Microsoft Pivots on Xbox DRM

So, the incomprehensible mess of game licensing on Xbox One that no one thought would work out well didn't even survive a month of publicity, and now you'll be able to swap games, sell them, and take your console offline without your games refusing to play until they phone home. All good, yes? Well Gizmodo doesn't think so, and Kyle Wagner goes into great detail about why it's a disaster for the future of gaming, and why those with nothing to fear shouldn't fear the new face of DRM:

Fair enough. But compare that to the benefits of DRM. It helps build an ecosystem that is easy and convenient and, most of all, affordable enough to draw customers. That's what Apple did with iTunes and music, and it's what Amazon did with books. The content was just too easy to get and too cheap to bother with pirating it. We could have had that with the Xbox One and games.

Except that's not what we had, or at least not what Microsoft managed to articulate. What we had was Plays For Sure, and a confusing jumble of requirements that would have scared most normal consumers away and in the direction of Sony. A complete 180-turn is dumb from a technology standpoint, but this is about marketing. Expect more on this as both Sony and Microsoft try to work out how to take things forward, whilst not terrifying their core audience.

Doom Ray Frontiers, and the Return of Re:Sleeves

While we've been quiet on the Futurilla blog front, we've had a busy few days over on Futurilla Radio, with a two-part Doom Ray and a new episode of Ben Waddington's Re:Sleeves, and both shows have great guests this week.

Doom Ray played a bit of a blinder by scoring Renton, WA-based Lars Simkins for a wide-ranging chat to co-incide with the launch of his Kickstarter campaign for Frontiers–an amazing-looking massive-world RPG explorer that's already raised $30,000 (in 4 days!). It's a great show, split into two halves for your listening convenience.

Also great is the return of Re:Sleeves with a fascinating deep dive into the world of demo-cassettes and the posters of Birmingham's legendary Catapult Club, in conversation with Birmingham Music Archive's Jez Collins. This is exactly the kind of stuff that Ben does best; pouring over details that others would consider unimportant to piece together fascinating social and cultural histories from disposable music ephemera.  

Have fun listening, and remember you can get all the shows from the Futurilla feed on iTunes. 

iOS Productivity, or How iCloud Saved My Ass, Again

After posting the Matt Smith piece on tablet productivity this morning I'd been considering how his measures of productivity compare with my own. In some ways it's similar: I need to email, take notes, fill in Pages/Word documents, look up things in spreadsheets and make changes, give presentations (and increasingly create them on the go), post to Futurilla, and keep my calendar updated. I rarely, nowadays, need to edit graphics or images, save cropping an image or two, and so it's unimportant how long that kind of stuff takes on a small touchscreen device. I've already nailed recording audio on the iPad (thanks to the amazing Auria), though I've yet to find a workable means for posting podcasts to Squarespace.

Now and again I find that my iOS devices solve a problem for me that I can't fix quickly any other way. This morning I found myself with a bunch of PDF files that needed printing, but that simply wouldn't open on the iMac (not mine) that I had access to, let alone print (corrupted, most likely). The original multi-page Pages files were in my Dropbox, but the iMac didn't have Pages, and I didn't have the permissions to install it from the Mac App Store. Stuck and frustrated, with the clock ticking on needing the printouts, I turned to my iPhone. Downloading the Pages files in Dropbox and sending them to Pages meant they showed up seconds later in iCloud.com, from where I could download them as PDFs and print them out. It's nothing compared to the web app version of iWork Apple previewed at last week's WWDC, but it solved a problem I couldn't see my way through without a trip back to my own iMac (and probably some more issues hunting down the cause of the corrupted files).

iOS is far from a done deal. Productivity on the iPad is still a work in progress for most of us. Still I'm reminded almost daily of how far we've come, and just how much I rely on the computing power of advice that was—until only a few years ago—good for little more than making voice calls  and sending SMS.

