Whilst my iPhone is downloading iOS 7 right as I type, I wanted to go through the features that will make it brilliant. This is my personal opinion so disagree if you like.
Control Center
Control Center is like the Notification Center but for controlling your device. Swipe up and access all of your settings easily, much like Android's Quick Settings (it's getting a bit copy-cattish here now). Control Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb, a handy torch and more.
AirDrop
Us Mac users have had AirDrop for about 2 years, but it is the most used part of OS X that I use on a regular basis. Send files between Mac and Mac to make an easy file transfer. Now iOS 7 brings the same feature. You can easily share a photo with a friend who is running iOS or Mac OS X without the need for third party applications.
Notification Center
It's just so beautiful. It loses it's silly tweed background and goes for the full on iOS 7 design. The Today feature will be useful for me as I can check the weather, stocks (and yes, I constantly check stocks, mainly because I'm interested in the computing industry stock) and more.
Siri
Lord Siri will be updated as well. Apparently more voices are coming with it, but that's not what I am excited about. iOS 7's version of Siri will bring the ability to control the device much more. For instance, you can ask him to turn on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Great for when you are on a hands free like I am sometimes.
Safari
Safari has better performance. It also looks more attractive and the tabs are organised in a neater way that will suit every device. Tabs are shown from above, a bit like a magazine rack. It all looks awesome.
But to finish
I never mentioned how I do like the consistency of the new user interface. It is so much more consistent and coherent that iOS 6 and before. I am excited a lot about the interface and the new design is a change I will have to get used to, but it will be great to try something new, hopefully.
I adored the GameCube. I have games for that have a total value of around £500+ which is incredible.
Games like The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess and the Legend of Zelda The Wind Waker, Wario Land, Mario Kart Double Dash, Pikmin and Pikmin 2, Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles, Pokemon Coliseum and Pokemon Channel, Billy Hatcher and The Giant Egg, Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime Echoes, Metal Arms Glitch In The System, F-Zero AX/GX, Doshin The Giant, Super Smash Bros Melee and Super Mario Sunshine were among the little purple box's best titles in my opinion. The console had great controllers and had good graphics for it's generation.
It's successor, the Wii, may have been the most successful console of that generation to date, but it certainly was not the greatest console ever made. I'm sure a few of my friends would undoubtedly agree that the GameCube holds that category.
What about the Xbox 360?
Whilst to so many people out there, the Xbox 360 is the console of consoles, to me it most definitely was not that. Throughout the years of the 360's life, I managed to find just four games that I enjoyed, namely Halo 3, Halo Reach, Banjo Kazooie (I have this on my Nintendo 64 as well) and Metal Arms Glitch In The System (my brother also owns this on his PS2). I can hardly say I loved the 360, as my original purpose to buying it was specifically for system links and online play of Halo 3.
There is no doubt, I disliked the Xbox 360 as a console.
Ok then, PS3?
Well the PS3 had a bigger impact for me. I genuinely got it as a Blu Ray player with access to games at the same time. I originally got the Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle and when I started to play MGS4, did not like it.
After trying to get into it, I really did fall in love with that game. In fact, it's one of the games on my list of games that I complete once a year. The game was fabulous and that continued on to my next favourite PS3 games, MotorStorm Apocalypse and then inFamous 2. I then downloaded the first three Spyro games, Mickey's Wild Adventure, C&C, C&C Red Alert and could continue to play my old PS1 games (Croc, Croc 2, James Bond Tomorrow Never Dies).
Overall, I liked the PS3 better than the Xbox 360, especially as a system, but still not over the GameCube.
To the point
Now, the point of this post was about the relationship between the GameCube and the Wii U. It's clear to me that the Wii U has a wide range of games, but there are some games focused more at the `serious` gamer (which I certainly had lost since 2003 until Halo 3 came out in 2007, the only serious games I played were PC games). However, there have never been so many brilliant games on the one console since I have become a serious gamer again. So far, after less than a year, I have a total of 8 games for my Wii U, I already own just under two thirds of my Xbox 360 library which had a total of 13 games. I also own 15 Virtual Console games for my Wii U.
Now, with the Wii U bringing back the serious gamers with the Pro Controller and the awesome new GamePad, I can see another GameCube.
To date, we have had some really awesome games such as Nintendo Land, ZombieU, Pikmin 3, New Super Mario Bros U, Game & Wario and Rayman Legends, all of which feel like, well, GameCube titles. There were countless titles for the GameCube with success. Third party games were good, and the GameCube was considered the Resident Evil player's console (just ask Greg Innes, one of my friends from back in school who holds Resident Evil time trial records), we had awesome games like Metal Arms Glitch In The System, James Bond NightFire and Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles but the GameCube relied on Nintendo to release the awesome games such as Sunshine and Wind Waker.
Now you may notice, all the third parties such as trashy EA and Bethesda have already announced a lack of support and interest in the Wii U. Also, so far the Wii U has been incredibly unpopular, just as the GameCube was. Could this mean Nintendo end up making the majority of the games to a very high quality standard just as they did with the GameCube to keep up and try and win back it's gamers?
The line up for the Wii U is incredibly Nintendo-published with loads of games like Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, Super Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros 4 and the two new Zelda games (one being a remake of one of the greatest games to have ever existed, and one of the first to ever get 97% or above from GamesMaster magazine). We could even see a new Metroid game or F-Zero (both would be nice!).
So will the Wii U replicate the GameCube's brilliance?
In what I would personally say was a good move, Steve Ballmer is to step down as the CEO of Microsoft in the next 12 months, announced earlier today. Steve Ballmer has been running the company as CEO since 2000 and has been a key part of the company.I'm not fond of Ballmer and some of his work with Microsoft, but lately some of the companies failings have been pointed at Ballmer.
