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League of Legends cracks down on more bad seeds
Riot Games has announced its next level of enforcement for problematic players in the wildly popular League of Legends. After working toward player reform over the last few years, the studio is now looking at a more aggressive approach. In cases of "extreme toxicity" (i.e. racism, death threats, homophobic remarks, etc.), troublesome players can expect a more severe penalty ranging from a 14-day ban to a permanent ban from the game. In the case that an "unfair ban" comes into question, Riot says they will now be fully transparent with chat logs and post the exact log that led to the player's ban. Intentional leavers/AFKers are also a concern for Riot as they plan to address these problems in the future.
WWE 13 review: Gimme a hell yeah
Pro wrestling is all about details. Devoted fans know the nuances of some of the biggest moments in the business' history well, from the formation of the Brothers of Destruction to Stone Cold Steve Austin soaking Vince McMahon in beer. A video game that dives into the rich history of the WWE is forced to reconcile all the details of the entertainment product. WWE 13 often meets those expectations, but is not the best there is, was, or ever will be.Much like past games, WWE 13 continues to push the illusion of wrestling, which is perfectly acceptable. It's a combat game with fighting mechanics, and some of those mechanics have been cleaned up since last year. One-button reversals now have an added indicator to tell you if your trigger finger is too fast or too slow (based on the small window to execute reversals, it often is). The "OMG" moments addition provide spectacular, albeit circumstantial events that can turn the tide of matches – things like trucking an opponent through the outside barrier by the crowd or heavier opponents actually causing the ring to collapse. Aside from these improvements, the in-ring action hasn't seen much change; players seem to transition a little more smoothly between moves, and most of the buggy, "jarring" animations in WWE 12 were cleaned up. Wrestling feels largely the same in this game, just a touch more fluid.%Gallery-167489%
Remote Dictation Smackdown: Which app does the best sending Siri text to a Mac? (Updated)
Update: At the end of the original post, Erica mused about a single-purpose iPhone 4S dictation app; turns out, of course, that there already is one. The $0.99 Remote Dictate, from the makers of Mobile Mouse Pro, works with the same Mac-side server and offers only dictation with no remote mouse/keyboard. We'll grab it and test it out shortly. –Ed. Recently, TUAW posted about how Mobile Mouse could be used with Siri for iPhone-to-Mac remote dictation. While trying it out, I grew annoyed by transposition errors at the start of my text. So I decided to put several similar solutions to the test. What Mobile Mouse Pro ($1.99), RowMote Pro ($4.99), Edovia's TouchPad ($4.99), and Splashtop Touchpad (Free, normally $4.99) have in common is that each app provides a way to send mouse events and key strokes to your Mac. For this post, we decided not to test full screen sharing apps like iTeleport and LogMeIn due to the more extensive set-up involved. (iTeleport offers a similar $0.99 Touchpad Elite app, but we were unable to get a copy in time for this write-up.) To test them, I dictated the same text sample into TextEdit, courtesy of the iTunes Terms and Conditions. To do this, I connected each app to my Mac, opened a standard keyboard, and used the Siri dictation mic to speak this sentence: "You agree not to use or attempt to use the iTunes Store from outside of the available territory." I ran each app three times, and categorized the errors each app made. How did they stack up? Here are the results. Mobile Mouse Pro Setup: Very easy. Install and run the Mobile Mouse Server app, run Mobile Mouse from your iPhone 4S. App detects and announces active app. Dictate at will. Performance: Transcription transposition errors, no default uppercase entry at the start of each sentence. you agree not to use or attempt to use the iTunes store from outside of the available territory. oyu agree not to use or attempt to use the iTunes store from outside of the available territory. oyu agree not to use or attempt to use the iTunes store from outside of the available territory. TouchPad by Edovia Setup: Easy. Enable screen sharing on your Mac. Launch app, and set up VNC-style. Tap pad button, then tap keyboard button, and start dictating. Performance: No default uppercase entry at the start of each sentence. Other than that, it showed no errors with transposition through these tests. you agree not to use or attempt to use the iTunes store from outside of the available territory. you agree not to use or attempt to use the iTunes store from outside of the available territory. you agree not to use or attempt to use the iTunes store from outside of the available territory. Touchpad by Splashtop Setup: Overly difficult. First I had to google my way to find about the Splashtop Streaming app for Mac. That information should have been in the iTunes marketing text. Then I had to authenticate to install what should have been a simple tweak. After that, once I ran the app, I had to enter a security code of at least 8 characters including one letter and one number. Then it kept asking me to give it my Google credentials. C'mon. This isn't supposed to be that hard. Once I made it past that initial setup, I then had to have my iPhone find the service on my local LAN. Despite scanning and scanning, I never got that far. Finally, Mike Rose walked me through entering my system IP address by hand. After a few mismatches with the security code, I finally connected. This took about 20 minutes to get this far. Performance: No default uppercase entry at the start of each sentence. Worst sync performance of all apps tested -- see the first of the three trials in particular. ou agree not to usye or attempt to use the iTunes store from outside of the available territory. oyu agree not to use or attempt to use the iTunes store from outside of the available territory. oyu agree not to use or attempt to use the iTunes store from outside of the available territory. RowMote Pro Setup: Had to authenticate to install server app for the Mac, which runs by itself on login, without an easy to find control panel and uninstallation option. (The uninstall instructions once I found them here at the website were straightforward.) Nicely unintrusive pairing security -- you're shown a short pairing number, and type it in. Overly complex app selection menu on the iOS-side. Performance: Spaces at the start of some sentences, transposition, inappropriate capitalizations. you agree not to use or attempt to use the iTunes store from outside of the availabLe territory. You AGREE NOT TO usE OR ATTEMPT TO use the iTunes store from outSIDE OF THE AVAIlable territory. oyu agree not to use or attempt to use the iTunes store from outside of the available territory Discussion Keep in mind that none of these apps were designed for use with Siri Dictation. It's hard to ding any of them for not perfectly supporting a feature not in their original brief. That said, only Splashtop Touchpad gave us pause. All in all, Edovia's TouchPad performed best and is our current choice for Siri-to-Mac dictation. Although its initial setup took a little longer than some of the other products, native VNC transmission provided smooth uninterrupted text without transposition errors. Once set up, it was quick to re-establish connections on later use. None of these apps were designed specifically for dictation. Instead, their job is to transmit UI events like key presses and mouse movements. That's why none of them responded to the start of the sentence being capitalized. There's an opportunity here for anyone who wants to add "Siri dictation mode" to their existing apps or create a single-purpose app just for that reason. In that mode, you could imagine the app would provide more textfield-entry-style results, allowing toggles for such items as "Cap start of sentence," "Cap each word," and "Auto add end punctuation." I look forward to seeing that kind of functionality moving forward.