Trying to Replace a Laptop with a Tablet

Does this mean you don’t need to own a PC? Not exactly. There are still tasks that tablets struggle with: editing photos on the iPad is possible, for example, but generally easier and more enjoyable on a PC. The point isn’t that a tablet completely replaces a laptop, however; the point is that it obscures the need to buy a new one.

Matt Smith (not that one) spends three months with an iPad to see how much of his daily work he can do without a laptop. His results are mixed but positive.

Bringing Bauhaus ideals to UI Design

iOS is no longer in the position of having to teach anyone about touchscreens. Even three-year-olds get them. The smartphone’s greatest problem today isn’t teaching people that there’s a virtual space for doing everyday tasks. Rather, it’s teaching people that they no longer have to use their computers anymore. The functions of phones themselves are growing even as the actual size of a phone screen is approaching its natural limit. Smart phones have, in many ways, exceeded the metaphors that used to define them. Thus, in order to do more complex interactions on the screens, and to keep those interactions uncluttered, you have to strip down the design language.

Cliff Kuant's piece for Wired chimes with what I wrote last night. In the new, modernist, design language, pixels are pixels and the UI metaphor has a different job to do. The headline is rather sensationalist (it is Wired after all!), but once you get past that, it's definitely worth a read.

A Screen is not a Sheet of Paper

We have been trained over many years to look at interfaces whose cues for depth come from a simulated ambient light from the front. This is the case not just in iOS before version 7, but all OS user interfaces. In short, the interfaces from yesteryear have not acknowledged that the true light source of those pixels come from the back, not the front.

The idea that an on-screen UI should behave like it's made of pixels rather than paper isn't a new one, and it makes a lot of sense. Still, it's unsurprising that we've spent so many years attempting to give those pixels the illusion of a physical reality that's anchored in previous technologies. It comes from the same impulse that gave us folders, a desktop and a trash can, from the necessity of providing understandable metaphors for unfamiliar environments. It's a powerful notion that has gripped us for thirty years or more.

This is different. Perhaps the time has come for us to shift our expectations and accept that the language of the screen is its own metaphor, a more appropriate one for an age when children will grow up more familiar with the glowing matrix of LCDs than with the shadows cast on textured paper books. In many ways it's the opposite of skeuomorphic, though it's anything but flat.

I Wonder How the Audiobus Team Feel About This?

Inter-App Audio - With Inter-App Audio, apps are able to share audio streams with other apps, an API that will make it even easier to use Apple's iDevices to create music.

Apple recently added Audiobus support to GarageBand on iOS, and it seems to have picked up a lot of industry support. Now we have a home-grown API for letting music creation apps communicate. I look with some interest to seeing how this one plays out.

UPDATE:

Thanks to Jamie Bullock over at uiux.io for alerting me to the Audiobus team's response on their blog. They sound positive, but there must be a question mark hanging over the future of the technology. 

Gaming in iOS 7 is Becoming a Bit of a Theme

Sprite Kit - The Sprite Kit framework is designed to allow developers to create high-performing 2D games, controlling sprite attributes like position, size, rotation, gravity, and mass. It includes built-in support for physics to make animations look realistic and it also includes particle systems for additional game effects.

I've been looking with interest at this API myself. It's another piece of the puzzle for a TV-connected iOS device focused on gaming.

Support For Game Controllers in iOS 7 is a Big Deal

The game controller spec for MFi partners is a framework, according to those familiar with Apple's plans. It's a template for one of two specific sets of controller types: a "standard" controller with a d-pad, four buttons, and left/right shoulder buttons, and an "extended" game controller with two analog pads and two sets of shoulder buttons. You can see examples of each above. Either spec could be designed as a snap-on case accessory connected via Lightning, a stand-alone wireless AirPlay controller, or whatever other design an accessory-maker saw fit.

