Hasta La Gadget!

At Apple’s tablet event last week, there was one noticeable absence: games.

Apple frequently uses games to show off the computing power of its mobile devices, but this time, Steve Jobs was driving home the message that the iPad is a tool for creation, not just a fancy plaything.

“This is not a toy,” Jobs said after a demonstration of iMovie for iPad. “You can really edit movies on this thing.”

Later, after a demonstration of GarageBand for iPad, Jobs repeated it: “Again, this is no toy.”

Priced at $5 each, iMovie and GarageBand were the only apps demo’d last Wednesday on the iPad 2. These apps aren’t brand-new, because they were previously Mac apps, but bringing them to the iPad is a significant move.

Historically, iMovie and GarageBand have been popular on the Mac because of their affordability and ease of use. With these two apps, Apple pioneered tools for Joe Schmo to create music and movies — skills that were previously exclusive to professional musicians and moviemakers with expensive hardware and software.

As a professional Final Cut Pro videomaker myself, I was personally frustrated that Apple kept making it easier and easier for anyone to replicate my technical skills with much simpler tools. (To be clear, beyond my selfish needs, I did view iMovie as extremely beneficial for creators.)

Now Apple’s making these same creative tools more accessible to an even broader audience, on an even more affordable device, the $500 iPad. The touchscreen interface is so intuitive that even children and grandparents have been able to pick up iPads and figure out how to use them in a few minutes. Now they could potentially launch iMovie or GarageBand and create some movies or music.

While touchscreen tablets are less than ideal for typing out long blog posts or writing novels, they may become an ideal platform for multimedia creation with tools like these. For that reason, these apps may be even more important than the iPad 2 itself.

But Apple still has a lot of room to improve if it wants the iPad to be a platform for creation. Going forward, one key area of creation that Apple should focus on is a tool to create apps.

Creative Coding

Programming is one of the most creative things you can do with a computer, and the iPad could potentially be a powerful tool to introduce this form of creativity to many people, particularly children.

Currently there is no way for people to use the iPad to make programs. Furthermore, the touchscreen interface already doesn’t seem ideal for traditional coding, and there’s no easy way to look under the hood of an iPad to understand how to create software.

Without a proficient programming environment readily accessible on the iPad, Apple’s tablet paints a bleak portrait for the future of programming.

“I think the iPad generation is going to miss out on software programming,” said Oliver Cameron, developer of the Friends iPhone app. “Kids don’t need Macs anymore.”

It doesn’t help that Apple enforces strict rules around how iOS apps must be programmed, which occasionally results in some collateral damage.

Take for example Apple’s rejection of Scratch early last year. Scratch for iPhone was an app for kids to view programs coded with MIT’s Scratch programming platform.

Apple rejected the app, citing a rule that apps may not contain code interpreters other than Apple’s. This rule appears to be specifically designed to prevent meta platforms such as Adobe Flash from appearing on the iPad, thereby allowing Apple to keep its iOS platform to itself.

The young community of Scratch programmers, however, doesn’t pose a threat to Apple’s business, and the rejection of the Scratch app shows how Apple’s developer rules can harm the art of programming.

“I think it’s terrible,” said Andrés Monroy-Hernández, a Ph.D. candidate at the MIT Media Lab and lead developer of the Scratch online community, when Scratch was rejected April 2010. “Even if the Scratch app was approved, I still think this sends a really bad message for young creators in general. We have a forum where kids post comments, and they were really upset about this.”

Furthermore, Apple has especially frowned on the act of hacking iOS devices. It’s worth noting that programmers can still tinker on the iPad by writing code for “jailbroken” (i.e., hacked) devices.

But Apple has created the sentiment that hacking iOS devices is a criminal activity. Jobs has described Apple’s cracking down on iPhone hacks as a “game of cat and mouse.”

In the past Apple vigorously fought attempts to legalize jailbreaking on mobile phones. The company eventually failed in that effort when the U.S. Copyright Office added jailbreaking to a list of exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anticircumvention provisions, making jailbreaking cellphones lawful. However, the iPad is not covered by that exemption, because it’s not considered a phone, and therefore the lawfulness of hacking an iPad remains uncertain.

The criminal stigma surrounding iOS hacking is disappointing, because many of our best coders learned a great deal by thinking outside the box, breaking the rules and hacking around with systems. Take for example, Alex Payne, an engineer at Twitter.

