The direction your thumbs point doesn't matter, as the iPad doesn't calculate the orientation of your fingers, merely where on screen they touch. If you want to put them on a 45 degree angle, that's fine. Naturally, up is still going to be towards the top of the screen, but with the bevel as a sort of guide this isn't difficult to maintain without looking at all.

I don't play a lot of games, so I can't really say what the typical scenario is. However, from the ones I have which have some sort of "jump" feature, this is usually given a dedicated button, with the virtual gamepad acting more for direction than discrete actions. Different control surface requires a different input paradigm.

Was this before the Wii U was first publicly demonstrated?

This functionality was demonstrated at the iPad 2 launch on March 2nd, 2011. According to Wikipedia, the Wii U was first announced in April 2011. So it seems like it was indeed.

Yaz

Games on the iPad that require such controls usually use on-screen controls where your hands will naturally rest when holding the device. Effectively, parts of the sides and corners of the display become your control pad. Some emulate distinct buttons (such as in Prince of Persia), whereas others use a sort of virtual thumbstick.

The best games also provide a system whereby when plugged into a TV or connected wirelessly to an external display they display their gaming graphics on the external display, and the entire mobile device becomes nothing but status information and the control surface. Really quite slick. I think the only reason why we haven't seen Apple really pushing this mode hard is that it works best in an all 802.11n environment with low and steady latency -- even though a number of games already support such a mode, for all too many consumers with unknown random wireless network setups the overall experience may not be all that great. And playing with a wire hanging out of the side of the device is a bit of a PITA.

Yaz.

(Composed on an iPad, FWIW)

What is with the love-in of having a dock? We live in a world of wireless accessories. There is no need for something like a tablet to have a ton of extra electronics to be able to handle a docking station connector and all of the necessary bus interfaces to go through it, when virtually everything you want to attach can be handled through the two major wireless standards already built into the device (Bluetooth and 802.11n or ac). So why have a dock, when you can simply have your tablet pickup the devices on your desk wirelessly? My iPad already picks up my bluetooth keyboard, the network, and external speakers (AirTunes) automatically, and can handle an external display via AirPlay (if I owned an Apple TV, that is). Why bother with a) having yet another accessory to buy and b) the added bulk and cost of the electronics needed to support the dock? Yaz (Typed completely on an iPad, FWIW).

No, I think what Gates thinks is that everyone needs a tandem tractor-trailer unit. With a massive Windows logo and several giant "Intel Inside" stickers all over it. (Typed on an iPad, FWIW). Yaz.

Too many people in this world could use a fresh install of the latest version of Super Ego. Yaz.

No they didn't. The menu bar is the same as it always was. The Finder has no analogue in iOS. The Dock is still vastly more flexible and capable than what is in iOS.

So yes -- while a few things have changed, saying they've changed their "whole UI to make it more iOS-like" is overblown hyperbole. I'm willing to bet than less than 10% of the overall UI widgets and construction was changed in 10.8.

This isn't 1992 anymore. All modern Macs have shipped with mice and trackpads with scroll capability for what -- seven years now? Other than my wife, who still scrolls with scrollbars? Besides which, going with a higher contrast bar as they have now is easier for people with visual impairments. And there are options in System Settings to disable the auto-hiding if you don't like it.

Oh, so changing the look of icons is something that has never happened in any other OS release ever? Apple has changed their icons with virtually every OS X release they've ever released -- certainly since I started running it back in the 10.2 days. I don't think you can fault them for keeping their branding consistent, and if you don't like the icons they use, you can still change them to whatever you want. Go out to the Internet and get yourself an icon set, or rip them out of a previous release.

No they didn't. You can bring it up either by hitting Control-Alt-0 (as a separate window), or by pressing "Show" and then pressing the middle button at the bottom of the display to roll up the Mail Activity frame (once rolled up, it will stay that way across invocations until you roll it back down). And if you don't like the new messages down the side style, go into Preferences -> Viewing, and check the "Use classic layout" box.

Then please do, because you certainly haven't done much here to prove your thesis that the hyperbole hasn't been overblown.

I always find it funny that there is this set of people out there who complain that you can't tweak OS X's UI enough. Then there is a set of people who seem to refuse to use any of the various UI tweaking settings Apple provides. Funniest of all is the set of people who are in the intersection of those two sets, who complain they don't like the way Apple has provided some of the defaults, but then seem completely ignorant that each and every one of them is indeed readily configurable, and that they shouldn't have to click a few checkboxes to make the software work the way they want it to.

Yaz

"All software is, by definition, math. And all math, by definition, is not patentable."

The problem with this argument is that the same reasoning that defines software as mathematics also defines *all* patentable subject matter as mathematics. If you can describe it, it is literally a finite algorithm. If a software expression of an algorithm can be excluded on the basis that it is an "algorithm" then the argument can be applied to all subject matter. (see: algorithmic information theory)

What is not patentable are mathematical concepts, not specific processes that implement those concepts. You cannot patent the idea of "sorting" but you can patent a sorting algorithm. This is an important distinction: there are an unbounded number of sorting algorithms that can be invented that express the mathematical concept of sorting so inventing one particular expression does not preclude anyone else from inventing their own expression.

This does not speak to the "on a computer" type patents (which are silliness) but it is the reason that computer algorithm patents are generally accepted in most countries (yes, even Europe). A consistent policy that banned computer algorithm patents would ban most other types of patents as well.