I'm surprised that this hasn't been more widely reported, but it's certainly a big deal, and appears well-thought-through from what we know so far. I've said before that I think an upgraded iPod nano could work great as a Bluetooth remote for the Apple TV, but this offers the hope of real gaming controllers for a future—App enabled—iOS device hanging off our HD TV screens.

iOS 7 Support Coming to Xamarin

We’re diving into the iOS 7 beta, and plan to have a release available in our alpha channel shortly.  Xamarin is unique among cross-platform development tools in offering timely support for new iOS versions.  We have issued same-day Xamarin.iOS releases for the last several major iOS updates, a tradition that intend to continue with iOS 7.

This is good news. One of the concerns with using third-party development frameworks is that you might end up writing to a kind of lowest-common-denominator set of APIs that the framework can deliver cross-platform. It's great that the Xamarin team seem determined not to let that happen.

iOS 7, Land of Opportunity

Marco Arment has a much more positive spin on the opportunity provided by Apple's root-and-branch redesign: 

Apple has set fire to iOS. Everything’s in flux. Those with the least to lose have the most to gain, because this fall, hundreds of millions of people will start demanding apps for a platform with thousands of old, stale players and not many new, nimble alternatives. If you want to enter a category that’s crowded on iOS 6, and you’re one of the few that exclusively targets iOS 7, your app can look better, work better, and be faster and cheaper to develop than most competing apps.

I'm with Marco. The iOS project I'm working on is going to be reconsidered in light of iOS 7, and not a moment too soon. When the iPad version lands I'm installing the beta on a development device. 

Let it all out, Linus

You claim that this is the biggest release since the first iPhone, but what you’re doing is sabotating for the users. Yes, you heard me right. First, let’s run through the basic stuff you managed to screw up. I’ll rant them in no specific order: Wallpaper, Statusbar, Dock, Icons (yes, all of your 1 million apps need an update), Notifications, Fonts (device wide), Folders, Phone locking, App launching, Navigation buttons (looks like freaking Zune), In-app navigations, Photos,Camera, Mail, Notes, Weather… You even managed to screw up Reminders.

I think it's fair to say that Linus Ekenstam doesn't like iOS 7. 

iOS 7 Looks to the Future

A lot will be written in the upcoming weeks about iOS 7, Apple’s decision to change an OS that allowed them to sell over 600 million devices, and designers’ taste for new system icons and interface. Change is always scary. When it comes to devices we use every day, major changes such as iOS 7 will need time to get used to. I see some iOS 7 design elements as a work in progress, subject to be tweaked and refined as betas are released throughout the summer. After six years of iOS, the new Home screen feels strange and unfamiliar. I’m sure that, even after iOS 7 will be released publicly later this year, it’ll take weeks to assimilate the changes and start thinking of iOS 6 as an odd past that won’t be familiar anymore.

Federico Viticci's epic look at iOS 7 is everything you might expect from him: Thorough, perceptive and thoughtful. Highly recommended. Viticci, puts the changes into context, and offers up some very interesting ideas about how Apple is readying its mobile OS for the next five years' evolution.

Apple's Ads are at the Top of their Game

Apple's always been rightfully lauded for its ads, though there have been low points (perhaps the recent "Genius" ads could have been better). The "Photos" and "Music" ads that have recently aired though show a company back at the top of its game with truthful, important advertising that reflects the essential values of the company. The pre-keynote video, and the Ben Affleck-narrated "Designed by Apple" tv spot are even better. 

At its worst, advertising is hateful, negative lying. These ads show that it doesn't need to be that way.

Making iPads Safer for Students

Apple's announcement comes just days before a summit scheduled by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón in which the officials are to meet with representatives of Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft to discuss issues related to mobile device theft. The officials have been pushing manufacturers and carriers to find ways to disable stolen devices in hopes of making them less desirable to thieves.

