Filed under: Cult of Mac, iPad

We've had more than a few inbound requests today, via email and Twitter, asking a slightly obsessive but completely understandable question: When can I pre-order my freakin' iPad?

True to form, the simple answer of "March 12th" is not adequate for the real early adopters, and they ask again: Yes, I know that, but what time can I push the button? When does the pre-order page go live on store.apple.com? Do I need to stay up all night, refreshing the page?

We understand. We know where you're coming from. We asked Apple PR to help you plan your day tomorrow, and they responded:

"Customers can pre-order online at apple.com at 5:30am Pacific time on Friday, March 12."

tweetmeme_url = "http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/11/how-soon-is-now-pre-order-timing-for-ipad/" tweetmeme_source = "tuaw" There you have it. 5:30 am PT, 8:30 am ET, and for those of you who happen to have US credit cards & shipping addresses but are currently elsewhere around the globe, here's the global clock. Now please have a nice cup of tea, sit down with a favorite book, and remember that it's still three more weeks until your new iPad hits your electrostatic digits.

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/flattop341/ / CC BY 2.0

TUAWHow soon is now? Pre-order timing for iPad confirmed, 5:30 am PT originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Software Update, Security

New browser time -- and unfortunately, time to restart your Mac. Safari has been updated (for 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6 on the Mac side, and Windows XP/Vista/7 on the Win side); it includes the improvements noted:

• Performance improvements for Top Sites
• Stability improvements for plug-ins, and for sites with SVG graphics and online forms
• Fixes issues affecting settings changes to some Linksys routers and iWork.com user comments

There are also a slew of security fixes in this update; full list is in the continuation of this post, via the Apple Product Security mailing list.

The update weighs in at 31.8 MB on my Snow Leopard install, but your download size may vary. You can get it in Software Update or via the Safari download page.

Safari 4.0.5 is now available and addresses the following: ColorSync CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0040 Available for: Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Viewing a maliciously crafted image with an embedded color profile may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: An integer overflow, that could result in a heap buffer overflow, exists in the handling of images with an embedded color profile. Opening a maliciously crafted image with an embedded color profile may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. The issue is addressed by performing additional validation of color profiles. This issue does not affect Mac OS X systems. Credit to Sebastien Renaud of VUPEN Vulnerability Research Team for reporting this issue.
ImageIO CVE-ID: CVE-2009-2285 Available for: Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Viewing a maliciously crafted TIFF image may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A buffer underflow exists in ImageIO's handling of TIFF images. Viewing a maliciously crafted TIFF image may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved bounds checking. For Mac OS X v10.6 systems, this issue is addressed in Mac OS X v10.6.2. For Mac OS X v10.5 systems, this issue is addressed in Security Update 2010-001.
ImageIO CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0041 Available for: Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may result in sending data from Safari's memory to the website Description: An uninitialized memory access issue exists in ImageIO's handling of BMP images. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may result in sending data from Safari's memory to the website. This issue is addressed through improved memory handling and additional validation of BMP images. Credit to Matthew 'j00ru' Jurczyk of Hispasec for reporting this issue.
ImageIO CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0042 Available for: Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may result in sending data from Safari's memory to the website Description: An uninitialized memory access issue exists in ImageIO's handling of TIFF images. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may result in sending data from Safari's memory to the website. This issue is addressed through improved memory handling and additional validation of TIFF images. Credit to Matthew 'j00ru' Jurczyk of Hispasec for reporting this issue.
ImageIO CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0043 Available for: Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Processing a maliciously crafted TIFF image may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A memory corruption issue exists in the handling of TIFF images. Processing a maliciously crafted TIFF image may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory handling. Credit to Gus Mueller of Flying Meat for reporting this issue.
PubSub CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0044 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting or updating a feed may result in a cookie being set, even if Safari is configured to block cookies Description: An implementation issue exists in the handling of cookies set by RSS and Atom feeds. Visiting or updating a feed may result in a cookie being set, even if Safari is configured to block cookies via the "Accept Cookies" preference. This update addresses the issue by respecting the preference while updating or viewing feeds.
Safari CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0045 Available for: Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to arbitrary code execution Description: An issue in Safari's handling of external URL schemes may cause a local file to be opened in response to a URL encountered on a web page. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issue through improved validation of external URLs. This issue does not affect Mac OS X systems. Credit to Billy Rios and Microsoft Vulnerability Research (MSVR) for reporting this issue.
WebKit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0046 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A memory corruption issue exists in WebKit's handling of CSS format() arguments. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved handling of CSS format() arguments. Credit to Robert Swiecki of Google Inc. for reporting this issue.
WebKit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0047 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A use-after-free issue exists in the handling of HTML object element fallback content. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory reference tracking. Credit to wushi of team509, working with TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative for reporting this issue.
WebKit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0048 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A use-after-free issue exists in WebKit's parsing of XML documents. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory reference tracking.
Webkit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0049 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A use-after-free issue exists in the handling of HTML elements containing right-to-left displayed text. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory reference tracking. Credit to wushi&Z of team509 for reporting this issue.
WebKit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0050 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A use-after-free issue exists in WebKit's handling of incorrectly nested HTML tags. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory reference tracking. Credit to wushi&Z of team509 working with TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative for reporting this issue.
WebKit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0051 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to the disclosure of sensitive information Description: An implementation issue exists in WebKit's handling of cross-origin stylesheet requests. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may disclose the content of protected resources on another website. This update addresses the issue by performing additional validation on stylesheets that are loaded during a cross-origin request.
WebKit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0052 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A use-after-free issue exists in WebKit's handling of callbacks for HTML elements. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory reference tracking. Credit: Apple.
WebKit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0053 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A use-after-free issue exists in the rendering of content with a CSS display property set to 'run-in'. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory reference tracking. Credit to wushi of team509, working with TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative for reporting this issue.
WebKit CVE-ID: CVE-2010-0054 Available for: Mac OS X v10.4.11, Mac OS X Server v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5.8, Mac OS X Server v10.5.8, Mac OS X v10.6.1 or later, Mac OS X Server v10.6.1 or later, Windows 7, Vista, XP Impact: Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution Description: A use-after-free issue exists in WebKit's handling of HTML image elements. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved memory reference tracking. Credit: Apple.

TUAWSafari 4.0.5 now available in Software Update originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: iPad

Is it too early to think about pre-ordering an iPad? The WSJ's Smart Money website looks at the options for early adopters, and comes to the surprising and novel conclusion that it costs more to buy early.

I'm not sure there's a polite way to put this, so with all due respect to Smart Money, let me say: Well, of course.

