Welcome to the world, Caliber Advantage, yet another iOS games controller. It’s more or less the iCade Mobile, but for the iPhone 5, and with added analogue nubs. According to Slide to Play,

iFrogz is working with Epic Games and Chair Entertainment to ensure that at least some titles developed using the Unreal Engine 3 will be compatible.

Well, that’s great. I’m sure “at least some titles” being compatible with yet another expensive controller is what the world needs. It’s perfectly sensible to keep fragmenting the already niche iOS games controllers market, because what ever gamer likes is a drawer full of controllers that only work with certain games. Even better when a single new controller will cost 70 quid, and will last only as long as the form factor of current Apple devices does. (iCade Mobile found this out the hard way and is currently available at fire-sale prices.)

To be fair to iFrogz, perhaps it can pull this off. Maybe it will get on board hundreds of developers and finally turn an iPhone into a games system with a physical controls option. But the iCade’s been around for a long time now, and even that easy-to-implement system only has games compatibility stretching to dozens of titles (some of which are, admittedly, retro compilations that bundle many games into a single app). Unless iFrogz somehow manages to totally revolutionise this aspect of the industry, it’s just going to be another Duo Gamer.

A couple of days ago, Apple announced the following on its developer portal:

Beginning January 9, app screenshots will be locked in iTunes Connect once your app has been approved. New screenshots may be uploaded when you submit a binary for an update to an existing app or a new app.

This obliterates a common tactic used by scammers, where they’d get a crappy app approved and then later switch out the grabs to mock-ups or even images from entirely different games. The process was memorably outlined on the Panic blog, where ‘Mooncraft’ turned out to be not exactly like Minecraft, instead being a really basic block-dropping game.

Well known iOS developer Matt Gemmell was positive about Apple’s decision, but I’ve since seen plenty of bellyaching on forums. “Why should the majority be punished to deal with a relatively small number of scammers?” “It’s so unfair that I can’t now update my grabs all the time, for marketing!” “Apple’s walled garden just became even more walled!”

Aside from the fact developers should more often be showing off their apps without added crap in App Store grabs (as I point out in How to boost the chances of getting your iOS game reviewed, part of my press tips series), devs should realise something very simple yet important about Apple’s update: it benefits everyone.

Users can now look at an App Store grab and be sure that’s the app they’re going to get. This means they will be more likely to trust the system and more likely to use it. That leads to increased income. The compromise: you can’t change your App Store grabs approximately every six seconds; but perhaps that’s not even a negative thing and could lead to more developers carefully considering the grabs they upload, rather than bunging something up quickly and figuring they can make things better later.

There’s a piece on The Guardian today about Manchester honouring pioneering electronic music genius Delia Derbyshire. Her most famous work is the arrangement of the Doctor Who theme, where she crafted something genuinely otherworldly, using cutting-edge electronics well over a decade before the likes of Kraftwerk took to synths. Famously, her arrangement was so unique that the theme’s composer asked: “Did I really write this?” Derbyshire replied: “Most of it.”

Theme tunes are important. They set the tone. The original Doctor Who theme and at least some of the subsequent versions are spooky, chilling, ethereal compositions. They say to kids: prepare to be afraid. Compare that with the theme in the resurrected Doctor Who, which increasingly buries the beautiful electronics, piling on more strings and bombastic garbage. I’m not naive enough to think that the original theme could ever be used today as-is, but the new theme doesn’t say “this will scare you”—it just says “this will be noisy”.

The big problem is that current composer Murray Gold only appears to have one tactic when he’s asked to amend the Doctor Who theme for a new series: he just adds more stuff. There’s also a hint of subversion, in him adding orchestral elements that somehow make the theme ‘his’, with new melodies that distract from the original. Assuming the show survives, and Gold doesn’t move on, I’m half expecting an interview along these lines by 2020:

Interviewer: So, Murray, tell us the thinking behind the new Doctor Who theme.

Gold: Well, it needed more! It had to be louder! It just needed MORE!

Interviewer: But as far as we can tell, the new theme is now actually compressed white noise.

Gold: LOUDERRRR!

I’d love to see the reverse. Next time the Doctor Who theme needs reworking, they should strip it back. Make it something eerie again, and set the scene for a show that’ll have kids scuttling to hide behind the sofa, rather than making it yet another in a long line of dull, directionless cacophonies.

