toadkick

I did read the article. Sorry, I conflated pinch-zoom with double-tap zooming. facepalm

How about we instead stop turning off page zooming on mobile sites. The least of my concerns here is the stupid 300ms lag, when it seems like 80% of mobile sites these days don't even allow pinch-zooming anyway. Remember when one of the great things about smartphones was that you could use the "real" internet? Yeah. My poor eyeballs (and fat fingers) miss those days.

Sure, if taste is not at all a factor. But since we're human beings, it is a factor. It's "easy" unless you are someone who is repulsed completely by the taste of most vegetables. There's nothing "easy" about choking down food that tastes like poison to me. I wish I could flip a switch in my brain and suddenly love vegetables, for more reasons than just potential animal cruelty. But I can't. So it will always be "hard" for me to not eat meat.

I posted a very similar reply to a post a couple of days ago linking to the same article (uh..see EDIT below, this is slightly different article), submitted by the same person, who also happens to be the the author of the story (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4425673). It appears that post was either flagged or downvoted into oblivion, because it disappeared shortly thereafter (and after seeing this hit again 2 days later, I'm thinking it was pretty justifiable...)

EDIT: okay, so I missed a small detail, the other was about the MBP, this one is about the MBA. My bad..I guess.

Anyway, my experience has been largely the same as yours...I lost a significant amount of battery life when I upgraded to Lion, and apparently it seems like the problem is only getting worse.

The author replied in the other post that he would add Snow Leopard to the test, which should be interesting...I'm expecting that the difference between Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion will be huge.

I wish they would/could also include Snow Leopard in this comparison. I lost about 20-30% of my battery life after upgrading to Lion, so the further reduction seems pretty horrible. Guess I'll be waiting a little longer still before upgrading to Mountain Lion.

It's one thing for suppliers to leak info on hardware they are supplying, but I'm sure Apple doesn't give inside information such as pricing strategy to them. It's BS. And the fact that it's coming from Digitimes makes it even more suspect.

It's one thing for suppliers to leak info on hardware they are supplying, but I'm sure Apple doesn't give inside information such as end product pricing to them. It's BS. And the fact that it's coming from Digitimes makes it even more suspect.

Yeah, Digitimes is notorious for being completely wrong about Apple's plans.

#1 and #2 are fair points, in light of the fact that the iPhone completely cannibalized the iPod market. But, the amazing iPod sales weren't going to continue forever, and I think Apple just took the next logical step when they released the iPhone.

As you mentioned, an $800 MB Air would be in iPad + Keyboard/other accessory price range territory, which could certainly cannibalize iPad sales. But in this case it doesn't make much sense to cannibalize the still young and very profitable iPad market with a product that has been around much longer, has historically had low market share, and doesn't have the same "new and cool" factor.

#3 I don't see happening as long as Apple still intends to sell Macs, because that would dilute one of the things that makes a Mac a Mac (the combination of the hardware + Mac OS X), and they've fought pretty hard to keep Mac OS off of other machines.

Well, typically Apple just sells all of the stock of their current Macs when they are about to release a new model. The rumor mill usually kicks into high gear around the time all of the retail and online stores start running low on stock. In fact, with Macs, they typically do just upgrade the hardware and keep the price point the same on the newer models. I'm not saying that it's impossible that Apple would release an $800 MB Air, just that it would be atypical for them, and it seems unlikely. Maybe if this story offered some actual evidence for why Apple would drop it's prices, but it didn't. All it says is "Somebody somewhere said so", and continues on to actually weaken it's point by saying that everybody else in the "ultrabook" segment is cutting back production, presumably because they aren't selling well vs. the MB Air.

