Here we go again. Microsoft does love its defensive comparison charts, and it’s unveiled another, pitting the iPad against a range of Windows 8 tablets. As you might expect, it’s just a tiny bit biased and the slightest bit sneaky with some comparisons. For example, the iPad loses out in terms of display size, but, for some reason, resolution is never mentioned.

When comparing against the HP Envy, the iPad has a “$69 sold separately keyboard” —the horror! And, of course, that’s the only keyboard that works with the iPad. The end. But wait! When you compare against any of the other tablets, the keyboard comparison magically disappears! It’s almost like Microsoft doesn’t want to admit that keyboards aren’t in fact included by default with Windows 8 tablet devices!

Elsewhere, we have the usual blah blah blah about the iPad not having a million ports, not printing to “most printers” (despite AirPrint printers now being absurdly cheap and readily available), and not having Office. I’ve written about Office and Microsoft’s current direction with it before, and the new comparison chart helpfully notes:

The only consumer Office app the iPad can run is OneNote.

Perhaps Microsoft really is going to silo Office and make it a USP for its tablets, in which case, it’s going to look pretty stupid. (Teaching people Office isn’t ubiquitous is a really bad idea.) Alternatively, Office might eventually show up for iPad, at which point these comparisons will be moot, and Microsoft is going to look pretty stupid. It’s like the company’s surrounded by a sea of stupid, but rather than building a raft, it’s just drinking down the stupid.

Fortunately, Microsoft then has a minor brainwave and presents two comparisons about things that are genuinely useful. Multiple accounts are something the iPad doesn’t allow (Apple would rather you buy separate devices for you, each member of your family and, preferably, even for your pets), and it really should, at least for ‘guests’ or to provide parents with more control over what children can access. And then there’s “seeing two apps at once”, which I’m sure is something at least some iPad power users would love.

Unfortunately, Microsoft then saw fit to release the toe-curlingly embarrassing Windows 8: Less talking, more doing advert. It ‘hilariously’ has Siri saying what the iPad can’t do, and I’m sure someone important at Microsoft was thinking how great the advert was. After all, it shows how the iPad doesn’t have live tiles, “can only do one thing at a time”, can’t do PowerPoint, and then ends with

Should we just play Chopsticks?

Oooh, burn!

The teeny tiny snag is, it’s easy to spin most of that in another direction:

• Man, that Windows 8 thing is a huge, noisy, garbled mess on the start screen, compared to the clean nature of iOS!
• Hang on, the iPad can speak to you? That sounds pretty great! Hey, why’s the Windows tablet silent?
• Microsoft’s proprietary formats are a really bad idea, aren’t they? Still, I bet there are some alternate Office-compatible apps for iPad, right?
• Hey, that piano app looks great. What, it’s GarageBand and costs only five bucks? Man, I’d love that. So where’s the Windows 8 version? Oh. *buys iPad*

In short, then: Microsoft says Windows 8 is amazing because it’s noisier, has split-screen and can run PowerPoint, but it can’t speak, and if you’re into music, you’re not ‘doing’—you’re just some kind of idiot who should really be making a presentation on a cheap piece of tablet hardware.

That’s Apple told.

Sometimes you read something on a blog that’s like a punch to the gut:

I don’t know exactly how much Bombcats needed to make to keep Radiangames in business, but these numbers aren’t close.

That’s a comment from Radian Games, in reality indie dev Luke Schneider. He recently released Bombcats, which has enjoyed plenty of downloads, but IAP conversion of around 0.1 per cent. On one day he mentions, he states 100,000 downloads resulted in a couple of hundred bucks in income—figures likely to drop as the game fades from view over time.

I had no idea Schneider was on his last throw of the dice, but it’s doubly sad to see him being generous about IAP (the game isn’t pushy and provides plenty of content for nothing) and then finding out that this method doesn’t work.

I wrote about the pros and cons of freemium/free-to-play/IAP on iOS recently. Every developer I spoke to said the same things:

• IAP in and of itself is not a bad system, and can actually be beneficial in providing income over time that can be reinvested in a title’s development and/or new projects.
• IAP has a somewhat poor reputation because it’s too often exploited.
• IAP can fail if you are not aggressive enough.