Stephen Colbert exposes Siri biases
Stephen Colbert, America's indispensable authority on absolutely everything, decided to put Siri to the test on the Colbert Report to see if he could find an abortion clinic in Manhattan. Not only does he claim he can't find one, but he says it can't understand foreigners either. Well, Stephen, just to prove you wrong, Siri understands my Scouser husband just fine, thank you very much. You'll find the segment below from Colbert Nation, which highlights just how ridiculous the situation has gotten. The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Conservative Siri www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive
Debunked: Ridiculous claims of 'pro-life' bias in Siri (Update: Apple responds)
Update: The New York Times has a response. Natalie Kerris, a spokeswoman for Apple, told them: "These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone. It simply means that as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better, and we will in the coming weeks." Think Progress, Slate, and a whole lot of other outlets are piling it on thick and claiming that Siri's search parameters have a "pro-life" bias because the service has difficulty locating abortion clinics or birth control services in many areas. "Siri's unhelpful and sometimes misleading answers to pressing health questions stand in stark contrast to her prompt and accurate responses to inquiries about nearby escort services," says Think Progress, while Slate goes even farther off the deep end and says, "many around the Web [are] wondering if Siri is pro-life and whether Apple is attempting to impose its morals upon the rest of us." This is a textbook example of sensationalistic media making something from absolutely nothing. If Siri's search parameters function the same way as other services (and I'm almost certain they do), it's likely that in addition to the business name itself, a business will have a cluster of tagged metadata associated with it. Siri's association with Yelp in the U.S. makes this sort of tagging extremely easy for restaurants and other retail services -- searching for something as simple as "hamburgers" or "Target" will return dozens of results in major cities. For other services -- birth control and abortion clinics being two examples -- Siri apparently relies on a much less extensive database than Yelp, with far less comprehensive tagging. All that Think Progress and Slate's "research" shows is that Apple isn't relying upon Google's database for such searches, either; a Google Maps search for "abortion clinic in Washington, D.C." turns up 10 results in the Maps app, while Siri returns only two (apparently invalid) results. If you're the type to leap to your keyboard and pound out a linkbaiting headline before warming up your logic circuits first, then sure, this might look like Apple once again being the "evil Big Brother" that the media's been trying to paint it as for years, this time passive-aggressively shoving a pro-life stance on people searching for women's health services. If you instead insert a couple minutes of logical thought between your fingers and the keyboard, it looks more like Apple's tagging services for Siri are incomplete when it has to source its searches from sources other than Yelp -- which is exactly what you'd expect from a BETA service that's been in widespread public use for less than two months as of this writing. At any rate, the central premise of this handwringing claim that Siri is "pro-life" is easy enough to debunk. Searches for "abortion clinic" or "birth control clinic" return few if any results in most areas, but I found results for "abortion clinic" in Denver, Milwaukee, New York City, and several other cities across the US. A Siri search for "Planned Parenthood" almost always returns results no matter where you search in the States -- because that search is powered by Yelp rather than whatever comparatively limited database Siri is using for more specific searches like "abortion clinic" or "birth control." If Siri is really supposed to be "pro-life" and "imposing morals" on its users, then searches for the politically charged Planned Parenthood clinics would also turn up no results, wouldn't they? Why searches for "abortion clinic" or "birth control" aren't also Yelp-powered is easy enough to discern; searching for "abortion clinic" in Washington, D.C. on yelp.com returns an array of ridiculous results such as "New York New York Salon" (the top result), McDonald's (not kidding), Ebenezers Coffeehouse, and Georgetown University Law Center. That's the downside of a crowdsourced search service. "Why not just source results from Google Maps?" you might ask. That's easy enough to answer: it's probably because Siri is designed to lessen Apple's dependence on its biggest competitor for search services. Does that do users any sort of disservice, especially to the extent that Think Progress and Slate claim? Not particularly, since either the Google-powered Maps app or a Google search within Safari are at most one or two taps away. Going by the hilariously flawed logic in Think Progress and Slate's reporting, I could just as easily say that Apple has a jingoistic pro-American bias because Siri's business and navigational searches only work in the U.S. "OH NOES, Siri can't find places in New Zealand, that must mean Apple hates Kiwis! Quickly Robin, to the Boycottmobile!" About an hour or so after I finished writing the above diatribe against the massive overreaction to this non-event, Apple confirmed to the New York Times that Siri's responses to queries for abortion clinics were a glitch. "These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone," an Apple spokesperson confirmed to the Times. "It simply means that as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better, and we will in the coming weeks." Critical thinking, ladies and gentlemen. It's not difficult. Note: Due to the inevitable storm in a teacup that results anytime anyone mentions the A-word, comments on this post will be heavily moderated. We will not approve comments from either side of the endless debate.
Bethesda denied restraining order against Fallout MMO co-dev Masthead
Legal battles, while academically interesting, are totes boring, even when they carry heavy implications for the future of a franchise, or even the industry as a whole. The monotony can turn something interesting into something no one cares about, so we're thankful that the Honorable John F. Walter has delivered an atomic buster's worth of smackdown to the ongoing case of Bethesda v. Everyone Else. Bethesda had sought a temporary restraining order against Fallout Online co-developer Masthead Studios, claiming that the company had illegally sublicensed Bethesda's intellectual property from Interplay. The court disagrees, however, and has denied Bethesda's ex-parte application, with Judge Walter essentially telling Bethesda that it's made its bed, and now it's going to lie in it: "Plaintiff has not demonstrated that it will be irreparably prejudiced if the requested ex parte relief is not granted, or that it is without fault in creating the crisis that requires ex parte relief. Indeed, Plaintiff was aware as early as February 2011 that Masthead was potentially infringing its copyrights. ... Yet, Plaintiff waited seven months to apply for ex parte relief. The Court finds that Plaintiff unreasonably delayed in seeking relief, and that the emergency that allegedly justifies a TRO is self-created." Yowch. Considering that this is the second injunction request denied of Bethesda since this whole thing began, things are starting to look pretty good for Fallout Online. Is anyone else weirded out by the United States Government actively defending a series based on its complete and total destruction? Just us? Okay.
