solution. It works beautifully in some cases, but not for every game.

If Nintendo really dedicated itself to creating a first-class Nintendo game for iOS developed for touch controls rather than just “one touch” and made sure that every part of it was polished... I can’t see how they couldn’t make profits they’d be happy with.

If they launched a good iOS controller, then they could not only make better iOS games more easily, they could make money on hardware too.

Maybe that isn’t the best thing for Nintendo to do. But the main point is that, as in most things, the lessons to be learned from Super Mario Run aren’t as simple as “iOS users won’t pay” or “Nintendo can’t be successful on iOS.”

Windows NT 4: A high point

Microsoft Windows NT 4 was a good system. It wasn’t a great system. It had plenty of flaws. But—at the time—it may have been the best in its class.

Apple was working on a system code-named Copland to replace the aging Mac OS as a transition to Gershwin, which would supposedly be a real modern, personal-computer OS. But it was a quagmire that would eventually be scrapped.

Linux wasn’t quite old enough...yet. Some people will say “Desktop Linux” is perpetually two years away, but it was good enough to serve as my primary system for the years between Windows NT and when I switched to Mac OS X.

(Apologies to the OS/2 fans, in particular. I never had much experience with it. And no doubt there are other contenders that I’m forgetting. But it was programming for Mac and Windows that was paying my bills. Linux was the only venture away from them I had time for.)

Windows NT 4 had the basic OS services—virtual memory, memory protection, and preëmptive multitasking—that personal computers were finally ready for and needed. It had a UI that borrowed some of the goodness of NeXTSTEP by way of Windows 95. It was sufficiently compatible with older DOS and 16-bit Windows software. (At least for my needs.) And, most importantly, I found myself more productive using it than I was on my Mac.

By the time Windows 2000 came out, I’d moved on to Linux. So, I can’t speak much to when things really started getting worse for Windows.

Sidebar: It seemed ironic how so many Mac people ended up on Linux during Apple’s dark years. On the face of it, at least, the two couldn’t seem to be farther apart. Completely open and customizable versus completely closed and curated. One that promises to let you do anything with it as long as you spend the time and effort; one that strives towards “it just works” provided that you want to do exactly what it wants you to do.

Microsoft today is so different. They’re no longer on top, and that means they’re doing some really great things. (And Apple is pulling Microsoft-style moves.) Yet they’re still doing a lot of silly things. And I wonder if Windows can ever again be even as good as it was with NT 4. Should I leave the Mac again, I can’t imagine it would be for a future version of Windows. Most likely it will be Linux again, if not some upstart that doesn’t exist yet.

Dear Apple: Stop nagging me! (for the 2nd time)

This is the feedback I’ve sent Apple. If you feel the same way, please let them know it.

Stop nagging me about iOS updates. Now.

This is something Apple should never have done. I should not have had to say this once. Yet here I am saying it a second time.

Add a “Don’t remind me” option, or get rid of the notification altogether.

Just stop it. Now.

Sword drills

I’d been doing a good job of exercising on the stationary bike every morning. 15 minutes per day for the first week; 20 for the second. While away from home over the holidays, I thought I’d take along a Hollowearth Sword, and do some drills out of Christian Tobler’s Fighting with the German Longsword.

Things I learned:

• Sword drills are a lot more work than an exercise bike but don’t earn as much Apple watch green ring credit.
• My body really doesn’t like the left vom tag guard. It will do almost anything to do something else when I try to assume it.
• Wear gloves for drills.

Frasier Speirs on replacing an iPad with a laptop

A brilliant piece by Fraser Speirs: Can the MacBook Pro replace your iPad

It would be easy to argue with many of its points, but that is the point. The iPad Pro (and the iPad before it) is more about providing different options than replacing anything.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Pencil versus finger

What you can and cannot do eith an Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro

I think one of the smartest things Apple did with the pencil is to distinguish use of the pencil from using fingers.

Exclusive Potter

Gruber wrote:

I’m intrigued about the strategic implications of an exclusive like this. But as a book reader, somehow it feels wrong for books to be “exclusive” to a proprietary software platform.

But while this edition of the books are exclusive to iBooks, the books themselves are available on many platforms. And available unencumbered by copy protection.

iPad Pro review on Wired.co.uk

I haven’t read many iPad Pro reviews. I guess because I knew I was going to buy one and make up my own mind about it. But then I came across the “review in comic form” that led me to this review on Wired.co.uk.

Because no, the iPad Pro is not a laptop. If you largely work with words, via a complex content management system, and enjoy your laptop already—as is true for most journalists who have reviewed the thing, not coincidentally—then it might not be for you.

If you’re interested in the iPad Pro at all, I think the whole review is worth reading.

For me, the iPad has effectively been a laptop replacement because I’ve always preferred a tablet to a laptop. (I just never found a tablet that was good enough before the iPad.) Before the iPad, I simply went without a laptop.

