In the current issue of MacUser magazine is a two-page spread of developer feedback to the new iPhone/iPod touch screen size, which shifted from the original’s 3:2 to a 16:9 ratio. Within, veteran developer John Pickford said something particularly interesting:

We’ll certainly take the new shape into account on future games, and the fact there are now three shapes to support means we’ll most likely go for an approach that doesn’t depend too heavily on screen shape.

One of the big things about iOS when it first arrived was that the device became the app. Because of the single screen size, you had developers, for better or worse, crafting experiences finely honed for the iPhone’s screen size. As the iPad arrived, developers split into those who continued to craft specifically for both screen ratios and those who took a more flexible approach, akin to responsive web design. In the case of the Pickfords and their game Magnetic Billiards:

We support two screen shapes (iPhone up to 4S and iPad).  The entire backdrop is a single bitmap and we even have different levels on iPad to make good use of the extra resolution and different screen shape. Properly supporting to the new long screen would be a lot of work if we were to take the same approach and redesign all the levels to account for the new shape. We haven’t decided what to do yet, but it’s probably not going to be cost effective to make that change.

Today, PC Advisor and other publications are showcasing the iPad mini. Despite my protestations in the past, even I have to admit this device is almost certainly on the way (although this photo could easily enough be yet another clever fake). What’s not known is what screen such a device would have: 4:3, like the iPad; 16:9, like the new iPhone and iPod touch; something entirely different. Even scaling from an existing ratio would make some apps work better or worse, because interface components would be bigger or smaller, depending on whether the app scaled up from the iPhone or down from the iPad, respectively.

All this is a very long way of saying that we’re going to see a big change in a certain type of iOS app—the one designed for the device. Pickford summed it up by stating his approach would no longer depend heavily on screen shape, and I’ve heard similar from other developers, both of apps and games (although especially the latter). In a sense, this could be a good thing—freeing up iOS from the constraints of specific screen shapes opens up developers to whatever Apple throws at them next and should also make apps simpler to port to competing platforms. But it also impacts heavily on those tightly crafted experiences that were designed just for your iPad or just for your iPhone. Having all the action take place only in the very centre of a screen, because a developer cannot guarantee what device you’re using, or, worse, carving out a viewport and surrounding it with a border, could cheapen iOS games and apps in a big way.

Perhaps I’m being pessimistic, but pre-iPhone 5, indies were already feeling the pinch. With that device and perhaps a new, smaller iPad to contend with, the shift towards more fluid and less device-specific apps seems inevitable.

Further reading: Standards guru and web designer Jeffrey Zeldman responds in Will the last digital canvas please turn out the lights?

TechCrunch’s Jordan Crook asks: In A Keyboard-Free Future, What Happens To All The Writers?

I wrote this post with my voice. I made no changes, save for a few typo corrections, and used no keyboard. That’s probably why it’s so bad.

It’s an experiment of mine. The hypothesis is whether or not a keyboardless world will change writing. And make no mistake, at some point we will live in a keyboardless world.

His concern: writing “gets rid of the voice entirely”, and speaking has a lack of editing. There’s also a quote from Paul Graham that more or less says speaking doesn’t generate ideas as well as writing does, because there’s less consideration.

Crook continues:

In short, good ideas don’t come from saying them, they come from writing them. They come from quiet thought transferred silently over to print.

This isn’t the case for many people. A future entirely lacking some kind of editing mechanism would, of course, be hellish from a publishing standpoint. However, I know—and I’m not going to name names—a number of fairly prominent writers who primarily use speech input to get their initial ideas down. Some feel more comfortable speaking, whereas others simply aren’t fast enough to type their thoughts into a software package. Although I myself don’t often use speech software (bar for subbing, having the iMac read back my work), I nonetheless sometimes find myself firing a kind of stream-of-thought into whatever writing package I’m using (not least when writing for this blog). This isn’t terribly filtered, and, as Graham puts it, I spend “no more time thinking about each sentence than it takes to say it”. But that doesn’t matter when the person crafting a piece of written output then spends subsequent time honing and editing it. Like with every other creative medium, it’s the edit that’s so often important with the written (or spoken) word.

Crook ends with a thought that makes sense, and then another that perhaps lacks vision:

Or more likely, will software be built for our constant writing, deleting, and rewriting?

Only time can tell for certain, but I know one thing without a doubt. Speaking this post, even without any corrections, took far longer than writing it would have.

Without doubt, we will continue to see interfaces improve beyond someone having to be tied to a keyboard, in precisely the same way that DTP apps in the 1980s moved us on from having to laboriously manually correct typewritten documents. There’s so much scope in gestural interfaces twinned with a kind of artificial intelligence—being able to select a chunk of your voice-input text and tell the application to move it, delete it, or change it in some way. On that basis, while I agree with Crook’s concluding line, I suspect it’ll be sooner rather than later before we have more intuitive and natural means of creating text than restricting people to how fast their fingers move over a QWERTY keyboard.

