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DevJuice: Forget iUI. Say 'welcome' to Emy for web-based cross-platform mobile dev
For years, iUI has been the gold standard of iOS web development. Dating back to 2007, iUI was initially created by Joe Hewitt to simplify the development of iPhone web apps using an iPhone-style look and feel. It's been stuck at its 0.4 release for some time. Developer Remi Grumeau has been active in the iUI community. He writes, "iUI is not even now what I (and others) would like it to be ... this library has been hacked back in 2007 with iPhone only in mind." He decided to move away from the iUI "brand" and build something new: Emy, the "Efficient Mobile web librarY." Supporting HTML5 syntax, custom transitions and many other features, this new MIT-licensed library is available at his github repo. He adds,"The quick and lightweight vanilla code concept remains, but that's pretty much it. HTML syntax is different; core files have been highly changed; plugins, extensions and themes are not compatible (yet ported)." The switcher's guide details the reasons behind the library and the way you can move your development to Emy. You can run a simple interface demo from Grumeau's own site.
Shadow Era gets a new expansion, a new website, and a new app
These days, the only iOS card game I'm playing with any regularity is SolForge -- I wish there was a little more to it, but the mechanics are very well-constructed. Shadow Era, one of the first collectible card games on the App Store, is still kicking around, however, and has gotten bigger than ever. The game's developers, now called Wulven Game Studios, have sent along word that they've just added a new expansion to the title, and they've released a brand-new app for that expansion, called Shadow Era: Dark Prophecies. Dark Prophecies adds about 150 new cards to the game, along with a new mechanic called Steadfast, and a new format, called Meltdown. The game also has a brand-new website to show off all of the latest content and news, so you can head there if you want to learn more. As always, Shadow Era remains free to play, with the opportunity to buy extra "crystals" if you want to pick up more cards sooner. With Blizzard's Hearthstone announcement and the onset of Rage of Bahamut-inspired card battlers, collectible card games are about to get even more popular on the App Store. But Shadow Era was one of the first out there, and it remains one of the best.
Wunderlist announces Wunderlist Pro for Mac, iOS and the web
The folks behind Wunderlist, the excellent to-do app that recently updated to version 2, have announced that Wunderlist Pro is almost ready for prime time. Wunderlist is a free service and is remaining free, but Wunderlist Pro is a new premium service that's designed to help get Wunderlist working with teams of all sizes, from just a few people to much larger groups, on all of Apple's platforms. The full feature list for Pro hasn't been announced yet, but it will be a to-do app for working across multiple people, with shared lists, an "Assigned to Me" smart list for everyone involved and a number of new backgrounds and cosmetic features. Developer 6Wunderkinder also says that the core features in the first release will be a starting point as well -- the company has grown Wunderlist quite a bit over the years, and Wunderlist Pro will undoubtedly grow into its own in the future as well. The new service will cost US$4.99 a month, or $49.99 a year. The company's CEO has more on his own blog about what Wunderlist Pro will be. In the meantime, we'll stay tuned for a full release to see just what the company has in store.
Popup Window for OS X
Popup Window (US$5.99) provides an organizer utility for your desktop, enabling you to stick folders onto the edges of your screen and fold them in and out on demand. I loved the idea of this app although I ran into several problems when actually using it. The app is meant for anyone who needs to balance easy folder access with the desire for a clean workspace. Drag a folder to the edge of your screen and it transforms into a tiny spring-loaded tab. Click the tab and the folder opens and closes using a clever accordion effect. Unfortunately, material from the Popup Window does not necessarily act in the way that native folders do, as you can see in the following video where I attempted to drag to Imgur. The developers wrote, "Popup Window imitates Finder file dragging, but of course Popup Window is not Finder. Unfortunately, we can't change how Safari works. Sorry." They pointed out that drag and drop does work with Dropbox, which I confirmed. I also encountered problems with aliased folders (they did not work at all) and some folders on external drives. I'm not entirely sure what was going on there, but here's the screenshot. I suspect some of this is due to App Store limitations. Popup Window shows early promise with a really intriguing underlying idea. I look forward to seeing the app mature over time.