“The thing that bothers me most about the iPad is this: if I had an iPad rather than a real computer as a kid, I’d never be a programmer today,” Payne said in a blog post last year when the original iPad debuted. “I’d never have had the ability to run whatever stupid, potentially harmful, hugely educational programs I could download or write. I wouldn’t have been able to fire up ResEdit and edit out the Mac startup sound so I could tinker on the computer at all hours without waking my parents.”

And then there’s software programmer Mark Pilgrim, who reminisced about the days when personal computers were truly “personal,” meaning a user could do anything he wanted with his device without feeling like a rebellious rule breaker.

“You could turn on the computer and press Ctrl-Reset, and you’d get a prompt. And at this prompt, you could type in an entire program, and then type RUN, and it would motherfucking run,” Pilgrim said in his post last year when the iPad launched. Pilgrim and Payne agree that children learning to program with an iPad won’t get the enlightening tinkering experience they had.

That’s unfortunate, because in our digitally driven economy, programmers are more important than ever before, and it’d be beneficial for people of all ages to learn some code.

If Jobs really wants the world to view the iPad as a platform for creation, it seems like an opportune time for Apple to release a suite of basic programming tools for iOS devices. This could be a simple tool that creates some rudimentary iOS apps (plenty of apps in the App Store would be considered subpar anyway), and purchasing it should include a free developer’s license for kids to get started programming.

It’s great that Apple’s iPad will give birth to some more musicians and moviemakers, but we can’t forget the people who make hardware extra special: the programmers.

It’s a sign of the times: a company originally known for typewriters, and struggling to find its place in a tech-driven market, turns to manufacturing tablets. This week, Olivetti announced the release of the OliPad, staking its claim to a slice of the slab pie, and repositioning itself on the enterprise PC market. Heralded (at least by Olivetti) as Italy’s first tablet, the OliPad sports a 10-inch screen, 3G, WiFi, and Bluetooth connectivity, NVIDIA Tegra 2, Android 2.2.2, and a 1024 x 600 display. It also features USB and HDMI ports and a 1.3 megapixel camera, but perhaps most telling is the simultaneous launch of the Application Warehouse, “a virtual storehouse of configurable and customizable software applications designed by Olivetti specifically for business and government.” Considering the vast and varied competition, we’d say sticking to what it knows — and Olivetti knows business solutions — is probably a safe bet. Now, if they could just make the thing look as good as the Olivetti Valentine… The OliPad goes on sale this Monday for €399. Full PR after the break.

[Thanks, Riccardo]

Continue reading Olivetti launches OliPad tablet, second coming of the typewriter?

Olivetti launches OliPad tablet, second coming of the typewriter? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 Mar 2011 04:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iMovie, GarageBand for iPad announced — $4.99 on March 11th originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Mar 2011 12:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Steve Jobs introduces the iPad in a January 2010 event. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The fumbled introduction of in-app subscriptions shows that when it comes to charging for subscription services online, Apple is just as confused as everyone else.

The widely anticipated policy allows publishers, including Wired, to charge subscription fees for recurring content. But while this is in principle a feature that both publishers and readers actually want, the announcement has been met with derision and complaints about the extortionate rates Apple is charging.

Clearly, Apple misjudged its audience.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that no one really knows what counts as a “publisher.” Wired parent Condé Nast certainly is. But what about the makers of Dropbox or Evernote, to name two popular cloud-based services that charge premium customers with a monthly subscription model?

Apple’s new in-app subscriptions policy requires publishers of “content-based apps, including magazines, newspapers, video, music, etc.” to pay a 30-percent cut to Apple for every subscription sale made inside iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch apps, according to Apple. So for example, when an iPad customer purchases a subscription of The Daily newspaper through the app, Apple takes a 30-percent cut of the subscription sale. Sounds about reasonable.

To anybody who’s even idly followed Apple in the past few years, this shouldn’t come as a surprise at all. Currently for every app that costs money on the App Store, Apple takes 30 percent of each sale, leaving the software developer with a generous 70-percent cut.

Publishers can still take subscription payments outside the apps — for instance, on their own websites — and when they do, they keep 100 percent of the proceeds, as Jobs was careful to point out.

But the new in-app policy is more strict and more confusing than it initially appears.

