Macgasm

The iPhone and iPod Touch are the world’s best selling gaming devices, according to Jobs. When people talk like that, the competition takes notice, and in this case Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime could probably see the grenade heading his way, tossed by Jobs himself, during the last keynote. According to Forbes, Fils-Aime knows full well that they’re competing with Apple. “Do I think that in the near term they can hurt us more than Microsoft?” Fils-Aime says. “Absolutely.” He also goes on to say that Apple is a bigger threat than Microsoft and Sony at this point.

So there you have it, straight from the mouth of a Nintendo Executive. But, he doesn’t end there, and starts to blow it right when he points out that the iPhone and iPod Touch games are for “casual” gamers, whereas the Nintendo DS isn’t. That’s right about when he lost us.

The Nintendo DS and the Wii are very much aimed at the same market as the iPhone, iPod Touch, and now iPad. Just when we thought this guy knew what he was talking about, he illustrates that he’s out of touch with his own market. Maybe someone should show Fils-Aime the Civ Revolutions game (or iPad version), Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown (iPad version), or Field Runners. I’ve sunk a lot of time into all of those games.

Someone should also show him the list of companies working on developing games for iOS, because we’re pretty sure some heavyweights, like Epic, will be creating content in the near future.

I guess Fils-Aime is right in a sense. They should be worried about Apple, but before they start addressing the problem they face at Nintendo, he might want to get his eyes checked. Pretty soon iOS games will be eating DS games for lunch if they aren’t careful.

Article Via TUAW

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Halloween is just around the corner and PopCap Games has put Plants Vs. Zombies on sale in the App Store (iPhone and iPad versions) to celebrate. The game in now $0.99 for the iPhone and $4.99 for the iPad.

Plants Vs. Zombies is by far one of the most successful gaming titles from PopCap games for both the Mac platform and now iOS. The game is a steal at this price. It provides endless fun, and it has a lot of replay value.

The game is pretty unique and imaginative. Zombies are about to invade your house and you have to plant different zombie killing plants to stop them. There are 26 types of zombies and each of the plant-types have different effects, from slowing zombies down to blowing them up!

You also need to collect the ‘suns’ so that you can build more plants – so plant carefully. Once you kill the zombies, collect the coins to upgrade your arsenal.

A few of the features as listed by PopCap include:

• 50 FUN-DEAD LEVELS

Conquer all 50 levels of Adventure mode — through day, night, fog, in a swimming pool, on the rooftop and more! Replay levels in the all-new Quick Play arena.

• NOT YOUR GARDEN-VARIETY GHOULS

Battle zombie pole-vaulters, snorkelers, bucket-heads and more. Each has its own special skills, so you’ll need to think fast and plant faster to combat them all.

• SMARTER THAN YOUR AVERAGE ZOMBIE

Be careful how you use your limited supply of greens and seeds. Zombies love brains so much they’ll jump, run, dance, swim and even eat plants to get into your house.

• FIGHT LONGER, GET STRONGER

Earn 49 powerful perennials and collect coins to buy power-ups and more.

If you haven’t picked it up yet, do yourself a favor and treat yourself. You’ll be happy that you did.

It looks like Apple has a hit on their hands. The Apple store is showing a 1-3 business day wait before a $999 MacBook Air will leave Apple. That’s the 11-inch 64GB model, the smallest and most affordable of the new line of Airs.

A Macworld Lab Report is proclaiming the new MacBook Airs to be as fast as the MacBook Pro, and in some cases outperform them. For everyday tasks, the MacBook Air is certainly fast enough. Positive reviews are certainly going to help sales of the Air, as I know I was among those waiting to see how it would perform before making a buying decision.

It’s interesting that the low end model is feeling the demand. Is it perhaps a reflection of the economic times, or perhaps just the easiest to justify and the best value? Apple has really filled in the gap in its product line nicely, as you can go from the iPod Touch to iPad, to 11-inch Air, then 13-inch and on up.

The original MacBook Air was not a success, and in some ways was like the G4 Cube before it. A cool design, but much too expensive and not fast enough. Apple didn’t have a chance to iterate on the Cube, but with the 2nd generation MacBook Air, Apple has found the right price and performance to really make the Air a standout. And right before the holidays, too. Well played Apple, well played.

Article Via 9to5Mac

In early June this year, at WWDC 2010, Apple revealed the iPhone 4. Like the 3GS before it, it would ship in two colors: black and white.

However, just a few weeks later Apple announced that the white models had “proven more challenging to manufacture than expected,” and that they would be available for sale the second half of July.

On July 23, Apple again pushed back the device, saying that the white iPhone 4 would be for sale “later this year.”

While the Apple PR page doesn’t have any new information, Reuters is reporting that Apple has delayed the white iPhone 4 yet again:

“We’re sorry to disappoint customers waiting for the white iPhone again,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said. When asked why the white phone would again be delayed, Muller declined to comment.

Rumor has it that these delays are due to an issue with Apple’s glass supplier not being able to reliably produce the white glass panels.