According to the writeup, waiting a few months before buying your iPad "could cut your bill substantially." Author Kelli B. Grant quotes Rob Enderle, who points out out that early technology is issued with premium pricing and is often "riddled with glitches." While those might be valid reasons to wait, there's not much evidence for Enderle's assertion that "the first iPhone owners were pretty unhappy." Aside from the price drop, first-gen iPhone buyers (like me and Mike S.) have been pretty darn happy.

tweetmeme_url = "http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/11/im-ok-youre-ok-its-cool-to-be-an-early-ipad-adopter/" tweetmeme_source = "tuaw" The early adopter tax, along with any associated tech risks, has not escaped the notice of most tech enthusiasts. In the end, it's not much of a factor. We don't buy early because it's a good deal. We don't buy early because it's fiscally sound. We buy early because the technology is cool and we simply cannot or do not want to wait for our preciousssssss to finally come home with us.

We are the People Who Stand In Line.

In my case, this is a hereditary condition. I blame my father, who would bring home the latest gadgets to an adoring family. We'd gather around the latest technology, glowing in its radiance, having an utter blast using toys that no one had ever heard of, let alone bought. We were the first family on the block (and possibly in the state) to have a microwave, a fax machine (the size, may I point out, of a small car), a personal computer, or a hand-held programmable calculator.

It wasn't just cool. It was awesome.

Thank you Dad, for being an early adopter. Thank you for showing me the way of the technology geek. Thank you for teaching me that you have to live life in the moment -- because if you don't seize today and play with it, tomorrow will never come.

Sure, something better and cheaper is always going to come along some day. Sure, the bugs will work their way out and the prices will work their way down. But if you don't hop aboard the adoption train, you're never going to get to Techsville.

Me? I'm going to buy a first-day ticket and have my fun from the get-go.

TUAWI'm OK, You're OK: It's cool to be an early iPad adopter originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Gaming, Software, Developer, App Store

Julian Farrior hosted a panel here on day two of the 2010 Game Developers' Conference here in San Francisco, and he told a room of press and developers about his last year in the App Store. He had attended last year's conference with a partner while considering starting up an iPhone company, and that idea became Backflip Studios. Since the company was founded in April of 2009, they've gotten five apps in the top five, and made (Farrior said he'd be honest, because it was more interesting) $2.5 million in revenue so far.

tweetmeme_url = "http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/11/gdc-2010-backflip-studios-year-in-the-app-store/" tweetmeme_source = "tuaw" He revealed that a full $1m in that actually came straight from ad sales -- he's made deals with AdMob and other companies to put ads in his popular Paper Toss app, and he uses those ads both for straight revenue, as well as to promote his own games (more on that later in the talk). Farrior offered up a frank and honest look at what it was like to run an iPhone app company for a year.

First, he talked about what Backflip did right last year. He said that he'd hired a talented team to work on his applications, and that the company had focused on distribution, which they'd "leveraged heavily" -- the more people playing their games, the better. They'd kept production cycles short, kicking out apps in no more than 12 weeks, and he said they'd made the good decision to "design for the medium" and the audience, making shorter, casual games that took advantage of the iPhone's hardware and touchscreen.

He also talked a bit about the balance he ran between "house ads" (using ads in their free apps to try and create paid app sales) and outside ads -- during the months of December and January of this year, he pointed out how he'd balanced house ads to try and take advantage of the "holiday jump" in sales. As you can see in the slide below, even though he had to take a hit in actual ad sales, he saw a huge boost in App Store sales by using his free app to encourage sales of the paid app Ragdoll Blaster. Farrior said this was important: as an App Store developer, you have to leverage everything you can, not just depend on sales numbers for revenue.

He showed another interesting slide as well about "download catalysts" -- specific events in the life of his app that encouraged major boosts or drops in downloads and sales. Apple's "What We're Playing" section in iTunes gave a big boost to app sales (which is something we've heard echoed from many developers here at the show), but the biggest boost actually came from when he used the free app to advertise the lite version of his paid app -- the spot marked as "RDB Lite House Ads in Paper Toss" below. Users downloaded the free app, saw that there was another free app to download, picked it up, and liked it enough to buy the paid version. Again, he made it clear that even if you've got a paid app on the App Store, using "free impressions" in a free app can encourage sales.

One more thing to note from the chart below: the app's price drop did almost nothing. Farrior again echoed something else we've heard: price on the App Store doesn't necessarily matter as much for sales as most developers think it does. The main factors seem to be quality and promotion -- if people know about your app and like it, they'll buy it almost independent of price. Farrior also went over what went wrong in the past year. His company had a lot of problems with Harbor Havoc 3D, a paid app that they intended to be a "deeper, better version of Flight Control." Unfortunately, development ran a little long on the game, they missed some key features (there was no saving of the game's state when you kicked back out to the homescreen -- "I don't know how we missed that," Farrior admitted), and by the time it finally came to market (after an Apple rejection that wasted some press coverage they got), it got lost in the mix of line drawing games.

Additionally, Harbor Havoc actually suffered from the lite version release: Farrior said the lite version cut sales of the paid version in half. He says they're still working on figuring that one out -- there are a few levels in the paid game, and he mentioned possibly "picking the wrong one" for the lite version. But at any rate, Harbor Havoc, he said, shows that you "can't make an OK game and count on impressions" to pick up the slack. Before you even start thinking about splitting up revenue streams, the product has to support it.

For the future of Backflip, Farrior says he wants to grow the company -- this year, they hope to release five to ten free apps per quarter "to keep the pipe wide and the impressions high." They also want to test out in-app purchases, from adding extra content for players to possibly a model where they offer "a 99 cent buyout" to completely remove ads from their apps. He's also interested in turn-based gaming -- he says that Zynga and other companies have experimented with that form elsewhere, but that they're not quite there on the iPhone, and there's room for someone else to be. And he's also interested in licensed content -- even a simple game that would otherwise be anonymous can benefit from having a name or brand attached to it.

The panel was a very frank look at what Backflip Studios has done on the iPhone in the past year. Farrior mentioned that one of the things that drew him and his company to the platform was that he'd seen people who'd never played games before (his mom and sister) looking for game experiences on the platform. Clearly, their success is a result of providing exactly those experiences for customers.

TUAWGDC 2010: Backflip Studios' year in the App Store originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: OS, Software, Developer, iPhone

Developers have found further evidence of multitasking support for 3rd party iPhone apps in the latest beta (3.2 beta 4) of the iPhone SDK, and suggest that it will become a reality this summer.