Little Inferno out on Mac
Little Inferno arrived on iOS in January. It's a wicked, little satirical adventure about burning toys that's gotten a lot of critical acclaim. Now, the game is available on the Mac. You can pick it up directly from the developer Tomorrow Corporation, or grab it on Steam or Gamersgate. Tomorrow Corporation says it's also working on an iOS version that's designed to work with older hardware, so the game will soon be playable on the iPhone 4 and fourth-gen iPod touch models as well. There's also a Linux version in the plans. I haven't played much of Little Inferno, but the reviews on it are really great, and it looks like a creepy, yet moving take on consumerism and "play" itself. And, of course, great games are always welcome on the Mac platform. [via Joystiq]
Daily iPhone App: Artkive helps you save your child's artwork for posterity
I first learned about Artkive last week at an event here in LA, put on by Technori and designed to show off some of the best startup ideas in the City of Angels. The company has been around for quite a while, and has picked up a whole lot of buzz from mom bloggers and the parenting industry (which explains why I'm so late on it: I don't have kids and don't plan to any time soon). But I have to admit, after watching the presentation at Technori, that Artkive is a really impressive app, with a lot of potential going forward. The basic idea with the app, as you might have guessed from the name, is that it's designed to work as an "art archive" of your children's work. All parents get plenty of artwork from their kids as they grow up, be those macaroni sculptures, finger paintings or just roughly scribbled-on coloring books, and sometimes that art goes on the fridge or into a box at the bottom of the closet. But Artkive's goal is to keep it saved away digitally, available to either be shared with others via social networks, or eventually printed off into a keepsake book or on other items. The app is as simple as it gets -- you simply use the iPhone's camera to take a picture of your kid's art, you can tag it with some relevant information like their age or where it was done, and then you have a quickly growing archive of all of their work. Artkive's representatives at the Technori pitch pointed out that while the app has been smoothed over through its various versions and iterations, it's far from done. Not only do they have lots of opportunities in terms of licensing and item sales (one company has even approached them to try and make a set of Artkive-branded creative tools like a paint easel or a crayon set), but what they'd like to do eventually is turn the app into an archive of everything your kid does including art, which would mean pictures as they grow, any special awards or commendations, or anything else you'd like to save from your child's childhood. That's a pretty big idea -- for now, Artkive is obviously focused on just keeping the art safe. This is definitely a solid app, and if your child is at that age where every other day they're bringing home something creative, this might be the perfect way to track and store exactly that they've done. Artkive is a free download, available right now from the App Store.
SugarSync gets a fresh, new UI and improved search in version 4
SugarSync, which allows you to share your documents, photos, music and other files between computers and mobile devices, has updated its iOS app to version 4.0. The new version features a major redesign which, as you can see above, looks quick slick and functional. In addition to the new app-wide interface, there are two big, new features. Cloud search is a system-wide search that allows you to find files sync'd by SugarSync, no matter which computer or device they happen to be on. And the new "Open In" feature allows you to take photos, videos and other documents from other apps on your mobile device, and open them up inside SugarSync's folders, where you can share them off to anywhere else. SugarSync's a great app that's gotten even better with this update. It's a free download from the App Store, and while you can pay for more storage if you like, everyone using the app gets 5 GB of storage for free. [via Engadget]
Zombies, Run! kicks off season 2
Zombies, Run! is one of the most creative running apps that you'll find on the App Store, hands down. It does what many other running apps do, like track your time and distance. But it's also a game. By combining sound effects, narratives, characters and GPS tracking, the app lets you "play" along (by running, always by running) as Runner Five, one of several human survivors of a zombie apocalypse. Your missions often require you to pick up various virtual items, outrun the flesh-eaters and explore a zombie-filled, postapocalyptic setting. Zombies, Run! is very impressive in its staging. The app does a great job of not only keeping you running, but also telling a compelling story with strong characters (and even some real emotions). As of today, the app has reached version 2.0, and that means that the developer is kicking off "season two" of the game's missions. This means more stories (with you, the player, as "Runner 5"), more items to find and of course lots more running to do. You can also build your own base to fight off zombies from. The app also supports those who prefer to run on a treadmill, so even if you're work out at the gym, you can still get "chased" by zombies. To celebrate, the developer has launched a sale. The main app, if you don't already own it yet, is available for US$3.99. Season two's upcoming missions are being sold via a "season pass," which means you'll pay one price now and then get all of the add-ons as they come out. You can get a season two pass right now for just $1.99, half off of the usual $3.99 price. There's also a "sidequest pass" (with access to all of season two's sidequests) for $2.99, or you can pick up the whole shebang for $4.99 right now. Zombies, Run! is a terrific app, both to get you running and in terms of the way it's designed to tell a great episodic story. If you haven't gone for a jog with this app yet, now's a great time to do so.
