Apple’s product line, as told by their site menu.

Recognizable and Memorable

One of Apple’s major successes has been in keeping their products recognizable, both visibly and verbally. You say iPhone, and most consumers have an accurate image in their minds of what that looks like. The same is true of MacBook, iMac, iPod, or iPad. Whether or not the picture in your head looks like the most current model is irrelevant. You know what it is and who makes it. This is the exact opposite strategy of almost every other technology company on the planet, but I think it’s one of the reasons Apple has the most brand recognition. People still care about Apple products in a way they don’t care about other companies. They may love Apple or loathe them – but they care. And that level of passion is something other companies only wish their customers had.

Illustrating this in a recent piece, Joshua Topolsky wites for the Verge:

The millions of square feet on the LVCC’s show floor are jam-packed with model after model of what could easily be the same product. HDTVs line booth after booth, sprout up towards the ceiling, and tumble over garish, elaborate displays. Smartphones and their accessories (mostly docks) dot outlines and make paths through massive Sony and Samsung micro-worlds, while the smudged glare of anonymous Android tablets greets you at every new spectacle. Nothing seems original.

On a similar theme, Gizmodo writer Mat Honan pens:

I try to remember all the products I’ve talked about that I won’t even bother to cover—and that nobody’s going to buy. There were some Bluetooth speakers. Or maybe they were WiFi. But there was definitely a helmet cam. And a waterproof phone. And a tablet and an ultrabook and an OLED TV. There was ennui upon ennui upon ennui set in this amazing temple to technology.

This was coming off of the Consumer Electronics Show, a venu where almost every gadget maker in the industrialized world gets a chance to show off their latest and greatest, whether in production or in prototype form. And these writers are technology reporters. This stuff is their bread-and-butter; this is their passion; this is their livelihood. Yet even they seem burned out by the deluge of technology. Little stands out in a world where too much is shoved down the throats of potential customers.

Simplicity in Selection

In all honesty, could you name the companies that make these Android phones? Aria, Desire, Hero, G2 Touch, Droid Incredible, Legend, Evo 4G, Nexus One, myTouch 4G, Inspire 4G, Sensation, Wildfire, Thunderbolt, and Merge. Would it surprise you to find out they all belong to one company? All of these phones are Android phones made by HTC, but the list does not represent all phones HTC makes. In fact, Chris Ziegler, also writing for the Verge, has created a great visual demonstrating that HTC released some twenty-four Android phones in the  time spanning the release of the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S. Adding WP7 phones to the list would grow it even more.

Which one is the iPhone? Now name the others.

The problem is similar to that of PC makers when Windows was reaching its peak. Yes, Windows won the computer operating systems war, but which hardware manufacturer truly benefited from that victory? Who could tell you the difference between an Compaq, an HP, a Dell, or a Gateway? They all offered basically the same thing because they allowed another company (Microsoft) to determine the features their computers could offer. Where they could not compete on uniqueness or quality of experience, they competed on sheer quantity until their business models became unsustainable. Of those various old PC companies, many look very different today; some have completely reorganized; some are barely staying a float; and others have disappeared altogether.

Remember these guys? Yeah, Acer owns them now.

The problem they faced and that current Android handset makers face is multi-faceted. First, among customers who care, they risk buyer paralysis. Think about it – you want the latest and greatest Android phone, but twenty new phones have come out in the last year. Atop that, you don’t know which ones will get a software update when a new version of Android comes out. When is the best time to buy? Why spend $200-$300 on a device you know the company will replace in a few months? The other extreme, then, is that people don’t care. They buy something that looks good when their contract is up. They hear they should get an Android phone, so they do. This time it’s an LG. Next time it may be a Samsung, or an HTC, or Motorola, or Acer, or something else. They don’t care because they are all basically the same thing, so you get no brand loyalty.

With iPhone, Apple has created the same brand awareness they created with the Macintosh. By 2006, a full year before the iPhone was introduced, Apple had surpassed Dell’s market cap yet were selling a fraction of the computers. They kept their profit margins high and they’re customers loyal, and, roughly every three to four years, they’d release a new iMac or other product in their lineup that would completely trump the model you owned, and then the internal conversation would go something like this: “Hey that’s nice! My iMac is  getting a bit old. Now could be a good time to upgrade.” The same is true for the iPhone.

