Monthly Archives: July 2010

iApp Review – Popular Mechanics Does it Right

Posted on July 14, 2010 | 2 Comments

I’m a sucker for giving publishing a chance. I don’t know why, they fail more often than not. Just look at Wired (iTunes Link), and Men’s Health (iTunes Link).

Popular Mechanics (iTunes Link), might be the exception for many reasons.

1. They priced the app right. 1.99. It’s a beta, so I hope they see that the price is a huge deal and keep it at something reasonable, and below the dead tree edition.

2. They don’t go rich media crazy like Wired did. There’s plenty of pages of simple text for reading. Maybe a nice transition of a graphic element sliding in slightly after the page transition finishes, but every page isn’t a multimedia orgy.

3. They started slow. Both Men’s Health and Wired, dove right in with high priced, “billed as complete” as far as I know offerings. It’s nice to see Pop. Mech. admit they’re testing the waters.

4. They valued consumer feedback. The app asks you (sadly it doesn’t seem to know that I’ve already done the survey, which is a might annoying) to fill out a survey about your experience with the app. The content, the ads, etc. Neither Wired nor MH, seem to care. In fact I had trouble with the MH app (It ate my $5 issue) and it took me hours to find an email to ask for help, and the email bounced. The support site, is only for subscribers. FAIL on so many levels, the app is deleted from my iPad.

5. don’t waste space. Honestly I’m not sure how big the PM app is, but I don’t think it was as big as Wired. I don’t want my magazines to take up so much space I’m debating what to sync and not sync, video or magazine. etc. Bloat is overrated.

I’m really digging the Pop. Mech. issue so far. As always great content, but also a pleasing experience. I’m not taping, swiping, and pinching every element to see if there’s something hidden like in other magazine apps. I’m very hopeful that they learn the right lessons from this beta, and create a digital magazine worth subscribing too.

For me that would be.

  1. Not $5 an issue. between $2 and $3 i think is the sweet spot. I don’t want to pay as much or more than the dead tree edition costs.
  2. Subscription price that makes sense. Not more than the dead tree, and not (digital) cover price X 12
  3. Leave the multi media orgy for others. Every issue should be just interactive enough to make sure I don’t think they simply uploaded a PDF of the print issue. I don’t need that much interactivity, it takes away from the content.

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Posted in Business, eBooks, I am a Consumer, reviews, Technology

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How does iThoughtsHD have this and Apple doesn’t?

Posted on July 12, 2010 | 4 Comments

One of my biggest complaints with the iPad is it’s complete lack of usefulness for content creators. I understand, creators are not Apple’s biggest market, or even a group the ever seem to care about, Shoot, they make “Consumer electronics” LOL.

Still there’s so little that would have to be done to make the iPad SO incredibly awesome for creators, and open doors left and right. I know it’s possible, iThoughtsHD (iTunes Link), a great mind mapping app has already done it!

When building a mind map, like many tools on the iPad, you can save off to the cloud somewhere, box.net, dropbox,etc. Unlike many apps, and all Apple apps. You can load from cloud.

It’s that easy. They did why didn’t/hasn’t Apple?

I caved, and paid $10 for Pages. Complete waste of money. I edit a lot of pages files. Sponsor packets,etc. All the time. I’d love to pull one up on my iPad, edit, and without having to think about plugging into iTunes, copying the files out of iTunes back to my iDisk where they live, overwriting the old one.

Pages, and most apps, come kinda close, you can access the file, pull it in locally, make edits, but then you’re stuck, the document is trapped in the iPad and iTunes.

Why not make the iPad apps (at least the Apple ones) more connected to Oh I dunno, say Apple’s own cloud services. iWork.com and mobileMe. Some of us (still) pay for mobileMe hoping it’ll mature and actually be useful. I have no idea what iWork.com is for, but it seems like it’d make perfect sense to tie the iWork iPad apps (maybe the new iLife ones too) to Apple’s own (though dropbox, et. al. would be nice too) services to extend their usefulness.

Please Apple here my plea! The iPad is great for games and consumer shit, hook those of us who create up! It can’t be hard, a third party did it! You can too!

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Posted in Business, I am a Creator, Mac, Random, Technology, Travel, Work, Writing

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iApp Review – Landformer

Posted on July 2, 2010 | 1 Comment

I met Owen Goss at the first 360|iDev I organized, and instantly liked him. If nothing else he takes my polar bear jokes in stride, that’s pretty big :)

He’s an awesome developer, great speaker, and his latest game LandFormer (iTunes Link) is an awesome time suck! That’s a good thing :)

Owen’s not new to games, but I think this latest release is his coming out game. This is the game that’s the start of truly awesome things for Owen.

Ok enough gushing!

LandFormer is a straightforward puzzle game, you don’t really need instructions or tutorials, pick it up, try it out and away you go.

The objective is to make the ground perfectly flat; raising and lowering the terrain in patterns to accomplish your goal.

You’ve got 6 patterns and 2 choices of terraforming; Up or down. Each level has a  number of moves it should take to clear the level. Some are pretty straightforward, but the game quickly moves into, “hmm well maybe this, then this… nope, undo!” Which is good. I’m usually pretty quickly turned off by games that start too hard, or don’t progress past easy.

It’s very addictive, sitting there staring at the terrain, thinking through permutations.

Graphics wise the game is stunning, a perfect match to the game play. Ditto on the sound, the effects and background music are incredible and all blend together for a calming, tho sometimes frustrating brain game.

As if all that wasn’t enough, Owen has not just made the game expandable with In App Purchase, but also for free, you can exchange levels. You can email a level, heck you can tweet a level. People can follow your URL and add the level to their game to play. It’s easy to create levels, it’s basically solving a map, backwards :) just start arranging the terrain, when you’re done, save and share.

The IAP is awesome, I’m really glad he went this route. I think IAP is one of the best features for game devs, to make money with their hard work.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want useless crapware that I can’t use without purchasing something. Quite the contrary with LandFormer, you can go (I assume) forever without ever buying any of Owen’s premium content, getting levels from friends and the internet, but why? Sure that’s fun and I hope we’ll see more and more tweets with levels in them, but Owen has put together a shit ton of levels for purchase, why not get those and test your abilities. And test them they will!

Oh and the game itself is skinnable, how awesome is that!?

If you haven’t already grabbed LandFormer, go get it! Heck even Apple likes it.

My only complaint (and I know Owen started this before the iPad was announced, at least I think so) is that it’d kick ass on the iPad. Either more complex patterns, or larger maps, etc. I think it’d be awesome. I’d suggest that be his next project, but he owe me bacon farmer!

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Posted in 360|iDev, Announcements, community, iPhone, reviews

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