9to5 Mac reports on a new line found deep within the latest iPhone SDK. Specifically, SpringBoard.js has a reference to a "multitasking dialog box" that did not appear in version 3.1.3 of the SDK; it seems that it's new to version 3.2. Of course, there's no assurance that this refers to 3rd party support for multitasking, but it is new.

Additionally, Appleinsider's souces with "proven track records" state that Apple has developed "a full-on solution" for 3rd-party multitasking which will be a part of iPhone OS 4.0. No specifics were given on how it will be pulled off or how it will address the two main concerns: battery life and security.

Let's assume that Apple's plan addresses the security issue, but battery life still presents a problem, one that was supposedly addressed by Push Notifications. Apple's remote notification service allows applications to offload polling processes to web servers. By keeping the update algorithms working off the device, the iPhone's battery is spared. Certainly the iPhone itself must take on the task of keeping all of those apps up and running.

It should also be noted that iPhone OS does not use a paged memory model. That means, multi-tasking applications must compete for the same memory space, making it more likely that apps will receive memory warnings and even crash when they use too much memory. That's not an issue in the one-app-at-a-time space, but a real problem with multitasking

Of course, the iPhone OS is already fully capable of multitasking. In order for non-Apple apps to participate, Apple must lift the current restrictions within the OS. That's something the company won't do until the iPhone engineers have devised the best and safest method. As for iPhone OS 4.0, Appleinsider notes that it's got "a ways to go." Hopefully we'll have an answer in July.

TUAWMore suggestions of multitasking in iPhone OS 4.0 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Apple Corporate, Hardware, Apple

On Wednesday, Consumer Reports published the results of its latest tech support survey. Apple was on top for both laptops and desktops, well ahead of the company in second place.

Consumer Reports asked 7,000 subscribers about their satisfaction with their computer companies across categories like problem solved, phone waits, phone staff and online support. Each answer was issued a point value, with a maximum of 100 points.

Among laptops, Apple scored 86 points. The second place finisher, Lenovo, accumulated up 63 points, for an impressive margin of 23 points. The rest of the leader board includes Toshiba (60 points), Dell (56 points), HP/Compaq (53 points), and Acer/Gateway/eMachines (39 points).

Apple scored even better with desktops, racking up 87 total points and leading the field in all categories. Here the 2nd place competitor was Dell which scored 55 points among the participants, a full 32 points behind.

Of course, fanboys like you and me are convinced of Apple quality. Now we have some good 'ol empirical data to toss at our PC-thumping friends and relatives.

[h/t to cnet & Jim Dalrymple]

TUAWApple tops Consumer Reports' tech support survey, second place not even close originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Rumors, Mac Pro

ZDNet is reporting that the next iteration of the Mac Pro will be unveiled next Tuesday, March 16th. Their sources indicate that Intel's new 'hexacore' Core i7-980x chip, which is also expected to be launched next Tuesday, will be in that machine.

Code-named "Gulftown" the 32nm, six-core i7-980X will be labeled as the i7x ("Extreme Edition"). It will be the first dual-socket, six-core processor from Intel. With 6 cores and 12 threads, a dual-configured, i7-980X Mac Pro will sport 12 physical cores and 24 logical cores with a top frequency of 3.33GHz.

Excluding the minor speed bump in December, the Mac Pro has not been updated for over a year. In December we reported on the leaked Core i7-980X specs. Two months later, HardMac reported that the new i7x Mac Pros could be delivered in February. With the launch of the i7-980X on Tuesday combined with HardMac's sources indicating a Mac Pro refresh that day as well, the i7x seems like a lock for the updated Mac Pro. However, as MacRumors points out, Apple has typically used server-branded Xeon chips in its Mac Pro line, and Intel is expected to debut a number of new Xeon 5600-series chips on Tuesday as well, notably Intel's 2010 flagship chip - the Xeon X5680.

TUAWMac Pro 'hexacore' Xeon Core i7 debuts Tuesday? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Gaming, OS

Today, the Khronos Group announced the launch of OpenGL 4.0, the cross-platform 3D & graphics API. OpenGL was most recently at version 3.2. Updated specifications are available at the opengl.org site. Game and 3D developers are presumably salivating.

Mac OS X includes OpenGL, and the iPhone runs an embedded version of OpenGL called OpenGL ES. The mobile ES version remains in its 2.0 release and is expected to move to OpenGL ES 2.1 in the near future.

The updated OpenGL release includes enhanced shaders, better texture support, and 64-bit double-precision floating point operations, amongh other features. It offers support for backwards compatibility with existing OpenGL code."AMD sees the release of OpenGL 4.0 as another major accomplishment for the OpenGL ARB," said Ben Bar-Haim, vice president of design engineering at AMD, in a press release statement.

An OpenGL 3.3 specification has been released simultaneously with the 4.0 spec, "to enable as much OpenGL 4.0 functionality as possible on previous generation GPU hardware".

TUAWOpenGL 4.0 announced during GDC originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

The clever 2006 card game Knights of Charlemagne has made it to the iPhone and iPod touch as a simple little number placing app [$1.99, iTunes link]. We don't mean simple in that it's easy to beat or uninteresting. We mean that the game is clearly designed and plays quickly. While the beginner level (the Squire) is really only worth playing through once or twice with the tutorial minstrel on to learn the rules, getting to and beating the AI at Knight, and then the King level (which is supposed to be Charlemagne himself) is a good challenge and provides plenty of game for two bucks.

There's a whole lot of math and bluffing in the game. That is something which is better experienced in person and using real cards, but board games on the iPhone are their own experience. So, when you want some light brain-burning with a medieval theme, look no further than this simple app. Read on to find out more.

Gallery: Knights of Charlemagne game app

The Game

Like Poison, Knights of Charlemagne could just as easily use pictures of animals or be a themeless collection of colors and numbers. The game starts with a deck of knight cards and ten spaces, called estates, to fight over. Five are numbered 1-5 and the others are colored one of five colors (which might cause problems with colorblind players). Each card portrays a knight who can be sent to fight at one of two locations, either the colored space that matches his color or the numbered space that matches his number. Even though there are only ten estates total, the app helpfully highlights the two spaces where a selected knight can go before you place him on the battlefield.

The deck is made up of 50 cards, two of every number/color combination, and each player is dealt half the deck. Of course, since designer Reiner Knizia doesn't want you to be able to completely predict what's coming, two random cards are removed before cards are dealt, adding an element of uncertainty to the end game. Does my opponent really still have a "1" to take the first estate away from me? You won't know until the last card is played. Speaking of which, each player will play 24 cards in a complete game, something that takes only a matter of minutes once you've learned the rules. Your opening hand is eight cards, and the little tent icon on the left side of your hand shows how many cards remain in your draw pile.

