Gah. I’m so behind the rest of the world. There’s been antennaegate and then there was Ryan Block’s not-at-all-link-bait glassgate that the rest of the tech industry parroted in its typical unthinking manner, without, you know, thinking it might be a good idea to check some of the supposed facts.

I need my own ‘gate’ to become famous (and then, presumably, hated and ridiculed a few hours later, but that’s the price of fame—just ask Jedward), but I don’t even own an iPhone 4 (not that lacking something you’re writing about is a problem for quite a few tech hacks these days).

Any ideas? I was thinking about actually-it-seems-that-the-iphone-4-works-quite-well-gate, but I don’t think that’ll draw in the traffic.

Microsoft’s taking an interesting stance with Windows Phone 7, almost positioning it as a means of dealing with your digital commitments faster, in order to get back to real life.

From a differentiation standpoint, it’s an interesting position to take. Digital gadgets are hugely disruptive technology, and a lot of people increasingly suffer from ‘info guilt’ regarding unread information, be it email, Twitter and Facebook updates, RSS feeds or articles waiting in Instapaper.

Microsoft’s emphasis on glance-oriented tiles seemingly promotes efficiency, and the interface is quite elegant, but Thibaut Sailly nails why the reality doesn’t entirely match the aim (or at least the aim of the initial advertising):

It’s a big push notifications agregrator right in your face as soon as you get your phone out of your pocket. Not really what’s advertised.

That said, what Windows Phone 7 does provide is the at-a-glance notifications that iOS lacks. This is an area Apple needs to do some serious thinking about, because it was already lagging behind Android in terms of notifications, and now Microsoft’s offering a superior solution as well.

Sometimes you have a secret you’re bursting to tell everyone about, but you can’t, otherwise an editor will hunt you down and kill you to death, using only a spoon, a slightly sharpened CD jewel case and a surprising amount of ingenuity and imagination.

Today, however, one of the most exciting magazine projects I’ve been party to was finally revealed: Tap! The iPhone and iPad Magazine. From the guys behind MacFormat (which I regularly contribute to), the 132-page iPad-sized mag will arrive for a fiver at the end of November, and it’ll have a suitably chunky games section that I’ll be overseeing. (Tap’s also on Twitter, if you want to follow it: @tapmaguk.)

It’s great to see Future taking the plunge on what’s the most exciting platform that I can remember, and I’m hugely looking forward to being involved.

Jason Fried at 37signals asks “What happens when it’s all glass?”, worrying about whether Apple will lose its edge with the way industrial design is moving:

I wonder if Apple will soon lose their perceived industrial design edge. It’s not that they aren’t incredibly good at it—they are the best in the business—it’s that industrial design is trending towards transparency. It’s all going glass. Everything is turning into a screen, from edge to edge. Once it’s all about glass, it’s all about software.

Luckily for Apple their software is outstanding. But, I think over time great software is less of a competitive advantage than killer hardware only because software, across the board, is getting better quickly.

The key here is perception. Apple must be careful to not get drowned out by a crowd of me-too imitators. Technology news pages are full of Android tablets that are supposed iPad killers, but all I see for the most part is a gang of iPad rip-offs. Advocates argue that Apple’s design decisions were ‘obvious’, hence everyone’s interfaces being so similar to iOS. If that’s the case, why did no-one release something like iOS before Apple? Why did it take the iPhone and iPad to push the industry forwards?

That’s why this time round things will be different. Apple’s share will of course dwindle (although its profits won’t), but not to the level seen on the desktop (where, remember, Apple is still profitable, despite commanding only a tiny market-share). And Apple will always excite the industry and consumers, because it dares to innovate. Android may have the lead in a few areas (such as notifications), but iOS forges ahead almost everywhere else, especially in places where it really matters, such as usability, robustness and elegance.

Differentiation is going to be the key in mobile and touch. Apple has the best industrial design, the best product integration, the best vision and the best selection of mobile apps. These things didn’t happen by accident and they didn’t happen by copying someone else. So what will happen when it’s all glass? Apple will still be out in front.

Due to reviewing a lot of iOS games of late, I now have an RSS feed that spits an overview of every new iOS game into Google Reader. And, my word, there’s an awful lot of utter crap out there. While I remain of the opinion that iOS is the greatest gaming system to date, it probably also has the worst ratio of good to bad games.

Ironically, much of the problem stems from Apple’s openness. Yes, you read that right. People bitch about the App Store approvals process, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to get a game on to the App Store than, say, make it for the Nintendo DS and get it on to store shelves. Apple recently in its review guidelines made a plea for quality, saying professional developers didn’t want their apps surrounded by ‘amateur hour’; from what I can tell, they already are.

So, if you’re planning on releasing an iOS game, I’ve provided some helpful tips below; and if you’re an app dev, now chuckling to yourself, switch ‘game’ for ‘app’ and see if you’re still laughing.

1. Are you planning on releasing ‘My First Game’, just because you can? If so, don’t bother, unless it’s actually ‘My First Game, Which, Objectively, Is Actually Pretty Damn Good’.
2. Are there already dozens of similar games on the App Store? If so, don’t bother, unless your title makes substantial improvements and changes to the genre. We don’t need yet another sodding Solitaire game, for example, or another 99-cent Reversi. Just stop it already.
3. Can you think of at least a few dozen people who would buy your game? If there’s no market for it, don’t bother trying to sell it—just send ad-hoc builds to your friends.
4. Does your game look and sound like utter crap? If so, consider getting an artist or musician on board. “I’m not very good at art and music” is not an excuse when there are loads of people out there who’d love the chance to collaborate with you on a project.
5. Have you found a game on another platform and just ported it right across, without any consideration for the unique aspects of iOS interfaces? You’re not Sega, you know. (And if you are Sega, just set fire to your Mega Drive/Genesis emulator already.) The best games on iOS are the ones that take advantage of its specific features, not the ones that try to fight the system (man).

In my next post on this subject, I’ll return to a subject that fills me with an equal amount of HULK SMASH: app and game websites, which developers are still screwing up with alarming regularity.