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Posts Tagged ‘Software Apple’

GDC 2010: Hands-on with Sketch Nation Shooter

Filed under: Gaming, Software, Apple, Developer

When I was reminded of its name at GDC, I couldn’t recall hearing much about Engineous Games. It’s the development studio founded by Nitzan Wilnai, a former software developer at EA and Yahoo who’s gone to work making iPhone games for himself. But I did recall Engenious’ first title, Tatomic, which I wrote about a while ago — it was a great puzzler that put a new spin on Tetris’ falling block gameplay.

Unfortunately, despite my purchase, Tatomic didn’t sell as well as Wilnai would have liked, so he’s decided to “create a game that would sell itself.” It’s called Sketch Nation Shooter, and he sat down to show it to me last week in San Francisco. He started off the demo by promising that he would make a game for me in two minutes, and sure enough, 98 seconds later, he had a custom spaceship shooter game up and running, as you can see in the photo above.

So how did he do it? Sketch Nation Shooter is really a whole genre of games — it allows you to create your own shooter game using your own art, rules, and designs. Whenever you head in to create, you can choose Basic or Advance, and Wilnai first showed me basic — it asks you to take a picture of a drawing (it should be surrounded by white, in relatively good light and so on), and then it analyzes that drawing and turns it into a graphic for your shooter’s player character. You can do the same with enemies, and the game adds their pictures as well. Then hit play, and within just a few minutes, you’ve got a Gradius-style shooter — your ship just kicks out a continuous stream of fire, and you control it by moving your finger around the screen as the ship stays in view right on front of it.

But what’s really cool is what happens after the shooter is made. Wilnai has set up a few servers to run the game, and so players can upload and share their creations with everyone playing Sketch Nation Shooter. Not only can you make and share games with your friends (the game uses your Facebook login to sign in), but you can access anyone’s games, and games are even rated (so you can just dive in and play the top 10 rated games any time you want). Every game has its own leaderboard as well, both globally and among your friends, so not only can you play whatever games are invented, but you can compete on each for the best score.

The Advanced editor really takes things over the top — you can add multiple enemies and define their weapons and behaviors (create kamakazi enemies, have them run patterns, or just have them hover at the top of the screen), and you can even create levels just by drawing and taking pictures of those, and define boss creatures and set their hit points, attack types, and so on. The game is very customizable, and even if you’re not artistically inclined, there are included art packs to chose from, featuring themed art that you can use in the games however you like.

And if nothing else, it’ll be interesting to see what people come up with — I got to play an Under-the-Sea inspired shooter by Wilnai’s wife, a World War II shooter, and even a game called “Traffic” that took shooting out of the equation entirely and just had you maneuvering a car through a crowded highway. And that’s just what Wilnai and his beta testers thought of — you can pretty easily imagine a Little Big Planet-style community popping up around this one as designers get more and more creative with the options. That’s what Wilnai meant as “a game that sells itself” — he’s hoping people will make games and get their friends to download the app just to try them out.

He’s not sure about a price yet, but he did promise that since your friends may be entreating you to buy it to play their shooters, it’ll be “cheap enough to check it out.” And the app is due out on the store sometime in early April — if you’ve wanted to create an iPhone game for yourself without actually downloading the SDK, you might want to give this one a look.

TUAWGDC 2010: Hands-on with Sketch Nation Shooter originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Incoming, outgoing Apple employees

Filed under: Apple Corporate, Software, Apple, Security

A few Apple employees played some musical chairs this week. Executive Pablo Calamera, who was in charge of MobileMe while at Apple, is off to work as the CTO of Thumbplay, a company that peddles ringtones and music to mobile devices.

HR shouldn’t have to change the big “35,000 employed worldwide” sign, though: former Mozilla security chief Window Snyder was picked up by Apple this week. She’ll jump in as a senior security product manager, a job that will take advantage of her work both at Mozilla and previously at Microsoft, where she worked on both Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Sure, she’s got the experience, but has she ever worked for a company that does this for its incoming employees? Didn’t think so.

TUAWIncoming, outgoing Apple employees originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple puts limits on location-based advertising in the App Store

Filed under: Software, Apple, iPhone

Apple’s excited about mobile advertising (and it certainly seems like they’re setting up a plan for local ads), but to devs, they say, “not so much.” Apparently they’ve sent out a message that says location services should only be used to provide “beneficial information,” not targeted advertising. Any apps that include ads targeted to where you and your iPhone are will be rejected posthaste, says Apple.

There’s a few things going on here — Mobile Entertainment wonders just what “beneficial information” means. Certainly apps like Foursquare and MyTown provide business information based on your iPhone’s location, and Foursquare especially is working on local deals with places that you’ve checked-in to — is that considered advertising?

And a few developers, including our friend Craig Hockenberry (MacNN messed up Chock’s name in their post) say that Apple wants location-based ads for themselves. Kind of a jerk move by Apple, but if that’s where the money is, I guess you can’t blame them.

