Why Forbes is Wrong (Again)

Brian Caulfield of Forbes.com thinks that the iPhone could kill the DS. Is it a possibility? In a word. No.

Still not getting it? Let me put it this way… Hillary Clinton has a better chance of being elected president.

Monday, however, Nintendo will likely face a new and far more dangerous foe: Apple. Steve Jobs’ computer and gizmo maker will likely launch a long-promised feature, dubbed the App Store, which will let outside developers pour software into the iPhone and iPod Touch. And while it’s unlikely that, say, a mobile version of Oracle’s wonky database will make anyone stand up and cheer, we already know putting games on the iPhone is a pretty powerful combination.
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According to his little equation, Nintendo should already be in trouble. I don’t know about you but I’ve been downloading games for the iPhone ever since I purchased it. Granted Installer.app isn’t as mainstream as the App Store will be, but shouldn’t it have had at least some affect on Nintendo’s sales? Well, when you look at the numbers, Nintendo actually saw increased first quarter sales in 2008 over 2007.

Just for fun, lets take a brief look at Nintendo’s best selling game of all time, Nintendogs, with 18.67 million copies sold as of March this year, 18.67 million? Apple hasn’t even sold that figure in iPhones and iPod touch sales combined! And this is only one game!

Not being a gamer myself I can’t really comment in detail as to just how bad the control scheme on an iPhone is vs. a DS, but it’s bad. I’ll let Fred expound on that one if he wishes.

From my point of view, gaming on the iPhone is better than gaming on your average cell phone (unless you live in Japan) but it’s nothing to sell your DS or PSP over (or even your Game Boy Color).

Tags: Apple, gaming, Nintendo

VLC Hits the iPhone

Heck. Freakin’. Yes.

VLC is one of the greatest pieces of media playing software around and it has been successfully ported to the iPhone!

Currently vlc4iphone is only been released to a select group of beta testers (ie. people who’ve given this guy money), but hopefully there will be a more public beta release soon.

Codec support is limited to MPEG / MPG, AVI, MP3. However, the developer (zodttd) is planning on adding support for FLAC, OGG, and is also looking into supporting VCD, DivX, WMA, WMV.

Tags: VLC, vlc4iphone, zodtdd

Coming soon…

Finals are over, so I might actually get a chance to update the repo now!

Ed has sent me two new themes, I just haven’t had a chance to add them, but expect to see them up within the next day or so.

Tags: Finals, Repo

Firefox 3 RC2 is Live

The latest and greatest Firefox 3 release candidate is now available. The final version of Firefox 3 is expected to be released later this month.

[ Download Firefox 3 RC2 ]

I’ve been using Firefox 3 since Beta 2 and RC2 is amazingly polished, I highly recommend it, even for everyday use.

Tags: Firefox 3 RC2

10.6 Snow Leopard

Word on the street is Apple is already hard at work on Snow Leopard, the successor to Leopard.

According to sources:

Snow Leopard is currently on track to come out during next January’s Macworld, and it will not contain major OS changes. Instead, the release is heavily focused on performance and nailing down speed and stability.

Snow Leopard will be an Intel only release.

Tags: 10.6, Snow Leopard

3G iPhone Scandal

Maybe scandal isn’t the right word, but it comes close.

TUAW is reporting not only that the supposed leaked iPhone picture shown to the left is real, but that the iPhone 2.0 firmware will not be shipping at WWDC. Okay…does this mean the firmware upgrade won’t be available right away from existing iPhone users, but that it will still be shipping on the new 3G iPhone?

If the leaked image turns out to be real, what are your thoughts?

Tags: iPhone 3G, Leaked pictures

Free iPod touch (for students)

Looks like the rumors were true! Apple announced today that they will be offering students a free iPod touch or iPod Nano with the purchase of a Mac computer (Mac Mini excluded of course).

My question is simple, why would you ever pick an iPod Nano over an iPod touch?

Tags: Back to School, free

.Mac mail service is down

And the Mac community has already started speculating that this is part of Apple’s efforts to rebrand .Mac‚Ķ

Tags: .Mac, .Me

Do you Plurk?

I’m not a big fan of micro-blogging, I have a Twitter account that’s been logged into three times since I signed up for it.

Plurk (if you hadn’t guessed already) is the new Twitter contender, even though it’s just another micro-blogging service I classify it as a contender from the standpoint that it was developed with scalability in mind. Oh snap.

As Twitter experiences more and more downtime, expect Plurk to gain a following. It won’t be an overnight success, but it certainly stands a good chance at making an impact.

If you like, you can follow the hijinksinc channel on Plurk by signing up using this link.

Tags: Plurk

.Me - Apple’s missing link

Except it’s not.

It’s a nice thought that the revamp of .Mac will yield a brilliant and usable service to connect everything in your digital life, but the likelihood of that happening just isn’t very high.

Colin Pape of Seeking Alpha thinks that Mobile Me (or .Me as some are calling it) is going to be the magic bullet for Apple, and it will suddenly tie all their products together. I’m sure that’s what Apple is aiming for, but they’ve neglected .Mac for so long that I’m not sure an overhaul and a new name is going to be enough to breathe life into it.

On the other hand, some rumors suggest that Apple will be turning .Me over to Google for a portion of it’s revenue. Though with Steve’s ego, I find this hard to believe. It’s a nice idea though, imagine a Google run service that would allow for unlimited email/file storage and instant syncing of your contacts/calendar/photos/email/music from your phone (iPhone or Android) to the web, and your home or office computer.

While the promise of an easy solution all in one place is nice, why pay for it? Nothing .Mac currently offers is worth the yearly fee, you can easily find free or cheap alternatives to most everything it offers.

Only time will tell I suppose. I’d be more than happy to be wrong on this, the more innovative products and services Apple launches the better.

[ In the interest of full disclosure, I currently hold stock in Apple ]

Tags: .Mac, .Me, Mobile Me