David Emery OnlineEA Announces SimCity and The Sims 3 for the iPhone
EA has announced that nine new titles are currently in development for the iPhone: Yahtzee Adventures, EA Mini Golf, Lemonade Tycoon, Mahjong, Monopoly: Here & Now The World Edition, SimCity, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09, Need for Speed Undercover, and The Sims 3.
I am very excited by the prospect of SimCity for the iPhone – if they get it right it could be the perfect iPhone app.
Visit ➔First Look at Cappuccino and Objective-J
The executive summary is that Cappuccino is re-implementation of many of the basic parts of Cocoa, and Objective-J is a language which looks nearly identical to Objective-C and “compiles down” into JavaScript. You can also use JavaScript right inline with Objective-J, similar to how you can use C in Objective-C.
This looks very impressive, and can certainly make interesting looking apps but I’m really not comfortable working so abstracted away from the real code. Coding javascript, html and css well in a cross-browser way is hard and I’m not convinced that 280 North will have solved every problem and bug inherent in the medium.
What do you if your code is right but it doesn’t work? You’re so far away from the actual code you’ve got no chance.
I’m also still not convinced by web sites pretending to be desktop applications – they’re not, and the most successful ones (like Flickr and Gmail) don’t pretend to be.
Visit ➔So, how has the 'no iTunes' policy worked, then?
Inspired by Kid Rock’s success, his label decided – bemusingly – to pull Estelle’s six month old album from Apple, too.
How did that work out, then?
Estelle’s single plunged 26 places on the Billboard chart.
But the album – did that benefit?
Not really – that tanked over 100 places down the album chart.
Another smart move by the music industry, then. Well done, guys.
Well done indeed. I thought we were past this kind of rubbish?
Visit ➔O2 UK sets pay-as-you-go iPhone 3G prices, launch info
The official pricing for the unsubsidized phones is now much higher than for the devices on contract and will require £350 ($631) for an 8GB iPhone 3G and £400 ($721) for the 16GB version.
They’re going to sell shed-loads of these over Christmas at this price – for comparison the 8GB Nokia N95 currently sells for £449.95 on O2 Pay-As-You-Go.
Very impressive that you get a year’s free data as well…
Visit ➔Google Chrome, Google’s Browser Project
Google Chrome is Google’s open source browser project. As rumored before under the name of “Google Browser”, this will be based on the existing rendering engine Webkit. Furthermore, it will include Google’s Gears project.
I don’t see anything here that excites me in any way – I have no faith that Google can design a better application UI then Apple can (in Safari), and I don’t see what new features this brings to the table. Also, I hope no one with a Mac gets too interested in this – Google have yet to ship a Mac app with a decent interface.
However, anything that broadens the usage of WebKit has got to be a good thing – I dream for the day when most people are using it…
Visit ➔Interfacing With Habari
This looks so much better then pretty much any other blog engine interface I’ve seen – I still need to be convinced that it’ll have both the simplicity and flexibility Textpattern allows though.
Visit ➔Tastes Like Selling Out? Mountain Dew Launches Singles-Only Label
We’re going to see big brand after big brand trying their hand at music over the next few years I think, until people realise that putting out singles doesn’t sell more soda.
That’s the problem here, of course – not the potential conflict between music and ‘selling out’ which has never been a real issue (they’ve never had a problem getting musicians to pimp Pepsi, have they?).
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