Why send the knights to a particular location? Whoever has the most knights at an estate at the end of the game (when all cards have been played) will score the points for that estate. The numbered estates are worth points equal to whatever their number is, while the colored estates are each worth five points. If both players tie for an estate, each wins a point. Why wouldn't you put all of your knights on the colored estates? Because whoever wins the two lowest-value estates first (estates are scored from left to right) gets the crown, a five-point bonus, and this usually determines the winner, in our experience.


The App

Like we said, the defining word for the iPhone app version of the game is "simple." Bare-bones would also work, but that's sort of two words. Everything on the screen is easy to see and read. Gameplay is easy to "get" and the graphics by Schrumpfkopf are basic. There is no music, and only minimal sound effects. You load up the app, play for a few minutes and see who won and then maybe play again. If you get interrupted, the app easily saves games in progress, but there's no win/loss record screen or any way to track how well you've done over time. Simplicity is the name of the game here, and it informs all areas of the design.

Want to see who's winning a particular estate? Look for the little sword icon. Want to make the knight cards even easier to identify? Turn on high visibility mode, which transforms the cards in your hand from little knight icons into simple colored squares that are easier to read. You can't change between modes mid-game, but that's not a huge deal.

Another quirk is that the app feels upside down. When you play, it's with the home button on the left, and there's no way to change the orientation. Another interface issue that might cause you to misplay a knight is when you select a blue number five knight, since the two places he can be sent are next to each other. We've never clicked the wrong space, but we can see that it's possible. Oh, and here's a tricky thing. The few sound effects that there are in the game (and, thankfully, you can still listen to iTunes music while playing, unlike in version 1.0) are counterintuitive to turn them on or off. On the menu screen, if it says "sound on," that means touch there to turn the sound on. Same thing with "sound off." So, while it looks like these items are telling you the status of the sound effects in they game, they're not.

The app can also only play the two-player version of the game. The physical game from Playroom Entertainment can handle up to three, and the earliest version, which came out in 1995 and was called Tabula Rasa, could play anywhere from two to four players. IRL, three players is a bit more fun, but the designer has said he has no plans to introduce that option to the app and it seems doubtful that a even baksheesh would change his mind. Instead, we have the three-level AI and the human vs. human options. Two-player pass-n-play works well - with the screen dimming and hiding your cards in hand from your opponent between turns - but we're always interested in networked play. Obviously, this takes more time to program into the app, but we think the potential for doubling your sales should be incentive enough for developers (our math on that correct, right? Of course it is).

Overall, the Knights of Charlemagne isn't quite as elegant as other Knizia games like Lost Cities (which we're still waiting to see in the App Store) or Money, but it is a game with a lot of replay value. We know we'll keep fighting for those estates for a while to come. This isn't an every day kind of game, but it simply fun to pull out every now and then.

TUAWReview: Knights of Charlemagne card game is simply simple, and we like it like that originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Gaming, Software, Other Events, iPhone, App Store

"What kinds of games do you like?" Adam "Atomic" Saltsman asked of his panel audience at the Canabalt postmortem during the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco. "Role-playing" was yelled out, as was "puzzler," and eventually Saltsman picked "platformer" as the genre. Without another word, he quietly went to work on a laptop. Then, his partner at Semi Secret Software, Eric Johnson, took the podium to tell us all about what it was like to make one of the App Store's most popular games.

He started by saying that the game was originally developed in just "five very long days," and was created for the Experimental Gameplay Project and based around simplicity -- it only uses six colors and, obviously, the one button. For a game that's so simple, it actually had a lot of complex influences. It drew from older games, like Another World and Flashback, as well as modern works, like Half-Life 2 and District 9.

The level design was originally assembled around the idea that "the farther you go, the harder it gets," but they later evolved the difficulty to be based around the player's running speed, so that, to an extent, you could self-mediate the difficulty by hitting obstacles and slowing down a bit. The buildings were all designed with what Johnson called "lego pieces" -- little bits of graphics that are interchangeable to create somewhat randomized designs.
Jackson also talked about what he said might be the most inventive part of Canabalt: the marketing. The game was originally designed as a Flash game, and throughout the entire time the game was available for $2.99 on the App Store, there was always a free complete version available online for the public to play. The developers were OK with that, however, for three reasons. First, they said, there was no Flash on the iPhone, so if you wanted to play the game on the iPhone, you had to buy it. Second, there was a "try before you buy" element that a lot of people liked, and that they believe sold some games for them. Third, they figured some people would buy the game just to support the developers, especially because of the Flash game.

Jackson said no matter what the reasons, having a free Flash version to play worked great for them (they shared that they'd sold 115,000 copies on the App Store in just five months), and while the server costs of keeping a popular game up online are not insignificant, Semi Secret Software will continue to do the same thing with their future games (in fact, you can currently play Gravity Hook HD, their next game, online right now even before it's released on the iPhone.

The other decision they made on marketing was with price -- despite calls to the contrary, they decided to stick with the $2.99 price on the iPhone. That proved to be very "polarizing" -- almost all of their App Store reviews mentioned the price, both positively ("this is totally worth the money") or negatively ("How dare you charge this much"). They believed that while they would have sold more copies at 99 cents, the $2.99 price gave them a different type of customer, and as they showed with the chart below, they got a different type of reviewer. Free apps, they said, tend to attract a lot more negative reviews in general, while people who pay for paid apps tend to take a little more "ownership" in the game they support. Finally, the guys announced their brand new development kit for the iPhone, called Flixel. The app, which they're bringing into a closed beta right now but will eventually release publicly for free, is designed and used by the guys to bring Flash games right over into the iPhone. It can help developers rapidly prototype Flash games in an iPhone format. To show off the software, Saltsman hooked the computer he'd been working on into the projector, and showed off a quick little platformer game (as per the audience's request at the beginning of the 20 minute panel) called "Platformer (I guess)." The game was super simple (and buggy -- he had to tweak it a little bit as he played, and the little guy couldn't go downstairs), but it was a very nice working prototype of a possible touch-based platformer. Nothing you could sell, but as a demo for Flixel, it worked.

We'll keep an eye out for both Gravity Hook HD and Flixel, and we'll try to corner the guys from Semi Secret later this week to try and talk to them both about their work on Canabalt and what they're up to in the future.

TUAWGDC 2010: Canabalt postmortem originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Freeware, iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

Poynt has come to the iPhone, after having been a very popular free app on BlackBerry phones. Poynt provides local searches of individuals and businesses. It also shares a database with Open Table, so you can use it to make reservations at restaurants. Unlike the BlackBerry app, it has augmented reality, but is missing some features beloved by the Blackberry crowd.