Wired’s Ryan Rigney on Rovio. This is a very strange article, pretty much suggesting that Rovio has spent the last few years essentially iterating on its own version of Crush the Castle (which is fair enough), but seemingly ignoring the dozens of games the company made prior to Angry Birds. (What, you don’t fondly remember Sumea Ski Jump?) And then the company gets praise for Bad Piggies, which

doesn’t feel like anything else on the market

Bad Piggies is a good game, and it certainly avoids much of the randomness that I found utterly infuriating with Angry Birds after the initial excitement of flinging avians at ramshackle buildings wore off. But it’s not like build-your-own physics puzzlers are something new.

This isn’t a criticism of Rovio, however. For once, I actually have some faith in the company, purely on the basis that it has done something different to what it has been milking for years now. Also, the execution of Rovio’s new game is solid and impressive. But it is curious to see a lot of writers these days offering very abbreviated takes on the games industry.

I previously wrote about fragmentation of iOS games controllers, with the GameDock providing a different system from the somewhat popular iCade. Before that, I questioned the sanity in app-specific controllers, because it made no sense that someone would buy a controller for one game or set of games.

Duo had form in this, creating Atari Arcade, an Atari-branded controller specifically for the mediocre Atari’s Greatest Hits, which includes a bunch of arcade games that really only work with their original controllers that weren’t joystick-based. So Atari Arcade is not only more limited than the iCade, but a non-optimal experience with the only games it works with. Great.

Duo’s now announced Duo Gamer and Duo Pinball. Again, these appear to be specific to certain companies—the Gamer ” plays exclusively with top-rated Gameloft apps” and the Duo Pinball? Yup: “Duo Pinball works exclusively with the games from Gameprom listed on the website”. What’s most baffling about this isn’t that Duo has started from this position (iCade, remember, initially only worked with Atari’s compilation), but that the website FAQs appear to suggest it wishes to remain there:

I’m a developer; can I use the Duo Gamer for my game?
No, the Duo Gamer works exclusively with Gameloft games. If you’re interested in using a controller for your games please email controllerdev@discoverybaygames.com.

I’m a developer; can I use the Duo Pinball for my game?
No, the Duo Pinball works exclusively with Gameprom games. If you’re interested in using a controller for your games please email controllerdev@discoverybaygames.com.

So the aim appears to be “we will design a controller specifically for your games, rather than adding value to our existing products”. Perhaps I’m missing something, but this seems like a perfect way to send your hardware rapidly to the bargain bins, once people realise quite how limited it is. Still, perhaps the press will help out. After all, while not being thrilled with the Duo Pinball itself, Slide to Play said in its review:

Duo Pinball controller works with games from just one company, Gameprom, the makers of the best pinball games on the App Store

Well, I guess Pinball Arcade and Zen Pinball must be figments of my imagination. Lucky me.

Oh, Apple. Every time I think you’ve got your shit together regarding the App Store and not being jerks regarding blocking apps that supposedly ‘confuse’ users, you start being jerks. As reported by TechCrunch, your latest guidelines are worthy of a headdesk:

Apps that display Apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store will be rejected.

Note that this isn’t stopping people advertising apps within their own apps in the annoying way that pisses off users (like those wonderful splash screens for an entirely different app when you launch an app), but instead potentially stopping people providing apps that curate the App Store, in a way that’s actually useful to users.

Recent changes to the App Store have improved things a little on iOS devices, at least in terms of navigation. But Apple still relies heavily on charts (i.e. what’s popular rather than what’s actually worth buying), and those reviews that do lurk within app pages have about as much collective worth as the mutant offspring of Amazon product reviews and YouTube comments.

To be fair, Apple does at least attempt curation itself. Beyond the charts, there are new & noteworthy sections, along with app- and genre-specific collections that might help someone look further afield. But these are often arbitrary (it boggles the mind, for example, that no Llamasoft game has ever been displayed within one of Apple’s retrogaming collections) and, of course, they don’t have the value of third-party objectivity. It’s the equivalent of a music store providing their selection of what is worth buying, rather than a music review site, magazine or app doing the same.

It remains to be seen which apps will be effectively banned by Apple due to this rule, or whether, as AppGratis CEO Simon Dawlat optimistically opines, Apple will just shoot low-end copycats (PocketGamer.biz). But if Apple does simply tear down a sub-section of apps, those that assist users in buying great apps, and those that often drive traffic to indies, that won’t benefit App Store users, nor, in the long run, will it really benefit Apple.

Further reading: Who controls the App store? by Xiotex Studios.