You can see the disconnect. In order to create a good user experience, you’re better off being generous; but in order to survive, you have to be a bastard. There are exceptions—Hero Academy comes to mind—but for the most part, those IAP titles that thrive are the ones nickel-and-diming you at every turn.

It’s also pretty depressing to see the comments in the Radian Games post. Some people say they won’t even try the game purely because it’s free-to-play, and, well, that never means free. That’s sort of how I used to think, but a comment by indie Ste Pickford sums up why I changed my tune long ago:

I think the move to digital distribution meant that a drift towards a purchase of price of zero was inevitable (as the ‘cost of goods’ is effectively zero), so now we’re here on iOS we might as well get on with working out how to make good games—and make a living—within this landscape, rather than clinging to the old business model.

Following on from that, gamers also have to understand these changing business models and support those developers embracing IAP if they’re going about it the right way. People who loved Punch Quest should have thought “Wow, this is amazing—I’ll fling the dev a few bucks just because”, rather than “Wow, this is amazing AND free—WOOOO!” The thing is, as Alan Downie recently wrote, customers won’t give you money unless you ask, and in iOS gaming, it seems you really have to ask rather hard.

I hope there’s a balance to be found. I hope the future of gaming isn’t developers increasingly getting consultants in from the gambling industry (yes, this is happening, and, no, it’s not a good thing) rather than simply creating great games. I hope that, somehow, Apple will one day embrace making smaller games more discoverable rather than so often flagging games that are guaranteed hits already. Right now, despite some devs finding they can’t survive the iOS lottery, there are still fantastic titles arriving by the day, but the manner in which aggression is becoming a requirement makes me uncomfortable and concerned for the future of what’s otherwise an amazing gaming platform.

It’s at this point I wish I were a Daring Fireball or The Loop, with the kind of readership that could make a difference. I could say go and buy Inferno+ (Robotron meets Gauntlet in neon) and Slydris (futuristic well-based block-falling puzzler), two of Radian’s best titles (for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad). I could say fling a few bucks at Bombcats, knowing that it could change the course of events. But my readership is small and so I’m effectively powerless; I can only imagine how the likes of Schneider feel.

Still, go and buy those games anyway, because you never know and—most importantly—they’re really very good indeed.

Back in 2012, I interviewed for .net magazine a chap by the name of Dalton Caldwell. He was a man with a plan, with the aim to create a realtime feed platform that would become “what Twitter could have been”.

Now, I like ‘Twitter the service’ an awful lot, but ‘Twitter the company’ makes me edgy. It’s very developer hostile when it comes to clients, and it’s also well on its way to becoming a platform for pushing advertising. I very much hope it doesn’t become the mess that Facebook is these days, but Twitter’s customers are increasingly businesses, not you, the user.

Caldwell’s App.Net takes a different stance. Although in a sense broadly similar to Twitter (you post, follow, repost, ‘star’, and so on), it’s based around paid tiers of membership (one for developers, and one for everyone else). This means the users are the customers, and it also keeps out spam. (Say ‘iPad’ on Twitter at your peril; say it on App.Net whenever you like. Hell, say it often, just because you can—until people start asking if you’ve been hollowed out and replaced by an Apple advertising robot.) It’s also, in my experience, resulted in a quieter but clearly content and happy community.

There’s also a free tier, which at the time of writing requires an invite from a paying member, and that also has some limitations, such as the number of people you can follow. Possibly because I’m a journalist a reasonable number of people follow, but probably more likely because I in my press photo look a bit like Seth MacFarlane, App.Net have given me a pile of invites to the service. So if you’d like to join me on App.Net, get your free invitation here, while stocks last.

If you’d like to know more about the service, read Matt Gemmell’s excellent post, which explores account discovery and the clients available for a range of platforms.

Time’s Ben Bajarin writes: Apple Vs. Google Vs. Microsoft: One Platform Will Not Rule Them All. His idea isn’t new, but it’s something that oddly few pundits understand or at least bring themselves to write about: that Microsoft’s domination in the PC market was an anomaly and won’t necessarily be repeated in the so-called post-PC market.