5 armchair CEOs whose advice would destroy Apple
Steve Jobs has stepped down from his role as Apple's CEO, and Tim Cook has stepped up to the plate. The web has gotten most of its reminiscing out of its system, so now it's time for the wild-eyed and empty-headed analysis! Huzzah! Tim Cook said nothing at Apple is going to change under his leadership, but that hasn't stopped "analysts" from compiling wish lists for Apple's future anyway. Today the tech sector is pretty much bursting at the seams with dunderheads whose advice for Apple ranges from merely misguided to downright tragic. I've singled out five whose advice for Apple's future is so monumentally bad that it's like telling your gullible cousin he should brush his teeth with dog food. I've arranged them in rough order of lunacy. 1. Apple should make a QWERTY iPhone ZDNet's Matthew Miller seems to think that Steve Jobs's departure from Apple means the company will abandon the design philosophy behind its most successful product ever and tack on a physical keyboard. Why? "I think there are millions out there that would love to see an iPhone with a QWERTY keyboard and if Apple can design one as well as it designs the iPhone then it could be the best physical QWERTY keyboard ever and there would be a lot more people who would jump on an iPhone." Umm, okay. This is just a guess, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that "lacks physical keyboard" hasn't been a big factor in the extremely low adoption rates of the iPhone so fa- hahaha, sorry, I couldn't keep a straight face for the rest of that sentence. If you're holding your breath waiting for Apple to slap a physical keyboard on the iPhone, well, I hope for your sake you're not underwater. Putting a physical keyboard on the iPhone would be a back-pedalling decision from a design perspective. Apple's not known for slapping extra things onto its products if it doesn't think most people will need that feature, and gumming up its flagship product with a physical keyboard would set a dangerous precedent. If you're going to do that, why not put a "real" keyboard on the iPad, too? And how about five USB ports, and a 3D camera, and a built-in handle, and a cupholder, and some fuzzy dice? Leave design decisions to the designers. 2. Scott Forstall should run Apple, not Tim Cook From the Department of Insensitive Headlines comes Ed Oswald's "It was time for Steve Jobs to go." I'm not going to dwell on his analysis of the timing of Steve Jobs's departure; instead, let's look at Oswald's plans for Apple's future. "I'm not the biggest fan of Cook at the helm of Apple. I don't really think he is the right person long term," Oswald says. Well, you're entitled to your opinion, I guess, but why not? Oswald says it's because Tim Cook doesn't take center stage the way Jobs did, and from there he decides that means Apple will be run by committee from now on and plunge into the same chaos that doomed it in the 1990s. Who would make a "better" CEO according to Oswald? "If you ask me, I've always been a fan of iOS chief Scott Forstall. The man has impressed me in his increasing number of public appearances at Apple events: he has the charisma, and shares Job's [sic] vision and knows how to express it well. Forstall is the next long-term CEO of Apple, and not Cook." So this is how we gauge a CEO's potential performance: not on the real numbers he turns in, but by his stage presence? Oswald's "analysis" would be a lot easier to swallow if fellow betanews writer Joe Wilcox, who's wrong about Apple far more often than he's right, hadn't pointed out that Apple's revenue has more than tripled in the past two and a half years under Tim Cook's guidance as Chief Operating Officer. Cook has already been in charge of the day-to-day at Apple for a long time, and the company has been more profitable than ever. If Steve Jobs thought Forstall was the better CEO long-term, why did the Apple board (and Steve) build a succession plan around Tim Cook instead? Maybe because Steve Jobs and Apple's board knew far better than Ed Oswald who'd be able to successfully helm Apple once he stepped down? Apple also just awarded Tim Cook one million shares of Apple stock if he stays on until 2021, so there's that. Strap into your safety gear, because it only gets dumber from here. 3. Apple should become less secretive Popular Mechanics' take on the matter is the opening salvo in a trifecta of wooly-headed calls for more "openness" from Apple. According to Glenn Derene, the company "must be more open about upcoming products. And to be honest, it's not even clear that Apple's secrecy gives them any tangible business advantage." You're absolutely right. I'm sure that pre-announcing products months in advance, then being forced to delay the shipping date later is a far better business strategy. I mean, look how well it's worked for Microsoft! And given that companies like Samsung are already shamelessly aping Apple's designs, I'm sure that problem won't get worse at all if Apple lifts the veil of secrecy surrounding its future products. Derene also advises that Apple should be less "vindictive" from here on out, and of all things, he cites Apple's blacklisting of Gizmodo as an example of that vindictiveness. Gizmodo, the outlet that paid several thousand dollars for stolen property, dismantled it for the world to see, blackmailed Apple into admitting the device was real before returning it, and then had the gall to publicly humiliate the engineer who lost it in the first place. If enacting media sanctions and pursuing legal action against them is "vindictive," Derene probably would've called me genocidal if I'd been in any position to pursue my own ideas for punitive actions against Gizmodo. For an encore, Derene says Apple should "stop being so full of itself," and basically attacks every facet of the company that gets people excited about its products. Sure, Apple could stop advertising itself and its products as "special" to its customers, but why should it? It is, and they are. 4. Apple needs to open up Proving once again that she's never met a free/open source (and legendarily consumer-hostile) operating system she didn't like, PCWorld's Katherine Noyes says "Rather than maintain its completely closed and locked-down approach to the technologies it makes, the time is right for Apple to open up." I know to a Linux enthusiast every nail looks like it needs to be pounded with an open-source hammer, but does that really mean you have to cite MacDefender as evidence that Apple needs to be more "open" than it is? You remember MacDefender, right? The harbinger of the end of Apple's "free ride" when it comes to malware? I know my antivirus logger on my Mac has been going nuts since then -- wait, no it hasn't. And let's not forget that the "open" mobile platform Android has been getting slammed with malware, while the "locked down" but equally popular platform iOS has -- wait for it -- absolutely none. Kind of kicks that "security through obscurity" argument right in the chestnuts, doesn't it? Noyes also argues that Apple's vertical integration has worked against compatibility and interoperability. I apologize if you just did a spit-take all over your keyboard. I'm sure she can't be talking about interoperability amongst Apple's own products, because that's unassailable even by the thickest of skulls. Instead, she's probably talking about interoperability with PCs, which leads me to think she's stuck in that late-90s world that so many pundits seem to be trapped in, where Macs can't read .doc files and can't network with PCs in any meaningful way -- you know, the kinds of legacy issues that haven't been actual, current problems for the better part of a decade. She also argues that Apple's "closed strategy just isn't going to be sustainable over time" without providing a single number for evidence. I've got some numbers for you to go look up when you've got some free time: Linux's profitability as an "open" platform versus Apple's profitability with two "closed" platforms. Linux's marketshare among non-server consumers versus Apple's. The amount of money "open" Android