Posts in Linked

Nintendo’s Plan For The 3DS→

Great piece by Kirk Hamilton at Kotaku:

On my 3DS, the little games fit between the bigger games. On my iPhone, the little games fit between all the non-game stuff the device does. Fire Emblem and a handful of other games feel essential to my 3DS in the same way that email and Twitter functionality feel essential on my iPhone. Without the best 3DS games, I’d be much less interested in owning a 3DS; without email or Twitter, I’d be much less interested in owning an iPhone. It’s something of a chicken and egg scenario: Because the 3DS is made primarily to play games, its games feel essential; because the iPhone is made to do so much else, it derives essentiality from other things.

I agree. People interested in gaming aren’t buying a 3DS for its camera software, just like they aren’t buying a PS Vita for the Internet browser. On the flip side, would they buy an iPod touch to get a mix of quick-fix and hardcore games? Would they buy a 3DS just for the non-Nintendo titles of the eShop?

I’m biased, obviously. I am a long-time Nintendo fan and I am enjoying my 3DS. I haven’t been able to deeply appreciate the mechanics of any original iOS game as much as I did for Super Mario 3D Land or Luigi’s Mansion 2. Maybe I did for Ridiculous Fishing, but it’d be like comparing a succulent Italian meal to a great snack. The Wii U is doing bad, but I still have faith in Nintendo’s ability to turn this around.

As Nintendo becomes more serious about its digital ecosystem (here’s my idea from last year), how will they keep differentiating themselves from mobile app stores?

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Resetting Launch Services On Mountain Lion→

Craig Hockenberry:

So, the next time you’re seeing general slowness on your Mac, don’t forget to give Launch Services a kick in the pants. Guaranteed to be more effective than zapping your PRAM.

My MacBook Air was feeling slow – especially when opening the Finder, clicking menubar items, and after waking up from sleep (at the login screen, I’d have to wait around 20 seconds for the keyboard to become responsive). It’s much better thanks to Craig’s tip.

You can find the Terminal command here.

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iAd Producer 4.0 Adds iBooks Author Widgets, iTunes Extras and LPs→

Interesting update to Apple’s often overlooked HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript authoring tool for iAds: you can now create iBooks Author widgets, iTunes Extras, and iTunes LPs, alongside regular iAds.

You can create an iBooks Author widget for use in your iBooks Author projects. For example, you can create a widget that allows users to stream video from the Internet, draw using their finger, or interact with a timeline.

More information about iBooks Author support in iAd Producer 4.0 is available here. You can also find documentation for all the new features on the app’s official support page.

iAd Producer was first released in December 2010.

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Pupil for Mac→

Pupil looks like a nice app to switch between multiple resolutions on a Retina MacBook Pro. The core feature of the app is a configurable menubar item that can list the resolutions you use the most, letting you instantly switch between them.

I can’t try Pupil because I don’t have a Retina MacBook Pro. However, Roman Loyola’s review at Macworld is positive. Pupil is $5 and there’s a free trial available.

I also like how you can “test” Pupil’s menu on the website.

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Apple Restricting Special Characters In App Descriptions→

Mikey Campbell:

As seen in the image above, Apple is no longer allowing developers to submit app description edits with the unique character sets, which in this case includes a checkmark, explosion, “no symbol” and a speech bubble. It is thought that others are included in the new restrictions, but that has yet to be verified.

It appears that Apple has also started restricting usage of glyphs that aren’t necessarily emoji.

I would welcome a change to text-only release notes. While emoji and other characters can add a bit of fun and personality to otherwise boring release notes, some developers were overusing them.

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Twitterrific 5.2.1: Notification Badges, Favstar, Trends, and More→

Big update for Twitterrific today, including automatic theme changing based on local sunrise and sunset times, automatic timeline refreshing after posting a tweet or DM, and improved VoiceOver support. The list of updates is long, but the rest is comprised of bug fixes and various improvements.

By the way, if you’re looking for those Trends, they’re buried in Search under the Tweets tab. For Favstar, you’ll also have to turn on those links in the Settings under Other Services.

For more information on Twitterrific, be sure to read our earlier reviews.

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Dark Sky Launches Forecast Lines→

Another neat web app following the release of Forecast.io last month:

Forecast Lines shows you the forecast spread for each field (temperature, precipitation intensity, pressure, etc.), overlaid with our best guess of what will actually occur. It’s a simple idea, but a powerful one: at a glance, you can see what will happen over the course of the next week, and where we are most–and least–confident in our predictions.

Essentially, Lines looks like a consumer version of Forecast.io’s API raw data sources, which is also available here.

I’m a big fan of the Dark Sky team’s work with web apps and developer APIs for weather data. I can’t use the main Dark Sky app in Italy, but I am testing various third-party apps that are implementing Forecast.io and I’m impressed with their accuracy so far.

I like the idea of Lines’ statistically-aggregated graphs, and, unsurprisingly, the iOS web app is solid.

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