Like some of the other iPhone search apps, you can enter the name of a business, and get a phone number, links to a website (if there is one), a mapped location, or directions. If you use the theater search, you'll find nearby movie houses. You can also search by movie genres, or get a list of the top 10 box office films. You can't buy tickets, but you can stream trailers. (Note: The developer says you can buy tickets if a ticket icon appears next to the distance marker. I didn't see any offering from my local theater when I checked the app.)

When you search for restaurants, you get similar results to those of the business search. Results include phone numbers, restaurant websites, maps, and directions. You can also narrow your search by cuisine, or by distance.For any business, you can save the information to your contact list, which is a nice feature.

If you turn your phone to landscape mode, you get either a map, or you can select the augmented reality view. I don't think that view adds much to the program. You can see a business name floating on the screen, and click for information. You won't get a distance to the destination in AR mode, just a little floating label. Basically, it's a yawner.

What's most frustrating about this app is the inconsistency of the way information is presented. When you search for restaurants, you are presented with a nice list that lets you choose the type of cuisine, but when you are searching for businesses there is no list. You have to type a name of the place you are looking for, or manually type something like supermarket. It's not exactly a time-saver, and that's just what you want from an app like this. It needs to be quick and easy.

Now for the omissions. The BlackBerry version gives you an up to date gas price directory based on your location. The iPhone version? Zip. The developers say it will be in a future update.

At the end of the day, Poynt has promise, the price is right, and it is somewhat useful. It doesn't break any ground over other similar apps like Around Me or Where To?, which are better organized and easier to use. We'll keep an eye on Poynt and see how it evolves, but at this 'Poynt', even for free, it's not going to become your favorite app.

Poynt runs on the iPhone or iPod touch, and requires Phone OS 3.1.2 or greater.

TUAWPoynt for iPhone is a mixed bag originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Gaming, Developer, iPhone, App Store

For the first panel of day two here at the 2010 Game Developers Conference's iPhone gaming track, Oliver Miao of Centerscore Studios took the stage to talk about working on Surviving High School for the iPhone as a part of Electronic Arts' Mobile division. As Miao made clear early on, he's an "insider outsider" at EA: his company was started with a few friends, purchased by Vivendi in 2006, created a hit mobile game called Surviving High School in 2007, and was bought by EA in 2008. Last year, they were commissioned to recreate their game for the iPhone. In one of the most interesting iPhone panels at the conference yet, he talked about the ins and outs of working with EA on an iPhone title, and explained both, what it was like to work with the company, and his own philosophies on game design, especially concerning in-app purchases and microtransactions.

Most users seem to believe that microtransactions and episodic content are, at the very least, a pain to deal with (and are, at worst, a scam), but Miao is convinced that they're actually necessary to having a successful game -- he said that every developer, going forward, "will need to have them." Read on to find out why.

Miao told the story of creating the game for the iPhone -- early last year, EA Mobile came to Centerscore and asked for an iPhone version of their game, and asked that it be done quickly and cheaply. Quickly because, as Miao explained, EA is very intent on seizing new technologies fast. iPhone OS 3 had just been announced, and EA wanted a game with microtransactions to go up on the App Store quickly. And cheaply because Miao says both EA and Centerscore were worried that if production costs ran high, the game would need a higher price than just 99 cents, and wouldn't sell at all. So they had just a few months to put a successful microtransaction model together on a platform that they weren't sure their audience (teenagers using mobile phones) was even using.

The first model they came up with was a kind of virtual currency for the game, in which you'd spend real money on ingame coins that you could then spend on more content. But virtual currency isn't technically allowed in the App Store (even though some developers do it anyway), and EA didn't want to shake the boat with Apple. Miao says he was surprised by that -- he thought that EA, as a big company, could get away with whatever they want, but instead he found that the opposite was true: they had to follow the rules even more closely, since one game could upset the entire relationship with Apple.

So the next plan was to follow the Pocket God model, says Miao. His team noticed that the reviews on Pocket God loved the free weekly content, so his studio thought they'd develop weekly content for free, and then create exclusive content to sell separately as microtransactions. EA rejected that idea in a greenlight meeting, however -- they said that no, the studio couldn't give away free content that it could be charging money for.

The next idea they came up with was timed content -- they would give away that week's content, and if the player wanted any old content, they'd have to pay to catch up. But this model was rejected as well, and at the same time, development on the game wasn't coming along correctly -- EA executives visited to play the game, said the quality wasn't up to snuff, and threatened to end the project. Miao says this was surprising: it showed that not only is EA very interested in the quality of their games (despite doubts of some), but that they are very agile when it comes to dropping projects and distributing the resources elsewhere. Even if a game is almost done, if EA doesn't like it, they'll cancel and move on without a second thought.

So the studio went back to the drawing board for a ten day push last summer, and when they were done, they re-pitched the "timed content" idea, this time stating that the weekly content was actually "promotional," and offering up microtransactions both for past weeks' content and next week's content as well. Additionally, they emphasized hitting the top 50 paid apps as a goal, and this time EA approved them.

Miao says that he found EA's approach to microtransactions very interesting -- the executives he worked with, he says, firmly held the belief that microtransactions should be for extra content, not content that you originally planned with the game. In other words, you don't sell levels that should be released with the game via in-app purchases -- you make a solid game experience, and then make more levels after release to sell via microtransaction. If customers pay you more money, you give them extra content, not content that was in the original game plan. Interesting take.

Surviving High School for the iPhone released last November, and while the game floundered at first (causing anxiety at the studio), a listing in the "What's New" section of iTunes catapulted them out from obscurity and into the charts. Miao shared a few lessons from their sales. He says that the "TV model" they came up with worked: you can sell a game based on episodic content and charge money for the old episodes. He also says that ratings matter a lot -- the game had one bug that caused their iTunes ratings to drop (even though people liked the game), and that directly affected sales. Once the bug was fixed, the ratings rose back up, and sales followed.

And Miao had some interesting thoughts on microtransactions, too. He said that microtransactions actually drove sales peaks -- when new content is added to the game every week, the team sees a spike in both sales and in the chart listings on the App Store. He says that microtransaction revenue definitely translates to where a game is listed on the Top Grossing chart, and that directly moves games into the Top Paid chart, both of which drive sales directly. In other words, Miao believes that a successful paid game on the App Store must have microtransactions to stay successful. "With no microtransactions," he said, "your app will be at a disadvantage."

