Myth of pinch-to-zoom: Apple doesn't own it

The myth of pinch-to-zoom: how a confused media gave Apple something it doesn't own | The Verge

yeah, media and is't Apple dedication. And worse, people starting to believe everything they read ...

MOAI: Multi-Platform Development

As Tim Schafer postet a movie about how they are going to use MOAI in their latest game. So I had to have a closer look at it. A few months back I already once noticed MOAI but I didn't care much about it. Nor did I have a closer look at it. Now that this changed here are my first thoughts on it.

MOAI is primarly intended for 2D mobile game development. But it's also possible to develop and distribute Windows and Mac games with a Linux port soon to follow. At least that's what their Website tells us. Mostly as a user of MOAI you code using LUA which is a pretty neat programming language. Overall it looks like a fast multi-platform 2D game development environment.

Zipline Games is the company behind MOAI. They make money from selling Games and Cloud Services (which MOAI fully integrates with). I especially like the Cloud stuff as that's definitely something I would want to use in my games.

My biggest problem with MOAI is the currently missing Linux support. As I develop my private projects solely on Linux (Ubuntu) I can't do much right now. The only possibility is to build the Linux part yourself from the Linux branch. But last time I checked they said it will be integrated soon. So I'm waiting for that.

Right now I mostly use libGDX which offers similar things except for iOS support (which they work on) and Cloud integration. Otherwise they seem very similar. But cloud for me would be a big plus and I would move my development efforts to MOAI with proper Linux support.  I hope that's gonna be released soon.

Ad-Supported Apps Killing Your Battery

Free, Ad-Supported Mobile Apps Are Killing Your Battery

yeah, who would have thought that ... :D ... good thing to add to your reasons for your customers to upgrade to the premium app ;) ..

My Mobile Phone Choice

Choosing the right mobile phone is a time consuming task. In the end it all depends on how you plan to use your phone. Here a list of the most important things I care about on my mobile:

• make phone calls and send text messages
• a usable webbrowser
• a good selection of useful Apps
• capable of replacing a mp3 player
• being able to take quick pictures
• a map application (not necessary route planning)
• replace any USB Pendrive (being able to mount it on every device)
• capable of sharing an Internet connection (USB, optionally WiFi)
• use it as a remote for other devices (DLNA and similar things)

Making phone calls and writing text messages is a pretty obvious one. Also a decent webbrowser supporting current standards is an important feature. Useful Apps to add features and customize the phone to ones likening is great. Apps like Shazaam, Grooveshark, Dropbox, WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook, aso. are all great to have on your phone. Usually I settle around 40 Apps on my current Android mobile. Especially Dropbox is a very essential App to me as it makes exchanging files between devices very easy.

I like to have a Map around. It has proven to be a handy thing at times. I don't care much about what provider it is of. I usually prefer Google Maps as they have a lot of additional data. But it's not as important to me. I just want it to show my current position and the streetnames to find something. In a big city this is a very useful thing.

I want my phone to replace other devices I used to carry around with me. So replacing an MP3 player is an obvious thing. It doesn't necessarily need to be the best player but it should get the job done in some meaningful way. For example I'm constantly confused by the Windows Phone 7 Player. I need at least double the time to get together a playlist of what I want than on Androids default player. The WP7 player is capable of playing what I want but I find it rather confusing to get there.

An other device my phone needs to replace is a quick shooter for pictures. Usually current generation phones are good enough for my taste. I just like to take pictures of funny things or something I want to remember or post on a social network to share with others. For serious Pictures I rather take a better Camera thats likely more expensive than my phone anyway.

Yet another device I want to replace is a Thumbdrive. My phone should be able to be used as one. This has already proven a very good feature multiple times to me. Every phone that isn't able to do this is out already. I usually don't need much space, a GB or two should be enough for this.

As my phone already has Internet access I want it to be able to share that with my other devices. I usually use it over USB on my Netbook. Most of the time this is enough but it's still nice to be able to also share the Internet over Wifi. I don't want to carry around yet another thing so I have Internet on my Netbook. Like right now I'm sitting in a Train on my Netbook and using the Internet of my mobile phone to write this. And I'm listening to music played by my phone as well. It's great what's already possible and I can't wait for what's next.