But whether the iPad is a laptop replacement or not is a minor issue at best. While an iPad doesn’t have a keyboard and mouse/trackpad, it does have a touchscreen. It will never be as good at the things keyboards and mouses/trackpads do well are as they are. But likewise, there are things a touchscreen does well that a keyboard and mouse/trackpad never will do as well.

For music and graphics—to name just two creative endevours, a touchscreen can be better than a keyboard and mouse/trackpad.

And while writing is more the domain of the keyboard than the touchscreen, I wonder if there aren’t places in the writer’s overall workflow where a touch interface might be better than a keyboard.

---

A side note: I am happy that Microsoft is pursing the route of trying to build all these options (keyboard, mouse/trackpad, touchscreen, & precision stylus) into a single system. I’m neither convinced that it will work or that it won’t. It is the fact that I was always disappointed in their tablet offerings before and the ways they’ve disappointed me with other products that keep me from buying what they’re selling today.

Book v. iPad Air v. iPad Pro

I put together an online iCloud photo album with some pictures comparing books with the same or equivalent e-book on iPad Air and iPad Pro.

While the iPad Air is a better size for typical novels and articles, the iPad Pro is (IMHO) better for textbooks† (like technical books and RPG books) and comic books.

Digest-sized RPG books are often better on the Air. Although, the Pro does allow viewing two of them side-by-side.

Unfortunately, to get the two books side-by-side I had to load them into different apps. (In this case, iBooks and PDF Expert.) Although I haven’t played with PDF Expert enough to know what it can do. My PDF app of choice, GoodReader, hasn’t been updated to support side-by-side or to fully support the iPad Pro yet.

Being able to view two arbitrary pages in the same PDF side-by-side could be useful too. While you could do this with the two apps workaround, it would be better if a single app added such a feature. GoodReader has the ability to open multiple pages from one PDF in separate tabs, so that seems a reasonable addition to better support the iPad Pro.

But being able to view a book at full iPad Air size on one side of the Pro while having another app—e.g. Pages, UX Writer, Evernote, etc.—at full iPad Air size on the other side seems promising.

†Ironic that the word “textbook” seems á propos to me here since what distinguishes these from typical novels and articles is that they have lots of images, tables, and diagrams in addition to text.

Making an Apple Music playlist

The task: I have a list of songs that I want to make into an Apple Music playlist using iTunes on my iMac.

Step 1: Search My Music. If I already have the song in my library, that is likely the version I want in the playlist.

If it weren’t for step 2 below, this wouldn’t need to be a full, separate step. I’d search My Music and—if the song wasn’t there—one click would switch me to searching all of Apple Music.

The good news: If I find the song in My Music, it is easy to add it to my playlist. On to the next song. Otherwise...

Step 2: Search Wikipedia for the song to find which album (or other information) will distinguish the version I want.

Apple Music almost never has just a single version of a song, but it gives me precious little context to help me distinguish them from one another. I’ve learned from experience that things go a lot smoother when I check Wikipedia before searching Apple Music or the iTunes Store.

I’m not suggesting that a service should choose a definitive version for me, but it would be nice if it gave me some useful context. This sort of context seems in-line with Apple and Beats’ “people over algorithms” stance. In fact, I’d argue that this fits it moreso than mere curation.

Step 3: Add the song to My Music. Apple Music doesn’t allow you to add a song to a playlist unless you add it to your My Music first.

Well, I did find ways to do it, but it didn’t really work. The song wasn’t added to the playlist. Or if it was, it remained invisible.

Step 4: Search for the song (again) in My Music, and add the song to the playlist. Finally go to the next song on the list.

Compared to Spotify: Doing the same task in Spotify suffered, of course, from the issue of step 2 as well. Although it benefited from not having steps 1 or 3. Once I’d found a song, I could add it directly to my playlist. My biggest complaint about Spotify when creating a playlist was not being able to see the search results and the playlist side-by-side—which is also a problem in iTunes.

So... Even leaving out step 2, creating an Apple Music playlist with iTunes is shockingly clunky. It is hard to believe creating a playlist wasn’t an important enough use case to get better treatment. And a music service that wants to truly differentiate itself from the competition should perhaps look farther than just algorithms and farther than just curation.

A side note: Apple Music’s curation (over competitors’ algorithms) is touted as a distinguishing feature. I’d argue that Spotify’s shared user playlists are more useful curation that all of Apple/Beats “experts”. The ideal service would have both and ensure they both worked well.

Will the iPad Pro get pro apps?

Why there is no Sketch for the iPad?

On the one hand, I certainly expect a developer to know their business better than I do.

On the other hand, this certainly sounds a lot like the same logic I heard from my competitors for not supporting the Mac back-in-the-day (the latter half of the 1990s) when my company was making a third of our profits from the Mac.