TUAWApple puts limits on location-based advertising in the App Store originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WSJ: Tablet confirmed, Apple to reinvent old media

Filed under: Hardware, Software, Apple

In all the years I have spent as an Apple fan, following various rumor sources and keeping my own mental list of who had the most credibility on various types of Apple theories, I never thought in all my days I would ever read, let alone write, the following sentence: The Wall Street Journal has just announced that Apple is releasing a tablet computer.

All of their information is centered on the alleged mystery device that will allegedly be announced at a now official event next week. Here are some of the juicier tidbits they passed on from those mysterious people “familiar with” what’s happening on Inifinite Loop:

• Always partial to the education market, one thing this device might be used for is e-textbooks, presumably including the sort of multimedia content that goes beyond the printed page.
• Textbook publishers aren’t the only publishers Apple has been talking to. They’re chatting up Conde Nast, Harper Collins, The New York Times, and even CBS, Walt Disney Co, and Electronic Arts (for games).
• A “Best of TV” service is possible, with a subscription to a set of on demand programs chosen by the consumer.
• Those same people are also reporting there is a revamp of iTunes coming, which would separate the purchase of iTunes content from the iTunes application.
• The device will have a 10 or 11 inch screen, a virtual keyboard, and “sharing” is mentioned — two ideas being thrown around are the ability to leave sticky notes on the device or even have the camera recognize faces of those using it.
• Price is expected to be around $1000, and they’ll be selling it to people who already have iPhones and laptops as well.

Of course the piece itself doesn’t have a full confirmation from Jobs, so we’ll have to wait until next Wednesday for that: Apple’s invitation to the media event on January 27th is titled “Come see our latest creation”, and is generally considered to be the public debut of a tablet-style device. But when the Wall Street Journal says there’s a tablet coming, there’s very likely a tablet coming, and if everything they’re saying about this device is true (which would make sense — we’ve heard most of it before in rumor form), look out world.

TUAWWSJ: Tablet confirmed, Apple to reinvent old media originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 01:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s Secret Cloud Strategy And Why Lala Is Critical

This is a guest post from Michael Robertson, a 12-year veteran of the digital music business. He is the founder and former CEO of digital music pioneer MP3.com. He is currently the CEO of music locker company MP3tunes. Robertson is also an adviser to Google Voice.

For years there’s been speculation that Apple would supplement their $1/song (now $1.29) iTunes business with a monthly subscription service, but their upcoming plans are quite different and once again are positioning them to lead the digital music industry into a new era. Leveraging their ubiquitous iTunes software Apple plans to upgrade their users almost over night to a cloud music service in an ambitious move to beat Amazon and others to a cloud music service. Record labels are wary to give Apple even greater dominance which is why Apple’s new strategy is designed to sidestep new licenses from the major labels.

Apple’s recent acquisition of digital music startup Lala rekindled speculation of an iTunes subscription service. There’s no shortage of subscription offerings (Napster, Rhapsody, Spotify, Pandora, etc), but none have attracted the millions of subscribers necessary to make the high royalty structures work. Experts have pondered that Apple’s design expertise and hardware integration could make subscription work. And leveraging Lala’s digital library, licenses from the major labels, and a management team who cycled through several business models including the ten cent web song rental could make it a reality. It’s a logical assumption, but after talking to a wide variety of insider sources it’s clear there is no upcoming Apple subscription service and Apple has far different plans.

Lala will play a critical role in Apple’s music future, but not for the reasons cited above. Lala’s licenses with major labels are non-transferable, so they’re not usable for any new iTunes service. The 10 cent song rental model never gained traction and does not cover mobile devices thus is of little value to Apple. What is of value is the personal music storage service which was an often overlooked component of Lala’s business. As Apple did with the original iPods, Lala realized that any music solution must include music already possessed by the user. The Lala setup process provides software to store a personal music library online and then play it from any web browser alongside web songs they vend. This technology plus the engineering and management team is the true value of Lala to Apple.

An upcoming major revision of iTunes will copy each user’s catalog to the net making it available from any browser or net connected ipod/touch/tablet. The Lala upload technology will be bundled into a future iTunes upgrade which will automatically be installed for the 100+ million itunes users with a simple “An upgrade is available…” notification dialog box. After installation iTunes will push in the background their entire media library to their personal mobile iTunes area. Once loaded, users will be able to navigate and play their music, videos and playlists from their personal URL using a browser based iTunes experience.

Apple will link the tens of millions of previously sold iPods, Touches, AppleTV and iTablets to mobile iTunes giving users seamless playback of their media from a wide range of Apple branded devices. Since media will be supplied from the user’s personal collection, Apple is freed from the hassles of device and region limitations. iTunes shoppers will be able to continue to buy music and movies as they can now with purchases still being downloaded, but once downloaded they will be automatically loaded to their mobile iTunes area for anywhere access. Again because users are in possession of the materials no new licenses are required from the record labels or publishers.