Once upon a time, people generated most of their value with their muscles. When machines replaced muscles, people could still generate value with their brains because machines could not replace brains. So the original Luddite scenario never materialized.

Now that machines are starting to replace brains, a growing portion of the population has a rapidly dwindling ability to generate significant economic value relative to the machines. As time passes, machines can effectively replace both the muscles and brains of more of the population.

This is also why forcing people to work fewer hours will not help. The problem is not the number of jobs available; it is the number of people who can generate more positive value in that position relative to a machine. Eventually we will all be in the position of no longer being able to be a productive member of a modern economy; everyone believes their contribution to be indispensable until the technology catches up and it isn't.

As I mentioned, here in my part of the world, the accuracy has been excellent.

And I disagree with your entire premise anyhow. Accuracy isn't everything. Cost is also significant. I don't mind a small reduction in accuracy if it means a significant reduction in data transfer costs. Speed is also significant -- again, I can deal with a small loss in accuracy so long as I get the results I need quickly.

Both of these areas are areas of improvement in Apple Maps. The vector maps are smaller to transfer than Google's big set of bitmapped tiles, and don't need to be reloaded anywhere near as often. This also improves speed -- I can't list the number of times I've been in places with marginal 3G access where I've had to wait several minutes for all of the bitmapped tiles form Google to load, but where Apple's maps load significantly quicker in a complete manner. For me, those things are better, and are significant improvements.

And as I've mentioned several times already, in the region of the world I live in, I have yet to find a flaw with Apple's Maps. I recognize that isn't true everywhere, but in the region of the world I spend most of my time the accuracy has been every bit as good as Google's Maps ever was. As such, for me it has been better. For others, I suspect it will also be an improvement once Apple gets their data in other parts of the world up to expectations (and I don't blame people for complaining about bad data in Apple's Maps -- they have every right to complain about it). However, in my case, accuracy as good as Google Maps, with better features, less data transfer, and faster response? Win, win, win.

Yaz

...and at least in my part of the world, the data is pretty good too, only missing any useful 3D data. But I don't live in a particularly massive city, so I doubt we're a priority.

My feelings thus far can be summed up as follows: the app itself is actually quite good. I like the fact that the maps data is now vector based, instead of Google's bitmapped based data; do any significant zooming in Google Maps, and suddenly you're using more data to download new tiles. This doesn't happen to the same level in Apple Maps -- the maps themselves are crisp, clean, and detailed, with less data going across the wire. The turn-by-turn navigation is excellent, and recalculates nearly instantly.

From that perspective, I think Apple's Maps is a huge improvement over Google's. The data for my region of the world appears to be pretty complete as well, and doesn't have some of the phantom roads that Google Maps has had here in the past. However, I haven't done an extensive survey of each to have any true metric to base any actual feeling on.

Of course, like everyone else, I've seen all of the captures of problem areas people have found. I've seen these for Google Maps as well. It does appear that Apple really needs to work on the data portion of their maps in many regions of the world, but the app itself seems to be a great improvement over the previous Google Maps.

Yaz

Please people -- reading comprehension! And maybe understanding a bit of geography...

According to the summary, the Wii Mini is only being released in Canada. Not the US. And here in Canada, the biggest shopping week and day of the year is Boxing Day (December 26th).

Setting aside for a moment a number of US stores in this country holding sales on the same day as their US counterparts do on Black Friday, and some Canadian shops following suit to remain competitive with both US-based stores in Canada holding such sales and to help combat cross-border shopping, Black Friday isn't really much of a thing here in Canada. It's not a holiday here, people who work are at work that day. It's just another day.

Congratulations to you and everyone else who either a) through lack of reading comprehension, didn't notice that the Wii Mini is only being released in Canada, or b) don't know that Canada is still a sovereign country with different traditions and customs (and often prices) than the US.

Yaz

The price may be $130 in the US, but it's $149.99 from BestBuy Canada (you know, where the Wii Mini is being sold), making the Mini 2/3rds the regular price.

I can certainly see a market here for this, particularly for use in cottage country. Often in such situations, cottages aren't equipped with Internet connectivity, and parents may want a cheaper version of the console they already have at home to allow their kids to play the games they already own while at the cottage. Many of these places still have standard definition TVs as well -- you don't go away to the cottage to sit around and watch movies (we don't even have a TV at ours, but I certainly know many people in our cottagers association who do).

I guess we'd have to see how sales go after the holiday season. I won't be running out to buy one, but with a 33% price difference I can see price conscious families who want a second console (or their first if they don't own one already -- strange how new children keep popping up in this world...) may be attracted to this as a nice Xmas gift.

Yaz

Actually, it is a relatively cheap computation on modern computing hardware. The specification for many modern tactical intercept systems is that the complete decision cycle has an upper bound of 20-50 milliseconds. You can do an amazing amount of computation on sensor data in that amount of time.

Remember, sophisticated multi-target tracking and engagement systems were built in the 1970s and 1980s with much less processing power than your cell phone has today.

And in fact, if you look at the chipsets used in state-of-the-art terminal guidance packages for hypersonic kinetic intercept of agile targets, they are embedded systems chips that would have been obsolete as desktop CPUs even a decade ago. Think MIPS R3000 or R4000 class CPUs and a modest DSP.

Basically, CPUs can drive computation at a much higher rate than material physics allows targets to change their behavior. We passed the threshold where computation is the bottleneck decades ago.

That's actually quite old, having originated in 1991, and having been an in-joke on their website for quite some time. See: Sosumi

Yaz