Apple publishes development job postings in Florida
Apple is beginning to recruit engineers in the Orlando, Fla., area for the designing, building and testing of custom chips, according to a post today on AppleInsider. The job postings included seven positions focused on development and testing of processor hardware, as well as others for driver development on graphics processors. AppleInsider notes that several other positions are open, including one for a reference model engineer specializing in modeling GPU hardware. Another job posting describes running iOS on "pre-silicon platforms." These listings do not seem to be associated with recent job postings for Apple's "Melbourne Design Center," which appears to refer to the headquarters of AuthenTec, a recently acquired fingerprint-scanning technology company located about an hour's drive southeast of Orlando. Instead, the positions appear to be in line with Apple's designs for custom processors, which began in 2010 with the A4 and continues in iOS products with the powerful A6X used in the current iPad with Retina display.
Steve Jackson's Sorcery! gamebook coming to the App Store
Steve Jackson's Sorcery! is an old series back from the early 1980s where you "played" through a sort of Choose Your Own Adventure-style story, except that instead of just flipping pages, you actually cast spells, fight in combat and do other fantasy-based activities. These books were reprinted back in 2002, but it's been announced that they're coming to iOS soon, as fully interactive books to play with. Most interactive books on the App Store are either meant for children or show off only a limited amount of interactivity, but these seem different -- they're heavily dependent on text, but they do offer some nice interactive touches from the original books. There's even some fun procedural stuff: When you do combat in the game, the book creates custom-made text for you to read about the outcome of the battle. It all looks very cool, and it's a nice throwback for those of us who played with these books all those years ago. Steve Jackson's Sorcery! is set to be submitted to the App Store right away, so we should see it for ourselves very soon.
Survey: Half of Chinese users want to own a Galaxy S4 instead of an iPhone
As we've reported quite a bit, Apple has been working hard to try and grow its influence in China. That nation has become the world's largest smartphone market, and so Apple has plenty of reason to be promoting itself and selling as many phones as possible. A new survey shows that as much work as Apple has been doing in the region, it may be behind already. According to research from Trendforce, almost 60 percent of 5,000 Chinese smartphone users polled say they would rather buy the newest Samsung Galaxy S4 than Apple's latest iPhone. This doesn't mean there isn't a market for Apple product in China. In fact, the same survey found that 52 percent of users did want to own an iPhone, which is very good news for Apple (the company currently holds an almost 10 percent market share there, so it seems destined for more). Still, Apple has far from an iron grip on the region. If Apple does release a cheaper iPhone this year, most analysts say that would help them make a bigger dent in the Chinese market. Given how deep Samsung's roots and influence go in China, it's still going to be a tough battle for Apple to get the market share it wants.