has made for Google (not handset manufacturers) versus the amount iOS has made for Apple. I don't know where the Linux guys and gals picked up the idea that "free as in beer" would somehow translate into billions of dollars, or that "free as in speech" would mean greater platform security, but the past decade or so of evidence is not exactly on your side. A drum roll now for the worst advice I've heard today, and possibly all year: 5. Apple should license iOS I'll let Ken Goldberg speak for himself before I beat him with a shovel refute his points: Extending the reach of iOS beyond iPhones and iPads is a real opportunity to dominate the ecosystem of appliance devices. It would unleash the creative force of thousands of developers who meet secretly all over the world and perform monthly druid rituals hoping to influence the Spirits to open up iOS. The fire wardens are getting testy, Tim. Let's just get this done! Make iOS even more pervasive, and make your mark! You know that old saying, "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it?" Do you remember what happened the last time Apple licensed its OS to third parties? It damned near killed the company. It's arguably the worst decision Apple made in its entire history. Once Mac OS was available on cheap, crappy clones, guess what happened? People stopped buying Macs! It's been a while since I've heard the "Apple should license (x)" argument. It used to be a regular thing with Mac OS X, but that's died down in the past couple years. Even in the early days of iOS, before Android started taking off, people were clamoring for Apple to license its mobile OS to third-party handset manufacturers. And really, why shouldn't Apple undercut its own hardware business by allowing its OS to run on less expensive and inferior products? After all, it's not as though Apple's low PC marketshare is doing it any favors (other than being the most profitable company in that market), and it's not like the iPhone is bringing in any money for Apple compared to what Android's bringing in for Google. Right? But for the sake of argument, let's say Apple follows Goldberg's advice and licenses iOS to third parties. Here's what happens next: Handset manufacturers initially say "no thanks" to iOS because Android is "free." Then they realize, wait, MONEY. iOS runs on fifty disparate devices rather than less than a dozen. Developing for iOS becomes a fresh hell thanks to device fragmentation. Customers blame Apple when their $99 LG POS can't run Infinity Blade. Predictably, a class action lawsuit ensues. Half as many people -- or less -- pay $199 for an iPhone when they can pay $99 for an LG POS instead. Apple's profit share from iOS devices goes down the tubes. Apple's stock tanks. Wired runs a cover story with an Apple surrounded by thorns and two words: "PRAY. AGAIN." Without Steve Jobs to save Apple again, the company really does die. Apple is a hardware company. Unlike Microsoft's software hegemony, Apple makes the overwhelming majority of its profits on selling tangible products: iPhones, iPads, and Macs, in roughly that order. How much money does Google make off of Android? Considering it doesn't charge anything to license Android, virtually all of Google's mobile platform profits come from advertising. In a year, those profits are roughly equal to what Apple makes in three months, just from the iPhone. Meanwhile, Google has recently paid $12.5 billion to acquire Motorola, probably in order to shield itself from patent attacks on Android. This means that as of today, Android is essentially a net loss for Google and will be for years to come. That's the company strategy Goldberg wants Apple to emulate. I'm gonna go with "No" on this one. Here's my advice for Apple and its new CEO: stick with what you've already said. Don't change a thing, and for all our sakes, don't listen to any of these people telling you what you "should" or "must" do, because it's five slices of wrong in a dipstick sandwich.
Blurrycam Theatre Presents: The i(have too much free time)Phone 5
Usually, tipsters looking to prank us with a faked shot of an unreleased Apple product will send us something like the fake iPod classic we saw a few months ago. You know, the classic Blurrycam shot, where it's obvious that A) the tipster has no idea how to use his camera's focus, and B) also has no idea how to use Photoshop. But today's subject went above and beyond. First off, he didn't stop at sending us a single image of a faked iPhone 5 -- he sent us a full-fledged video. The purported story behind this video is that Apple fouled up somehow and managed to accidentally include a hidden link to the iPhone 5 on its Swiss website. Ludicrous? Absolutely. But if you suspend disbelief for a bit and watch anyway, the video shows our tipster navigating through this secret site, flicking through galleries of a quite convincing-looking iPhone 5 and even a comprehensive tech specs page. The whole thing looks like a lot of effort went into it, with near-professional quality renders of the supposed iPhone 5. Frankly, it's the best fake I've ever seen -- and it was good enough to hoodwink some other sites that have posted it as a legitimate leak. A good fake, however, remains a fake; there are several clues to the faux-ness throughout the video, and they aren't exactly hard to find. First off, check out the URL in the address bar during the opening split second of the video. Busted. Rather than a standard http:// address, the video kicks off with a file:// prefix -- meaning the browsing wasn't of a website hosted on a server, but instead a collection of local files on Peter's desktop. This is an immediate tipoff that the whole thing is fake. All our tipster had to do was edit out this one second of video, and he might not have burnt all his credibility from the word "Go." (And I'm sure it's a total coincidence that the first person to send this video to us was named Peter.) Any other clues this video might be fake? Oh yeah. There's the random string of characters between www.apple.com/chde and iphone5 in the URL -- the current Swiss site for the iPhone 4 is a simple www.apple.com/chde/iphone. There's clumsy typesetting on the iPhone 5 logo. The "hero" images don't autoscroll the way they do on Apple's real site. The gallery's background is grey instead of black. Screenshots of the phone show "No Service" in the status bar -- a great way to advertise a mobile phone, right? The time in the status bar reads 8:07 AM rather than Apple's traditional 9:41. Battery percentage is showing, too, which Apple doesn't show off in its product shots. The forehead-slapping "duh" moment comes in when you see that all of the apps in the gallery shots have English names... on a Swiss site. Oops. The iPhone 5. iPhone without the phone. This changes everything. Peter really went overboard on his tech specs page, with what looks to be carefully-calculated dimensions for an iPhone 5 with a 4.2-inch touchscreen at 275 ppi. The camera has been upgraded to 8 megapixels and 1080p video, and capacity is bumped to 32 or 64 GB. In all, it's a laundry list based off all the rumors we've heard so far, but it falls flat on at least one detail. The tech specs on Peter's page list iTunes 9.2 as the minimum required version for the iPhone 5, and we know full well that iTunes 10.5 will be the earliest version of iTunes that iOS 5 will support. Also, he's missing photos and descriptions of the top and bottom ends of the supposed iPhone 5; I guess he just forgot those? The thing is, I actually like Peter's renders of the iPhone 5 -- I'd be neither surprised nor sad if the device looks similar to them -- but trying to pass this off as a "leak" is what's prompted me to poke fun at him. If he'd sent us these pics and said something like, "Hey, check out my iPhone 5 renders, do you think they're pretty close?" we might have taken him more seriously. But trying to put one over on us (and the rest of the Apple-centric web) this way gets you inducted into the Blurrycam Hall of Shame. We hope that publishing this rundown means our more easily misled readers will stop sending us his video as a tip.
