OK, so the title of this one’s not quite true, but HP’s new tablet looks like an iPad, and John Gruber makes a brilliant point:

TouchPad — a name that, not coincidentally, is drawn from those of two best-selling iOS devices

Not very subtle, HP. Also, the announcement seemed lacking in important details, such as price, availability and battery life. Still, I’m sure those will all ensure it’s an iPad killer, right, tech press?

I’m currently reviewing games for Tap!, Future’s iOS magazine. One of them is RPG/match-three mash-up Puzzle Quest 2. It’s quite a good game, but for me its most important attribute is its size: when unpacked on an iOS device, Puzzle Quest 2 weighs in at over 1 GB.

With Apple devices having fixed storage that’s relatively small (the iPhone tops out at 32 GB and the iPod touch and iPad max out at 64 GB—my iPhone is 16 GB and my iPad 32 GB), the rapid increase in the size of games is fast becoming a problem, not least because Apple encourages regular purchase and publishers price games low to tempt users. The end result is lots of people buy tons of games.

On a magazine forum for a publication I write for, there’s a thread over 50 pages long, with people excitedly talking about their iOS purchases and making recommendations. Several people are now deleting games that they don’t have space for, despite having spent time playing through those games, investing time in them. It’s the same with me and Puzzle Quest 2. The game’s not quite good enough for it to stay on my iPad, because I know by the next issue of Tap! I’ll need to make room for several GB of new games. But I put hours into my progress and would quite like to continue playing. On a Mac or PC, this wouldn’t be an issue (due to the size of hard drives); on a PSP or DS, this wouldn’t be an issue, because I’d plug in the cart again and pick up where I left off (assuming it had battery back-up). On iOS, though, I’m ‘forced’ to delete games when my devices become full.

That Apple doesn’t provide a workaround for this is inexcusable now that we’ve reached iOS 4.x. In the days of 10 MB iOS games, it wasn’t a problem: you could stuff dozens on a device without problem. But in this age of Rivens and Puzzle Quest 2s, Apple’s (from a gaming standpoint) fast turning its high-end devices into the equivalent of crappy cartridges without battery back-up. The only difference is that an iOS device can hold a bunch of ‘cartridges’, but when one’s removed, the result is the same: all your progress is lost.

Game Center could have been a solution to this, but it currently only seems to work well with high scores and achievements. iTunes could definitely be a solution, providing the means to optionally reinstate game data when you reinstall an app. Right now, though, the only option you have is to manually back-up an app’s /Library and /Documents folders yourself (on a jailbroken device or by using the likes of PhoneView or iPhone Explorer), and that’s just not good enough.

Jeremy Keith on the BBC’s plans to—for no reason whatsoever—delete a whole bunch of websites:

Just to be clear, these sites aren’t going to be archived. They are going to be deleted from the web. Server space is the new magnetic tape.

This callous attitude appears to be based entirely on the fact that these sites occupy URLs in top-level directories—repeatedly referred to incorrectly as top level domains on the BBC internet blog—a space that the decision-makers at the BBC are obsessed with.

The BBC, of course, famously spent plenty of effort in the 1960s and 1970s trashing or deleting tapes, which of course hasn’t at all returned to haunt the corporation. Tapes cost money, and so the argument back then was stronger, but the BBC just nuking a load of websites that are just sitting there being informative, like the bastard knowledge-givers and memories-storage containers that they are, is bonkers. (Bye, 47000 unique World War Two memories that the public contributed—the BBC wants to delete you to appease the Tories and senior-level BBC management somehow!)

Keith adds:

I’m very saddened to see the BBC join the ranks of online services that don’t give a damn for posterity.

I agree wholeheartedly.

TouchArcade has some nice quotes from Nintendo’s el-presidenté (of North America) regarding cheapo mobile games (reacting to Nintendo 3DS games likely costing 30-to-45 dollars):

I actually think that one of the biggest risks today in our industry are these inexpensive games that are candidly disposable from a consumer standpoint.