RFLKT and Runmeter: It's basically Pebble for your bike
People love the idea of the Pebble watch. It's an iOS-compatible display that sits on your wrist, so your iPhone can stay in your backpack, purse, or pocket. It's a great way to keep light track of your notifications, and what's going on in your life. It is, however, not a particularly good match to bike riding, where constantly checking your watch for fine detail might end up with a bad case of road rash, small screaming children who you just hit as you checked your inbox, or even the less dramatic wobblewobbleohdear. For years, bikers have used small handle-bar mounted computer systems to keep track of their speed, cadence, heart rates, and distance -- among other OCD-friendly metrics. In the more recent past, vendors have produced iPhone mounts, so you can watch all this data directly as you bike. This also has several negative side effects. First, keeping the screen on and well lit kills your battery quicker than Steve Sande goes through nachos at a Rockies game. Second, when your bike goes down, your iPhone goes crash, and there are few insurance policies generous enough to cover the case of "Oh, I stuck my multi-hundred-dollar-phone onto my bike handlebars" with good humor. Enter the Wahoo RFLKT. It's a Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE) display that mounts to your bike and keeps your iPhone out of the way. It offers a way for your favorite apps to keep you supplied with data while you ride. Tuck your phone in your sleeve, your back pocket, or your pannier, and you're ready to go. I assumed the RFLKT would blow my cheap Avenir bike system out of the water. Turns out the reality is much more nuanced. Let me start with the hardware. The RFLKT is about a quarter of the size of an iPhone 5, so it's about double or more the size of most bike computers. It can be mounted to stem or handlebars. It has a low-energy screen, runs off a coin battery and in theory can be removed from that mount every six months or so to change that battery. (In practice, I completely stripped the pop-out section and could not, for the life of me, get that darned thing off my bike. I basically ended up destroying the back, using the manufacturer-supplied metal pry bar.) I first ran the RFLKT using the free Wahoo-supplied app. In my preliminary outing, I quickly realized how much I wanted to go back to my standard exercise app of choice, Runmeter. That's because of several things. First, none of the output selections really appealed to me. I like to see current speed, max speed, elapsed time, current time and I couldn't get that on one screen. Second, the app kept making rookie mistakes -- and I knew they were rookie mistakes because I've written GPS apps. These are things that Abvio's Runmeter has long long since figured out and fixed. By rookie mistake, let me give you an example: max speed. When working with GPS, you often lose sync. The quality of the data you receive can vary all over the place, from accuracy within miles to within tens of meters. You have to keep this in mind as you calculate the current speed. When you bike, you earn your max speed. You "walk" that bike up the big hill using your granny gear and you soar down like an eagle. (In my case, that eagle is fat, slow, and middle aged, but it's still an eagle, damnit.) Your max speed should reflect that. With the Wahoo software, I was doing 43 MPH while trudging along on the flat. I may be a persistent cyclist, but I am not a good one and there's no way I live in Lance Armstrong territory, even in my most addled cold medicine dreams. While Wahoo was delivering the right hardware, it wasn't giving me what I needed in terms of software. The second I returned from my initial test ride, I started googling to see if I could use Runmeter with the hardware. Fortunately, I was within days of Runmeter's releasing their new RFLKT support. I contacted Abvio and they set me up with their latest version, complete with RFLKT integration. This is just a $4.99 in-app purchase for Runmeter Pro (which is what I use), Cyclemeter, and Walkmeter owners. I should warn you that Runmeter is clearly an app written by engineers instead of artists, but it's one that has served me well for years and one I'm wildly enthusiastic about. It does everything I need in terms of tracking my exercise. With RFLKT, it let me select one of about a dozen pre-designed templates and customize it to show exactly the statistics I wanted to see. Sure, the menus to do this tweaking were a bit antidiluvian, but if you're a tech