Those who ask whether current iPhone 4 users would want an iPhone 4S are asking the wrong question. Their contacts aren’t up and aren’t as likely to upgrade phones. Instead, it’s the iPhone 3GS owners who are currently up for grabs and are looking for a new phone, and would they want to upgrade to an iPhone 4S? It’s almost certain, and Apple knows that. With the iPhone 4S, current iPhone 4 users feel safe with their purchase until it’s their turn to upgrade. These simple and well-considered upgrades help Apple succeed in maintaining customer enthusiasm for their products while avoiding the alienation that can often come as the flipside to new product releases. They know who their potential buyers are. It’s simple, reliable, and predictable – a strong foundation for customer loyalty.

Focused Features

Beyond the simplicity of product lines, Apple has a simplicity behind the features they tout with each released iPhone. In contrast, Android phones are advertised the same way PCs were in the 90s. Spec after spec is named in a way that sounds truly impressive but is ultimately meaningless. They show a lot of impressive graphics. They show the phones looking cool floating in space, being struck by lightning, or being molested by pointy objects, but they’re like those car commercials that show an SUV snowboarding down a hillside. It looks cool, but what does it mean for me? Apple takes the opposite approach. I ask you what’s new in the iPhone 4S, and you say Siri.  Yes, it has larger storage options, an improved antenna, a far better camera, and a handful of other features Apple could be listing as bullet points in their commercials, but Siri gets all the attention.

Why does Siri get all of that attention? Because Siri is memorable. You see the guy tell his phone to put a meeting on his calendar, hear the phone tell him that causes a schedule conflict and think, “I wish my phone did that.” It’s that simple. All of these phones run at pretty much the same speed, so you can’t differentiate that way. I understand the numbers of how 4G is faster than 3G, but it all seems slow compared to my home WiFi network, so network speed isn’t too compelling yet. They all take good pictures, show great video, and have a bajillion apps (that’s a rough estimate by the way), so what sets any of them apart? With the iPhone 4S, it’s Siri. With whatever comes next, it will be something else, but you can be sure the message will be loud and clear.

Maybe They’re Figuring It Out

Apple is doing something right here – a simplicity that non-traditional players like Amazon and Barnes & Noble have quickly adapted and veterans like Motorola are having a hard time emulating. The numbers don’t lie. Apple just came out of a fiscal quarter that was the second best in history. That isn’t the second best quarter in Apple history; it’s the second best quarter in any company’s history ever. The only quarter topping this is ExxonMobil’s massive fall quarter in 2008 when oil prices were at an all time high. Think about that, though. Apple doesn’t sell a necessity like gasoline. They don’t sell weapons to the US military like some other hugely profitable corporations. They sell a small selection of consumer electronics, yet those products make them the second most valuable company in the world as of fourth quarter 2011. Last fiscal quarter, iPhones accounted for 55% of phones sold on Verizon’s network and 80% on AT&T’s. They are certainly doing something right.

Others are slowly getting on board though. As I already mentioned, both Barnes & Noble and Amazon have released very focused and very marketable devices and have both seen great success with their offerings. HTC is promising to cut back on the sheer volume of phones they release in 2012, and Samsung is pushing for strong brand awareness with their Galaxy line of Android phones. The next hurdle will be one of differentiation. Once the pack is thinned, these phone makers (and tablet makers to a certain extent) are going to have to look at each other and ask themselves, “What makes me unique? What do I have to offer that my competitors don’t?” And most importantly, “Why will shoppers care?” I feel like Asus has done a good job with the Tranformer, and Amazon made an excellent case for their product from the onset.

Apple has an advantage when it comes to separating themselves from the pack, the software. Nobody else’s devices are going to legitimately run iOS. It’s the same advantage Apple had with the Mac, only they are now coming from a far stronger position and a history of missteps from which they can learn. Many of their past competitors are now gone or have moved into different markets. Apple has learned how to build a customer base and keep it, and other players in the tech market would do well to learn the lesson. Simplicity sells. Sane release cycles create their own hype, and compelling features market themselves. You have to stand out on your own merits, and, for heaven’s sake, find a product name and stick with it long enough for people to remember it. Make your customers care, and they will keep coming back.