Some are curious why Apple with thousands of engineers would need Lala talent and technology. For sure Apple could copy Lala technology, but time is of the essence and Lala lets Apple move faster in transitioning from their PC software business to a cloud service. They get a knowledgeable digital music engineering team, plus a code base to build upon which already does uploading and web playback. There’s precedence for this strategy. The iTunes software did not originate within in Apple but came via an acquisition. Finally, Apple gets the quick witted, brilliant, but occasionally loony Lala CEO Bill Nguyen who will play a future role in Apple. (Although one wonders how Jobs and lime light relishing Nguyen can co-exist.)

It’s critically important that technology companies build and maintain a core strength. This cornerstone allows them to command a significant portion of the profit stream and is a beachhead to launch other initiatives. Think Amazon/e-commerce, Microsoft/OS, Google/search, Apple/media. Jobs is keenly aware of the digital transition from PC to cloud centric programs and services. It’s imperative Apple lead in this transition or risk ceding leadership in media to others such as Amazon, Real, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. Lala will help Apple protect their media franchise from encroachment by accelerating their cloud efforts. iTunes users can expect mobile iTunes in 2010.

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Former Apple engineer: Fingerworks may be a part of the tablet

Filed under: Hardware, Rumors, Software, Apple, Developer

The New York Times is the latest big source of tablet rumors today, and they went way back for the latest stab in the dark. All the way back to 2005, when Apple purchased a little company called Fingerworks, known for their work with gesture recognition on a multitouch interface like the Touchstream keyboard above. The Gray Lady says they spoke with “former Apple engineers” who have worked on the tablet itself, and those guys claim that it makes use of gesture recognition to operate: “for example, three fingers down and rotate could mean ‘open an application.’” Another former employee told them that Apple’s been putting together a multitouch version of iWork for years, and that the tablet is actually a full-featured Mac, not just an e-reader or larger iPod touch.

Of course, we don’t know how long ago these Apple engineers worked for the company — given that the App Store has vastly changed things over there in just the last year and a half, the tablet itself could have changed its focus in that same period of time. At this point, given all of the things you can do with a multitouch screen, finger gestures are probably the least impressive. But then again, Apple’s been obsessed with multitouch for a while, so it’s not a stretch to think they might be included some of this FingerWorks technology in a larger multitouch screen. Wait and see, wait and see.

[via MacRumors]

TUAWFormer Apple engineer: Fingerworks may be a part of the tablet originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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OpenFeint announces version 2.4, now in Fieldrunners

Filed under: Gaming, Software, Apple, Developer, iPhone, App Store

The guys over at OpenFeint have released version 2.4 of their social gaming platform, and they’ve also corralled one of the biggest games on the App Store into using it: you can find the brand new version in the popular Fieldrunners app. New features of the software include a simplified UI, a completely revamped “Discovery” section (popular among developers for recommending games to users, but good for users as well in terms of finding new things to play), and a new “Forum and Fan Club” system which allows for discussion about games and between devs and customers right inside the app.

Other improvements include a new geolocation leaderboard (so you can see where people are nabbing the high scores), and tweaks on other social features like the “presence” system, which features Xbox Live-style announcements when friends come on and offline while playing.

It’s interesting how this sort of sub-culture is burgeoning simply inside individual games, completely unofficially, on the App Store. You have to wonder if Apple is watching any of this — certainly there’s a call from both devs and players for social connections like this, and it would be interesting to see a system that worked App Store-wide, perhaps even with current iTunes accounts. OpenFeint and the other folks working on their own social networks are doing a lot of interesting things already, but I have to wonder what it would be like if Apple got involved.

TUAWOpenFeint announces version 2.4, now in Fieldrunners originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple wins copyright infringement case against Psystar in California

Well, well. Apple’s won its copyright infringement claim against would-be Mac cloner Psystar in California. Anyone surprised? As we’ve been saying all along, the key argument wasn’t the OS X EULA or Psystar’s failed monopoly claims, but pure, simple copyright infringement, since Psystar was illegally copying, modifying, and distributing Apple’s code. Psystar was also dinged for circumventing Apple’s kernel encryption in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, but that’s just another nail in the coffin, really. There’s still some legal fireworks to come, as Apple’s various other claims like breach of contract, trademark infringement, and unfair competition weren’t addressed in this ruling, but those are all secondary issues now — and we’d expect this decision to have quite an impact on the other case currently ongoing in Florida. We’ve broken down the highlights after the break, hit up the read link for the PDF and follow along.

[Via Groklaw]

Continue reading Apple wins copyright infringement case against Psystar in California

Filed under: Software

Apple wins copyright infringement case against Psystar in California originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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