It’s ironic that Apple sells its products for a market willing to spend premium prices, yet the App Store has this perceived race-to-the-bottom justified by developers’ skepticism that the same market is willing to pay premium prices.

From products to platforms

Microsoft’s and Adobe’s subscriptions do not appeal to me. Although perhaps that has as much to do with my experience as a customer of both companies than with the subscriptions themselves. I’m glad they’re support the iPad, but I want apps from smaller developers too.

Would trials or upgrade pricing or other things “solve” the problem? Surely it could help, but this looks more like a perception problem to me. Although, sometimes the way to address a perception problem is to address the perceived problem. But those “solutions” have their own downsides.

Meanwhile, the Omni Group seems to be doing fine selling iPad apps for $50 each.

As an iPad user, someone who wants good apps, and someone willing to pay for them; this is something I worry about. Whether true or not, how many apps is this conventional wisdom keeping off the platform?

Apple September 2015 post mortem

Assuming there will not be any more big announcements this fall, I like having them all at one event.

My midnight blue watch band has been ordered.

I will order the new Apple TV. We already use our Apple TVs a lot, and this one is better.

No new 4-inch iPhone. No anodized “iPod touch” blue iPhone. sigh No new feature that I’m not willing to live without.

With the old subsidy from AT&T, upgrading every two years was a no-brainer. My bill would not go down once my phone was paid off, so I would be paying for a new phone whether I bought one or not. But that’s not the case anymore.

(Actually, it isn’t entirely clear to me whether the subsidy with 2-year contract is still an option or not. Apple doesn’t show it as an option, but AT&T still lists that option with the current phones.)

The AT&T Next program—the payment plan that replaces(?) the subsidy—seems unnecessarily complicated, and I’m not sure I like it. Since I usually hand my old phones down to someone, I don’t want to be locked into a trade-in. And what if something happens to my phone so it isn’t in acceptable trade-in condition? It may be great for someone who upgrades every year, but it doesn’t look great to me...yet.

And now there is Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program, which I haven’t seen enough details about.

So, at the moment, I’m not planning to get an iPhone 6s.

I think I will get an iPad Pro. For graphics editing and music, I think I’ll find the larger screen useful. For running RPGs and some other things, I think side-by-side apps on the iPad Pro will be useful. I am confident it won’t replace my iPad Air 2. It will just occupy use-cases between my iPad and my iMac.

For me, I’d rather have an iPad Pro than a MacBook Air. After all, my favorite drawing app (InkPad) and my favorite word processor (UX Write) are iOS apps without Mac equivalents.

(And after comparing the size of the iPad Pro to my clipboard—see previous post—it seems like the size I’ve always wanted a tablet to be.)

I’m also planning on getting an Apple Pencil. The iPad Pro + Apple Pencil looks to be about the same price as a 13-inch Cintiq. But a Cintiq is just an accessory to a computer, not a stand-alone tablet. (There are certainly advantages to a Cintiq over the iPad Pro, but still...)

The new Smart Keyboard...I’m not currently interested in. I’ve been pretty happy using a Bluetooth keyboard with my iPad. I’ll try it out the next time I get to an Apple Store.

How big is the iPad Pro?

The iPad Pro is big, but let’s put that in context.

The clipboard I use is 12×9 inches.

The iPad Pro is 12×8.7 inches.

A US-letter size sheet of paper is 11×8.5 inches.

(With 1-inch margins that becomes 9×6.5 inches.)

The iPad Pro screen is 10.3×7.7 inches.

The iPad Pro screen is roughly equivalent to US-letter size paper with ⅓ inch margins.

What I hope to see from Apple (Fall 2015)

What I hope to see from Apple this fall:

A new 4-inch iPhone. While the iPhone 6 may have brought new customers to the iPhone (and brought some old customers back), it would be foolish to, at the same time, lose the customers that were happy with the smaller phones. So far, I have upgraded my phone every “s” year. I don’t want a bigger screen, but—depending on what else is on the table—I may still upgrade. I’m hoping, though, that I won’t have to weight a bigger screen against other factors.

Better colors. The iPhone 5c was a success by any sensible measure. Imagine how much better it could have been with decent colors. Even among the people I know who have and love their 5c, nobody seems to really love any of the colors.

I’m very curious about a bigger iPad should one finally appear. I tend to agree with John Siracusa that, in many ways, the iPad represents the future of personal computing. While conventional personal computers will always be around (and I’ll always have one), more and more of our personal computing should move towards appliances like the iPad.