They take something small, simple, and painstakingly well considered. They ruthlessly cut features to derive the absolute minimum core product they can start with. They polish those features to a shiny intensity. At an anticipated media event, Apple reveals this core product as its Next Big Thing, and explains—no, wait, it simply shows—how painstakingly thoughtful and well designed this core product is. The company releases the product for sale.

Then everyone goes back to Cupertino and rolls. As in, they start with a few tightly packed snowballs and then roll them in more snow to pick up mass until they’ve got a snowman. That’s how Apple builds its platforms. It’s a slow and steady process of continuous iterative improvement—so slow, in fact, that the process is easy to overlook if you’re observing it in real time. Only in hindsight is it obvious just how remarkable Apple’s platform development process is.

Apple is a company that relies on iterative improvements to their products that slowly result in something far greater than the initial version. They resist the urge to add bullet points to the feature set until they know the foundation is a solid one.

Take the original iPhone as an example. There was no App Store when the iPhone came out; in fact there was no SDK at all. There was no GPS functionality. The camera was 2 MP and could only capture still images. There was no front-facing camera. The camera had no flash. There was no gyroscope, no compass, and no voice control. It could not even copy-and-paste. It had none of the features that we take for granted in modern Android phones and iPhones. Still, it came out as the Next Big Thing in the phone industry, and it was so divergent from contemporary products – despite the obvious limitations of the initial device – that it instantly garnered consumer fascination. That small, simple, and painstakingly considered device sold 6.2 million units before the release of the iPhone 3G. To date (and not counting iPhone 4S sales) those incremental updates have resulted in roughly 137 million iPhones sold.

The other thing to remember is that Apple begins with tight control over the content surrounding their products and slowly releases their grip over time. At one time, all music in the iTunes Music Store was DRM-locked. Slowly, over time, more and more tracks were sold without DRM until no songs in the Music Store contained DRM at all. The same is true with the App Store for iOS. While fringe cases still exist, Apple is now approving more and more apps they would have previously rejected. Also remember that, when the App Store launched, developers had no option to create “full” and “lite” versions of their apps. There were no in-app purchases, and there were a large number of APIs completely off-limits to them. Again, over time, these restrictions have relaxed. Some – like the requirement that iOS apps only be compiled in XCode – have disappeared altogether.

iBooks Author must be considered in this context: Apple has released a ridiculously focused product where features you or I might want have been ruthlessly cut because they are either not ready or because the don’t yet fit Apple’s larger strategy. They have also released a tool over which they exercise very tight control over the commercial content produced by that tool. It does a few things very well. There are some glaringly missing features, and some aspects of the license agreement are positively draconian. But it’s a solid foundation, and Apple knows how to build successful platforms atop deceptively simple foundations.

Developing Books in iBooks Author

When you fist launch iBooks Author, you’re greeted with a selection of templates. The selection is very small, but each template offers a good deal of flexibility. The choice of theme isn’t very important outside the page color. I couldn’t find a way to change the page color after the template was selected. Unfortunately, there’s no way to see if a theme has colored pages until after you choose it, and there is no way to change the template without creating a new document.

A default chapter layout.

Once you’ve selected a template, the interface will be familiar to anyone who has had experience working with iWeb or any of the iWork applications. It feels like a hybrid including Keynote, Pages, and the all-but-forgotten iWeb. Book sections are arranged at the top of the sidebar with individual chapters organized underneath. Every additional page in a chapter is nested under the initial page, which makes rearranging chapters very easy. You’d have to make generous use of section breaks to accomplish the same mobility in Pages. Also, like Keynote or Pages, it’s possible to edit the master layouts on the fly and apply the changes to your document. iBooks Author brings a slight refinement to this feature by adding an “Apply” button, allowing you to make changes to the master without it immediately affecting other content.

iBooks Author offers a number of other useful features. For example, if you want your book to have an introductory video, simply dragging a .m4v file into the window will pop it right in. From there, you can choose a poster frame, decide whether or not the video will repeat, and decide if you want the video to be restricted to full-screen viewing. The downside is that iBooks Author won’t accept any other format, not even QuickTime’s .mov format. The same restriction happens when you want to add audio. Audio files must be AAC files. Mp3 and other formats won’t import. It’s not a big technical hurdle, but it’s one more step if you’re wanting to include media encoded in other formats.