As more and more devices support DLNA its really handy to have a remote for them right in your pocket. I'm looking closely at the DLNA features on all my new media devices.

So with these features OS choice is very slim. Windows Phone 7 and iOS aren't capable to deliver the features I want without some great effort like Jailbreaking on iOS. Android is the only bigger choice left. WebOS as well as MeeGo would be nice but just don't have the needed traction and with that support. Hardware wise I'm against taking a device with your contract as these aren't as cheap as they seem. And the lockin you get is even worse. Most of the time you pay more in the end. So Carriers get more money from you and have you locked to them. Great for them, bad for you most of the time.

I think in the future Smartphones will also start to replace other devices we have. Like your computer at home. It just needs a dock where the monitor, mouse and keyboard are connected. On-the-go you just need a cheap Netbook shell to place your phone in. As our phones get more powerful this will be enough for most people. Want to watch a movie? Your DLNA phone will stream it and your DLNA capable projector or TV will make a cinema experience out of it. It's gonna be great :)

Currently annoying things

Things that I'm annoyed at:

* Software Patents. As log as they exist innovation and the evolution of all our software is slowed down and in some cases even destroyed. Of course the ones with the biggest problems are small companies closely followed by open source projects. They have no chance against a patent giant. The video-codec mess comes to mind, or exFAT on SDXC cards.

* Browser wars. They are sooo 1990. People need to inform themselves more, no one would use IE 7- anymore. I have still hopes but people tend to be soo lazy. HTML5 at least seems to move fast everywhere except IE of course. If you use Opera/Firefox/Chrome or Safari just makes no big difference as it should be the case. Who cares what you use as long as it works fast and looks the same everywhere.

* State of music/movies. I wanna buy music, but I'm not gonna do that with the current system. It just sucks, its too complicated. Not to start with how expensive it is to buy something. I have hopes that they manage to at least get into the evolving cloud stuff. My music everywhere, that's great. If they would start to make it really cheap to buy a song people would get crazy for that. They need to make it so cheap that the gain of illegally downloading a song is just too small. I mean why should I use my time to search for a illegal copy if I can just pay 10 cent and have the song without any work involved besides searching for it on a internet platform.

* Hardware vendors which try to be software companies. Means they make closed source drivers and do a horrible job at that. Creative comes to mind ..

* Ruby. Great language, but why is everyone using python these days? Python makes so ugly code compared the the freedom you have in Ruby. I would any day choose ruby over python if the language is the only deciding point. Also, I couldn't use python in any big project. Its just too hard to maintain. Too much work on keeping the code clean. Don't get me wrong, python is great but ruby is just better so why not choose the better language?

* Android fragmentation. Fragmentation is a natural thing in Software and only a very small problem. There is only one platform which keeps fragmentation small that's Apple and its iPhone/iPad. But that's all explained very simple: Apple tells you what you can use and have, not you. You buy an Apple product and Apple decides what you do with it no one else. With Android (and other systems like WinMo) you (and the companies using it on their devices) have the freedom. I have Android 2.1 on ma HTC Hero, no problem just a bit of following instructions. HTC will soon release a official 2.1 for Hero. You just can't do that with an Apple product without a lot of work.

Unity3D 3.0 Development Platform

Unity Technologies Unveils Third Generation of Its Powerful Development Platform

uhh ... I like that! ... just add some linux support to it and I'm totally for that platform :). Hope I am able to try something with that soon ...

Apple is always fun to watch ..

Steve Jobs, last week:

We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it.

Steve Jobs, 1996:

...Picasso had a saying he said good artists copy great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

I guess its good to see Apple taking steps against Android. That means Apple already fears Android. And I think they have any right to fear Android as it is where the iPhone will never be able to go to. Open, Featurefull, Simple ... I really like that I can do and use what I want on my phone. It feels so powerful and so open and ready for any task. The iPhone is nothing compared to that, just a nice looking feature phone. I don't even know why they call it smartphone, don't see anything smart there.

oh and btw. Patents suck hard ..