Super Mario Run

Nintendo Disappointed by Super Mario Run Profits

I'm in the minority, but I think it hurt Super Mario Run more that it wasn't a regular Super Mario game than that the in-app purchase was seen as too expensive. People will pay more than $10 for a good Mario game on any platform.

It also didn’t help that you had to sign-up/log-in before you could play. And that that whole process was awful. And that once you did that, it still took way too many taps to go from launching the app to actually playing the game. This is exactly the lesson that everyone should have taken from the success of Flappy Bird.

Controls are arguably an issue on iOS. I’m not fully convinced since there are controllers available. We haven’t seen enough developers willing to make games that require them, though.

But I know that just falling back on “one touch” isn’t a solution. It works beautifully in some cases, but not for every game.

If Nintendo really dedicated itself to creating a first-class Nintendo game for iOS developed for touch controls rather than just “one touch” and made sure that every part of it was polished... I can’t see how they couldn’t make profits they’d be happy with.

If they launched a good iOS controller, then they could not only make better iOS games more easily, they could make money on hardware too.

Maybe that isn’t the best thing for Nintendo to do. But the main point is that, as in most things, the lessons to be learned from Super Mario Run aren’t as simple as “iOS users won’t pay” or “Nintendo can’t be successful on iOS.”

Dear Apple: Stop nagging me! (for the 2nd time)

This is the feedback I’ve sent Apple. If you feel the same way, please let them know it.

Stop nagging me about iOS updates. Now.

This is something Apple should never have done. I should not have had to say this once. Yet here I am saying it a second time.

Add a “Don’t remind me” option, or get rid of the notification altogether.

Just stop it. Now.

Content blocker is not a euphemism

We’re told that “content blocker” is just a euphemism for “ad blocker”, but it is not.

Consider Board Game Geek. I visited that site today with my content blocker active. I saw ads. I clicked on two of them, and there’s a chance I end up spending money on what one or both of them led me to.

The ads that my content blocker blocks? Ads I would have ignored. Ads that are so annoying they may have keep me from even bothering to read the content of the site they are supposedly supporting.

And, my content blocker blocks annoying content that isn’t ads.

Frasier Speirs on replacing an iPad with a laptop

A brilliant piece by Fraser Speirs: Can the MacBook Pro replace your iPad

It would be easy to argue with many of its points, but that is the point. The iPad Pro (and the iPad before it) is more about providing different options than replacing anything.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Pencil versus finger

What you can and cannot do eith an Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro

I think one of the smartest things Apple did with the pencil is to distinguish use of the pencil from using fingers.

iPad Pro review on Wired.co.uk

I haven’t read many iPad Pro reviews. I guess because I knew I was going to buy one and make up my own mind about it. But then I came across the “review in comic form” that led me to this review on Wired.co.uk.

Because no, the iPad Pro is not a laptop. If you largely work with words, via a complex content management system, and enjoy your laptop already—as is true for most journalists who have reviewed the thing, not coincidentally—then it might not be for you.

If you’re interested in the iPad Pro at all, I think the whole review is worth reading.

For me, the iPad has effectively been a laptop replacement because I’ve always preferred a tablet to a laptop. (I just never found a tablet that was good enough before the iPad.) Before the iPad, I simply went without a laptop.

But whether the iPad is a laptop replacement or not is a minor issue at best. While an iPad doesn’t have a keyboard and mouse/trackpad, it does have a touchscreen. It will never be as good at the things keyboards and mouses/trackpads do well are as they are. But likewise, there are things a touchscreen does well that a keyboard and mouse/trackpad never will do as well.

For music and graphics—to name just two creative endevours, a touchscreen can be better than a keyboard and mouse/trackpad.

And while writing is more the domain of the keyboard than the touchscreen, I wonder if there aren’t places in the writer’s overall workflow where a touch interface might be better than a keyboard.

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A side note: I am happy that Microsoft is pursing the route of trying to build all these options (keyboard, mouse/trackpad, touchscreen, & precision stylus) into a single system. I’m neither convinced that it will work or that it won’t. It is the fact that I was always disappointed in their tablet offerings before and the ways they’ve disappointed me with other products that keep me from buying what they’re selling today.

