A year ago: Acer dismisses a tablet (PCWorld), arguing that its netbooks and notebooks won’t be affected by the iPad.

Today: Acer is to start selling tablets by summer (Computerworld), and Taiwan sales manager Lu Bing-hsian says:

They are aimed at phasing out netbooks. That’s the direction of the market.

Interesting times in mobile gaming. Although plenty of people continue to dismiss iOS and similar devices going forward, the industry is gradually shifting. The big news today is on MVC, where Capcom Interactive’s president and COO Midori Yuasa had this to say:

The casual gamer that used to play on the PC and the hardcore gamer that used to play on a dedicated gaming portable now plays on their smartphone.

The iPhone and larger smartphone markets are extremely important to Capcom as, like no device before, smartphones have the potential to become a universal game platform.

This is the fight Nintendo’s now in with the 3DS, and it’s very different to battling just another gaming console.

Apple’s media advisory just went out, with Steve Jobs telling Apple staff that he’s taking another “medical leave of absence” so he can focus on his health. Today, there’s no US stockmarket trading. Tomorrow, AAPL will fall off a cliff and people go OH MY GOD NO STEVE JOBS APPLE IS DOOMED, ignoring the facts that:

• Apple didn’t keel over last time Jobs took months off to deal with health problems;
• Apple has very capable people to take over the general running of the company (and, arguably, to offer both innovation and vision);
• Apple essentially is Steve Jobs now.

That last point bears explanation. I’m not saying Apple is Steve Jobs in the sense that if he is out of the picture, Apple ceases to function. I’m saying Apple is Steve Jobs in the sense that his way of thinking is now so deeply infused into the company that the company can continue to ‘be Steve’ even when he’s not there.

Hopefully, Jobs is merely taking a leave of absence to concentrate on getting fitter (day-to-day running of Apple is probably quite stressful and not ideal for long-term recuperation from a major operation) and there’s no recurrence of the cancer he had. Hopefully, he can and will get well soon. Hopefully, the tech press and traders won’t go batshit monkey ballistic over this news, spewing disinformation and bullshit everywhere. Sadly, I think the last of those is a very long shot indeed.

UPDATE: BBC News reports:

Apple shares traded in Frankfurt are down 7% on the news.

Don’t expect Apple to catch up with Exxon in 2011, then.

As reported on the internet, iOS 4.3 returns you to the home screen with a four finger pinch. But plenty of games and apps exist where you use more than three fingers to interact. There are light toys (like uzu), virtual musical instruments, and plenty of games (such as Eliss) where you could feasibly make that gesture and thereby quit the app. Maybe this won’t be the case, or perhaps Apple just doesn’t care. If the new gesture does impact on such apps, though, that’s a major blow to a touchscreen OS, especially on the iPad where multiplayer games are commonplace.

I asked for dev replies on Twitter and will publish them here, unless said devs see their words reprinted, hunt me down and force me under threat of being slapped silly to remove them.

Neil Inglis:

It’s worth noting that nothing’s set in stone. Apple’s developer release notes for the iOS 4.3 beta specifically state that they’re looking for feedback on how this affects people’s applications. If enough people say it’s a problem, they’ll remove it or scale it back.

Personally I love the concept but I think it breaks enough applications that they’ll be forced to remove it. It’s not just that some apps intentionally use these gestures, I think users are far too likely to accidentally make them.

The conclusion there is the thing I’m most concerned about. I can see people making such a gesture by mistake. Good that Apple’s looking for feedback though.

Matt Gemmell:

A pinch is a specific gesture, remember; it’s not just any old four-finger input. Apple hasn’t grabbed them all.

And in response to my query about the specifics of that gesture:

A specific, mathematically-defined gesture which takes into account both position & velocity. It’s not just 4 fingers moving.

Stephen Darlington:

Apple are specifically asking for feedback on the gestures so I don’t think you can file it under ‘don’t care’. My guess is that they’ll add an option for developers to switch the gestures off, much as you can turn off the task switching.

Patrick Scheips:

The apps don’t quit, they just ‘freeze’ if you use these four or five fingers gestures. But yes, these gestures even work in those apps. I’ve tested that in uzu.

Boy Genius Reports claims Apple will remove home buttons from its next revisions of iOS devices. This report has suspect timing, to say the least. It comes the day after new multitouch gestures for iOS were revealed, including a four-finger pinch that returns you to your home screen.

I’m thinking this is someone putting one and one together and getting three. Apple’s guiding principle has always been usability, but removing the home button would be problematic in two important areas:

• If the OS locks up (which happens fairly regularly on iOS, especially when apps freeze), software gestures aren’t going to do anything. The home button is therefore a handy ‘quit’ override; in cases of extreme emergency, it can be used in combination with the sleep switch to force a device to reboot entirely.
• Gestures are not easily discoverable, and the more complex the gesture the less likely someone is to discover it. Users don’t sit down with manuals (or even the small leaflets Apple ships with its products)—they just start using stuff. Single taps and swipes are where most users are at. In the current iOS, relatively few users even know about the multitasking bar, and even fewer know you can swipe that bar to access further controls. Forcing users to use a four-finger gesture to return to the home screen would therefore be a dangerous move by Apple.

Journo chum Gary Marshall notes on Twitter that there is another option, since Apple has a patent for an intelligent bezel corner. However, that wouldn’t necessarily improve things. If left blank, it’s just as hard to discover as complex gestures. If labelled, the aesthetics are the same anyway, but you lack the tactile response that’s important for the functions the hardware button provides access to.

UPDATE: John Gruber makes a good point, responding to the same piece, noting that forcing a complex pinch would be problematic on the small iPhone screen and a potential accessibility disaster on the iPad—what if the user doesn’t have enough fingers, or enough dexterity to perform the gesture?

UPDATE: On Twitter, smittytone says: “Anyone who thinks the iPad 2 won’t have a home button clearly hasn’t read the iOS 4.3 developer docs”. And Matt Gemmell says: “Another point re no-Home-button/accessibility for your post; blind people use Home to know which way up the thing is.”