Expensive corn dogs, plus 10 other things that are totally Apple's fault
Seattle Times columnist Brier Dudley speculates that we should expect the price of corn dogs to skyrocket from US$0.99 to $1.50 each. Since Dudley's report, U.S. financial markets have been in a tailspin over the news. Who does financial speculator Dudley say we should blame for the rising price of corn dogs? Steve Jobs. Of course. It all fits. You see, according to Dudley, small business owners enamored with the iPad will use any excuse they can find to justify owning one. "It'll help my business be more productive," corn dog vendors will say, but Dudley says this is a trap: These hapless souls will be snared into Apple's annual cycle of iPad upgrades, forcing them to shell out thousands of dollars in costs per year. Following basic economic principles, Dudley therefore expects those rising operating costs to be passed on to consumers. Therefore, you'll be paying half again as much for your corn dogs as you were last year, and it's all because Apple has hypnotized everyone into buying iPads whether they need them or not. I know you want seconds on the corn dogs, but there's no reason to shout. Dudley has no idea how deep the rabbit hole really goes. Corn dogs are only the beginning. Put on your aluminum thinking caps and follow along as I unveil the true extent of Apple's nefarious plans for world domination. We're through the looking glass here, people. 1. Brain cancer Did you know the iPhone is the most dangerous cell phone ever? Dr. Joseph Mercola sounded the warning two years ago, but nobody listened. Now, every time you send your Angry Birds high score to Game Center or FaceTime with your grandparents, you're not just getting a dose of endorphins from your brain's pleasure center -- you're also soaking up neuron-killing microwaves! Everybody panic! 2. Hearing loss iPod use causes deaf- I SAID, IPOD USE CAUSES DEAFNESS. Those white earbuds are basically the aural equivalent of staring directly at the sun during an eclipse; experts all say don't do it, but you just couldn't listen, could you? I SAID, YOU JUST COULDN'T- oh, forget it. 3. Unemployment The iPad is a job killer! You know it has to be true, because a Congressman said so. Those guys know how to kill jobs. Digital downloads are causing stores like Borders to shut down, and it's all Apple's fault! Damn its wildly popular iBookstore! But there's another underhanded scheme behind U.S. unemployment at work here... 4. Underage Chinese labor Apple uses child labor! They admitted it! Hundreds of thousands (11) of tiny (15-year-old) hands built your iPhone in terrible factory conditions. Next time you unlock your iPhone, think about how all eleven of those 15-year-old Chinese workers were unable to unlock themselves from Foxconn's chain gang (until Apple found out about them, anyway). And as we all know, no one else makes products at Foxconn's doom factories; once again, it's all Apple's fault. 5. Addiction Frankly, it wouldn't matter if Apple's products were manufactured by bipedal, enslaved factory-worker kittens genetically engineered to be as sympathetically cute (and productive) as possible. Why? Because Apple has us all addicted to the iPhone. That's the core of the company's grand scheme right there: create products so compelling that we can't put them -- hang on, checking my Twitter stream -- down. Apple purposefully designed the device to be compelling for only 12-14 months, however, which means by the time the next one comes out, the iPhone you have will feel like a useless piece of junk. All part of Apple's plans to keep you in... 6. Poverty Apple doesn't give away software upgrades like Snow Leopard or Lion for free to people running older operating systems. And you know what that means? Well, it means you have to pay for them! That's money that could've gone toward rent or getting braces for little Suzie, but nooooo... greedy old Apple insists on charging money for its products! It doesn't help matters that Apple intentionally breaks its older products to get you to buy new ones, then purposefully engineers basic flaws in its newer products in order to force you to buy accessories! Where does it all end? To the mines with you! 7. Crime Four years ago, the NY Daily News determined that the iPod was singlehandedly responsible for a nationwide crime wave. But did we listen? Of course not! And four years later, now that Apple makes products even more desirable than the iPods of old, crime is higher than ever. 8. Climate change Apple's leading the charge into cloud-based computing, but as Greenpeace wisely pointed out last year, clouds cause shifts in climate! All those data centers have to get their power from somewhere. Apple hasn't yet figured out how to transmute cash directly into electricity, which I suppose is lucky for coal plants run by people who turn electricity into cash. It's unlucky for the rest of us, though -- those of you in coastal cities had better buy waterproof cases for your iPhones. You know what's craziest about this? Al Gore is on Apple's board of directors! The guy who brought the whole climate change thing into the limelight! It really IS a conspiracy! 9. Espionage "Big Brother is watching you." It's more than a line from George Orwell's 1984, it's the literal truth. Underground bunkers buried deeply beneath Cupertino monitor your every move via the iPhone in your pocket. From atop his throne built entirely from $1000 bills, Steve Jobs sits before a bank of 10,000 Apple Cinema Displays that let him know, at any moment of his choosing, exactly when you start playing Flight Control in the bathroom. Oh sure, Apple says they never used that data for anything, and they say they've fixed the "bug," but that's exactly what you'd expect them to say, isn't it? 10. War Apple has declared war on everything. War on Flash. War on Google. War on Amazon. War on Samsung. War on Microsoft. War on Nintendo and Sony. War on publishers. War on developers. War on users. War on Porn! An entity willing to go to war with so many combatants, simultaneously, can only have one goal in mind: total, global domination. We've grown so used to reading the headline snippet, "Apple declares war on (x)," that it's unlikely we'll notice at all when (x) turns out to be "humanity." And how are we supposed to stop Apple when it rises, gargantuan, monolithic, from its long slumber beneath Cupertino's bedrock to enslave us all? How can we battle against Apple and its legions of underaged factory workers when we're all addled with brain cancer, deaf, unemployed, poor, terrified of crime, swimming for high ground, and so addicted to our iDevices that we don't even notice when they report our locations to the Thought Police? How, dear comrades, can we win the day without corn dogs?