Mm. Far better to continue ripping off consumers*. Because that isn’t a risk at all. Also, it really is terrible that plenty of iOS gamers are out there buying games every single day, due to their low cost, rather than one game a month.

Angry Birds is a great piece of experience but that is one compared to thousands of other pieces of content that, for one or two dollars, I think actually create a mentality for the consumer that a piece of gaming content should only be two dollars.

And why exactly shouldn’t a great piece of gaming content only be two dollars? Or, more precisely, why should a great piece of gaming content cost 30 dollars, or 45, or more? (Infinity Blade is six bucks, so is that OK, or is that still too cheap?)

I actually think some of those games are overpriced at one or two dollars but that’s a whole different story.

Oh gawsh! Chuckle! AHO! And so on. You go, el pres, dismissing iOS and its kin with a quip. But here’s the thing: your problem today isn’t myriad games that aren’t worth two bucks—it’s the thousands available that are.

* Incidentally, my all-time favourite Nintendo WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING? moment came with Pac-Man (NES Classics) for the GBA. Currently ambitiously priced at 30 quid on Amazon, the game was originally priced at ‘only’ 15 when first released in the UK—for a dodgy port of the NES version of Pac-Man. BARGAIN! Kind of puts iOS gaming into perspective. Hell, it even makes Namco’s crazy iOS Pac-Man pricing almost look sane. (Almost.)

The BBC’s having to apologise to Mexico (BBC News) after Top Gear did an episode in a very Top Gear manner, taking the piss out of Mexicans in a low-brow, vaguely xenophobic way. This, apparently, has caused “outrage”, for some reason, because, clearly, Top Gear is a serious news programme and not just three blokes arsing about and wanking over car porn.

One of the few sane voices on the spat, Robert Llewellyn, says:

One of the most intelligent men I’ve ever met was a Mexican architect. He wasn’t lazy, he didn’t wear a poncho, he cooked some of the best food I’ve ever eaten and he was a gentle, non judgmental kind man. I also know if he’d watched Top Gear the other night he would have laughed because he wouldn’t be threatened by such inanity. He would have known that the three middle aged men in jeans had not a clue about Mexican history and culture, he would know what they were really doing was revealing their own ignorance and frail self worth.

Llewellyn’s post seems to swerve between whether Top Gear was ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, but ultimately comes to the conclusion that the episode was merely embarrassing. The bigger argument, though, is should the BBC be self-censoring? It’s one thing for the news to carry on in this manner (almost unheard of in the UK, although some US channels, like Fox News, do this kind of thing all the time), but should television be sanitising an entertainment show? And if so, what about comedies?

Last year, Stephen Fry said there was such a culture of fear at the BBC that it was shying away from taking creative risks. And, indeed, even the man himself has been hit, with the Japanese embassy complaining over a section of a recent QI that featured a discussion on the nuclear bombings of 1945. While some of the comments were undoubtedly in poor taste (such as Davis quipping that bombs had bounced off survivor of both blasts, Mr Yamaguchi), it’s insane to think this sparked a minor international incident. Even more crazy is the tone of the BBC’s own report, which adds:

And Stephen Fry expressed amazement that the Japanese trains were still running after the blast.

Indeed he did express amazement, but that wasn’t him being derogatory—he was amazed at how the country managed to deal so well with being bombed twice by brand new, deadly weaponry. That’s not something to be apologetic about in the slightest.

Still, lucky no other countries ever portray the British in a stereotypical fashion or make jokes at our expense, eh? Man up, BBC. The Top Gear thing wasn’t anything to be proud of, but it wasn’t, in the context of the show, anything to apologise over; and that QI—the best-mannered, most intelligent, most interesting panel show around—also finds itself in a similar situation is nothing short of maddening. Sometimes it’s like the BBC wants to find itself being the British PBS in a decade’s time.