It was a pretty fascinating conclusion for those of us who have been watching the App Store from day one, and Miao's experience with EA Mobile showed a few good insights about how that big game developer thinks and works. Even he said he didn't agree with everything they did -- as "a startup guy," he says "it was often a pain" to deal with some of their rules and procedures. But big companies are trying to figure out the iPhone platform just like everyone else, in their own way.

TUAWGDC 2010: How to develop an app with EA Mobile originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: iPad

During CES 2010, HP gave the public a slight tease of its upcoming slate device. The touchscreen device, which runs Windows 7, sports a form factor similar to Apple's iPad, as well as similar uses; it supports eBooks, music, videos, and of course, the Internet. But wait, there's more. According to a post on HP's Voodoo blog, the device will give you a "full Web browsing experience," not a "watered-down Internet" with "sacrifices." In other words, the HP slate device supports Flash and, well, the iPad doesn't.

While the blog posting didn't mention the iPad by name, it was fairly clear that the statement in question was an indirect jab at it. Accompanying the post is a short, 30 second clip. The highlight of the clip, which occurs toward the end, shows the user going to Hulu.com and watching a Flash-based video.

The reason that the clip is only 30 seconds long, and the Hulu portion is at the end of it, is that running Flash may have drained all of the device's batteries before all footage could be shot. (Just kidding! I couldn't help myself).

On a serious note, while the lack of Flash on the iPhone, and now the iPad, has its drawbacks, these drawbacks have been muted to a degree. The advent of the App Store created a non-Flash, potentially monetizable, playground for the creations of developers and content creators to play in. In addition, HTML 5 is emerging as a potential Flash development alternative.

via [AppleInsider]

TUAWHP attacks Apple iPad over Flash originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Gaming, Multimedia, Rumors

Now that Valve has committed to offering full support for the Mac for both its in-house games and Steam, its digital game delivery system, other developers are expressing interest in the Mac as a gaming platform, too.

Gas Powered Games, creator of Supreme Commander 2, Kings and Castles, and Dungeon Siege, has said of the Mac: "We, as a developer, will include a Mac platform option in all of our proposals moving forward. We're in 100 percent support of it, absolutely." Chris Taylor, founder of Gas Powered Games, says that porting games over to the Mac is relatively easy since Macs and PCs now have largely identical internal architectures. Intel processors and ATI or NVIDIA graphics cards are common to both platforms, making game porting far easier than it was back in the PowerPC days. Taylor also says that recent rises in Mac sales are another contributing factor making the Mac a more attractive target for game developers.

Swedish gamemaker DICE, best known for the Battlefield series of games, may also be throwing more support behind the Mac -- one of the company's lead developers has said that "We're currently investigating the possibility of making [Battlefield: Bad Company 2] available on Mac." That's not as big or flashy a commitment as Valve or Gas Powered Games, but considering the popularity of the Battlefield series, it still goes a long way toward improving the state of gaming on the Mac.

Over the next year or so, many other developers are likely to be watching Valve's success (or lack thereof) on the Mac with a very keen eye. If Valve manages to make a healthy amount of money by selling games to Mac users, it may only be a matter of time before many more gaming outfits follow suit.

TUAWValve on Mac piques interest from other game developers originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Multimedia, Software, iPhone, App Store, Music

Recently I've been preparing to move home and finally did last weekend. Naturally I had to pack up all my musical gear, equipment and of course, my Mac. In the week leading up to the move, I've had my iPhone and nothing else. With no creative outlet and the pressure of looming project deadlines, I found myself scouting the app store for a fix to help me start fleshing out a few creative ideas.

This is what I found that worked well for me.

1. TonePad and TonePad Pro

The iTunes Store describes TonePad Pro as "...the easiest way to make music. Discover the inner musician in you. Create songs by simply touching." And this is exactly what I found. With a 16 x 16 matrix, and an easy-to-use user interface (literally start tapping your fingers and music is made), I found myself coming up with little melodies and tunes immediately. Although you only have the 16 x 16 matrix, to me, what initially seemed quite limiting soon became a boundary for creative focus.

You can save an unlimited number of tunes to listen back to, and upload them to a shared server where your buddies can check out what you've been musing. With the paid version, you can save your melodies into a ringtone that will sync back to your iPhone, too.

2. Flourish

Flourish is something a bit more immersive. While having a steeper learning curve, there's loads more to explore here. The user interface is really fresh and unique (especially for the iPhone), and presents a creative challenge in focusing your composition whilst giving you the space to try different approaches to what you are creating.

Basically Flourish represents musical phrases as physical loops:

-Record loops with expressive multi-touch keyboards.
-Generate percussive and melodic sequences.
-Build arrangements by ear or by eye.
-Select from a consonant collection of instruments.
-Sequence loops by connecting them in chain.

Check out the Flourish website for a few demo clips.

Let us know in the comments below what other apps for the iPhone / iPod Touch, or the Mac, that are inspiring you to make music.

TUAWCount The Beats: Inspiration... two apps for the musician on the move originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Gaming, Retail, Software, Developer, iPhone, App Store

Russell Clarke of Ideaworks Game Studio hosted a post-mortem report near the end of the first day of GDC 2010 about Call of Duty: World at War Zombies for the iPhone. The game was one of the first big brand hits on the App Store -- it successfully brought a game mode from one of Activision's Call of Duty console games (originally developed by Treyarch) to Apple's handheld device. After a quick joke about how a "post-mortem" was an appropriate exercise for a game about zombies, Clarke got into the nuts and bolts of how Ideaworks went about adapting the game for the iPhone.

The most major feature of the game's development, he said, was the decision last year around this time to sit down and work on prototyping for about six weeks. Nowadays, there are a few successful first person shooters around the App Store, but last year, FPSes were still a new genre for the iPhone, so the team decided to really brainstorm how one would work on a touchscreen.

They started by looking at the original game developed by Activision and Treyarch. Zombies is a extra mode of Call of Duty: World at War that was developed as a "lunchtime project" -- a few developers threw it together on a whim, and enjoyed it so much that they released it as DLC, outside of the original game. So Ideaworks wanted to run with that vibe -- create a game that you could play on your lunch break, or squeeze into a few minutes. They did find that the App Store tended towards more casual and family games, but they didn't feel that the mature game could be successfully translated to a family-friendly format. Instead, they decided to stick with the blood and gore: "Activision," Clarke joked, "said we would have to learn to love our 17+ rating, and live with not releasing in every country in the world."