One of the smaller iOS 7 announcements yesterday was around the iPhone activation security features. Educational institutions need to be highly conscious of both the potential for device theft if we're distributing £300+ devices to our students, or recommending they buy them out of tightly-squeezed personal budgets, not least in terms of their own safety. This is a welcome move that potentially makes stealing an iPad significantly less attractive.

iBooks Lands on OS X Mavericks

Well, there's a lot to say about the next version of OS X which Apple previewed yesterday at its World-Wide Developer Conference keynote, not least that they've run out of cats to name system iterations after, and plumped for California hot-spots instead. Mavericks continues OS X's trend of making worthwhile changes to the back-end that improve performance and power-consumption, elegantly innovating on an already-mature user experience, and finding more ways to unify what happens between the Mac and iOS.

Worth highlighting here though is the addition of iBooks to Mac OS X, and especially the well-thought-out support for books created in iBooks Author. This in a single stroke eliminates one of the primary objections to adopting the iBooks platform that I've heard from educators in the 12 months we've been experimenting with it; Being able to access our iBooks on the faculty's many iMacs (and the student's own–quite common–Apple notebooks) eliminates the need for them to own iPads (though that's not an objection I've heard from many students themselves). 

If that weren't enough, the smart integration of sidebar notes and the ability to auto-generate citations is another win. The battle to become the default choice for academic text books is far from over, but this is a real step in the right direction for iBooks. Now I'm really waiting to see what the next version of iBooks Author brings, and whether Apple will integrate it right into iWork or leave it separate. Thoughts?

Don't Call it "Flat"

The predicted rebirth Susan Kare’s original black-and-white OS design, it ain’t. Actually, let's just ban using the term "flat" altogether for this post. The iOS 7 we met today was full of what Jony Ive called “new types of depth.” Alongside a poppy, neon-and-pastel color scheme, the icons, apps, and homescreen of iOS 7 are full of layering and dimensionality. There are also entirely new types of animation: from a screen that uses the accelerometer to adjust in parallax, to beautiful new animated weather icons.

The visual treatments in iOS 7 seem to have polarised people, though we should remember that this is a first (and beta) version of a fairly major visual redesign. We'll see refinements to this both before release, and in subsequent years. What ought to be clear is that it provides a design framework for much greater sophistication than we've seen so far in Apps. This will be doubly true on the iPad, and I can't wait to see how it plays out there.

I've more to say on the WWDC announcements, but I think we've just seen the first real clues of how iOS will evolve into the primary working environment for a whole new set of people.

Making Apple IDs work for kids

Some really smart thinking on this from the Fan Girls site. I've had to deal with this as a parent to an under-13 iPod fangirl, and it's far from straightforward. Apple should give this young woman a job.

How Digital Art Degrades

For a generation, institutions from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Pompidou Center in Paris have been collecting digital art. But in trying to restore the Davis work, which was finally debugged and reposted at the end of May, the Whitney encountered what many exhibitors, collectors and artists are also discovering: the 1s and 0s of digital art degrade far more rapidly than traditional visual art does, and the demands of upkeep are much higher. Nor is the way forward clear.

“We’re working on constantly shifting grounds,” said Rudolf Frieling, a curator of media arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which has been at the forefront of sustaining online art. “Whatever hardware, platform or device we’re using is not going to be there tomorrow.”

Fascinating work, and bound to be an increasing area of concern. I have piles of floppies with HyperCard stacks on them, and a library of Atari 2600 cartridges that says this has been a problem for some time.

The Most Interesting Slide at WWDC

I talked this weekend to Kyle Jobson on Doom Ray, and we touched on anticipation for today's Apple WWDC keynote. As usual there's a ton of speculation about what we can expect to see, though very little in the way of solid information this year. The main thing to remember of course is that it's a developer event, and that means that the most interesting things aren't going to be those things that you can read about in Metro on Tuesday morning.

What I'll be most looking forward to is the same as usual: This slide. It's in the seemingly innocuous list of APIs that Apple reveals more about the near-term future of its platform. It's in the list of public APIs that we learn what Apple hopes developers will build for iOS, or at the very least the building blocks that it's providing for developers to do cool stuff with. When I see that, I start to think about where the platform is headed. This year, I expect to see more evidence that iOS is becoming powerful enough to be my primary computing environment, even more than it already is.