I don't think that's competing on price first, I think that's a graceful and inexpensive way to increase market share in a very competitive mobile environment. From everything I've read, it's the $0 with contract 3GS that is accomplishing this, and I don't think the people who would get a 2-year old iPhone because it's free are the same kind of people who would spend $800 on a laptop, regardless of the brand. I don't think the drop from $1000 to $800 would really be that compelling to them, because they likely aren't type to care about getting the super-thin awesome hotness with a small hard drive and no optical drive at a significant cost over a run-of-the-mill Dell (or comparable) laptop. The Mac has never had huge market share, and their Mac business brings in a scant amount of profit compared to the iPhone and iPad business, where they can much more afford to lose a small amount of profit in the interest of increasing market share. I don't see why they would kneecap themselves by reducing the price so much just to increase market share, when they make such a nice margin already with what little market share they do have.

I'd hardly call the 64 GB in the $999 model "massive". I still know a lot of people who won't make the switch to an Air due to the lack of an optical drive, and reducing the already small hard disk capacity would reduce the attractiveness of the Air to those folks even further. Also, I don't think iCloud and iTunes Match are good enough (yet) to convince people that the don't really need a hard drive anymore.

I don't buy it, and this article doesn't really make a strong case for it either. If the MB Air is a strong seller (and by all accounts it is), what sense does it make for Apple to drop the price down $200 to "compete" in a segment where it is already dominating? Clearly other "ultrabook" makers are already having a hard time competing at even the $999 price point, so there's no need for Apple to eat into its (presumably healthy) profit margins for the MB Air. With that said, I wouldn't mind if this was true, I would have a hard time turning it down at that price. The only way I could see this happening is if Apple takes a similar approach as it does with iPhones (and now iPads), where they keep the last gen hardware on the market at a reduced price when they update the lineup. But still...a $200 price drop seems unrealistic.

Mysteriously, AT&T changed their plans very shortly after Apple announced iMessage. Obviously they foresaw a lot of people downgrading their plans so they just did away with the tiered plans completely.

I worked at BB for a year back in the day. I can say that the blue shirt employees were only good for 2 things: attaching overpriced high-margin peripherals/cables to sales, and pushing the extended warranties. Those who were not good at either did not last long there.

Yeah, I was wondering how they would have let something like this slip through. I figure either a) they weren't aware of the exploit (unlikely, but possible...Draw Something, while fun, is not a very polished game), or b) they know of the exploit, but fixing it is a non-trivial. I suspect b) because the game does not appear to store any state between the time you start guessing the other player's drawing, and the time you complete you drawing (so it just starts over if the round is interrupted, as if nothing ever happened). So, in order to remember the list of words that was previously presented to you, the game would have to 1) maintain state that indicates which "phase" of each round you are in for a given game, and 2) maintain the original list of words presented to you after you get to the "choose a word to draw" phase. I suspect they just decided that fixing the exploit isn't worth it, because a lot of iOS users don't even know that they can force quit the app, and a lot of the ones who do probably still wouldn't be bothered to actually do it. Also, having to go through the process of watching/skipping the other player draw his picture again can be tedious.

That's very strange. My girlfriend's iPhone 4 handles it just fine.

Heh, which I find myself doing frequently. Every time I get to the point where there are no "easy" choices for words to draw, I find myself force-quitting the app, relaunching, and playing a round with someone different, and then coming back to the round I skipped (incidentally, you get offered new word choices in this case). Hard to say whether having a "back" button would end up discouraging people from continuing the game or not without some A/B testing, and I have a hunch that not having a back button probably keeps people in the game a little longer, but I still wish there was a back button. I'd like to be able to return to the same point in the round instead of having to completely restart the round again.

EDIT: something else occurs to me too. When you are presented with a list of words to draw, you have the option to "bomb" the list and get new words. As I mentioned, if you force quit the app at this point, and come back to that round, you will be offered different words, for free (definitely an exploit if you are patient enough to go through the process of force-quitting and restarting). I guess putting a back button on this screen would pretty much obviate the need for the "bomb" button, and would directly impact their bottom line since people wouldn't have as many opportunities to use their bombs. I have a suspicion that that's the reason there is no back button...the fact that it doesn't give players a chance to back out and keeps them a little more engaged it probably just a happy side effect.