And they also wanted to create a game with "relaunchability," a term that a developer at Treyarch coined. "What keeps you relaunching the game," said Clarke, "is that, like most zombie games, you don't really win. You're just postponing your inevitable death." He also said that learning became a big function of the gameplay -- the game allows you to defend the same environment against zombies every time, so eventually you learn the best spots to make a stand, and so on.

Before development even started, they created a set of benchmarks in terms of performance and gameplay that they wanted to hit: Twenty zombies felt right for gameplay (you'd only be fighting 10 at any given time, but 10 more would be hanging around in the background), 20 FPS seemed like a good target for speed, 2000 triangles for graphics, and of course two thumbs ("the amount that most people have") for control.

The controls were probably the most interesting part of prototyping -- Clarke says his team really tried to brainstorm an interesting way to control an FPS on the iPhone. The problem, however, was that in an FPS game, you're doing three things (running, looking, and shooting), but you only have two thumbs to do them with. One prototype they created had you tilting the accelerometer around to move (while looking and shooting with two onscreen controls), but for some reason, that made everyone who tested it rather dizzy. In the end, they went with a compromise, including a few different choices: a dual stick standard, an aiming assist system, and even a mode that only slightly uses the accelerometer to look around.

Authenticity was another question -- obviously the iPhone doesn't have the processing power of the latest and greatest consoles, so Ideaworks had to work hard to walk the line between keeping the game running smoothly and keeping it detailed enough to compare to the bigger title. They did a lot of pruning on the original model work, turning geometry into straight textures, and cutting off 3D modeling that couldn't actually be seen by the player (the original team had even modeled tree roots underground, rendered on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, but never actually seen). They did things like not animating enemies when they weren't in the player's line of sight, and just using a sphere for the grenade hit model rather than actually modeling the shape, since it worked just as well. In the end, the iPhone had only about 1/7th of the geometry of the original game, but Ideaworks tried to make it at least look as similar as they could.

Multiplayer was a challenge, but fortunately, Activision had already created an online backend, so when Ideaworks hooked into that system, they were able to put together all of the multiplayer ideas they had (2-player, 4-player, and even a full online system) and then some (host migration was a project one of their engineers threw together in his spare time, and Bluetooth multiplayer was also added in on a whim).

Finally, Clarke shared a few lessons from the game's development. In terms of the controls, they learned that offering a choice to the player is sometimes the right move, and when there is a choice, you usually need to force it at some point (if you hide a different control scheme in the options, most players will never find it). Piracy was something else they learned -- while Clarke was hesitant to speak much about his opinions on piracy, he did say that it was easier to pirate the game than anyone on his team believed, and that in the first days of the release, they saw a significant number of extra users playing than had actually bought the game.

Still, Clarke said that the game had done very well -- they've been high on the App Store's Top Paid list ever since release, and while he didn't mention sales for the main game, he said that the lite version has seen over three million downloads. Clarke's panel offered up an interesting look behind one of the App Store's big name hits.

TUAWGDC 2010: Call of Duty: World at War Zombies postmortem originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Apple

Unit testing refers to a software validation methodology that allows programmers to test individual program units for correctness. It's been an ongoing question in the iPhone developer community as to whether the iPhone's view controller class is testable or not.

In response to these discussions, iPhone developer Jonah Williams has written up a view controller unit testing how-to over at the Carbon Five web blog. His write-up offers examples that show how to incorporate some best practices into your code.

Williams points out how broken NIB bindings are a common problem for iPhone OS applications. To address these issues, he regularly adds simple assertions that test that each IB outlet and action are set properly from inside his view controller class implementations. These assertions check that IBOutlet instance variables are not set to nil and that IBAction targets have been assigned, adding a layer of protection against broken bindings.

Another typical view controller issue involves responding to application memory warnings. To respond, he adds tests that ensure that each view-dependent property gets correctly released and re-created as views unload and then later reload. By building these into test methods, he can execute this behavior on demand, and ensure that the sequence will execute flawlessly in real world conditions.

Finally, Williams discusses view controller interdependencies. Often instances are tightly intertwined, with objects acting as clients for each other. For example, a simple table view controller, living within a navigation controller, might present a detail view via yet another view controller when a row is selected. That's three separate controllers to account for, when you really only want to test one at a time. Williams suggests isolating these view controllers away from their interdependencies to test each component separately and provides examples of how you can do so.

What made Williams' approach pop for me is how he carefully exposes and isolates dependencies for testing. These are features that can otherwise be hard to inspect and validate in the normal course of programming. His write-up is well worth reading through, and provides an excellent jumping off point for investigating view controller unit testing.

TUAWiPhone devsugar: Unit testing for iPhone view controllers originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Gaming, Developer, iPhone, App Store, iPad

We stopped by the Capcom Fight Club party here at GDC 2010 last night, and in addition to playing the new game, we also got to talk to producer Takeshi Tazuka. Actually, we got to talk to his translator -- Tazuka only speaks Japanese, and I only speak English, so the interview was done with a middleman in between.

But even with the language barrier, we did get some good chat in about the new game, Capcom's future plans for the iPhone, and what Tazuka thinks about making a game like this for the iPad. Read on for more.

Thank you for speaking with us, I appreciate it. So, a fighting game on the iPhone -- how did you approach that?

I used to create arcade games, and the equipment is kind of similar to the iPhone.

It's similar? But there's no buttons on it.

It is different. The device is completely different. But the behavior for game users is very similar. When you go to game centers, you want to jump in and play a game spontaneously. And the iPhone is the same thing -- it's like an arcade experience.

What did you think of developing games on the iPhone as a platform? Was it easy, hard?

It's really interesting as a platform because people that play games on the iPhone usually don't have a game console at home. I am interested to see how people react to playing video games on their handheld, not on a full console. It's very interesting. Music fans, and other application fans, they play video games on the iPhone. It's very interesting to see those people playing the games on the iPhone.

Are there other iPhone games that you like?

[Laughs] Except Capcom games?

Right, besides Capcom games of course.

I really like Homerun Battle 3D, it's by this company called Com2us. [Pulls out his iPhone and shows us the Japanese version.]

Have you looked at the iPad at all? Are you interested in developing a game like Street Fighter for the iPad?

I'm very interested.

What would be different than the iPhone game?

The iPad is obviously heavier, so the user experience would be very different. [Motions with thumbs, has trouble holding a bigger device the same way.] Different than using iPhone.

On this game, how did you work on developing the interface to make it easier to use?

There's actually a mode called dojo mode, it's a tutorial or training mode, where you can learn how to improve your technique, brush up your technique, and learn to fight against really hardcore players as well. It doesn't only teach you how to play, it teaches you how to do super combos, hadoken, and how Ryu fights against Ryu, how Guile fights against Ryu. It's learning, dojo style. With this game, the major segment that we're targeting is late 30s. Those people who used to play Street Fighter II big time. So that's why it's a little easier for those people to pick up and play.

