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Opinion
One thing is certain; It’s difficult to predict the future, even more so in the sphere of technology and gaming.
It’s fascinating to think that in my lifetime hand-held gaming has gone from slotting two dimensional blocks on a small monochrome screen, to fully rendered three dimensional racing games in gloriously bright colour. Great traditions are sinking into the abyss, we’re well past the days of blowing dust from frozen cartridges and swapping over our AAs for ten minutes more juice. Rubbing the battery of an iPad is more likely to get you sectioned than on to the next level of Angry Birds.
A recent interview with Phil Harrison, a former Sony boss, has piqued my interest in the stumbling blocks created by iOS for the console gaming giants. I’m going to look at the greatest threats the iPad can levy, and whether a changing of the tide is for the better.
This is no time for complacency, just ask the music industry.
There were a vertiable Smörgåsbord of announcements from the WWDC keynote that will effect the iPad, but today I’d like to think about the impact that iMessage will have on the future development of the iPad and the outside perception of the iPad.
What is iMessage, and will it change the way we use our iPads? Will we eventually see calling on the iPad?
Will it be useful?
So there we have it. On June 6, 2011, Apple announced iOS 5.
Described as a “major release”, anyone who watched the coverage of the announcement would be hard-pressed to disagree. Over 200 new features, 1500 new APIs for developers to utilize. Apple’s answered many a critic with the 10 key features that they highlighted, even the ones glossed over made big splashes, namely WiFi syncing with iTunes and a new split-keyboard layout for the iPad.
But, if you’re not a registered iOS developer, you don’t get access to all this new shiny goodness until this Fall. And, while Apple probably couldn’t have been more vague when it comes to a drop date for iOS 5, we can use the time we have to do what we pundits do best: speculate.
Now that we’ve all had time to mull over the announcements Apple made, let’s take a look at which ones still look great in the fresh light of the day after, and which ones are maybe a little more hype than substance.
I love magazines. There’s nothing quite like the experience of opening up the mailbox and getting your latest issue of your favorite publication, then spending a few hours pouring through the glossy pages and learning new things.
Of course, print media has been in trouble for years now, and everyone is trying to figure out how to make more cash. The iPad was once considered the savior for the print world, but at the moment the results are less than sparkling. How could that be? The iPad offered so much promise?
I”ll tell you why: Print media doesn’t get it. They don’t understand what makes the iPad such a unique device and how to take advantage of all its technology to make their print magazine so much better. What do they do to fix the problem? Let’s take a look and see what magazines are doing right, and what they’re doing wrong.
Google announced the retail launch of the Chromebook at their recent Google I/O conference in San Francisco, the notebooks that run Google’s cloud-based Chome OS.
The machines, manufactured by Acer and Samsung, will be available in internationally from June 15, a year-and-a-half after Apple’s original iteration of the iPad.
Mobile computing has been significantly redefined in the past 18 months, with countless computer makers coming out with tablets and other ultraportable computing solutions – from the MacBook Air and iPad, to the Samsung Series 9 notebook. All examples of popular manafacturers shifting their product design to portable computing, even more so than before.
In today’s article, we’ll be taking a look at whether Apple, the maker of both the highly successful MacBook Air and the iPad, have anything to worry about in Google’s cloud-based Chromebooks.
One of our writers here at iPad.AppStorm is currently writing a travel-based series of articles that go through the process of turning your iPad into the perfect travelling companion. His inspiration is taken straight from the creative imagination of Douglas Adams, the iPad is as close as we’ve yet come to having in our hands the long dreamed about Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
How does the iPad compare with the guide on the functionality front? What are the services and apps that make the iPad indispensable?
In the brilliant, and certainly emotional, ‘Year One’ video at the launch of the iPad 2, Apple would say that the arrival of the iPad in 2010 was the arrival of a new category of product – something significantly different to what has come before.
Something different should make a difference.
Apple highlighted the dramatic effect that the iPad has had in a huge variety of industries; from the medical profession, right through to education. Is this change for the better, or is money simply being wasted on gadgets that would be better spent on textbooks (50 textbooks to 1 iPad).
Can the iPad be a profoundly positive influence within the education system?
Does it fascinate you to know that your humble iPad 2 would have beaten (and been) the most powerful supercomputer in 1985?
A recent article in the New York Times reports on the tests run by Dr. Dongarra and his research group, keepers of the TOP500 list of the worlds fastest supercomputers.
Besides sheer awe at the pace of technological development, in my mind it raises several interesting questions. At what point does increasing computing power cease to make a difference, is there a limit to the usefulness of sheer processing power?
In light of the exponential pace of development, what does the future look like for the computer in the palm of our hands?
Following on from the roundup last week of beautifully designed iPad app icons I’m going to have an opinionated look at what can make, or break, an app icon.
Why are you writing about icons, you say, surely it hardly matters what an app’s icon looks like? If these were questions that sprung to mind when you read the heading, then think again!
Icons are very very important.
Last week I wrote an article that looked at how good the iPad is as a gaming platform, and examined some its strengths and weaknesses in the process.
Simply taking a look at some of the beautiful titles already out there for the iPad gives us a glimpse of the future potential of the iPad as a gaming giant – but how far can it go?