The perils of bashing an OS you've never used
I've been running OS X Lion for about 24 hours now. I knew what to expect before installing it thanks to months of coverage, but that was no substitute for actually diving through Lion's features firsthand. After a day of getting used to new features like Mission Control, fullscreen apps, Resume, and various other tweaks to my Mac's OS, I've grown to enjoy Lion far more than any version of OS X before it. That's not to say it's been 100 percent smooth sailing. I turned the iOS-inspired, systemwide autocorrect off immediately after the first boot up into Lion, because a feature that's a godsend on a touchscreen would drive me (and most competent typists) absolutely insane on a "real" keyboard. I disabled the inversed, "natural" trackpad scrolling right away, too, but I've decided to give it one more chance to work its counterintuitive magic on my muscle memory. Some of the trackpad gestures don't work all that well on my pre-unibody MacBook Pro -- the gesture for showing the Desktop works maybe 25 percent of the time -- and some of the other gestures occasionally bug out in Safari and stop working. I'm also not a fan of the "dumbing down" the Finder's sidebar has received; in Snow Leopard I had several default saved searches in the sidebar that let me access files based on history, but those went away in Lion, I've had to rebuild them from scratch, and they still don't work quite as well as they did in 10.6. The one common thread running through all these gripes? They're coming from someone who's actually used Lion. I can speak with some authority on what I like or dislike about Apple's newest OS, because I've spent most of my waking hours since the launch playing around with it (much to my wife's chagrin). Some people who've also used Lion have laundry lists of complaints that are even longer than mine, with a handful of reviewers from (ahem) bastions of impartial Apple-related journalism (/ahem) like Gizmodo panning it thoroughly. All snark aside, even though I disagree with the bulk of their review, at least it's coming from the point of view of someone who's actually used Lion. It's far harder for me to wrap my head around screeds like this one from a TUAW reader: Coming from a Windows PC I moved to the Mac about 2 years ago, and up to now I didn't regret it at all. But what I now read about Lion makes me think that Apple is no better than Microsoft in telling people how they should use a computer. I call that arrogance, and I hate arrogance. Apple should not tell their users how to work, they should assist them with their work. I hope that Lion will be made more user friendly very soon, otherwise Snow Leopard may be the last Mac OS I will ever use. Did you see the key text in that quote? If not, here it is: "What I now read about Lion." If you believe everything you read about Lion, then like everything else Apple does the OS is merely a conspiracy from Big Brother Steve Jobs to lock down your computers all 1984-style, but so subtly that the Kool-Aid-drinking masses won't even notice as they line up, iSheep all, to plunk down money for overpriced and over-hyped hardware that would cost half as much from any other company even though it's far less functional than a ThinkPad running the latest Linux distro. (Gasp, gasp... did I miss any clichés? Oh, wait, I forgot to call you all fanbois. There, done.) Judging something as complex as a computer's operating system solely by what you read is a fool's errand (even if it's book-length). I'll happily talk smack about any version of Windows from XP on down to 3.1.1, because I've used (and despised) them all. But I don't go out of my way to bash Windows 7, because I haven't used it. Same story with Android; I may get my jollies smacking down the common memes associated with Android's supposed dominance over iOS, but my practical experience with actually using Android can be measured in minutes, so I'm far from qualified in saying, unequivocally, that Android sucks and no one should use it, ever. That's why I find pieces like this one from Dan Gillmor particularly puzzling. He claims that his current Mac will almost certainly be his last one because buying a new MacBook Air would force him to run Lion, and 10.7 "is far too new for me to trust as my primary OS." That's half of a fair statement; if you've got mission-critical stuff running on your Macs, running a day-old operating system on it may be unwise. Maybe wait for the first couple bug-fix updates, then take the plunge. He also mentions the lack of Rosetta, which we've acknowledged may block the big cat for some users. But why the big leap from "Lion is too new" to "Last. Mac. Ever?" This wouldn't be a big issue if I liked Lion more. Some of the changes look terrific, based on reviews. Others are more questionable, even though they're designed to create a more modern structure -- in itself a worthy objective but not when forced on users who have become accustomed to perfectly workable earlier methods. (Emphasis mine) Again, we have someone who's apparently decided Lion is the Devil in digital robes without actually using it. He doesn't elucidate any of the changes he finds so questionable, but if his biggest complaint against Lion is that the user interface has changed compared to Snow Leopard's, he's right that it's changed but (mostly) wrong that the changes are a bad thing. Both Gillmor and our unnamed tipster are complaining about how apparently non-user-friendly Lion is (it must be emphasized again, based on reviews, not personal experience), but Lion is probably the most user-friendly desktop OS I've ever used. If you want brain-dead simple, feature-deprived but so basic even my 91-year-old grandpa could understand it, Lion has Launchpad. If you want middle-of-the-road in terms of usability, features, and ease of use, you have full-screen apps. Semi-advanced usage, hey, the Finder is still there, still confusing as ever to novice users and still frustrating as ever to the mega-geeks who crave UI consistency. As someone who knows just enough about power user features to be a danger to myself and others, Mission Control rocks my face off with its features. And finally, for the über-nerds, Terminal is the same stolid UNIX-y text interface it's been since the 1970s. Gillmor's core complaint against Lion? It's "plainly designed to push Mac users into a more iPad/iPhone-like ecosystem, where Apple gives you permission to use the computers you buy in only the ways Apple considers appropriate. The writing has been on Apple's wall for some time. It's aiming for absolute authority over the ecosystem in which all its devices operate." In other words, it's the "Steve Jobs Big Brother 1984" meme dressed up in a rented tuxedo. The Mac App Store is the harbinger of a future where only Apple-approved apps will run on your Mac. Inversed "natural" scrolling, fullscreen apps, and Launchpad are Apple's way of brainwashing us all into buying iPads and iPhones. Macs and iPads living together, MASS HYSTERIA. "By rejecting its past so thoroughly -- a proud history of creating devices that we users could modify for our own purposes with no one's permission but our own -- Apple is forcing me to move on," Gillmor says. I don't know if he's been paying attention for the past decade, but user-modifiable devices haven't been Apple's forte since the late 90s. You can't even swap out the batteries on Apple's notebooks without a trip to the Genius Bar, and the whole idea that you can build your own Mac out of off-the-shelf parts is one that's been dead for a long time for all but the most dedicated, persistent, and above all masochistic of hobbyists. Let's say he's talking about the software, and not the hardware. It is, after all, Lion's purported intransigence that's driving Gillmor away from the platform. For someone who espouses Linux (of all things) as a viable alternative to OS X, he doesn't seem to give much credit to the OS X Terminal, or the Mac's ability to run Windows (or even Linux!). I don't know a chmod from a grep without Google holding my hand, but I can still do things in the OS X Terminal that simply aren't practical (or, often, possible) in the Finder. I wouldn't install Windows on my MacBook Pro unless someone paid me (a lot) to do it, but I know full well that I can. It's not as though tripping the Lion fantastic is a difficult proposition. For US$30, you can download it and see for yourself whether it's Jobs's Gift to Mac Users or The Death Knell of OS X. You don't even have to change out of your "play clothes" and drive to the Apple Store in order to get Lion. Stay home, stay in your bathrobe, download Lion, and at least give the thing a 24-hour spin before you decide that it's bad enough to warrant leaping wildly onto a Linux-chugging ThinkPad. Remember when you were six years old, and you insisted that you HATED broccoli, and your mom said, "How do you know you hate it if you've never tried it?" It's pretty much the same principle here, guys.