Creating a glossary.

One feature I really like is the ability to automatically generate a glossary for your book. You can add definitions, related words, and a simple press of a button searches your document for the selected word. It’s a very simple yet competent and welcome feature.

The Review widget in action.

Widgets is one of those features that will feel familiar to anyone who used iWeb. Back when iWeb was still in development, widgets would add functionality like an RSS feed, YouTube videos, Google Maps, and MobileMe Galleries. You could even paste in arbitrary code to add your own functions. The widgets in iBooks Author are nearly identical without the reliance on web content. Using widgets in iBooks Author will allow you to add image galleries, music and video, 3D models, interactive images, Keynote presentations, assessments, and (like iWeb) arbitrary HTML code. These features allow more interactivity within your iBook than that offered by past ebooks. Previously, to include things like these, you’d have to have someone with XCode experience convert your book into a native app and sell it in the App Store instead of the iBookstore. Unfortunately, these same features are what currently prevent books generated in iBooks Author from being viewed in other readers since some custom code is running alongside the more open ePub standard (much like Amazone has proprietary features in its Kindle format).

The Limitations

That brings us to the drawbacks included in iBooks Author. Some of these I’m sure will be resolved in time. Others are probably permanent unless the nature of Apple’s business model fundamentally changes. For people not entirely sold on the Apple ecosystem, a couple of these drawbacks will be deal-breakers, but first some small limitations.

• As I already mentioned, there is no changing templates on the fly. Keynote can do this. Even iWeb could do this, and it looks like iBooks Author shares much code with iWeb, so I’m not sure how this feature failed to make the initial release.
• Supported media formats are very limited. Audio and video must be AAC-encoded. Included presentations must be generated in Keynote. Fortunately, I haven’t had any problems with various image formats.
• You cannot include embedded fonts despite the fact that the iBook format supports this. Only supported fonts are included in the format bar, but opening up the font panel will display all of your installed fonts – even ones unsupported by the iPad.
• You must have an iPad to preview what your book will look like in iBooks. Since the application is designed for the specific purpose of creating interactive textbooks (which are only supported on the iPad), no option to connect an iPod touch or iPhone are present. Related to this, you can’t view your finished product on a Mac with full interactivity.
• Exporting your document is limited to text, PDF, or iBooks. You cannot generate a standard ePub file from this application. You can still use applications like Pages or Scrivener for this, however. iBooks Author is not a one-stop resource for all of your ebook needs, nor is it intended to be.

This brings us to the biggest and most controversial aspect of iBooks Author. All commercial content created on the application are tied exclusively to Apple devices – specifically the iPad. Section 2B of the iBooks Author EULA reads:

Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:

(i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;

(ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.

On face value, this looks similar to Apple’s App Store restrictions, and it is. But one difference is important: in the case of the App Store, this clause is an agreement separate and apart from the software agreement. There is no clause in XCode’s EULA that requires me to sell a Mac app trough App Store. The same is true for iOS apps. I can, if I wish, develop an app in XCode and market it exclusively for the jailbreak crowd (despite the dubious legality of doing so). As Dave Wineman puts it, this kind of control is unprecedented. It is not, however, entirely unreasonable, for Apple has provided its customers with a free tool that could, in fact, benefit their competitors.

If you create an app in XCode, you can’t distribute it on the Android Market. The books generated by iBooks Author – unlike apps generated in XCode – are not wrapped in a proprietary binary. Instead, you have a wrapper around a file that is primarily ePub 3 with whatever CSS and HTML5 liberties Apple took to make the output possible. None of these are Apple-specific standards, and it would be possible for any other ePub reader (like Nook or Kindle) to add support for these features. It would not be a trivial task, but neither would be as difficult as getting an app like Instagram to run on an Android phone as a Cocoa Touch application. The restrictions, unpalatable as they may be, are in place to protect Apple’s interests and investment into this platform. Also, as John Gruber points out, note that the name of the app is iBooks Author, not eBooks Author.

