A shortened, slang application.
I’ve been thinking about this question a lot over the past year. It may sound silly given the ubiquity of the word, but despite all the “apps” on our phones and webpages and other devices, I’m not sure we have a good sense of what it means, or what that meaning implies. I was happy to fall upon this nice explanation… read more
A Zero-Player Game
Can’t believe I missed this. Godville is a browser and iPhone game that bills itself as “zero-player,” because, well, play doesn’t require a player. Godville is a massively-multiplayer zero-player game (ZPG), playable in the browser. The gist of the Godville is a parody on everything from “typical” MMO games with their tedious level ups, to internet memes and ordinary day… read more
Let's Laugh at Libertarians
After a few days talking about Marxism here and elsewhere, I figured it would be good to spread my wings and pick on libertarians. Here are two specimens. First, from cartoonist Barry Deutsch comes the 24 Types of Libertarians (or click on the cartoon for a legible version at Deutsch’s site). There’s one variety that’s clearly missing, the Palo Alto-style… read more
How multitasking really works on iOS 4
Despite the fact that I develop for iPhone, I can’t tolerate using beta versions of the OS on my personal device. So it was only last week that I I installed iOS 4 on my iPhone last week. Ever since, I’ve been trying to grasp how the widely-anticipated multitasking feature really works. I understood that actually running a background thread… read more
Apple and the Rhetoric of Change
Now that yet another Steve Jobs keynote is over, I find myself more interested in what Apple was saying about itself than what others are saying about its new gadgets. Despite my apparent pique pommaire, I like Apple stuff. I do my computing on a Mac and I have an iPhone and so forth. But as both a user and… read more
What Gripes about Apple tell us about Computational Literacy
I’ve been watching reactions to Apple’s controversial decision to prohibit the publication of iPhone applications created in environments other than Apple’s own. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g.,… read more
Abstract puzzle games and the mathematical sublime. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra.
I want to discuss two excellent abstract puzzle games for the iPhone: Drop7 by Area/Code and Orbital by Bitforge. But there’s a problem: it’s hard to talk about abstract puzzle games, particularly about why certain examples deserve to be called excellent. Sure, we can discuss their formal properties, or their sensory aesthetics, or their interfaces. We can talk about them… read more
Or, atoms are more memorable than bits
I read this article about alternatives to paper business cards yesterday. It mostly covers electronic alternatives to business cards, from social networking sites like LinkedIn to iPhone apps like Bump. It made me think of when I first met Jouni Mannonen, a Finnish game entrepreneur. We met at the 2003 Game Developers Conference, in the unrivaled San Jose Fairmont hotel… read more
Adds new sound settings, high score reset
Apple has just approved, finally, my latest update to the iPhone version of Guru Meditation (to 1.2). Here are the list of updates as they appear on the iTunes App Store: Added a Sound Mode setting. Options are Requires Quiet, which is the standard mode, Microphone Disabled, which allows the game to be played in louder environments like public transit… read more
Apple Rejects Commodore 64 iPhone App
iPhone developer Manomio has created a slick, feature-packed Commodore 64 emulator for iPhone. The emulator and the five games it ships with are legally licensed. After a year of development, they submitted the program to Apple, who rejected it, citing the following SDK agreement clause: We’ve reviewed C64 1.0 and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone… read more