Was there anything that you wanted to do that you couldn't do because of the smaller platform?

Because of the memory capacity, we couldn't implement any more than eight characters total. We would have liked to put more characters in there, but the memory is limited.

A lot of people wouldn't have expected Street Fighter to become an iPhone game. Are there any other Capcom games that you'd like to put on the iPhone that people might not expect?

We have a lot of plans. But we can't tell you anything right now. We will try our best to do more than you expect.

Great, we're excited. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

TUAWGDC 2010: Interview with Street Fighter IV producer Takeshi Tazuka originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Deals

The ever-popular MacHeist bundle, offering eight Mac apps for $20 total, closes out at midnight Pacific Time tonight. If you've been on the fence so far about whether or not to buy in this year, two bits of news may push you over the brink.

First, all the initial applications have been unlocked; both Tales of Monkey Island and RapidWeaver are fully present and accounted for. Second, there's been a last-minute addition to the roster; Tweetie for Mac (normally $20 on its own) is now part of the bundle.

If you're Macheisting this year, let us know what you think of the app selection; if not, share your reasons why. (We will accept "I'm saving up for tickets to Tron Legacy" as a valid reason.)

TUAWMacHeist nano bundle adds Tweetie for final day originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Gaming, Software, Developer, iPhone, App Store

As popular as Ngmoco and its games are, whenever we seem to post about them, the subject of their business model seems to rise to the top again. While they have emerged as one of the iPhone's top original developers, they've also lost a lot of fans by sticking with a model they call "freemium," even to the detriment of some of their most popular games. They release games for free, and then monetize the games by using microtransactions, selling both virtual items and virtual currency for real money.

digg_url = "http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/10/gdc-2010-ngmoco-justifies-the-freemium-model/" We have a lot of questions for the company, and we'll be asking even more of them coming later this week. But first things first: we cornered Ngmoco producer Allen Ma here in their suite at GDC 2010 and asked him to try and tell us why Ngmoco is so insistent on "freemium," and how they feel about some of the adverse customer reactions to their model. Read on to hear why free-to-play, pay-to-play-more is the model that they're betting their business on.

When we post about Ngmoco, the first comment on the post is often "Here's Ngmoco trying to steal our money again." What do you think when you see a reaction like that?

It's very, very odd because it's strange to see those moments when our goal as a company is that we want to give you a full game experience for free. That's really what Eliminate is. You can log into Eliminate any time you want, and play the game against anyone else, for free. And it's Quake 3 on the iPhone! So it's very interesting when people go oh they're scamming us because they want us to pay ten to twenty dollars to play through a game experience. That really is not true. Because you can never pay for the game and get the same exact experience.

Well, it's not the same exact experience.

It is, it just takes longer to get there.

That in itself makes it not the same.

Well does it or doesn't it, right? Because I feel like there's a lot of games out there where you're paying to do something faster than someone else. There's a whole black market that exists in World of Warcraft where you can buy a level 80 character for hundreds of dollars. There's this market where people are willing to do that. We're just doing that in a way where it's legitimate and fair to everyone.

Well, but a lot of players frown on that even in World of Warcraft. A lot of players say if you buy a level 80, that's cheating, because the game is designed to be played the other way.

And in Eliminate, we would never let you buy a fully maxed out character, right? In Eliminate specifically, what we're allowing you to do, we're still allowing you to play the game, but we allow you to earn credits at a higher frequency than other people. You still have to play the same amount of games, you can't cheat your way to max level, but in actual total number of days to get there, you're lowering it.

I think another reason that people have an issue with this is that you guys, Ngmoco, have said that you're not even bothering with paid apps. There are some people who are willing to pay for a good experience, they're even willing to pay ten dollars for a solid, worthwhile, whole unlocked version of the game. And Ngmoco is saying we're not doing that, it's all freemium or nothing. What would you say to that?

We're just finding that, with paid, you can't make any money. There's only a handful of companies that are able to charge more than three dollars for a game. Gameloft, EA, Square Enix. Anyone else, they charge more than two bucks, no one's even going to look at their game. There's no way that we could have built Eliminate, for the cost per install or cost per SKU that we would have sold, to actually be able to make back that money in the timeframe that we wanted to. It's funny, because people are saying that they're willing to pay, but when push comes to shove, they're actually not willing to pay. That person that says they're willing to pay $10, they'll probably wait for it to drop to 99 cents before they actually purchase it. What they really want is a $10 game for 99 cents. What we're giving them is a $50 game for free. That's really our stance right now.

When you set out to make these games, even a game like We Rule, are you still thinking about it in the old model of, the premium experience for this is $50, or the premium experience is $10? Is there a "right amount" of money to spend to get the full game, or are you just saying the sky's the limit on the amount of money you should pay?

I think what freemium allows us to do is continually make the game better. So instead of going, OK, you as the user have to take a gamble to see if this game is worth x amount of dollars to you; instead, why don't you come in and try the game. If you like it, throw us a couple of bucks. When you do that, we know that you like that piece of the game, and we'll give you more of that, so that if you continue to like it, we'll keep designing these things, right? The ones that you don't like, we'll stop doing. For example in Eliminate, people really wanted co-op. So we're going to give them co-op, because they're going to keep playing the game. Some of them will continue to keep paying to play the game, and that's encouraging as a developer to keep making it better and better. And this is why World of Warcraft works, right, because users are willing to continue to pay to play the game. Unfortunately, not every game can be as excellent as World of Warcraft where everyone in the world is willing to pay for it. I could point you to a game like Dungeons and Dragons Online, which used to be a regular MMO and now is a free-to-play MMO, and they're saying that they're making like 60-80% more revenue as a free-to-play game than when it was paid. And they're now updating the game way more frequently than they did when it was paid.

So it sounds like you're not even thinking in the old model of, "here's this experience for this amount of money." You're thinking of it as a dialogue, where you pay us for what you like, and we'll return more content. You're not just investing two bucks to speed up your game, you're investing two bucks in the game and in future content.

Yeah. You're paying to support the game, and you're paying to support all of the free players that weren't willing to pay for the game. So when you think about it that way, you're paying so that we can maintain the servers that allow all of the people to play. So again, going back to Eliminate, our game that's working right now, you're paying for the game, so that you can continue to own people that don't pay for the game.

Great, thanks very much.

TUAWGDC 2010: Ngmoco justifies the freemium model originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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