Yesterday’s Apple event didn’t draw gasps of amazement of the good kind. Some great announcements were made (app management in iTunes 9, a cheaper iPod touch, a camera in the iPod nano), but the biggest surprise was the lack of a camera in the iPod touch.

This strikes a lot of people as crazy, but from yesterday’s event it’s pretty clear that Apple is aiming to differentiate each of its devices in a very clear way, rather than in the old days where everything played music and perhaps did a couple of extra things not particularly well.

The iPod shuffle is the truly mobile device, aimed at people who don’t care what they’re listening to, and don’t want any weight to carry around.

The iPod nano has been repositioned as a device to smack Flip with, due to bundling a VGA camcorder, but in a device much thinner than its rival.

The iPod touch, judging by the fact a quarter of yesterday’s announcement was about gaming, is now positioned as a handheld videogames device—Apple’s answer to the DSi and PSP Go. I still feel that the device’s name is a massive hindrance to true mass-market acceptance, but with 21,000+ games on the App Store, it’s clear where developers think the money is.

The iPod classic remains the player for people who must have every tune available at all times, under pain of death.

The iPhone is the device that mashes everything together in a profitable package for Apple.

Despite this desire to differentiate individual devices (presumably to encourage people to buy more of them rather than concentrate on convergence), it still seems odd that iPod touches lack a camera. Jobs argues in an interview with David Pogue that iPod touch is “the lowest-cost way to the App Store, and that’s the big draw”. He says Apple was focused on “just reducing the price to $199 […] to get the price down where everyone can afford it”.

I suspect in the medium term, there will be an about-face on the camera decision, not least when you consider Jobs goes on to say in response to Amazon’s Kindle: “General-purpose devices will win the day [because] people just probably aren’t willing to pay for a dedicated device.” Right now, iPhone is the only truly general-purpose device; iPod touch is close, but really needs that camera to have the widest appeal and scope.

But next year will see flash memory reduce in price to the point that the iPod classic becomes irrelevant next to a 128 GB iPod touch. At that point, it’ll be a no-brainer to add a camera at least to the more expensive models in the iPod touch range, perhaps leaving the low-end without a camera, intended as a cheap gaming device to continue attacking Apple’s newfound handheld-oriented rivals.

LA Times reports that Norwegian lamp maker Luxo is suing Disney. Its reasoning is that Disney has moved from a purely animated Luxo to a physical animatronic in a theme park and actual lamps, bundled with the Blu-ray release of Up.

On the face of it, one might have sympathy for Luxo, because the company showed goodwill in letting Pixar/Disney ‘get away with things’ for so long, and it’s easily to argue that Disney’s current lamps are a clear breach of IP rights.

Despite this, one phrase is curious from the Norweigian company: it states Pixar lamps would “cause devastating damage to Luxo and dilute the goodwill which Luxo has built up”. Right. Perhaps the Luxos in the Up package will be relatively shoddy and potentially cause problems, but it’s surely undeniable that Luxo the character has added a hell of a lot of value to Luxo the company. But then again, lawsuits are also a fantastic way to get lots of press and added value.

This blog’s mostly tech and gaming oriented, not political, but this once I’ll make an exception, so apologies for possibly nonplussing regular readers.

I just heard that PRUPIM and ProLogis won their battle last week to develop near our town what can only be described as an 860,000 sq ft shed of astonishing ugliness. Said shed will be one of the biggest buildings in the country, the core of a 24/7 Tesco distribution centre.

Throughout the process, the developers lied through their teeth to local residents, bent the truth to the relevant inspectors, moved the goalposts regularly, and yet still tried to suggest that the development would be beneficial to the local area. In reality, it’s going to—at best—cause massive noise pollution and traffic congestion (in an area that already has hugely dangerous roads), utterly wreck a local wildlife reserve, and demolish the strategic gap between the towns of Farnborough and Fleet (in Hampshire).

Local residents will, apparently, ‘benefit’ from redesigned road layouts near Farnborough (which will only need redesigning due to the number of HGVs travelling along local roads rising from ‘bugger all’ to ‘two per minute, 24/7’), 1600 jobs (near a constituency with, er, the 625th highest unemployment count in the UK, and whose residents generally won’t be suited to the types of jobs available at the warehouse site), and the site being ‘cleaned up’ (something any development would have done).

What’s worse is this shows how little Labour cares about democratic process. This development had 10,000 local complaints against it (a local record by a huge distance) and the planning inspector, after immersing herself in the local area and seeing the facts, agreed with the opinion of locals and decision of local councils to reject the scheme. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (whose department issued the white paper Communities in control: real people, real power) essentially said “fuck you all” and backed the developers. His reasoning? Jobs.

Never mind local opinion. Never mind the local SPA being ruined. Never mind the fact the increase in traffic will almost lead to deaths on the roads. Never mind that the jobs won’t be relevant to the area, meaning people will commute in (more congestion, more strain on public services). Never mind the fact myriad superior locations exist in the UK for this development. Never mind the development being two nearly miles from the motorway (or, if you’re the developer, “under a mile”), along small, local roads. And never mind that the inspector ruled against the development. This is Labour, and “communities in control” clearly means “we’re in control, fuck the communities”.