There are so many creative endeavors that don’t require a keyboard. That said, using the on-screen keyboard isn’t so bad. A few weeks ago I wrote an actual, useful C++ program on my iPad using the on-screen keyboard, Textastic, and codepad while at my daughter’s martial arts class. I didn’t feel as if I was doing this in spite of the system. The only slightly frustrating part was the process of copying the code, switching over to Safari, and pasting it in codepad. (A fully solvable issue.) I, personally, would have been much more frustrated trying to balance a laptop on my lap and hunch over it. And I think we’ve only scratched the surface of the kind of code editing we could do on an iPad.

Of course, a real keyboard works beautifully with my iPad. For me, the ability to add a keyboard when I want it trumps having to deal with one when I don’t.

I’m not convinced there is ever any need for an iOS mouse. Even on my iMac I have (surprisingly) found I prefer Apple’s track pad over their mouse, and an iOS touch screen can do pretty much anything a track pad could. Tyype has long done a great job of this. I hope iOS 9’s “Easy text selection” brings that to most apps.

A bigger screen could be great for some games, music applications, and graphics applications. And iOS 9’s long-awaited Split View would be even better with a larger screen. But being bigger could be more awkward for a hand-held device. At what point does it make more sense as a drafting-table-like desktop device rather than a hand-held?

I don’t think a bigger iPad would replace my 9.7-inch iPad, which increases the chance of the data I want not being on the device I’m using. The “cloud” helps with that some, but it doesn’t make it go away.

While I’m excited for a new Apple TV, I also fear Apple going overboard with it. I often find the gesture-based Remote app more frustrating than the simple buttons of the physical remote... (although the app beats the remote for text entry) ...so I’m not excited about a touch-enabled remote. And as much as I like Siri on my phone and watch, I’m not so sure about it with my TV.

But I’m prepared to recant all of this once I see what they have to offer and get to play with it. ☺︎

Gold Apple watches (revisited)

A gold Apple watch will not be useless in two years. It will likely be able to perform the same function that other gold watches do—show the time—as long as the battery can still be recharged. It may not last as long as a comparably priced mechanical watch, but neither will it be worthless as soon as a cell phone. (And just because many people buy a new phone every year or two, that doesn’t mean that lots of people aren’t happy to use them longer.)

It seems that the amount of gold in a gold Apple watch is likely a very small fraction of the price. I think, however, that the point that Apple products tend to hold their value well stands. They probably won’t hold their value as much as a Rolex, but I expect them to hold their value at least as well as an iPhone.

IPhone and sentences

The word “if” is not normally capitalized. If it comes at the beginning of a sentence, however, it is.

The word “iPhone”, despite being a proper noun, is not normally capitalized. IPhone, when it is the first word of a sentence, however, ought to be capitalized.

The Pebble Time

While I am planning to get an Apple Watch, there is a lot to like about Pebble. And their next one looks even better.

Pebble Time Kickstarter

Gold Apple Watches and upgrades

I don’t think a solid-gold Apple Watch needs to be upgradeable. Because it is solid-gold. Gold never becomes obsolete. There are companies that will pay you a significant portion of the original purchase price for your year-old iPhone so you can upgrade. There will certainly be companies that will buy a year-old, solid-gold Apple Watch for an even more significant portion of your original purchase price so you can upgrade.

(Of course, we’re talking about subsidies with the phone, but still...solid gold.)

Edit: follow-up

Reliable

I have come to depend on my iPad both when running and when playing RPGs.

10 January 2015 was the first time I was getting ready to run a game and found myself thinking about having contingencies in case my iPad had issues.

My iPad Air 2 is undoubtedly the best iPad I’ve had yet. Except it doesn’t feel as reliable. Too often, in the few months I’ve had it, it has locked up or spontaneously rebooted. Once it appeared completely dead for a while.

Is it iOS? Is it the iPad Air 2? Is it a flaw in just my particular iPad? Is it the extensions I’m using that iOS has enabled? I don’t know.

(System extensions were always the biggest culprit of technical issues on the Mac. As happy as I am with the extensibility iOS 8 has enabled, I’m less happy to have the uncertainty that comes with them.)

Of course, the iPad is still the tablet that has most met my expectations.

Available capacity

Over at iMore, they’d published a piece titled: “Apple sued for false advertising by plaintiffs that don't understand iPhone digital storage” It seems they’ve since removed or edited it. But I’m responding to it anyway.

Just because it is industry practice to advertise total capacity instead of available capacity doesn’t make it right. It makes zero sense to advertise any capacity other than what’s available for the user’s use. A number that is always some arbitrary size bigger than what is usable doesn’t tell the customer anything anything.

The fact that available capacity varies is no excuse. They just have to advertise a conservative value that they know will always be available for the user’s use. (Available at the time of sale. If a system update would take up all the headroom, the user can be warned about that before updating.) If things change more than expected so that new devices come with less available space than that conservative value, they need to update their specs and advertising accordingly.

Will that be expensive? I’m sure it will be, but cost is not an excuse for not being honest with your customers.

It isn’t just Apple that needs to change. It’s the industry.