Other Notes and Observations

• I find it both odd and predictable that Mac OS X has still not received iBooks. I read several expectations that this launch would include a Mac client. It seems, though, that Mac OS X is slowly depreciating in favor of iOS. My unfounded and uninformed prediction is that we’ll see iBooks on the Mac when Apple releases a desktop-class version of iOS.
• It’s been a while since any of the iWork apps have received an update, and that has lead some to speculate that Apple is prepared to abandon the whole software suite for the Mac platform. Keynote, however, is integral to the iBooks Author experience, and that development environment is Mac-only. So I expect Keynote, at least, will see some updates in the near future.
• The EULA controversy surrounds output you would want to sell. If a school district has teacher-created textbooks they would want to deploy, there are no restrictions. As long as it is free, you may distribute your files as interactive iBooks anywhere and any way you want. They don’t even have to go through the iBookstore. Non-commercial distribution of work produced in iBooks Author is entirely unrestricted. As David Smith writes, this freedom is as unprecedented for Apple as the restrictions for sold content.
• Like other customizations they’ve made to open standards, Apple seems to come down to asking themselves what the best is they can do with the standards available and what is it they want to offer their customers. If the standard does not offer to functionality they want, Apple’s engineers will supplement it with their own work.

Apple has released a very focused, very clean foundation for their digital textbook strategy. Yes, there are limitations, but, like the iPhone and the iPad and OS X, those limitations will disappear over time. This is Apple putting forth its vision and seeing how it works and who jumps on board with them. Already, though, Apple’s software engineers are starting to roll with this new platform, tweaking it and improving it in ways both expected and unexpected. It might be a while before we see where this new venture is going, but we can be sure it will keep improving. After barely scratching the surface of what iBooks Author has to offer, I’m pretty excited about it – not only about what it can mean to the education industry (if the financial challenges of acquiring a quantity of iPads can be surmounted), but by what it means for anyone wanting to freely create and distribute beautiful and interactive iBooks.

Filed under: Software & Technology Tagged: apple inc, education, ibooks, ipad ]]> http://simplyrobert.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/ibooks-author/feed/ 0 simplyrobert iBooksAuthorIcon iBooksAuthor-Templates iBooksAuthor-Chapter iBooksAuthor-Media iBooksAuthor-Glossary iBooksAuthor-ReviewWidget http://simplyrobert.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/ipad-kindle-fire-or-ipod/ http://simplyrobert.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/ipad-kindle-fire-or-ipod/#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:03:58 +0000 simplyrobert http://simplyrobert.wordpress.com/?p=2734 ]]> A few weeks ago, I opined that, all things considered equal, I felt an Amazon Kindle Fire would make a better purchase than an Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet. Of course, the geekier side of me secretly coveted the Nook for the ease with which one could sideload apps and customize the user experience. Unfortunately, Barnes & Noble recently disabled those abilities with a software update, and I’m not a fan of rooting devices. I’ve bricked one computer too many in my days of tinkering to want to try such experiments with any of my current devices. That fact was the deal breaker for the Nook, and I went to Best Buy to pick up a new Kindle with some money I had accumulated from some side jobs and holiday gifts. I ended up walking out with an iPod touch instead.

Mind you, I don’t buy gadgets often. This iPod touch is my first foray into the handheld/tablet world, and I’ve been using it constantly. I actually prefer social networking in the iPod touch, and that’s kept me more focused when I’m working on the computer. It’s replaced my Bible. It’s become my e-reader of choice, and it’s that last part I want to talk about for a minute. The iPod touch is, in some ways, a superior e-reader to the Kindle Fire and even the iPad 2 for one important reason: pixel density. The pixel density on the iPod touch leaves both the Kindle Fire and iPad in the proverbial dust, with only dedicated e-ink devices as more pleasant reading devices (so long as you are the type who wants a dedicated reader).