geek to start off with, you shouldn't have too much trouble picking and customizing one of the choices shown here. I had to reset the RFLKT (there are instructions right inside the settings of Runmeter on how to do this), enable Bluetooth Sensors, and upload my custom screens. It wasn't particularly painful, although it did take some time to figure my way through the menus. Using a RFLKT display isn't exactly like using a bike computer. You gain some things, you lose others. Take speed for example. Because of the GPS sync problem, your Runmeter speed will always lag unless you use an external sensor. That means you can be flying down that mountain and still register 7.7 MPH for a while. For speed and distance measures to be accurate, they need a wider range of sampling time. Side by side, my Avenir bike computer knew my speed changes as they happened. I found myself referring to that much more often for MPH versus the RFLKT monitor. You can, however, integrate other sensors into the Runmeter/RFLKT experience to fix that. If the Runmeter app can integrate with the sensor (they have posted a list here), you can add it to the RFLKT display -- this includes digital speed and cadence from Garmin and Bontrager, negating any issues of GPS sampling. You can also add heart monitors, giving you some extra performance feedback. Regardless of speed, the distance portion of the solution was wicked accurate. There's no need to measure your tire or estimate its pressure and multiply the circumference to calculate how far you've gone. Need to go 3.7 miles? The RFLKT/Runmeter combination gets exactly that. It's brilliant. Other measures like date and time and max speed are also super-precise. I have no intention of buying new sensors so I found that I liked having both displays -- traditional and RFLKT on my bike, even though I had to sacrifice one of my night-riding lights to fit it there. I have small girlygirl handlebars, which don't offer a lot of real estate. I also had to pad the RFLKT with not one but THREE layers to get it to fit the bar and stay firmly mounted. Speaking of displays, I really do wish the RFLKT offered a lip the way my Avenir does, giving a little shade and offering glare protection. The RFLKT is pretty obviously a 1st gen device, and I expect it to evolve to be a little cleaner, and less boxy over time, but even as is, I really fell in love with it. On Monday, I had a chance to sit down and talk with Steve Kusmer of Abvio, the man behind Runmeter to talk about RFLKT, its technology and how the app has integrated itself with display. The relationship is longstanding. "Wahoo has provided the technology we've used for over two years to access Bluetooth devices. With the RFLKT, Wahoo provided the hardware, a wonderful design point, and we built from there. We've been demoing the RFLKT since September and just now released support in our software." The RFLKT took a lot of its design influence from the Palm Pilot. "It had to run on a simple battery and last forever. The RFLKT works with a coin cell battery, can be alive for months if not a year, and powers down on idle, when nothing is being used. Plus, it uses BTLE with minimal bandwidth. It has buttons and it's programmable. It's very simple but effective." Kusmer talked about integrating the device into riding. "Once I put the RFLKT on my bike, it becomes a different experience. It's providing a lot of value that enhances my experience." Making Runmeter work with the device helped leverage the app's underlying features. "We've been spent more than four years deployed -- started back in 2008, and we have spent a lot of time on the underlying data architecture for storing and displaying application data. It's very hard to do this right. One spike of data and your Max Speed is toast. We went through a year or more of iterations on trying to figure out the heuristic so bad GPS data doesn't whack your data. "We love RFLKT because we could take our data architecture and match up with anything you want to do on RFLKT. We can display 148 different statistics -- from your current speed to your previous interval average heart rate --- all readily accessible during your rides on the RFLKT." What you get in the end is a terrific combination of software (from Abvio) and hardware (from Wahoo) and one that I was really happy using. You can pick up a RFLKT for $130 at Wahoo. Runmeter is free with a $4.99 in-app upgrade to Pro, and another $4.99 in-app upgrade for RFLKT support. Cyclemeter and Walkmeter are $4.99 each.
Weekend Poll: Are you switching to T-Mo?