Book v. iPad Air v. iPad Pro

I put together an online iCloud photo album with some pictures comparing books with the same or equivalent e-book on iPad Air and iPad Pro.

While the iPad Air is a better size for typical novels and articles, the iPad Pro is (IMHO) better for textbooks† (like technical books and RPG books) and comic books.

Digest-sized RPG books are often better on the Air. Although, the Pro does allow viewing two of them side-by-side.

Unfortunately, to get the two books side-by-side I had to load them into different apps. (In this case, iBooks and PDF Expert.) Although I haven’t played with PDF Expert enough to know what it can do. My PDF app of choice, GoodReader, hasn’t been updated to support side-by-side or to fully support the iPad Pro yet.

Being able to view two arbitrary pages in the same PDF side-by-side could be useful too. While you could do this with the two apps workaround, it would be better if a single app added such a feature. GoodReader has the ability to open multiple pages from one PDF in separate tabs, so that seems a reasonable addition to better support the iPad Pro.

But being able to view a book at full iPad Air size on one side of the Pro while having another app—e.g. Pages, UX Writer, Evernote, etc.—at full iPad Air size on the other side seems promising.

†Ironic that the word “textbook” seems á propos to me here since what distinguishes these from typical novels and articles is that they have lots of images, tables, and diagrams in addition to text.

Will the iPad Pro get pro apps?

Why there is no Sketch for the iPad?

On the one hand, I certainly expect a developer to know their business better than I do.

On the other hand, this certainly sounds a lot like the same logic I heard from my competitors for not supporting the Mac back-in-the-day (the latter half of the 1990s) when my company was making a third of our profits from the Mac.

It’s ironic that Apple sells its products for a market willing to spend premium prices, yet the App Store has this perceived race-to-the-bottom justified by developers’ skepticism that the same market is willing to pay premium prices.

From products to platforms

Microsoft’s and Adobe’s subscriptions do not appeal to me. Although perhaps that has as much to do with my experience as a customer of both companies than with the subscriptions themselves. I’m glad they’re support the iPad, but I want apps from smaller developers too.

Would trials or upgrade pricing or other things “solve” the problem? Surely it could help, but this looks more like a perception problem to me. Although, sometimes the way to address a perception problem is to address the perceived problem. But those “solutions” have their own downsides.

Meanwhile, the Omni Group seems to be doing fine selling iPad apps for $50 each.

As an iPad user, someone who wants good apps, and someone willing to pay for them; this is something I worry about. Whether true or not, how many apps is this conventional wisdom keeping off the platform?

Apple September 2015 post mortem

Assuming there will not be any more big announcements this fall, I like having them all at one event.

My midnight blue watch band has been ordered.

I will order the new Apple TV. We already use our Apple TVs a lot, and this one is better.

No new 4-inch iPhone. No anodized “iPod touch” blue iPhone. sigh No new feature that I’m not willing to live without.

With the old subsidy from AT&T, upgrading every two years was a no-brainer. My bill would not go down once my phone was paid off, so I would be paying for a new phone whether I bought one or not. But that’s not the case anymore.

(Actually, it isn’t entirely clear to me whether the subsidy with 2-year contract is still an option or not. Apple doesn’t show it as an option, but AT&T still lists that option with the current phones.)

The AT&T Next program—the payment plan that replaces(?) the subsidy—seems unnecessarily complicated, and I’m not sure I like it. Since I usually hand my old phones down to someone, I don’t want to be locked into a trade-in. And what if something happens to my phone so it isn’t in acceptable trade-in condition? It may be great for someone who upgrades every year, but it doesn’t look great to me...yet.

And now there is Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program, which I haven’t seen enough details about.

So, at the moment, I’m not planning to get an iPhone 6s.

I think I will get an iPad Pro. For graphics editing and music, I think I’ll find the larger screen useful. For running RPGs and some other things, I think side-by-side apps on the iPad Pro will be useful. I am confident it won’t replace my iPad Air 2. It will just occupy use-cases between my iPad and my iMac.

For me, I’d rather have an iPad Pro than a MacBook Air. After all, my favorite drawing app (InkPad) and my favorite word processor (UX Write) are iOS apps without Mac equivalents.