Reading and Pixel Density

For my less technical readers, pixel density is the relationship between the physical screen size and the number of pixels on the screen. For example, an iPad has a screen resolution of 768 x 1024 pixels (or 786,432 total pixels on screen), and it has a diagonal size of 9.7 inches. This gives it a pixel density of 132 pixels per inch. It’s actually not a very impressive pixel density. The Kindle Fire fares better. It has a screen resolution of 600 x 1024 (or 614,400 total pixels on screen), and this comes out to 169 pixels per inch, which results in crisper imaging than the iPad in general. The iPod touch has a screen size of 3.5 inches and a screen resolution of 640 x 960 (0r 614,400 pixels, identical to the Kindle Fire but distributed differently). This gives the iPod touch a fairly astounding pixel density of 326 pixels per inch – nearly double the Kindle Fire’s and more than double the iPad’s density. This results in a display where the pixels are all but undetectable, even when very close to your eyes. In contrast, 42-inch television in 1080p only features 52 pixels per inch.

To illustrate, here’s a crude image demonstrating the pixel density of each device.

You can only really see the outlines of every fifth pixel, so it’s not perfect. Still, notice how the grid is plainly visible on the larger iPad and Kindle Fire screens while the iPod touch’s display is very nearly a uniform grey? That’s because the iPod’s display is straining your capability to differentiate between objects so small.

Illustrated another way, here are the displays of the three devices sized by pixel dimensions. The iPad’s display is gray; the Kindle Fire is yellow, and the iPod touch’s display is blue.

Based on it’s pixel density alone, the iPod touch features nearly as much screen real estate as an iPad or a Kindle Fire, yet that space is crammed into a screen only 3.5 inches diagonal. Developer’s can consequently create assets rendered in twice as many pixels than they usually would for that size of a screen. Text is rendered with nearly perfect smoothness.

One more illustration. Here’s a raw iPod touch screenshot, posted its native size:

click for full-size

The screenshot probably seems disproportionally large. If you hold an iPod touch or iPhone up to this image, it will dwarf your device. At this size, the pixels are visible on a normal computer screen, but shrinking this image down to the size of an iPod touch without removing any pixels produces an incredibly crisp image and text that is very easy on the eyes. Agan, outside of  e-ink displays, few mobile devices will prove easier on your eyes than an iPhone or an iPod touch. Couple this with the fact that iBooks is a much more pleasant e-reader application than Kindle’s or even the Nook’s reading clients, and you have a device that serves as a nearly perfect e-reader. Finally, thanks to the relatively few lines of text per virtual page, I don’t lose my place as much as I usually do when reading on screen.

Other Considerations

Here are some other things that tipped the scales in favor of the iPod touch.

• Pocket-sized. An iPad might be able to replace my laptop in most cases, but the cramped software keyboard on the iPod touch would prevent that. Neither would the Kindle Fire be in a position to replace my laptop in most cases; the productivity software is lacking, and the keyboard is still too small for rapid typing. Therefore, whatever I chose would still be a secondary device. This made increased portability a factor in favor of the iPod.
• App Selection. Amazon’s app selection is good but not as good as Apple’s App Store, especially if you want something other than games. GarageBand and Keynote alone are testaments to the rich applications available for iOS, and I’ll probably be revisiting the theme of apps in another post in the near future. In fact, the app selection allows for something unavailable on either the Nook or the Kindle – multiple reader apps. I can access the Kobo, Kindle, Nook, and iBooks libraries from my iPod touch. Buying the Kindle would have tied me to one vendor.
• Browsing. Browsing the web on a Kindle Fire is unpleasant at best. Sites take a great deal of time to load; scrolling is not smooth; and the browser feels half-finished. There’s no comparison to the smooth experience of Mobile Safari, even on more modest hardware than the Kindle.
• Sharing My Stuff. With the Kindle Fire, I’d have had to manually move any music videos, pictures, or files I’d want. With the iPod touch, iTunes does all of that automatically. Additionally, the iPod can run mobile versions of GarageBand, Keynote, Pages, and Numbers – meaning I can open any document I want on that device without having to convert it. Nothing on the Kindle would have been able to read those files.
• Doing More. The Kindle is great if your primary focus is consumption – purchasing games, purchasing movies, purchasing music, purchasing books. It is a devices marketed toward consumers for the purpose of facilitating consumption. While there is a definite element of consumption on iOS as well, there are more opportunities for exercising creativity and for being productive on the platform. This could change in time, but right now the Kindle Fire lives up to the popular criticism that tablets are made for consumption more than creation.