Publishers that offer alternative means of subscription must also offer Apple’s in-app purchase system, and subscriptions offered outside the App Store can’t undercut the in-app price. Also, only the in-app sale option can appear inside the app; external links are not allowed.

Here’s where things get really confusing: The iOS developer agreement states that “Apps utilizing a system other than the In App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality or services in an app will be rejected.”

Certainly any app would fall under that category, wouldn’t it? So now is everybody a publisher of “content-based apps”? That language would suggest so.

In-app payments sound more convenient for iOS customers, but the wording of the policy is loaded and vague. Every app can be seen as something that provides content, functionality or services, but Apple particularly describes this policy as applying to publishers of “content-based” apps.

What about companies that provide paid, subscription-based software services through an app, such as Dropbox, Evernote and Salesforce? Marco Arment, developer of the iOS app Instapaper, points out these apps offer paid services outside the iOS payment system. Should they be rejected for not doing so? That would upset everybody, but it would only seem fair.

Those apps haven’t been pulled. And if a purported Steve Jobs e-mail is to be believed, they aren’t going to be — although it’s hard to say. The e-mail merely states, “We created subscriptions for publishing apps, not [software-as-a-service] apps.”

The bottom line is that Apple has managed to make its App Store review policy even more confusing and vague than it already was previously, and this disarray may discourage businesses from participating, Arment says.

“This policy will prevent many potentially great apps, from many large and small publishers, from being created on iOS at all,” Arment says in his blog.

A large contributor to the confusion is that Apple is creating an invisible hierarchy inside the App Store. Traditional publishers have been receiving different treatment than everybody else for over a year.  In early 2010, Apple approved the Playboy and Sports Illustrated apps, for example, while banning a plethora of sex-tinged apps made by smaller companies.

“The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,” Schiller told The New York Times last year.

Herein lies the problem: Apple seems to think there’s a difference between a media organization publishing a magazine through an app and a software maker publishing a service through an app. While there are obvious differences between the products provided, the fundamentals are the same: These are companies using Apple’s app channel to sell product.

From a media publisher’s perspective, it probably doesn’t seem fair to be stuck with different rules.

And from a software service provider’s perspective, it’s uncertain what it can or cannot do in the coming future given the broad wording of the new policy, and Jobs’ apparent statement that the policy doesn’t even apply.

If Apple wants to give different kinds of publishers different rules, they should give them a separate channel in iTunes, where partnerships are firmly established in inked agreements between publishers and Apple.

Why not create a separate store for magazine and serials publishers, just as Apple has done with book publishers in iBooks?

By giving publishers a separate place to play ball, Apple could also grant them access to an important resource: user data. The New York Times‘ David Carr points out that publishers are less concerned about the revenue split than they are about the difficulty of collecting user data with in-app subscriptions.

Apple only allows user data to be shared with the publisher if the user gives permission. When a customer chooses to subscribe to a publication, a message pops up saying, “The developer would like your name, e-mail, and zip code so they can send you messages about related products in accordance with their privacy policy.” Who would hit OK on that? Tracking user data is crucial for a business that relies heavily on ad targeting, but Apple’s privacy policy creates a high hurdle.

Keeping developers in the same arena as publishers while enforcing rules inconsistently creates an atmosphere of unfair play, and suddenly the App Store no longer feels like the “best deal going” for mobile apps.

See Also:

• IPad Apps Could Put Apple in Charge of the News
• iPad Developers Code Their Apps in the Dark
• A Call for Transparency in Apple’s App Store

You know all of that time you’ve been wasting on Angry Birds HD? Looks like your flying friends may have company when it comes time to, um… kill time, as Markus Persson has confirmed to Gamasutra that an iOS port is “in the works.” That means that an official Minecraft build will soon pop up in Apple’s App Store, with iPhone and iPad versions hinted at. Aron Neiminen, a new recruit to the Mojang team, is responsible for the port, and if all goes well, it’ll be let loose later in the year. Persson also confirmed that the iOS version won’t receive every update that the original browser / download versions get, but that it’ll be “granted features that make sense for the touchscreen platform.” Raise your hand below if you’re giddy beyond control.

Update: Video’s after the break! Thanks, Cooper.

Continue reading Minecraft for iOS confirmed, the hunt resumes for free time to squander

Minecraft for iOS confirmed, the hunt resumes for free time to squander originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 01:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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