(And after comparing the size of the iPad Pro to my clipboard—see previous post—it seems like the size I’ve always wanted a tablet to be.)

I’m also planning on getting an Apple Pencil. The iPad Pro + Apple Pencil looks to be about the same price as a 13-inch Cintiq. But a Cintiq is just an accessory to a computer, not a stand-alone tablet. (There are certainly advantages to a Cintiq over the iPad Pro, but still...)

The new Smart Keyboard...I’m not currently interested in. I’ve been pretty happy using a Bluetooth keyboard with my iPad. I’ll try it out the next time I get to an Apple Store.

How big is the iPad Pro?

The iPad Pro is big, but let’s put that in context.

The clipboard I use is 12×9 inches.

The iPad Pro is 12×8.7 inches.

A US-letter size sheet of paper is 11×8.5 inches.

(With 1-inch margins that becomes 9×6.5 inches.)

The iPad Pro screen is 10.3×7.7 inches.

The iPad Pro screen is roughly equivalent to US-letter size paper with ⅓ inch margins.

What I hope to see from Apple (Fall 2015)

What I hope to see from Apple this fall:

A new 4-inch iPhone. While the iPhone 6 may have brought new customers to the iPhone (and brought some old customers back), it would be foolish to, at the same time, lose the customers that were happy with the smaller phones. So far, I have upgraded my phone every “s” year. I don’t want a bigger screen, but—depending on what else is on the table—I may still upgrade. I’m hoping, though, that I won’t have to weight a bigger screen against other factors.

Better colors. The iPhone 5c was a success by any sensible measure. Imagine how much better it could have been with decent colors. Even among the people I know who have and love their 5c, nobody seems to really love any of the colors.

I’m very curious about a bigger iPad should one finally appear. I tend to agree with John Siracusa that, in many ways, the iPad represents the future of personal computing. While conventional personal computers will always be around (and I’ll always have one), more and more of our personal computing should move towards appliances like the iPad.

There are so many creative endeavors that don’t require a keyboard. That said, using the on-screen keyboard isn’t so bad. A few weeks ago I wrote an actual, useful C++ program on my iPad using the on-screen keyboard, Textastic, and codepad while at my daughter’s martial arts class. I didn’t feel as if I was doing this in spite of the system. The only slightly frustrating part was the process of copying the code, switching over to Safari, and pasting it in codepad. (A fully solvable issue.) I, personally, would have been much more frustrated trying to balance a laptop on my lap and hunch over it. And I think we’ve only scratched the surface of the kind of code editing we could do on an iPad.

Of course, a real keyboard works beautifully with my iPad. For me, the ability to add a keyboard when I want it trumps having to deal with one when I don’t.

I’m not convinced there is ever any need for an iOS mouse. Even on my iMac I have (surprisingly) found I prefer Apple’s track pad over their mouse, and an iOS touch screen can do pretty much anything a track pad could. Tyype has long done a great job of this. I hope iOS 9’s “Easy text selection” brings that to most apps.

A bigger screen could be great for some games, music applications, and graphics applications. And iOS 9’s long-awaited Split View would be even better with a larger screen. But being bigger could be more awkward for a hand-held device. At what point does it make more sense as a drafting-table-like desktop device rather than a hand-held?

I don’t think a bigger iPad would replace my 9.7-inch iPad, which increases the chance of the data I want not being on the device I’m using. The “cloud” helps with that some, but it doesn’t make it go away.

While I’m excited for a new Apple TV, I also fear Apple going overboard with it. I often find the gesture-based Remote app more frustrating than the simple buttons of the physical remote... (although the app beats the remote for text entry) ...so I’m not excited about a touch-enabled remote. And as much as I like Siri on my phone and watch, I’m not so sure about it with my TV.

But I’m prepared to recant all of this once I see what they have to offer and get to play with it. ☺︎

IPhone and sentences

The word “if” is not normally capitalized. If it comes at the beginning of a sentence, however, it is.

The word “iPhone”, despite being a proper noun, is not normally capitalized. IPhone, when it is the first word of a sentence, however, ought to be capitalized.

Apps for RPG judging

Here are some of the iOS apps I have used when running role-playing games.