Wrapping Up

I’m working on a more in-depth review of the device, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the iPod touch. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty great, and it makes for a wonderful reader – which is what I went out in search of to begin with. Thanks to a fantastic display and an enjoyable ebook application, the iPod touch is one of the best readers you can get, and it is clearly the among the best color readers – if not the best –  you can find at that price. I walked into the store thinking a 7-inch screen was exactly what I was looking for in a tablet, and I walked out with a 3.5-inch screen instead, and, if I regret anything, it’s only that I didn’t pony up a bit more to get some extra storage on the device. It’s turned out to be a nearly perfect reading device, and it performs its other functions very well. It’s no iPhone, but it doesn’t really have to be. It’s also no Kindle Fire; it’s better. The app selection is better. The performance is better. Web browsing is better, and, despite the smaller screen, the iPod touch is easier on the eyes when reading for any length of time. When looking for a new e-reader, the iPod touch is more than worthy of consideration.

On more trivial topics, I’m very much a fan of Apple products;  I’ve never met an Android product I’ve loved. I like Star Trek with Deep Space Nine being my favorite series. Yes, I do like the new Star Trek movie. I’m a fan of The Empire Strikes Back. I think the Star Wars prequels were a crime against nature. I like 2001: A Space Odyssey and most Pixar films. I refuse to see anything with Michael Bay’s name attached to it. I like Stephen King, John Irving, Arthur C. Clarke, J.K. Rowling, Harlan Ellison, Gregory Maguire, and a host of other writers. I think the Twilight series is also a crime against nature – especially considering how many trees have been sacrificed to those tomes of triviality and nonsense. I love Christina Perri and Adele, but I think Lady Gaga is wasting her talent. I love Mahler but find Beethoven tiring.

The point is this – biases are a part of life. Everything we experience gets filtered through our biases. This means those people we read or watch for information also have biases. Their producers have biases. Their writers have biases. And their biases are not always mine. Where we fool ourselves is in thinking that somewhere we might find that grail of the unbiased assessor, the holy and anointed commentator who views all things through a lens of perfect clarity, un-fogged by preconceptions or personal preferences. Such a source does not exist.

“What got me thinking about this?” you ask (or did not ask, but I’m going to answer anyway). It was a blog post over on CNET that decried the lack of objectivity in Apple blogs.

Take the blog Daring Fireball. It offers some solid analysis. But in the end it’s a fanboi site, assailing the misinformed or pointing out how wrong or disliked the Android competition is. That kind of attitude gets in the way of informed insight.

The issue I take with this paragraph is this: the author is confusing unbiased with informed. (Okay, I also take issue with his childish spelling of fanboy, but that’s not the point right now.) John Gruber is clearly a very informed individual. He researches every one of his posts obsessively. He carefully selects the links he shares on his site; and yes, it all fits a specific narrative. When it comes to Android, his narrative is: “here’s why people like me find it unpleasant to use.” It’s not “here’s why Android should fail;” it’s not even “here’s why Apple is clearly superior to Google.” He doesn’t hide his bias. He wears it on his sleeve. I can respect a source that is honest about their own bias and presents their case in a calm and intelligent manner.

I can also appreciate a bias that still contains clarity of vision. John Gruber clearly prefers well-designed products, and Apple often fits his criteria more than anyone else. But he is also quick to criticize the company where he feels it deserves. He’s called Apple out on corporate actions that have been unpalatable at best. He’s quick to point out imperfections in the Mac OS and iOS user experiences. He points out when he thinks Apple releases a shoddy or under-prepared product. It’s apparent he feels Apple has set a high bar for the technology sector, but he’s unafraid to write about areas where he feels the company fails to meet the expectations of themselves and their most loyal customers. Furthermore, he understands that his preferences are not everybody’s preferences. Again, John Gruber is catering to people who have similar subjective tastes as his own, but he has acknowledged time and again that not everyone will see things his way.