Sounds like on the new iPad the max has further increased to 4096x4096

The max texture size has been 2048x2048 since the 3GS

Agreed. I've had to use factories in Obj-C plenty. I guess the argument that I would make is that they are much easier to implement in Obj-C and require less boilerplate (especially if you use blocks), not that the pattern doesn't exist in Obj-C.

This may be a nitpick, but how can something be "fairly deterministic"? Is it possible for there to be degrees of determinism? I would consider determinism to binary, either something is deterministic, or it is not. If a thing cannot be demonstrated to be deterministic 100% of the time, then by it's very definition it is non-deterministic. By that logic, I would actually conclude that the entire universe does in fact behave deterministically. If it didn't, then I don't see how science would even be possible.

It'd be nice if the author of the story would point out how Instapaper is different than Business Insider, in that the content it "harvests" is content that the user must first see by going to the actual website where the content exists, and save the page for later viewing, meaning that the original site still gets credit for at least 1 page view. Instapaper also does not pretend or try to trick the reader into thinking that the content belongs to or is generated by Instapaper staff. Henry Blodget knows that his actions are dubious, and is grasping at straws with his comparison.

You mean like how the competition has caught up with the iPad? Oh, wait...

edit: Also, they've been selling the iPhone 4 for a long time now, it has sold better than all of the previous models, and it's still selling incredibly well in spite of the expectations that a new model will be released soon. Doesn't really seem like the "one size fits all" approach has backfired on them at all, especially when that one size fits so well...

another edit: "there is currently no competitor to the Apple products he's discussing"...isn't that part of the point he was trying to make? That other companies are unable to compete currently because they don't control their supply chain as well or as tightly as Apple is able to, as Apple only offers a few options as opposed to the overwhelming amount of near-useless (to the average laptop buyer) options that the other guys offer?

This old chestnut.

First, before I get started on the piracy bit, there are a few things in this article that are cliche and offputting. The minute I saw these things, I was immediately unsurprised about their app's lack of success.

"GAMEized is one of the newest game development agencies to take the industry by storm, and we did it through an innovative marketing approach and solid game development"

There are very few iOS developers who are taking anything by storm. Rovio, Andreas Illiger, Newtoy...those guys took the app store by storm. The developers of the other 400,000+ apps in the app store...not so much. Simply saying something is "innovative" or "solid" does not make it so. What is "innovative" about GAMEized's marketing approach? What is it that makes their development so "solid"? If it their approach was so innovative, surely I would've heard about their game before this article showed up on HN...

"After several hours of research and development..."

Why is it that there are so many iOS devs that think that they can spend "several hours" doing anything and expect anyone to care? Name me one great app that has come along and was profitable as the result of "several hours" of work. Found one yet? Exactly...

"FingerKicks is an exciting and addicting game we developed for all iOS platforms (iPOD, iPHONE and iPAD). It’s simple to play and exciting to master"

This is how damn near every single app developer describes their app these days. If I see the words "addictive" or the phrase "simple to play, difficult to master" or some other variation, I immediately choose not to download it. Eli Hodapp from TouchArcade wrote a great a article about describing your app: http://a-13.net/post/8151551632/addictive-polished-gems

Anyway, to the piracy bit. I'm sure many people upon reading this story immediately began to imagine ways in which they curtail the piracy problem by implementing some unique piracy detection method or other approach to prevent people from illegally playing their game. Put those thoughts out of your head, it's a waste of time. Pirates will always find a way to get what they want for free. And for all of your efforts to stop them, all that will have happened in the process is that you will have lost valuable hours that you can never get back conceiving and implementing those efforts, hours that you could have spent instead making your app better. Does it suck that most iOS apps have a 90% piracy rate? Sure. Is there really something you can do about it? Perhaps. Is it worth your time to bother? Definitely not. Angry Birds, Tiny Wings, Words with Friends...those games are not at the top of the charts because of their innovative anti-piracy measures. They are at the top of the charts because they are fantastic games.