iTunes, Tiger, and irrational ire: The difference between updates and upgrades
Update: After we posted this story, reader Nate emailed us to suggest that if you find yourself in Rupert Jones' shoes (with a new iOS device that requires Leopard/iTunes 10 for sync support, but still running Tiger on your Intel Mac), call AppleCare. He says that Apple's support team will ask you for your iPhone/iPad/iPod touch serial number... and then send you a copy of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, free of charge. No word on whether this is official policy or merely an ad-hoc accommodation, and it's possible that the upgrade deal is only available to US customers, but it's worth a shot. --- Rupert Jones of the Guardian recently discovered -- to his utter shock and dismay -- that his four-year-old MacBook running a nearly four-year-old OS can't run current software without being upgraded. His MacBook runs Tiger, which means he can't run iTunes 10, which further means he can't sync with any of Apple's latest portable gear. Anyone reading this probably knows the next step: pay to upgrade to Leopard, download iTunes 10, and get on with your day/week/life. In fact, I'm willing to bet that our readers knew about OS X Leopard when it first launched in late 2007, and chose an upgrade path long ago, whether it was buying Leopard on a disc or upgrading to a new Mac with the OS pre-installed. Most of you probably also moved up to Snow Leopard when it launched, or within a few months. Rupert Jones didn't do either of those things. In the three and a half years since OS X Leopard's release, he chose to stick with an older iteration of Mac OS X. And four years later, he's blaming Apple for his inability to run current software or sync with current hardware. According to Jones, Apple is "penalizing" him and "thousands of other loyal customers," and not enabling iTunes 10 to run on older versions of Mac OS X amounts to telling these customers their computers are obsolete. "It seems we have been left with gadgets we can't use, unless we pay more money for a software update," Jones opines. There's a basic problem underlying this argument: like many people, Jones apparently doesn't understand the difference between a software update and an upgrade. That difference is usually simple, and it boils down to dollars. Updates are (mostly) free. Upgrades are (mostly) not.
Four Android myths lazy analysts love
The more I read about the tech sector, the more it becomes clear that "analyst" is synonymous with "stand-up philosopher," which Mel Brooks fans will know is the same thing as an artist who works in a decidedly unsavory medium. This is never more clear than when an outlet like Nielsen releases numbers on the US smartphone market, because immediately afterward legions of "analysts" will leap to the dumbest conclusion possible: Android is ascendant, and Apple is doomed! Dead in the water! DOOOOOMED! In support of that entirely boneheaded thesis, I've noticed a pattern: these "analysts" keep using the same four myopic arguments. All four of these myths dance around a central point, that the smartphone market will only have one "winner," and it sure won't be Apple. The worst part of these analysts' outlandish claims isn't that the arguments are so easily dismantled, it's that so many otherwise intelligent people completely fall for them. Ever since the HTC Dream came out I've seen people jumping up and down and saying, "That's it for Apple, they're done! Android is going to eat your lunch, sorry fanboys!" The fact that it's two and a half years later and that still hasn't happened is no deterrent to the Android faithful, or the lazy analysts who egg them on in the first place. It's honestly getting kind of painful to watch this happen every month, especially since the analysts keep saying the exact same things every time. Read on for the four Android myths that contribute to these analysts' narrow views.
Lawsuit pending over iPhone 3G's iOS 4 performance issues
By now it's no secret that the iPhone 3G's performance suffered tremendously following the iOS 4 update. Soon after widespread reports of stuttering, freezing, and crashing, Apple said it would "look into" the problem. A month went by with no relief for iPhone 3G performance issues, but Steve Jobs himself promised a software update was coming "soon" -- and "soon" turned out to be a couple weeks later. With the release of iOS 4.1, the iPhone 3G's performance issues under iOS 4 finally disappeared. Those two months or so were hell for iPhone 3G owners, but reports (and our own personal experiences) indicate that the 4.1 update resolved most, if not all performance issues. That's not good enough for California resident Bianca Wofford, however, who is filing a class action lawsuit against Apple over the iPhone 3G's performance. Her claim? "In essence, Apple knowingly and intentionally released what it called a system software 'upgrade' that, in fact, made hundreds of thousands of the Third Generation iPhones (sic) that were exclusively tethered to AT&T data plans 'useless' for their intended purpose." Let's ignore for the moment the lawsuit's issue with terminology (the iPhone 3G is the second-generation iPhone) and concentrate instead on its core claim. Wofford's lawsuit alleges that Apple knowingly and intentionally released an OS update that would render the iPhone 3G and 3GS "useless" in order to pump up sales of the new iPhone 4. That particular theory got thrown around quite a bit on the internet during the early weeks of the iPhone 3G under iOS 4 debacle, but does the claim hold up? Well, maybe... but only if you think Apple's "evil geniuses" have intellects comparable to Wile E. Coyote's. For more juicy bits from the law brief itself (hat tip to Wired), grab your tinfoil and click "Read More."
TUAW Fact Check: Apple using underage labor? No.
When a lot of people get their news electronically, skimming over headlines through news aggregators, RSS feeds, and retweets on Twitter, sometimes the majority of information people will get from an article comes from the headline. When a headline leans towards the sensational side, or doesn't accurately reflect the information that's actually contained in the article, it's easy for poorly-represented news to spread like wildfire. This article from the UK's The Daily Telegraph, regarding Apple's self-initiated audit of its overseas manufacturing facilities, is a perfect example, with its attention-grabbing headline: "Apple Admits Using Child Labour." The sub-headline isn't any better: "Apple has admitted that child labour was used at the factories that build its computers, iPods and mobile phones." Once a person reads those words, his or her knee-jerk reaction is most likely going to be one of disgust and horror. "How could you, Apple?" they might say. If this hypothetical reader owns a Mac or an iPhone, their eyes might glance over at it with anguished guilt; if they don't own any products from Apple, it's just one more reason not to buy them. If you dig beyond the headline, however, to the meat of the Telegraph's article, where the actual reporting finally begins? Then you get a completely different story as early as the first sentence: "At least eleven 15-year-old children were discovered to be working last year in three factories which supply Apple." That's pretty far from the image conjured by the headline, of legions of school-aged children lined up in factories and slapping together MacBook Pros when they should be slapping together algebra homework. Instead, we find a relatively small number of teenaged factory workers -- reprehensible, but not unusual at all for overseas factories. The end of this first sentence is even more important, because it puts the focus where it belongs: three factories which supply Apple. Two paragraphs later, we find another very important bit of news not reflected in the headline: "Apple said the child workers are now no longer being used." Other news sites performed better reporting on the matter, but at least one still had an easily misinterpreted headline. Read on to find out more.