As a parting shot, I’m absolutely sure that Hart and Rushmoor councils being Conservative, the local MPs being Conservative and the majority of locals being Conservative supporters (with most of the rest backing the Lib Dems) had absolutely nothing to do with the Labour Secretary of State’s decision to back developers with lots of money over the wants of the community, the decisions of the local council, the wishes of the MPs, and the decision of the inspector.

Stuart Dredge’s iPhone Games Bulletin just ran a story on Edge magazine once again placing itself firmly in bizarre-o-land. Despite its constant claims at being at the forefront of gaming, it’s made a bunch of stunning screw-ups over the years, the most obvious perhaps being an off-hand dismissal of WarioWare (which got 7/10, a rating Edge has tried ever since to remove from the history books, both by arguing that the review was written by a poor widdle overworked freelancer, and by running 46-page articles on why Made in Wario—the Japanese name for the game that Edge insists on using over the localised one—is so good).

Gosh, that was a long sentence, wasn’t it? Almost as long as one from Edge. Anyway, anyone who’s been keeping tabs on my work will know that I’ve become a total iPod gaming fan-boy of late. The reason isn’t some insane, misguided love for Apple, but the simple fact that iPod (as in touch, or the iPhone) is the only gaming platform that matters.

Ignoring for a second the problems surrounding the App Store (most of which don’t concern the general public), not least the rush to 59p/99 cents that every publisher seems to be taking part in, the simple fact is that since I got an iPhone, I’ve barely used any other games console. The App Store offers thousands of games, most of which are by independent developers, offering highly individual takes on gaming. Because of the nature of Apple handhelds—touchscreen; accelerometer; no tactile buttons—you can’t easily port stuff over from other platforms, and the best games therefore take direct advantage of the system.

To a great extent, iPod gaming is like a return to the 1980s, but with modern technology. Independent developers can make and sell a game, without pandering to the needs of focus groups. These games are then easily accessible (simply download from the App Store), affordable (even ‘expensive’ iPod games are about six quid) and often innovative. Games like Eliss are genuinely doing something new, and I can’t remember the last time I was so excited about a videogames system.

This is why it’s so galling—so hugely irritating—that Future’s supposedly forward-thinking industry bible has once again got it wrong. In its Edge Award For Interactive Innovation 2009 Shortlist, you’d think at least one iPod game would make the cut. You’d think that the magazine, despite its inexplicably tiny amount of iPod gaming coverage, would notice one of the genuine futures of gaming, and champion it, shouting from the rooftops.

But no. Instead, the publication specifically singles out iPod gaming, stating “the games made for these environments are still nascent” (And why is that a bad thing? I seem to recall arcade games development was once ‘nascent’, but we still hail Defender, Robotron and Missile Command as classics) and “It’s difficult to think of an iPhone game that truly exemplifies the singular abilities of its host”. Really? I can think of at least a dozen, but perhaps this merely shows how Edge is stuck in the past rather than the future, if it’d rather showcase the likes of Far Cry 2—an impressive but incremental update on the FPS genre—over products that genuinely innovate.

Many gaming platforms are suddenly finding themselves becoming increasingly irrelevant as new formats take hold. It seems Edge is going the same way.

UPDATE: Phil Schiller Responds on Daring Fireball regarding dictionary app Ninjawords and the App Store.

The iPhone and iPod touch are nothing special from a hardware standpoint. In fact, they are in some ways (such as the iPhone camera) inferior to the competition. However, a combination of a fantastic UI and the App Store ensured both devices became top sellers. But the environment is changing fast, and Apple’s doing little to help.

In terms of UI, others are playing catch-up, and this is—bar flinging lawsuits around—something Apple can’t really guard against. It’s long been an R&D department for less able companies, and that will continue. But Apple’s handling of the App Store has gone from the worrisome to the surprising to the outright absurd.

Initially, one could argue that the App Store was new and surprisingly successful, and so the submissions reviewers were caught off guard and made the odd mistake. This was usually rectified via a combination of public pressure and explanation from developers. Now, though, it seems Apple’s being at once systematically destructive, puritanical and utterly stupid.

I reported yesterday on TechRadar about Apple censoring a dictionary, a story initially broke by Daring Fireball. Today, TUAW claims Apple’s about to start removing eBook apps, under the guise of copyright concerns (something Apple doesn’t seem terribly concerned about when it comes to gaming, judging by the number of IP breaches littering the store).

I sincerely hope there’s little truth to this story, but the report claims Apple’s now even rejecting eBook apps from developers who can prove they own rights to the content. If that’s the case, we’ll presumably soon see the likes of Classics, Eucalyptus and Stanza removed from the store, smashing the App Store’s credibility to dust and removing the ability for Apple handhelds to act as eReaders.

In the aforementioned Daring Fireball piece, John Gruber said: “Every time I think I’ve seen the most outrageous App Store rejection, I’m soon proven wrong. I can’t imagine what it will take to top this one.” I think the removal of eBooks and readers would just about do it.