On Friday, T-Mobile finally launched its iPhone line, offering some great deals along the way. Did you hop over and place a request for an iPhone 5? American customers now have more service choices than ever. From Cricket to Straight Talk, Virgin to Sprint, you can now shop plans, devices, and options more than ever before. How are you making your choices? Is T-Mobile's appealingly inexpensive basic plan winning your heart? Or do you need more sophisticated choices and premium features? Do you need truly unlimited data? Or is a high-allocation with a cap enough for your needs? Are family plans important? Or do you depend on tethering? What feature is driving your choice of carriers? Join in this poll and then add your comments about what matters most to you from your iPhone plan. %Poll-81982%
Bump removes ability to share iTunes tracks in latest update
We see tons of app updates come through the App Store every single day, but it's very rare that one of those updates removes functionality rather than adds it. The latest update for Bump for iPhone does exactly that, unfortunately. Bump is an app that came out very early in the App Store's life, and its core feature was that you could "bump" with another iPhone user to share contacts. Over the years, Bump has added more and more sharing features, to the point where it can now share files, work with Dropbox and even connect up with a Mac directly. Last year, the company added the ability to "share" music from phone to phone, basically by sharing the song's information, and then by looking that song up on the target phone across YouTube and iTunes. But that feature no longer works, as per the app's latest update. It could be that Apple didn't like music being "shared" across phones without their standard cut being paid, or it could be that Bump just didn't think the code was working as well as it should. At any rate, you can't share music in Bump any longer. The good news is that if you have a version of Bump that will share music, you can simply keep that version by not upgrading to the new one, and you can also keep the functionality. You can even drag the app out of your iTunes library (if you've installed it from an iTunes client), and save it elsewhere, in case you ever accidentally upgrade. True, this one feature may not justify having to remember not to upgrade the app every time (and you'll miss out on any future Bump features), but if it's something you depend on, there are ways to keep it active.
Turntable.fm releases Piki app, for music recommendations and streaming
Turntable.fm is one of the many social streaming music sites out there -- it allows you and your friends to stream music and even listen in together to your favorite albums and songs. The company already has its own standalone app for the App Store, but it's trying a new tactic now to grab attention in this increasingly crowded streaming market, releasing a new app called Piki (a misspelling of "picky," I guess) that's centered not just around listening to music, but also around sharing recommendations and favorites. Just like any other streaming app out there (Pandora, Slacker and Rdio are all popular variants on this), Piki lets you pull up radio stations that will automatically fill with music and stream it out to wherever you happen to be. The difference here is that instead of coming from a computer or even a radio producer, these stations are filled with music recommended by your friends and other members of the service. You can provide reactions to the music as well, and then those picks are incorporated in other users' music, too. I know Pandora does use user preferences to rate its various music streams, and while Slacker's big claim is that they're using actual radio producers to pick some playlists, this is definitely an interesting idea, especially if you've got friends using the app with some excellent taste in music. And the fact that Turntable.fm is branding it under a completely different name shows that things are getting hectic in the streaming business. They're doing whatever they can to nail down an audience of listeners. If you're down to put an ear on some new tunes recommended by your fellow listeners, Piki is currently available on the App Store for free.
Zynga unveils Battlestone, an action RPG coming to iOS soon
Zynga's been on an interesting pivot lately. The company made a name for itself on Facebook, and most of its business is tied up in big games like Farmville and its sequel. But that audience is slowing down in growth, if not declining, which has prompted Zynga to experiment on mobile platforms like iOS. Last year, Zynga published Horn, which is a very impressive action / adventure title on iOS, and this year I expect to see more games like it as Zynga targets the "midcore" audience with nice graphics and complex gameplay. Battlestone is a great example of that. It's a newly revealed game from the House that Farmville Built, and as you can see above, it looks very impressive. It's an action RPG in the vein of Diablo, but made for mobile platforms, and with a slightly more casual look. Battlestone will let you pull one hero from multiple choices to fight through varied 3D environments, swiping and tapping across the screen to get involved in combat. It definitely sounds fun -- Battlestone should be available in the US soon, as it's already being tested in a few markets around the world. Zynga's real challenge with these will be to balance "midcore" gameplay with its preferred freemium promotional practices. The company grew very quickly thanks to its "social" gameplay, but as it has grown bigger and bigger, Zynga's depended more and more on desperately trying to make its games viral. If they can tone that down in these more complicated titles in a way that still allows them to keep things profitable, the company will be able to find a whole new audience to replace the one that's getting more and more bored with all of the "cow clicking" that Zynga originally started out with.