We’re one week into January, and already there’s a battle on for the most stupid Apple article in tech. This doesn’t bode well for the industry as a whole. At this rate, by March we’ll see ‘analysts’ arguing Tim Cook should become an actual cook, and that Jony Ive should turn every Apple device into a dodecahedron, just because.

I earlier today talked about a slice of Forbes stupid, but the ever reliable International Business Times has also been on hand with CES 2013: 6 Gadgets to Expect from Apple. Before we begin, it’s important to note that Apple does not attend CES. The last time it did so, over 20 years ago, John Sculley was CEO and Apple was pimping the Newton.

So, Vittorio Hernandez, what can we ‘expect’ from Apple. And by ‘we’, I mean ‘you’, after presumably taking in too much ‘candy’?

The Apple TV

Oh, here we go. If I was going to lazily bang out a list of upcoming Apple kit without even bothering to think about it, I guess the mythical Apple TV would be number one. Still, Hernandez takes it a step further than most, in providing the following information about the new device that Apple won’t in fact be displaying (because, remember, Apple won’t be at CES) and that doesn’t actually exist outside the minds of fevered tech hacks:

The next Apple TV that will appear in the upcoming CES 2013 event was predicted last year and it quotes “thinking differently.”

WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? Gah.

Anyway, number two:

Mac Pro

This one’s at least somewhat sane, but the chances of Apple announcing a new Mac Pro at CES are zero, largely due to Apple not attending CES. Even if Apple happened to be there, CES probably wouldn’t be the place the new hardware would be announced anyway. Still, Hernandez is on hand to talk about one of the new features of the Mac Pro hardware:

The next generation of Mac Pro […] is expected to have several outstanding improvements including the revolutionary video editing app – Final Cut Pro X.

Apple’s new hardware will feature… new software? Sigh.

If you’ve not yet lost the will to live, number 3 is:

iPad Mini: Finally, after comments and disappointments by many Apple users, the iPad Mini will have another version and this time, it comes with a Retina Display.

That’s right. Apple, having released the iPad mini in November, which is selling very nicely, will at CES, which it isn’t attending, ditch it in favour of an updated model. I imagine Hernandez has here taken Apple’s marketing spin about iPads being magical as a literal thing—after all, with today’s tech, there’s no way in hell the company would get a Retina display into the iPad mini and retain its light weight and thin form factor. Still, it’s not like reality is something Hernandez cares about, as evidenced by item four:

iPhone with Two Sizes

Unlike the existing iPhones that are for sale, in, um, two sizes.

Clearly on a roll and somewhat infatuated by the appeal of high-res displays, Hernandez then offers item five as ‘Retina display’, although mangles the sentence to the level I imagine all the sub editors had died from a combination of shame, despair and madness by this point:

Retina Display: iPad mini will finally have it but larger devices like iMac is not having any treats for this feature due to high cost. However, Macbook Air is going to have a retina display coming soon.

So the iMac “is not having any treats for this feature due to high cost”, but the MacBook Air (sorry, Macbook Air [sic]) is? Uh-huh.

And if those five weren’t enough to make you just give up on tech reporting and spend 2013 reading about kittens, number six delivers a knock-out blow:

New Camera Technology: The next generation of iPhone camera will come with a pre-installed database and new recognition software for recognizing paintings, landmarks, and famous people. This is a welcoming part for aspiring paparazzi.

Yay! New tech for creepy stalkers! I’m sure that’s going to get Cook to change his mind about CES and zoom over to get a stand right now. And never mind that Hernandez is talking about software, not hardware at this point, despite specifically mentioning the ‘iPhone camera’.

*Googles ‘articles about kittens’*

This is a great video, which shows Tommy Edison—who is blind—using Instagram. If nothing else, this highlights the importance of accessibility in modern technology, and the way it can make tasks more inclusive. Roll back 20 or 30 years and someone like Edison would have found it significantly harder to take the shots and would also have had no worldwide outlet. Today, with an iPhone, he can capture and share his surroundings, despite not being able to see them himself.

Apple talks about its devices being ‘magical’, and that’s mostly marketing guff, but in this kind of case, I think it’s a justifiable term. You can follow Edison here, and if you’re an iOS developer whose app isn’t fully accessible, I hope this might give you some inspiration and lead you to making your app available to all users.

Further reading: developer Matt Gemmell’s iOS accessibility articles.