Goodreader: Good reader is a PDF (and other types of files) viewer. You can have several PDFs open at the same time and easily flip between them. It now even lets you have multiple tabs viewing different pages in the same PDF. You can add your own bookmarks to PDFs that lack them.

I have even used the annotation features to stock a map, which works OK.

Evernote: I have an RPG notebook in Evernote. I have tags for monsters, encounters, treasures, house rules, campaign ideas, setting ideas, preparation tips, and more.

UX Write: All my campaign notes are stored on Dropbox. UX Write is my word processing app of choice for viewing/editing them on iOS. One of the nice things about UX Write for this is its automatically populated outline that makes it quick to jump to the part of a document you need.

Dropbox: Besides keeping all my campaign notes in Dropbox, I also use it to share documents and images with my group. e.g. When the PCs discover a map, I may hand them a paper copy, but I also pull up the Dropbox app and copy it from my campaign notes into the shared folder.

Battle Map 2: I’ve experimented with using Battle Map 2 on a TV. Also used it a few times when one or two players were telecommuting to a game. It worked OK, but it wasn’t great.

Hex Map Pro: I’ve tried using this one on a TV too. Also wasn’t great.

Old School: This is an app for planning and running classic D&D combat encounters. I have only actually used it a couple of times, but it worked well.

Lotto Machine: This was created to randomly pick lotto numbers. You tell it the range of possible numbers and how many to choose. You have six PC and need them in a random order for some reason? You can make everyone roll a die and reroll ties. Or you can tell Lotto Machine that you need 6 numbers from 1 to 6. Need to randomly pick three of the PCs for some reason? Ask for 3 from 1 to 6.

InitiativeBoard: I haven’t actually used this one yet, but it looks handy for tracking individual initiative in any game.

Role app

Role is an iOS app (Android version “coming soon”) designed to aid in the playing of a traditional role-playing game.

The app is based on its own system. You can download a copy of it off their web site, and you could easily play it without the app. You can get a bit lost with just the app, so it may be worth reading it before trying to play with the app. (Although, it may be more likely that you get lost in the app because you’re expecting more than is there rather than not understanding the system.)

This system is very light. It is very similar to Risus without the emphasis on humor. So no complaints there.

The app itself doesn’t really do much, though. About all it does is “roll the dice” for you; determine failure, success, or critical success; and track XP. As it currently lacks the ability to save your characters or adventures, it is really hard to see the point. And you might think that the app would communicate and coördinate with the other players’ apps, but it doesn’t. It does nothing to make the GM’s job easier that Notepad doesn’t do. There may be potential here, but it is severely unrealized thus far.

(And rolling actual dice is a huge part of the fun for me.)

They are positioning it as a “party game”, though I don’t think that excuses the lack of saving. That does seem to be one of the features they are working on, though.

It has a few character templates and more that can be purchased. There is very little to making a character here (make up three skills) so the templates don’t really seem to be much value. On the other hand, a free-form system like this really benefits from examples. shrug The templates seem so intent on supporting any genre that they come across as supporting only a very specific kitchen-sink genre. I personally didn’t find them inspiring.

There are also a few adventures and a few more to purchase. They have, however, too much setting and not enough adventure. Especially considering the apparent aim towards one-shots over campaigns.

It is nice to see an app that aimed to support very traditional role-playing in the “no miniatures” mode. But basic functionality (e.g. saving) is missing, what they have needs to be refined (e.g. genre-specific character templates and a bit more depth to the adventures), and they need to figure out how such an app could really help the GM.

Reliable

I have come to depend on my iPad both when running and when playing RPGs.

10 January 2015 was the first time I was getting ready to run a game and found myself thinking about having contingencies in case my iPad had issues.

My iPad Air 2 is undoubtedly the best iPad I’ve had yet. Except it doesn’t feel as reliable. Too often, in the few months I’ve had it, it has locked up or spontaneously rebooted. Once it appeared completely dead for a while.

Is it iOS? Is it the iPad Air 2? Is it a flaw in just my particular iPad? Is it the extensions I’m using that iOS has enabled? I don’t know.