Payback 2 goes free-to-play
Payback 2 arrived on the App Store late last year. It's the sequel to a game called Payback that was sort of a Grand Theft Auto for iOS (before Grand Theft Auto for iOS was actually released). Payback 2 added online multiplayer and a new "custom mode," and as of today, it has gone free-to-play, which means you can now pick it up for zero dollars. The game's seen plenty of updates since its initial release. Just recently, the controls were tuned up, and plenty of bugs have been fixed and extra options added in. By going free, the dev tells us, Payback 2 should attract an influx of new players, which means the multiplayer modes should be well-populated and ready to go. If you haven't given Payback 2 a try, now's the best time to do it.
DevJuice: Better Objective-C associated objects
iOS/OS X internals guru Gwynne Raskind tipped me off to a much better way of creating associated object keys. Until now, I've been doing this: static const char nametag_key; return objc_getAssociatedObject(self, (void *) &nametag_key); Turns out there's a much easier and better way. That's because Apple's selector implementation uses a fixed address. That means you can declare a property, for example: @property (nonatomic) NSString *nametag; and then use that property's selector as the key: return objc_getAssociatedObject(self, @selector(nametag)); It's way cleaner, requires no extra static variables, and according to Gwynne, "It's absolutely safe and rather cutely self-documenting in current runtimes -- and for the foreseeable near future, no question." Could this eventually break? Gwynne tells me that Apple would probably have to implement a completely new ABI for that to happen.
Blast from the GUI past: 50 years after Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad first debuted
Fifty years ago in 1963, Ivan Sutherland first demonstrated Sketchpad, one of the most important contributions to the field of Computer Science. Long before Apple, the Lisa and Xerox's Alto, a constraint-based object-oriented graphical system was developed and demonstrated. Today's video was pointed out by Charles Choi over on his Notes from /dev/null blog. He writes, "Sometimes you're told something that happened some time ago. You stash that date in the back of your mind only to recall it much later in life, surprised and chagrined at the time that's passed since you last thought of it... Today I recalled Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad, arguably the most significant Computer Science Ph.D. thesis ever. I had the fortune in the mid-'90s to watch a rare videocassette recording of Alan Kay describing Sketchpad for a computer graphics course taught by Randy Pausch. Fast-forward to today and the video is only a YouTube search away." Looking at that video, it's just amazing to think of that kind of tech in 1963.
Comixology claims responsibility for banning Saga #12, rescinds ban
Yesterday, we posted about Apple reportedly banning issue 12 of a comic book called Saga, due to a couple of graphic sex scenes included in it. The book's creator, Brian K. Vaughan, had posted that Apple wasn't allowing his book to be sold on the App Store, though it was available through a number of other channels. But today it turns out that Apple isn't to blame -- instead, the book's digital publisher, Comixology, has confessed that they made the decision not to sell the book. Comixology runs the very popular Comics app on iOS, and they publish the digital versions of books from a number of different publishers, including Image Comics, who publishes the Saga series. The company's CEO, David Steinberger, has posted on the company blog that Comixology made its own decision to not publish the book, based on its assumption of Apple's policies. Of course, after the news yesterday, Apple says it would not have a problem with the book being published in Comixology's app, and Steinberger says the issue will be available soon, and apologizes to Vaughan and Image Comics for the confusion. So there's both good news and bad news here. The good news is that this decision did not come from Apple -- instead, it was Comixology that jumped the gun and decided to not publish the book on the App Store. But the bad news is that while Comixology did make the mistake, I can't really blame them for being concerned about Apple's retribution. Just yesterday, the company did threaten an App Store developer with removal over some adult content, and we've seen examples before of Apple being overly concerned about content that was already labeled for users 17-plus. That's why we here at TUAW jumped on this story and took the comic's creator, Vaughan, at his word -- because it's not hard to believe, given Apple's unclear and inconsistent polices on this matter, that they would have a problem with this book. Fortunately, they don't, and all credit to them for confirming that. Macworld followed up with Apple to confirm the supposed ban, and in hindsight, we should have done the same. But as long as Apple's policies and their enforcement on what's OK and not OK for the App Store remain unclear, we may see more issues like this pop up, either driven by developers dependent on the App Store for revenue, or by Apple itself.
