I waited longer than many to upgrade my iPhone 3GS to iOS 4, because I was on holiday when it was released, and also Drop7 hadn’t been updated (it has now). The experience has so far been variable—while Camera is now insanely fast, Angry Birds regularly judders; I enjoy Apple’s implementation of multitasking but it’s clear it’s been responsible for totally freezing the iPhone for the first time; and folders are a joy, but moving icons around is now even more of a finicky process.

It’s Mail, though, that truly offers the best and worst updates. On the plus side, the absurd dance back and forth to access accounts has been banished via the ‘All Mailboxes’ view (although it often freezes while downloading email from multiple accounts), but the way Apple has implemented automated threading is bonkers.

The way things work is fine until you actually bother to read something. Emails that are part of a thread are gathered together and flagged by a number denoting the messages in the thread. Tap it and you see the overviews of the thread’s messages, in reverse chronological order, so the latest one is at the top. This is all fine, but in the mailbox the thread’s overview is shown not by the most recent message, but by the earliest available one—and this changes depending on how many messages Mail is allowed to store.

The net result of this is that when threading is turned on, you see several new messages and then a very old one, followed by more new ones. To see an overview of the latest reply to a thread, you have to enter it, which is absolutely horrid from a usability standpoint. Not only should this action not be forced, but users shouldn’t see an overview and then jump to an entirely different message—it’s confusing.

Apple should make Mail threads show an overview of the latest email within the thread—something that would be logical and helpful. At the very least there should be a setting for this.

The quote of the day that forms the title of this post comes from MacRumors, as part of its link-bait iPhone 4 Drop Test with Bumper Case Shows Little Protection. Reporting on iFixyouri’s iPhone-with-Bumper drop test, the site notes: “The iPhone 4 with bumper lasted only 3 drops before the front glass cracked. This was the same number of drops that it took to break an unprotected iPhone 4.”

Oh noes! Apple is clearly evil for pushing those bumpers on everyone! BUT WAIT! It turns out that “the iPhone 4 hit the concrete face down for the last fall, so how it falls likely affects the chances of the glass breaking“. Wow, a serious revelation there, folks!

In other LATE-BREAKING NEWS, MacRumors will almost certainly soon reveal that if you repeatedly smash your brand-new MacBook Pro with a hammer, it will get damaged more easily than if you repeatedly beat it with the very feathery bit of a feather duster. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

One of the things that utterly boggles my mind is how reluctant the publishing industry seems to be to acknowledge the existence of iOS devices. Offline, there’s relatively little coverage in Mac mags, and in the UK only the bi-monthly iPod & iPhone User is there for people who want to do more with their iPhones, iPads and iPods. It’s a pretty good mag (disclaimer: I also happen to write for it), but it’s crazy that it’s the only regular publication of its kind.

Perhaps publishers have as one decided there’s no market for competition, but given how iOS stories make a site’s visitor count jump, one might think there’d also be more interest in print-based publications. One argument against is that the relatively low cost of apps makes it unlikely people will buy an iOS magazine; but from a consumer perspective, I’d be happy to pay four or five quid each month if someone would tell me what great apps are out there and how to use them, rather than wading through pages of crap on the App Store and ‘wasting’ 59p a bunch of times before unearthing a real gem of a game or utility.

The iPad might be shaking up thinking in this area, due to apps and games for it generally being more costly than those for iPods. I sincerely hope so, because when I was asked to write the games section for the rather wonderful MacFormat Presents: iPad The Essential Handbook, I had a really fun week, and it was quite a come-down when I returned to my iMac, to review and write about all manner of Mac things. But even if I wasn’t a writer in this space, I’d love to have a small selection of monthly iOS mags to peruse, rather than a few pages in a Mac mag, combined with the inevitable moaning from Mac users about their mags being ‘polluted’.

Anyway, if you have an iPad or are considering getting one, MacFormat’s guide is well worth reading—there are plenty of tutorials and apps covered, for the princely sum of £7.99. You can buy it online from myfavouritemagazines.co.uk.

Kotaku’s mini-article Will Nintendo Release Its Games On, Say, Apple Hardware has some brief content from the Japanese giant that’s raised the hackles of gamers. On the prospect of Nintendo IP on iOS, Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata reportedly said: “Nintendo’s software and hardware are the same thing. Other companies don’t share Nintendo’s values or traditions when it comes to creating devices. We are absolutely not thinking of doing that.”

With every gamer wanting every game everywhere, Iwata’s statement has gone down like a sack of shit, but the reality is that Nintendo has, for many years, been the closest thing to Apple in the gaming space. It operates a largely closed model, and it’s therefore able to innovate—something it does far more often than its rivals, and often regarding UI/UX rather than by churning out Yet Another Console That Can Shift More Polygons. Because of this, Nintendo’s totally right to continue its ‘lock in’ way of thinking. It can do what it wants with its IP and not worry about anyone else.

However, the problem of being the Apple of the gaming space is when Apple itself arrives to spoil the party. On the desktop, Apple gaming has always been a joke, but in the mobile space, Apple is gaining serious ground. Time will tell whether Nintendo acts accordingly to the threat of Apple’s underlying ecosystem (if it doesn’t, it’ll potentially be playing the same game as Sega in a few years), but in retaining a general closed approach, the House of Mario is on the right path.

Apple often gets a lot of stick for the perceived ‘race to the bottom’ regarding App Store prices. Many developers feel compelled to reduce app prices to 99 cents or 59p, in order to compete—especially when it comes to games. However, it appears things on Android are even more grim, with Distimo’s latest app stores report stating over half of Android apps are free (TechCrunch).

Interestingly, while the Android Market is available in 46 countries, only 13 of them can download paid apps, and only nine enable devs to distribute them. While Google advocates and promotes the ‘free’ economy, it’s worth remembering that the company sits on a cash mountain of billions made from advertising. Developers do not—they need to eat, and they can’t eat ‘free’.

Therefore, here’s hoping Android swings more towards the balance seen in Apple’s App Store, and that both then manage to convince people that a few bucks for an app or game (as opposed to free or 99 cents/59p) isn’t actually a huge rip-off.