10 reasons to pass on the iPad? TUAW fact check
Over at TechRepublic's 10 Things blog, Debra Littlejohn Shinder has posted an article called "10 reasons why I'll be passing on the iPad." Some of her reasoning is sound, but quite a few of her points are easy to refute. It's worth looking at her post and the points it tries to make, because it's indicative of a widespread misunderstanding of not only the iPad's capabilities, but also its intended consumer base. 1. There's no physical keyboard Debra's correct that the iPad has no physical keyboard. But what she fails to account for is that not only will Apple sell a keyboard dock for the iPad, the device can also be paired with any existing Bluetooth keyboard. Apple's reasoning for not including a physical keyboard on the iPad is even more compelling than for the iPhone, because unlike the iPhone, you at least have the option of pairing the iPad with a physical keyboard. In order to put a physical keyboard on the device itself, there'd be two options: keep the iPad the same size and sacrifice a third of the screen's real estate, or increase the iPad's size beyond what some (including Debra) already consider unwieldy in order to include a keyboard. In landscape orientation, the iPad's virtual keyboard is nearly the size of a conventional keyboard, too, so while touch typing is going to be a challenge, it's a fair bet that typing on the iPad will be much faster and easier than the high end of 30 - 35 WPM thumb typing many people (myself included) achieve on the iPhone's far smaller keyboard. The lack of a physical keyboard on the iPhone hasn't measurably affected its sales; the iPad isn't likely to suffer many lost sales from this, either. (Note: a few people have asked for a source on the Bluetooth keyboard issue, particularly my assertion that you can use any BT keyboard and not just Apple's wireless models. During her hands-on with the iPad following the device's announcement, Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica verified that "You can use any bluetooth keyboard you want, instead of Apple's keyboard dock. You could use the case/stand with your existing bluetooth keyboard. You cannot use a bluetooth mouse, however.") Check out the other nine points by clicking the Read More link below.
Apple giving huge discounts on Black Friday? No way!
The boy geniuses over at Boy Genius Report are getting a lot of hits out of a story they ran late yesterday. Apparently, one of their contacts tipped them to a "shot of Apple's yearly Black Friday deals" that is "reported to be something Apple will email out shortly." The email (seen at right, pasted with an editorial comment from yours truly) shows alleged discounts of up to 30% on all iPods (excluding iPhone or iPod shuffle), up to 25% on all Macs, and up to 15% on all accessories, Apple software, and Apple hardware. This will only happen on November 27th and apparently "select" Apple stores will open at 6 AM. Well, most of us here at TUAW are pretty sure this is a fake. A compelling fake, mind you, but an utter fabrication. Why? First reason -- Apple almost never discounts their products, other than selling refurbished equipment on the cheap. That's part of the reason that the company is so successful and has the highest margins in the personal electronics and computing world. Discounts of "up to 25% on all Macs" are an Apple fanboy's most exciting dream (next to the iTablet, of course), but we doubt if the Cupertino Kids would discount anything more than 5%. Reason two -- Apple Stores are, for the most part, hugely popular anyway. Apple doesn't need to drag in customers on Black Friday by enticing them with wicked discounts. Let's face it, most of the Apple Stores are going to be packed on November 27th, so why would Apple want to create traffic jams and general hysteria by doing something like this? Hell, most of the Apple retail employees would probably quit during Black Friday, leaving the company in the lurch for the rest of the holiday season. Number three -- Historical precedence shows that Apple usually provides discounts on Black Friday, but not as big as BGR is indicating. In 2006, Apple provided free shipping to shoppers at the online store. Last year, Best Buy discounted up to US$150 on Macs and Apple matched that, but there was no steenkin' 25% discount. And finally, reason number four -- Apple's probably not going to send out anything with that much blank space at the top of it. They're too picky about design. They don't want someone to have to scroll down through an email to read the discounts, even if there is an Apple logo floating around at the top of the email. How sure are we that this isn't going to happen? Well, if it actually happens the way Boy Genius Report says it will, I'll wear a Boy Genius Report baseball cap (provided by BGR, of course) for four hours at Macworld Expo 2010 and give you guys some free advertising. TUAW readers -- what do you think about the discounts? Are they going to happen or not?
All the way live: Red Bull BC One
Red Bull BC One has little to do with the energy drink in its title and more to do with the Red Bull-sponsored international breakdancing competition, a series of b-boy battles presenting the best of the best break-boys from around the world. In addition to announcing a DS extension of the tournament, publisher Playlogic released a batch of screenshots (hit the gallery below) and an online demo (browser plugin required).Despite the game's questionable art direction and insipid dialogue -- in one of the custcenes, a faceless challenger yells out, "Chiggidy check yourself before you wreck yourself," I kid you not -- the demo is fun and easy to pick up. Players connect groups of like-colored dots with the touchscreen, racing to form geometrical shapes against a time limit to execute moves. If you watched Step Up 2 and have felt compelled to "bust a move" while T-Pain croons a song about girls wearing "boots with the fur" ever since, this title is for you!Red Bull BC One promises a plethora of customization options, 100+ dance animations, and "WFi multiplayer levels." According to the screenshot above, the game will also feature characters modeled after movie monsters. %Gallery-19997%
WWE readies Smackdown's switch to HD next year
Ready for pro wrestling in 1080i? It's getting closer, as the WWE production team just spent time in Florida shooting all new openings specifically for the HDTV broadcasts. SmackDown was projected to make the high definition switch in January and it appears to be well on schedule.[Via PWMania]
PSP-exclusive wrestling legends on view
The PSP version of the upcoming WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw features a few classic wrestlers you won't find in the console versions of the game. The three included for Sony's handheld are: Jim Neidhart, Sgt. Slaughter and Eddie Guerrero. IGN has the profiles of these wrestling legends, and a few videos too. Hopefully, the inclusion of these additional characters isn't meant to make up for what the series has become notorious for: infamously long load times.
Zune vs. iPod specification smackdown
The new Zunes are official so let's get to it: a spec-by-spec scrap between Redmond's new Zunes and Cupertino's formidable iPod foe. Unfortunately, Microsoft failed to mention the all important battery performance of their new gear in addition to a few other minor details. Microsoft fans will tell you that's due to an iPhone-like surprise close to the November launch while haters will jump to the conclusion that this is a definite sign of trouble. Still even without that morsel, there's plenty of data to masticate for comparison. The Zune 80GB certainly holds its own when pitted against the 80GB iPod classic on a specification table. That's not the case, however, with the iPod touch as long as you're willing to sacrifice the bytes for the touch's bigger display and heftier price tag. It's a tougher call on the flash-based Zune vs. the iPod nano -- just how important is WiFi to you on a 1.8-inch display? None of this, of course, accounts for the oh so important user experience or the ecosystems supporting their respective players. As such, we'll reserve final judgment until we have the new Zunes in-hand. Until then you'd best dig in fanboys, that November release is a long way off. The tables that follow will provide the fuel to fight the flame wars in the weeks to come.Update: Battery data updated with information found on Amazon.com.