Earlier today, the device made news when it showed up in Apple’s Apple Store app, fueling speculation that the device was getting ready to be launched, but that Reuter’s report sure seems to quench the hope of white iPhone fans.

Of course, a spring release would be unusual. Historically, Apple launches a new iPhone mid-summer, meaning the white iPhone 4 would be on the market potentially for just a few months. I wonder if at some point Apple won’t just scrap the device entirely.

Update:

Cult of Mac is now reporting that the white iPhone 4 continues to be delayed because of issues with the camera and light leakage. While previous rumors indicated the white device had light leakage issues, this particular cause deals with light being let in through the white glass, interfering with photos. Leander Kahney from Cult of Mac:

“You don’t get accurate pictures on the white iPhone because of the color of the glass back. It washes out the pictures,” said a source with connections to Apple who asked to remain anonymous.

The source said Apple has been struggling to isolate the camera sensor. The problem may demand a complete redesign, they said, hence the string of delays.

A “complete redesign” would be a serious setback.

While Apple has never given a reason past the ambiguous “manufacturing issues,” it’s definitely an interesting case of Apple’s design team and manufacturing partners not being able to make something work. It’s a rare misfire by the company.

When Apple announced that they’ll be bringing iOS-style homescreens called “Launchpad” to Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, the first thing that came to my mind is “Goodbye, dock.” Sure, the Dock won’t be going anywhere when 10.7 hits the street. However, I think having a new, more consistant and elegant way of launching and viewing your apps will make the dock vestigial. As we all know, Apple isn’t at all hesitant to throw away old technology and move forward.

Look at how it is described on Apple’s site:

The Launchpad gives you instant access to your apps — iPad style. Just click the Launchpad icon in your Dock. Your open windows fade away, replaced by an elegant, full-screen display of all the apps on your Mac. It takes just a swipe to see multiple pages of apps, and you can arrange apps any way you like by dragging an app icon to a new location or by grouping apps in folders. Downloaded an app from the App Store? Your new app automatically appears on the Launchpad, ready to blast off. — Apple

Apple is embracing gestures very strongly, and that was made very clear during the “Back to the Mac” event. Dedicated displays like the Dock could easily be replaced by a HUD, and triggered by gestures. What do you think? Is the dock dead? Sound off in the comment section of this post.

Apple’s planning on shutting down the App Store during Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. Maybe “shutting down” the App Store isn’t the most appropriate way to explain it. It’s actually going to be more like a content freeze. The news isn’t all that shocking considering Apple has done this in the past, but they have included Thanksgiving weekend for the first time in the practice.

For consumers who are planning to purchase apps during this downtime, the store will remain open. But, if you’re a developer, hoping to make some changes to your application, access iTunes Connect, or do any tip management that requires Apple services, you’ll have to wait until they get back into the office and flick the App Store switch back on again.

In addition to the lockdown, 148 Apps is reporting that Top App listings in the App Store will also be locked down for the duration of the freeze, resulting in the listings remaining the same for the duration of the freeze.

While most of this isn’t news for developers—this happens every year— there is a new twist this year: scheduled price changes. There has been no official announcement from Apple yet about how they plan to handle sales scheduled during the holidays. We assume that they’ll let anything that has been scheduled previous to the freeze be updated as usual, but we’ve been wrong before.

We’ll keep you posted once we hear more on the topic, but if you’re thinking about getting some updates into the App Store during December, you might want to double check your deadline schedule.

Article Via 148 Apps

Around the 21st of October, sites began reporting that Nielsen released an amazing survey claiming that 30% of iPad owners are not buying apps. I was pretty amazed at this statistic, because if you don’t have any apps then what you have is a beautiful paperweight. They are now saying it is actually around the 9% marker, a far, far lower number. They have amended their origional image that acompanied the findings with the following:

No longer 32% - it's now stated 9% have not downloaded apps.

When I first saw the figures, I couldn’t believe it. This is a device that plays heavily on the fact that it needs apps to actually do anything. I wondered if it was possible for an iPad owner to not purchase apps and use just what came with the device – which, yes, is possible, but way less fun. Also, when we compare it to the statistics of the numbers of apps on the App Store and number of downloads, there just had to be a mistake somewhere.

This leaves us to question what other amazing statistics are out there that are incorrect? How did this get published in the first place with such a huge error? And at what point did they realise and amend it all?

Their original article has been amended.

Article Via daringfireball

Bob Mansfield, Betsy Rafael, Jeffery Williams, and Bertrand Serlet have all decided that the time was right to sell off some stocks, according to SEC documents. Some (Mansfield) even made off with a small fortune, cashing in 40,000 shares at approximately $308 per share, resulting in $10.844 million dollars in the bank.

I firmly believe that most of these guys earn these stocks, and we can’t really blame them for selling while the market is hot. They’d be kind of silly not to cash in a little bit while they can. We’re not really into reporting on stocks here on the site, so we’re going to leave the analysis to sites that have a better take on what’s happening.

But, as a fun little twist, Bob Mansfield walked away with the equivalent of 10,337 stock MacBook Airs.

Article Via MacNN