A common fallacy is the believe that pirated copies == lost sales. This is simply not true. There are an overwhelming amount of pirates who will get your app for free simply because they can. There are only a handful of people out there spending the time to actually crack the apps. Then, they post them onto sites like AppTrackr or Installous, and the majority just download the apps from there. If everyone had to actually crack the app themselves, the amount of illegal downloads would certainly decrease, because most people just can't be bothered to put that much effort into it. But when it's just sitting right there, ready to go, then hey, why not? Most pirates will not suddenly start paying for your app simply because they can't get it for free. It's also worth noting that the perceived value of these pirated apps is low in their eyes. They have no vested interest, and their level of enjoyment from the app is low in most cases (based on analytics data from my own game, most people who pirated the app never ran it more than once or twice, whereas most of the people who actually payed for the app came back at least several times to play).

As a point of reference, the guys from 2D Boy posted on their blog a couple of years back on the piracy rate of World of Goo (http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/). Lo and behold, it was sitting around 90%. In that article they have a lot of info backing up the oft-heard claims that pirated copies != lost sales, and relate several points on whether DRM is actually effective at getting people to pay for your game (spoiler: it's not). Since then, they have released versions of the game on the Wii, the Mac, the Xbox, and all iOS devices. And you know what? They made a killing. In fact, the iPad version outsold all of the other versions combined (http://www.tuaw.com/2011/02/09/world-of-goo-for-ipad-outsell...). Instead of spending their time worrying about the pirates, they spent their time doing work that mattered, porting their work to devices where there is a significant audience of people willing to pay a couple of bucks for their game.

And you know what else? World of Goo is a fantastic game.

So, before the next time someone jumps to blame Apple for their lack of efforts to prevent piracy on jailbroken devices, and making them the scapegoat for the horrific failure that was their iOS app, maybe the lens should be turned inward and there should be some reflection on why exactly their game didn't attract paying users. Odds are, you'll find that your game just isn't that good.

Indeed. In fact, Gruber has, on several occasions, encouraged readers to go Flash-free, which I'm sure has an impact on the number of his visitors that don't have Flash installed.

They didn't, they licensed the patents from Intellectual Ventures years ago. Lodsys acquired the patents after the fact.

Perhaps, but now Apple has contested that their developers are in fact licensed, and that Lodsys has already received what they claim is due to them. Seems like they've found a way to inject themselves into the battle in a way that should bring the fight home to them.

Most apps who are able to make anything at all average somewhere around $4000-7000 in sales for the lifetime of their app. I can attest to that firsthand. Even at 70% it is not a viable business model for most (except for the <1% who are fortunate enough to make a lot of money in the app store). If every damned patent troll comes out of the woodwork claiming their share, then it will even be less worthwhile than it is now.

The smartphone market and the tablet market are two different beasts though. Sure, they both have iOS and Android, but that's where the similarity stops. Android has 3 significant advantages with smartphones that it doesn't have with tablets: more manufacturers making tons of Android phones, more carriers, and the fact that carriers offer Android phones for cheap (or even free) with their contracts. I just don't see the parallel. And (I'm no expert here, so forgive me if I'm wrong) I don't think any of the Android handset makers are pulling in anywhere near the profits that Apple is with the iPhone.

At any rate, when it comes time to drop $500+ on a tablet, why would anyone choose the one with lots of bugs, performance issues, and few apps?

The litmus test for a tablet to me is, "Why would I buy one of these when I could just buy an iPad?". As of yet, there is not a single competing tablet with a good answer to this question, and Mr. Kincaid is unable to provide one in this article, in spite of his desperate attempt. In fact, he pretty much just reiterates the problems that all of the reviews for non-iPad tablets have already presented: performance problems, "buggy as hell", not enough apps optimized for the form factor. Why do these guys think that out of the blue, Android tablets are going to just miraculously going to start being great?