Steve Jobs has posted his thoughts on the Adobe Flash debate. Very interesting read.
EDIT: Good replies from Jesse Warden and Uza.
Genius application coded by those very clever people at Do Tank Studios; turn your iPhone into a fighter.
I love Pac-Man: Championship Edition. I (mainly) love my iPhone. Surely the two should be a marriage made in heaven?
As soon as the game was launched earlier today I bought it. It helped that the game was being sold at a reduced price initially, but I would’ve just handed over a couple of quid to Namco regardless to try and sway them towards releasing a version of this game for the Sony PSP (ideal platform) or Nintendo DS. This game has so far only been released on Xbox Live Arcade, which is criminal considering how great it is. I never really liked or got Pac-Man before this game, and judging by the looks I get from friends when I recommend it I guess I’m not alone.
Anyway, back to the review. The port is a good one overall, but there are “buts”. It requires you restart your iPhone seemingly as it constantly crashed for me until I did so. There are a few issues with it regarding freezing very occasionally for a tiny amount of time (on my 3G; might be fine on a 3GS), but overall graphically it’s a good port. However, the game isn’t sold as a complete entity as Namco try to intially sell the other levels as DLC. IGN picked up on this and gave Namco a hard time over it so I’m not going to retread that ground again. The biggest problem I have with the game isn’t down to Namco; it’s the lack of controls on the iPhone. Considering the killing Apple is making through its App Store, surely the next iPhone has to come with physical buttons (or some sort of add-on to the device)?
Controlling Pac-Man via the iPhone’s screen is frustrating. Once Pac-Man picks up any sort of speed the game gets increasingly less responsive to quick touch inputs, so basically you’re left staring into a lovely-looking window of what could be (if only this was ported to a device with decent physical controls).
I said above that the Sony PSP would make the ideal home for this game. The widescreen format, bright glossy screen, along with the 4-way control pad could potentially trump the Xbox version (due to the crappy d-pad on that system’s controller).
Please Namco, make it happen.
Score: 6.5/10 (due to the lack of decent controls)
I’m looking forward to the 3.0 firmware in a few days a lot (although there are ways to get the it ahead of release). There are a lot of obvious holes in the existing firmware that need plugging (lack of MMS the main culprit), but the possibilies offered to app and games developers is perhaps the biggest thing for the new firmware.
gameindustry.biz has a good article on the current development situation for games developers and what firmware 3.0 means to them. I’m hopeful the new firmware will open things up to games developers such as control over the 3GS’s digital compass, which would be a massive deal for things like RPGs for example; imagine guiding Link through an adventure with an enhanced map system. Peer-to-peer will be opened up with the new firmware too, which is a massive deal for any online gameplay.
I’ve only dipped my toe into iPhone development, but I can see myself dedicating some time now towards really learning 3.0.
At last; Adobe start to stick video tutorials up on YouTube. It’s now a little easier to stick these things on your iPhone to watch during the commute.
It seems Adobe and Apple are working together to bring Flash to the iPhone.
I’d almost prefer the wait if it means both companies ensure Flash works as best it can on the device.
iPhone AS3 application released. Now all we need is Flash for the iPhone. Please.
Good summary on Ajaxian of an article on Dr Nic’s website on the pros and cons of using WebKit within native iPhone applications.
Really interesting blog post on how the mobile version of Flickr was constructed. I haven’t had the opportunity to try the mobile version of the site out on a mobile browser aside from iPhone Safari, but it works really well on that browser. You can tell the focus on optimising everything has paid off when it comes down to user experience, and I love the visual feedback that every click provides (so the user isn’t left twiddling his/her thumbs wondering if a click has registered).