Oh my. iOS 4.3 just went into beta and… oh my.

I had two wishes for iOS 4.3, based on iOS 4.2 shortcomings that made me want to NOT AT ALL DO ANY VIOLENCE TO A LARGE WHITE BIRD, EVEN IN JEST, BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE DON’T REALISE THAT I’M JUST JOKING. And these things were:

• Get my orientation lock back, because having a mute switch for only some sounds on an iPad is about as useful as a chocolate teapot made with an exciting arsenic/cocoa mix (i.e. not at all).
• Get AirPlay in the hands of devs, so either the Air Video or streamtome guys can figure out how to enable me to fire videos at my Apple TV. (First one to the finish line gets my cash!)

Ars Technica reveals that iOS 4.3:

• Provides a preference within the Settings app for defining the functionality of the hardware lock switch. (YAY!)
• Provides APIs that will “extend AirPlay support to their own apps instead of just the limited few from Apple”. (YAY!)

All that remains now is for Apple to remove these features at the last minute, just to spite me, and for the phone to ring one day:

Hey, Craig, it’s Steve. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Pocket Gamer dot BZZZZ reports that Lima Sky’s cancelled its threats to smack all other iOS doodle games with a legal shovel of doom, but also reveals why this spat happened in the first place. Apparently, another dev was trying to get Lima Sky’s Doodle Jump mark cancelled (Lima Sky’s Igor Pusenjak refers to “Bryan Duke’s big-house law firm”). Their argument: since Lima Sky didn’t prevent other devs using the word ‘doodle’, it shouldn’t have the rights to ‘Doodle Jump’, which sounds about right. IF YOU’RE A CRAZY PERSON.

The end result appears to be that Lima Sky’s still going to go for a limited number of devs, but those who are riffing off the Doodle Jump name or that have ripped off or copied characters, which is fair enough. Pusenjak seems rattled by the harsh press reaction, saying he’s saddened that “so many of you were so quick to jump to conclusions based on incomplete and incorrectly reported information, and without even hearing the other side of the story,” but on hearing the other side of the story, I’m saddened that an indie developer felt the need to threaten 700 apps rather than just the ones they needed to.

A one-all draw here, I think.

This sounds familiar:

We are required by USPTO [US Patent and Trademark Office] to monitor and police our trade marks. If we don’t, we lose them.

But, no, Tim Langdell’s not risen from the grave (he’s not dead—it’s just where EA left him after giving him a serious kicking); this time, it’s Doodle Jump creators Lima Sky who are reportedly being total dicks.

According to Pocket Gamer, the Doodle Jump devs have now decided to rampage round the App Store, yelling at devs who have the audacity to use the word ‘doodle’ in the titles of their games. (At the current count, there are over 700 such games, so the Lima Sky guys are going to get really sore throats.)

Gosh, I guess, then, that Lima Sky must own the trademark for ‘doodle’, right? Well, no, they only own ‘Doodle Jump’, and they weren’t the first doodle game on the App Store anyway. So not only are they acting like total dicks, using the same bullshit language as Tim Langdell to ‘police’ their mark, they also don’t have a fucking clue about marks, the policing of marks, or, seemingly, common sense.

The danger here is that Apple might take down loads of ‘doodle’ games, until the relevant parties come to some arrangement or other. Personally, I suggest coming to a different arrangement: stop buying and playing Lima Sky games until they stop being dicks. Their only big earner is Doodle Jump anyway, and there are plenty of alternatives, such as the free Froggy Jump and the similarly free Mega Jump.

As revealed on Ars Technica’s live blog and a billion other places, Steve Jobs’s friend and servant Tim Cook and Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Vee’s moustache have revealed that the iPhone 4 will soon be available on Verizon for money!

This is good, because it will—like in the UK for bloody ages now—enable American consumers to bitch about how rubbish iPhone carriers are, rather than just how rubbish the exclusive iPhone carrier is. This is an important distinction for reasons.

Well done, America! *sings national anthem*

People rattle on about the Steve Jobs/Apple ‘reality distortion field’, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that companies battling Apple in the handheld gaming space are also living inside their own little bubbles and firing out distortion of their own. Sony last year cunningly decided to take on iOS by saying all iPhone/iPod touch games were rubbish, using an irritating little shit as their advertising campaign’s figurehead (nice one, Sony—I’m sure you can tell from marketshare figures how that idea worked out for you). Nintendo has fared better, but is losing serious ground to iOS across all age groups, especially in the USA.

But now, Nintendo’s going to fight back, and Gamespot has revealed the launch of the Nintendo 3DS will take place in Japan on February 26. The line-up for games is the usual mix of remakes, remakes and remakes, and as someone fully immersed in iOS gaming’s diversity, the 3DS offerings don’t look terribly exciting to me, especially since I own the previous versions of many of the launch games on the DS. (“Oooh, prettier graphics” is no longer a selling point, as Nintendo itself largely proved with the Wii.)

The biggest problem though is the crazy price-points. The console’s expected to come in at over $300, which in Brit-land will no doubt mean at least £200 being stamped on the box—in other words, more than an iPod touch. Even better, the games are expected to sell between 4800 yen ($57/£38) and 6090 yen ($73/£50). Even with some serious discounting (and Japanese games often being more expensive than in the US and Europe), these prices are obliterated by the App Store, which usually ranges from $1 (59p) to $9.99 (£5.99) per item.

I’m sure Nintendo fans will lap up the new console, but I fear it’ll—like its predecessor—eventually (and all too rapidly) find itself largely bereft of decent games, relying on shovelware to keep it going. More importantly, the core market of kids is rapidly vanishing. Time was that market at least was Nintendo’s, but kids increasingly want iThings rather than expensive Nintendo kit (and Nintendo itself has warned that the main USP of its new handheld may not be safe for kids). Perhaps Nintendo’s aiming to seriously ramp up its download offerings, or tempt buyers with pack-ins. If not, it’s going to have even more of a fight on its hands than over the past couple of years, and Apple has a real chance to take the lead in the handheld gaming space.

Update: As Lukas points out in the comments, some of the launch line-up comprises new titles in existing series, with “exactly zero to do with” earlier titles. However, having been a Nintendo fan since the NES, and having owned quite a few Nintendo consoles, it’s clear that many titles will involve more than a little recycling, unless the company really has changed its ways.