Tag: iOS

#oneaday Day 77: Updates Are Available

Remember when we didn't have to update things? I do. It was a good time. You could put something in to your computer or console, safe in the knowledge that it (probably) worked… and if it didn't work, it would probably get recalled and/or refunded. It was a binary state. In the world of consoles, this situation prevailed until the last generation ended—the era of the 360 and PS3 ushered in the Age of the Patch.

Of course, PC users have been dealing with this for considerably longer. Anyone who has ever used Windows will be intimately familiar with the incremental update process. It just used to happen slightly less regularly before we had the Internet there with easy access. You might get a disc (or huge pile of floppy disks) with an updated version on providing significant new features, rather than just plugging Security Hole Number 5,237,429.

Nowhere is "update culture" more apparent than in the world of smartphone apps. It's like keeping on top of your email inbox—you'll never beat it. Update everything on your phone and within an hour or two at least one app will have been updated with either "bug fixes" or "AMAZING NEW FEATURES". And people have come to expect, nay, demand these updates. Read reviews in the App Store (I know, I know) and you'll see products which have just been released with consumers demanding updates.

Of course, you don't have to update things when they come up. People who don't have an Internet connection don't, of course. And in theory, this shouldn't cause much of an issue—unless you own an Apple device.

I've become convinced with the past few iOS updates that Steve Jobs has a big magic "obsolescence" button in his office that immediately renders all iOS-based devices nigh-on unusable unless they're running the absolute latest version of the system software—even if they were happily working just fine the day before.

You may accuse me of paranoia at this juncture, and it wouldn't be an unreasonable assumption. However, let me cite the example of last night to you. Last night, Twitter for iPhone started playing silly buggers and decided to start crashing every five seconds. I deleted and reinstalled it and still it had trouble. So I downloaded Echofon instead. This ran, but slowly and jerkily. Given that I'm running an iPhone 4, supposedly THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE UNIVERSE (Smartphone. I meant smartphone.) the word "slowdown" really shouldn't be in the vocabulary I use when talking about it. But slowdown there was. And lo, it was annoying.

It then occurred to me that I hadn't updated to iOS 4.3, which came out a few days earlier. So I quickly (ha!) updated my phone. And wouldn't you know, everything suddenly, magically ran the way it was supposed to. How about that?

So, the moral of this story, then, is update your shit. Otherwise the CEOs of the world will enjoy torturing you from afar.

#oneaday, Day 334: That Seems A Bit Expensive

Those who doubt the value of the iOS platforms as serious gaming devices should take a look at some of the stuff that's come out recently. The iPhone and iPod touch are becoming gaming powerhouses, and not just for portable versions of timewasters like Bejeweled Blitz and Farmville.

No, in just the last couple of weeks, we've seen some spectacular games show up. Epic's Infinity Blade, for example, provides spectacular graphics and a cool update on, of all things, Punch-Out!! Trendy Entertainment's Dungeon Defenders gives us an interesting multiplayer twist on both the action RPG and tower defense genres, despite being a little bit too ambitious for its own good on the small iPhone screen. (Stick with it past the tutorial, though; once you're done with the screen-filling tutorial text, the interface is still a little bit cluttered, but less burdensome). Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light provides the same experience as the console and PC versions—complete with co-op. And Aralon is pretty much Oblivion in your pocket.

Stop and think about those for a minute. Those are all pretty fucking impressive games to run on a phone. Things get even more impressive when you look at the prices for each—the most expensive of those mentioned is Aralon, which is three English pounds and ninety-nine pence. Compare and contrast with Oblivion, which launched at £40 on consoles.

The thing is, though, the App Store and its customers appear to operate in some sort of weird parallel economy. Aralon's predecessor, Ravensword, sells for 59p and offers a pretty thorough RPG experience. And yet there are reviewers who say that they have "wasted their money" because it didn't have one feature they thought it should have in it.

Seriously. These people need to get a little perspective. 59p for 20-30 hours of entertainment is pretty outstanding value whichever way you slice it. £3.99 for the same amount of gameplay is still pretty fucking amazing value. There are games that are considerably technically inferior to these games we're getting on iOS devices now selling for £20-35 on the Nintendo DS. Ace Attorney on the iPhone is a tenth of the price it is on the Nintendo DS, and it's the same game. Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is 1200 Microsoft Points on XBLA, whatever that means. It's 4 quid on the App Store. And again, it's the same game—except it actually shipped with co-op built in.

iOS gamers, you've never had it so good. At some point, developers will figure out that they're vastly undercharging people for these awesome games, and prices will rise. So stop bitching and make the most of these incredible experiences while they're still the price of a coffee in Starbucks.