Ballmer leaving this role has made share prices rise, put confidence back into those of us who follow Microsoft and allows for new marketing strategies to be applied in relation to the company.
We shall see how this pans out in the future.
It has been long known as the business oriented phone company but today RIM (Research-In-Motion) and latterly, BlackBerry Ltd. went up for sale. BlackBerry has dropped to as low 2.9% of the phone market this year, whilst Google's Android phones take around 80% of the market, you would imagine figures like this make the company directors at BlackBerry Ltd. slightly concerned.
In the same way we lost Palm, a company who pretty much got the touch devices out on the market in the first place, BlackBerry were one of the first smartphone manufacturers for business users. It's a sad fate, but Android and iOS are in control of the smartphone market with the others trailing behind.
http://media.theage.com.au/business/businessday/blackberry-market-share-under-3-4657199.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/blackberry/10237847/BlackBerry-timeline-from-RIM-to-RIP.html
Nokia's new advert suggests that "every day, more photos are taken on the iPhone, than any other phone". Nokia's Lumia camera may be better, but does that mean more people will change to Nokia's phones? Well, clearly not as Windows Phone only has around 2-3% of the market share. I'm not criticizing Windows Phones themselves, but the operating system they run on.
For now, my point is that if Microsoft doesn't do something with Windows Phone 8 and indeed Windows 8, then they will see the market slip out of their hands to both Google and Apple as BlackBerry did.
I'd like to mention my new software which is under development:
Hyper WEB
Hyper WEB (Hyper Wonderword-Extends-BlackRabbit) is a web editor. It is based on the same distinct feature set of the BlackRabbit Editor in that it uses a function machine editor where inputs are given and the editor produces the output based on those inputs. The editor uses the Internet Explorer's Trident engine with full support for Internet Explorer 10. Future plans are to bring WebKit to it. Pictures will be posted soon as progress begins to show. Currently the browser engine provided is based on Cobweb version 2.0, and it features the same page blocking technologies integrated into it. There are some very clever features being produced for it that will make creating sites easier.
BlackRabbit 2.0
Although I did announce this in the blog for BlackRabbit, version 2.0 is a total redesign on the scripting language. Integration in Cobweb will be much deeper, Hyper WEB will include ways to include sandboxed scripts into websites and Painter Pro and Wonderword will have better support. The current version of Elements will support version 2.0.
Cobweb
Recently, I stopped working on Cobweb because of a limitation of Windows preventing the use of the rendering engine of Internet Explorer 8 and above as part of any application apart from Internet Explorer itself. Due to a new feature brought to Cobweb, it is now possible to ensure that all versions of Trident can be used in Cobweb Internet Browser, and so version 2.0.1.319 has this feature. I will soon put the latest version up on the web. As Cobweb is my currently only finished product, feedback would be much appreciated.
Wonderword
The future for Wonderword stopped back in October 2012 because it was taking the place of nothing more than a web editor, script editor and more other things. Due to the fact that Hyper WEB and BlackRabbit do both of these, I have decided to revamp Wonderword. There is now the possibility of a full WYSIWYG word processing package, but this will need some investment. It cannot happen without support.
Painter Pro
Current betas on Painter Pro have expired. To obtain another beta, please contact me. Painter Pro 1.2.1.6000 was the latest release and the next release will be 1.2.2.0, currently known as it's codename Aberdeen.
VUEBB
Work on VUEBB has also been slowed, but it will resume as soon as the next file extension library is complete.
As if Instagram could get any more controversial, the Facebook owned photo sharing service is now deleting any photos that are uploaded by apps on Windows Phone 8 such as Instance.
Instagram is an app that does not feature on Windows Phone and it apparently is now deleting the user's photos uploaded from any Windows Phone device. This is apparently a security issue more than anything. I've never ever used Instagram because I know the ins and outs of photo sharing through these services and realised that it's not a good idea. Instagram at one point could even sell your photos according to this source, although since then have backed down.
Apple is supposedly testing a new size for the iPad - although this time it is said to be larger rather than smaller. The iPhone with a larger screen size is not new information, in fact, I posted about it a month back.
The rumour suggests a 13" iPad, which is the size of the smallest MacBook Pro (the one I use by the way) and slightly larger than my current Windows laptop. To me this seems too big, I prefer small tablets and small laptops. When I come home, I dock my devices to my monitor (23? display) and enjoy the big screen of that.
One of the most upsetting things that can happen with any technology is that it starts to die, or die prematurely. This is exactly what has happened with my Nexus 7.
Many others have complained as well. Here is a list of issues:
- When I rotate it from vertical to horizontal it takes about 7 seconds to flip.
- Music can't play in the background most of the time because it can't cope. It pauses the music and I have to resume it.
- Chrome takes about 15 seconds to create a tab, even if there are no other tabs
- Occasionally, going home makes the system crash and it takes me back to the login screen.
- Changing users takes about 10-15 seconds to change between two users on the login screen. I even decided to remove every other user on the tablet in the hope that it would make it faster.
- The battery life is subsequently wasted by all of this, and system restarts are frequently required. It also heats up considerably.
- Scrolling is never fluid - it just jumps.
This is a Nexus 7 32GB with 15GB of data. By the way, I have an iPad 16GB as well and have it almost full (11GB of data on it) and it still runs fine.
Here's the proof it happens to others.
The 2012 Nexus 7 is a cheap tablet that seems to have problems
Just two searches that I decided to do on both Bing and Google and look at the results!
Google users search more for why "the Xbox One is bad" and Bing users search for why "the Xbox One is amazing".
You can share this on Facebook if you like.
I have to agree with Google here!