(System extensions were always the biggest culprit of technical issues on the Mac. As happy as I am with the extensibility iOS 8 has enabled, I’m less happy to have the uncertainty that comes with them.)

Of course, the iPad is still the tablet that has most met my expectations.

Nagware

Instead of painting all in-app purchases with the same brush, let’s call the problem by name: Nagware. (“Pay to win” is also acceptable.)

Even then, though, it is hard for me to get too worked up about it. While the nagware model might be making Rovio (e.g.) more money, they’re getting less of my money than they used to. Yet I still get to enjoy their games.

The funniest bit to me is where they want me to pay or take a break from playing. For me, that’s a feature. I need a reminder to take a break. I’ve stayed up way too late playing Angry Birds several times. Why would I pay to eliminate a feature?

Apple, Amazon, and Comixology

This issue: Comixology has been the #1 way to buy and read digital comic books on iPads. Amazon bought Comixology. It is no longer possibly to buy comics through the Comixology app, presumably because Amazon isn’t willing to continue paying the 30% that Apple requires of in-app purchase.

Oddly enough, this has proved to be a positive for me. My local comic book store has a Comixology web store. When I buy digital comic books from it, I still read them on my iPad, but I also support my local store. In-app purchase going away made me actually do that.

It seems to me that what Apple makes off of their 30% of in-app purchases is peanuts compared to their primary sources of income. I would think Apple would be more interested in improving the user experience than on holding the line on their 30% cut.

On the other hand, I’m not convinced the damage to the user experience here is all that great. I still buy Kindle books. I still by Comixology books.

One interesting difference between the Kindle app and the new Comixology app: In the Comixology app, you can still browse their store and add things to your wishlist.

Flappy bird

Yesterday’s post about Threes and 2048 reminded me of some things I wanted to say about Flappy Bird. Maybe Flappy Bird is a horrible game that doesn’t deserve the popularity it garnered, but I do think there are a lot of lessons game developers could take from it.

A couple I can think of: It starts up fast. You get to playing fast. There is as little as possible between launching the game and playing the game. There is no point at which the gameplay that the player has been enjoying changes to gameplay they may not enjoy.

There is also an idea out there that players today will not accept a difficult game. Flappy Bird soundly refutes that. While I greatly enjoy some games that are basically “no lose”, it is satisfying to have games that are significant challenges too.

Threes and 2048

One of the creators of Threes: The Rip-offs & Making Our Original Game

What the creators of Threes don’t realize is that—just as subtle differences between Threes and 2048 makes Threes a better game—some of the subtle difference also make 2048 a better game.

The biggest is perhaps start-up time. In a quick one-sample trial, Threes took 12 seconds from launch to play; 2048, 2. For a mobile game, that can be the difference from getting in ten seconds of play versus not playing at all.

As much as I appreciate the personality of Threes (and I appreciated the catchy soundtrack enough to buy it from iTunes), I also appreciate the austerity of 2048.

Threes is deeper, and it shows.

I can’t say it comes easy to me, but I think we’d be better off if we could get past this ownership of ideas concept.

If so, then people would also be more likely to openly credit their inspirations.

iOS ergonomics

On the Accidental Tech Podcast, John Siracusa posited that perhaps some people in the future will work at a drafting-table-like iOS-like device instead of at a personal computer. Some feedback he got was that this would be ergonomically worse than horizontal keyboard and mouse with vertical monitor.

I do already suffer from “iPad neck” on occasion, but...some thinking out loud...

Firstly, John was making an educated guess. The important point is that for some workers in the future a touch-based device may well replace a PC. We know that there are ergonomic problems with touch-screen PCs, so whatever the workstation looks like, it won’t look just like a PC.

Secondly, ergonomics is overblown. It is important, and for some people it is more important than others. But ergonomics can easily go beyond what is necessary. We don’t need a perfect workplace; we need one that is good enough.

Thirdly, office ergonomics best practices have been built up around the PC. So, it is no surprise that the recommendations favor the PC setup. When our devices no longer look like PCs, new ergonomic advice will be formed.

Fourthly, the most important lesson of ergonomics is to not sit in one posture for too long. Even with the best ergonomically design workspace, people need to not sit in one posture too long. And if you aren’t, then many ergonomic concerns become less important.