The narrative we so often see—presumably in part due to the page views it results in—is that Android is winning in smartphones and Apple is winning in tablets. Also, Android will soon win in the latter market, too; Apple will eventually be snuffed out entirely—and Microsoft has already missed its shot. No-one else has a chance.

Not only does this argument ignore the fact Apple’s quite happy taking much of the PC industry’s profits, despite its relatively tiny market-share (and could therefore likely do the same in mobile), but it avoids any discussion regarding why Microsoft rose to almost complete dominance in the 1990s PC market, and why that doesn’t look likely to happen again.

Bajarin explains about the past and present, stating that the PC market was then small and dominated by corporates, but now consumer markets are the real prize, and those markets can sustain many players; indeed, they often thrive on competition. He mentions fast-food chains, car manufacturers and companies that make soft drinks. Pause for only a second and you will be able to think of technology industries with similarly strong competition: televisions, for example. We don’t talk about Sony or Samsung eventually winning the ‘television war’, so why do so many do so when it comes to smartphones and tablets?

There’s also an important point Bajarin omits that explains why one player is unlikely to win these wars: interoperability. In the early 1980s, computing was diverse and siloed, but the genius of Microsoft was to be an essential player in ushering in a ‘standard’ platform, still effectively siloed. The web obliterated that, and we now increasingly rely on interoperable services. I can use Twitter on my Mac and iPhone, but friends can use it on their PCs, Android devices, Windows Phones, BlackBerry devices, Firefox OS phones, and, if they’re feeling particularly oddball, their C64s. Of course, platforms still have unique advantages that draw people in, but ensuring you have access to something that’s a ‘standard’ isn’t really one of them.

Via Ian Betteridge on App.net.

Edge has put up its Impossible Road review. It gets a 9. Having spent hours wrestling with this bastard-hard game, I think that’s a perfectly justifiable score. Impossible Road is addictive, pure and polished. It’s not perfect, but in the context of mobile games, it’s very, very, very, very good indeed.

However, how does it fare when you remove the context of mobile games? In the comments section of the Edge review, a couple of readers have complained that the game doesn’t deserve its rating, that Edge is dumbing down, or that it only deserves a 9 if you compare it to other games that you play for five minutes. So here’s my entirely reasoned and carefully considered response to that: bullshit.

I’m sick to death of people whining about mobile games somehow being inferior to ‘proper’ games on ‘proper’ consoles. If you have a ratings system, its full range should be used. If a game is really great, it should get a high score. If it’s not that great, it shouldn’t. I understand why it might break some people’s brains that the likes of Impossible Road might score similarly to a Zelda, but it’s insulting to mobile developers to suggest their games aren’t as rewarding or, for that matter, don’t reward investment.

If I think about the games I’ve spent most time on over the years, they are varied. Civilization II had tons of depth, and I spent many hours rampaging around semi-random planets, obliterating all-comers. But I also spent an insane number of hours honing my skills on Tetris. Should Tetris somehow have had a ratings ceiling, just because it was a simple game? Of course not. Just because you can understand Tetris and see pretty much all it has to offer within a minute, does that mean it lacks longevity? Absolutely not. In fact, gaming’s history is littered with titles that were absurdly simple and yet also brilliant, from the Pac-Mans of the classic era of arcade gaming through to the Super Hexagons of the modern mobile age. Moreover, they reward investment. It’s a different type of investment to finite and linear games, where the objective is often to complete a story, but it’s still a reward, more akin, perhaps, to honing a sports skill.

Given the choice, I’d obliterate all scores in every publication, essentially forcing everyone to—horrors!—read the text. At the most, I’d allow ‘recommended’ and ‘bloody essential’ badges, as per the mid-1990s Melody Maker. But if numbers must be applied, then this shouldn’t be done on the basis of any arbitrary rules dreamt up by ‘hardcore’ gamers scared witless by the prospect of mobile gaming encroaching on their turf. The thinking should be simple: is this game any good? If it is, like Impossible Road, it deserves a high score, regardless of the platform the game’s on and the mechanics it offers.