Since I first bought an iPhone 3G and started downloading games for it, I’ve been of the opinion that iOS is the greatest gaming platform I’ve experienced. Having grown up during the 1980s, videogaming for me is at its most exciting when it’s about fun and novelty. Due to low barriers to entry for developers and low-risk for consumers (through iOS games costing way less than those for other platforms), iOS utterly succeeds in providing a gaming environment totally at odds with the mundane, pedestrian, focus-grouped-to-death output that plagues most other platforms.

Apple makes it hard to love sometimes, though. It’s too easy to lose (or be forced to lose) game progress, and Apple’s now decided to drop Game Center support from the second-generation iPod touch and iPhone 3G. I think that decision beggars belief, and it could have grave consequences for developer uptake and iOS grabbing more marketshare at the expense of Nintendo and Sony.

More on this in my TechRadar piece Game Center for iOS bombshell shows Apple still doesn’t get gaming.

It’s almost becoming a weekly event. Rupert Murdoch says something about the future of media, paywalls and electronic newspapers, and the Guardian has a go. Today, it’s the turn of Jemima Kiss, who in an article entitled Murdoch: Tablets are the future for News Corp reports that “Rupert Murdoch was cosying up to Apple again today as he spoke at a media debate,” (of course, the Guardian wouldn’t be seen dead releasing an iPad article approximately once every three seconds) and argues that “in the long term, the thing that will be harder to calculate is the cost of losing much of [the Times’s] voice in the international, online news market. That’s the bottom line we’d really like to see.”

It’s far better, presumably, to obliterate the cash reserves the Guardian has built up over decades by relying too much on ‘free’; the Guardian may have a bigger voice now in international news, but that will only last as long as its pile of cash does.

I’m no fan of Rupert Murdoch. I think his attitude towards the likes of the BBC is abhorrent, and with the exception of a few talented columnists, the Times isn’t a publication I’m interested in reading. However, my gut tells me that Murdoch’s gamble might well work; he’s taking a risk in saying to people that news and related content is worth paying for if the format is good enough. This will add value to his brand rather than diminish it. And when in the future rivals realise he was right, they’ll be fighting to enter a market Murdoch’s already leading in.

Gary Marshall links to a surprisingly candid and lengthy piece by Nigel Whitfield on the state of reviews for the tech press. If you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes and don’t know a freelance journo you can get drunk enough to reveal all (and, let’s face it, that means you just don’t know a freelance journo, because most would sell their souls for half a stout and a packet of peanuts), it provides plenty of insight.

Particular gems include the rather brutal fact of reviewers having a lack of time. Whitfield notes that half-page reviews may pay as low as £80, and if you spend a day screwing around with a product to get it to work, before spending a day testing it, you’re rapidly heading below minimum wage. The reality is actually worse: £80 isn’t a bad rate at all these days, and many freelancers earn less than half of that for a half page, and so get £30 to £50 to fully review a piece of software or hardware (including sourcing imagery, writing the review and editing/marking up said review). Online, things are even worse, with some websites offering as little as £10 for a 500-word review, images and HTML mark-up of edited content.

These days, the only way reviews can be financially viable is if the reviewer already has enough knowledge to get through testing reasonably efficiently. That’s why you tend to see the same people review the same products quite a lot, and it’s also why you sometimes find an obvious flaw isn’t flagged in a review: the reviewer likely had to knock testing on the head after spending twice as long on it as they’d initially wanted to, in order to make enough money to do trivial things such as paying the rent, buying food, and the like.

Still, there are times when I get teeth-gnashingly angry about errors in review copy. John Gruber found an absolute gem over at Information Week; Eric Zeman pitches the iPhone 4 against the Droid X, and rather oddly says that “The iPhone 4 won’t support applications built in-house by businesses,” which therefore “gives the Droid X a slight advantage when it comes to apps”. Given that every single Apple keynote on the iPhone has rattled on about its enterprise app capability, and also that Apple has a section on its website about this functionality, this is one of those times where I feel zero sympathy for the writer.

It’s one thing missing an obscure fact, or incorrectly stating how a feature works, but to in a business magazine incorrectly state a device you’re reviewing lacks business-oriented functionality when an explanation of said business functionality is accessible by typing “iphone enterprise apps” into Google is unprofessional, incompetent and totally unfair on the article’s audience.

The iPad’s a confirmed success. Apple can’t make the things fast enough, and they’re vanishing from shelves worldwide. Another thing that’s vanished is the ‘pad’ jokes, comparing Apple’s device to sanitary products. This sort of thing tends to be the case when a device is successful—the same thing happened to the Wii.

What’s more interesting is how ‘pad’ now might become a generic term over ‘tablet’ for similar devices. Engadget reports that HP’s filed for the PalmPad trademark and Pocket-lint notes that RIM’s grabbed Blackpad.com.

These might be defensive moves, but perhaps these companies are bright enough to take advantage of Apple’s branding success, using names that would immediately get consumers thinking of the iPad, but selling devices that are more ‘open’ or more geared towards enterprise. That said, don’t expect Microsoft to reveal the Windows PhonePad 7 any time soon.

On the Societal Web, Alison McClintock examines the reasoning behind modern corporations using software to find disgruntled customers online. As she rightly points out: “There’s no such thing as a lone complaint in cyberspace and businesses of any size and sector should take note.”

I agree with this, and it’s interesting to see this modern take on customer service in action. I’ve bitched about various companies on Twitter, and had responses from support teams, leading to swift resolutions, which is great. There are, however, two problems. The first is when a company’s systems aren’t fully integrated. It’s great for someone to reply to you on Twitter within five minutes, but decidedly less great when they tell you to email a certain address and you don’t get a response. Secondly, if this process is being automated—as is increasingly common—everything goes wrong very quickly.

Recently, I said something on Twitter about the BBC licence fee costing less per month than the standing charges on my BT bill. Taking that text in context, there’s no reason for any company to respond to me. Sure enough, though, a BT ‘bot’ chirpily replied to the tweet, asking me if I needed help with my bill. This is a nuisance, and shows that, as with any other area of customer care, you actually have to take care to make it work. Scouring the internet and helping customers is a good thing; having bots run rampant and respond to vague keywords in an out-of-context manner is not.

Hat tip: Ian Betteridge.