There are a few facets of bias that I cannot respect, however:

• Promoting a bias while maintaining a veneer or balanced and unbiased reporting is unacceptable. The worst offender in our current media is Fox News who clearly promote a pro-Republican (not even necessarily a pro-conservative) agenda while proclaiming, “We report. You decide,” calling themselves “The Most Trusted Name in News,” and repeatedly calling themselves “Fair and Balanced.” It’s a sham. Fox News is unashamed propaganda, but they deny the biased nature of their work to the hilt. They are lying to themselves and their viewers, and I cannot respect such an approach.
• It’s also a problem when your bias leads you to make subjective the objective. (Apple’s own corporate presentations have been guilty of this, especially in recent years, when it comes to how they present Apple/Android usage statistics.) Climate science is not an opinion. Death panels are not an opinion. President Obama’s citizenship is not an opinion.
• You should never treat people who don’t agree with you as idiots. Fox is perpetually guilty of this. Daily Kos is often guilty. Even John Gruber flirts with this in the tone of some of his comments and articles. If you feel someone’s opinion is uninformed, then inform. But don’t be condescending; avoid rudeness; and never act like a schoolyard bully in expressing your opinion. In other words, if you call iPhone users a cult, or iTards, or anything else like that, you’ve lost all credibility. If you use the term Feminazi or liberal fascist, you lose credibility.

Bias doesn’t bother me as long as you are honest about it and you don’t let it affect your conduct. Talking Points Memo is allowed to have a progressive bias because they are open and professional about it. The same is true for The Next Right, a conservative blog that does pretty much everything right (except for post regularly). I don’t mind Rachel Maddow’s ideological bias for the same reasons – and she’s pretty quick to admit it when she messes up. John Gruber and Paul Thurrott occasionally get under my skin when they write disdainfully of those who don’t agree with them, but I can usually stomach their biases pretty well, especially since John Gruber is such a good writer.

Have opinions. Have preferences. Be biased, but do so in an objectively informed way. Remember that those who don’t agree with you are also human; be willing to change your mind; and stay respectful. In the words of a preacher I know; “You don’t have to be disagreeable to disagree.”

All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

- George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism

I just wrote about the good first impressions I had with the Kindle Fire. Sure, it’s an imperfect device, but it’s fun to use. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s one of the least expensive tablets on the market. There are still a couple of things that would make a purchase all the more certain if included on the Fire.

• More Storage. Just up the storage to 16 GB. I know about The Cloud™, but wireless networks aren’t exact ubiquitous where I live and work. That lack of storage harms its usefulness as a portable device. At the very least, copy B&N by offering an SD card slot.
• Video Out. The tablet integrates so well with Amazon’s media offerings; I just I could send some of it to my TV or a projector. Mini DisplayPort, HDMI – whatever works on the small form factor. Update: As it turns out, some Android devices offer video-out through micro-USB, so no new ports would be needed.
• Home Button. There, I said it. The lack of a hardware home button is a pain.
• Move the Power Button. It’s in a bad place. Move it. Or, alternatively, add a Home button and let that also serve as a power button.
• Newer Android (Added 11/26). Like the Nook, the Kindle Fire comes with Android 2.3 “Gingerbread.” Version 3.x “Honeycomb” was the first version to truly support tablets, so why isn’t the Fire running Honeycomb? Sure, Android 4 “Ice Cream Sandwich” would be ideal, but Amazon should have 3.2 on their tablet at the very least.
• Keyboard Support (Added 11/26). If I really want this to supplant my laptop in most travel scenarios, supporting a hardware keyboard is a must. On a device as big as the iPad, it’s not as much of an issue; but the Fire’s cramped keyboard is not ideal for a great deal of typing. A micro-USB port is already there. It seems like it should be trivial to get a keyboard working.

That’s about it. Even if these added features raise the price by a few dollars, the Fire would still be a compelling product. It’s a nice consumer device that has the potential to do more. The software seems great (outside some performance optimizations), but the hardware does not seem well thought out. A few tweaks could turn the Kindle Fire into a serious tablet alternative for people wanting to use their tablets creatively and productively as well as those who want a consumption device.

Rumor has it that a successor to the current model is already in the works for Q2 2012, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the case. Some elements of the Fire feel rushed, even with limited experience on a store floor model. I’m sure the Fire will do well this holiday season. The launch timing could not have been better for capturing winter shoppers – early enough to beat Black Friday and finalized Christmas lists while late enough to avoid waning interest before the final holiday push. Still, Amazon will want to maintain interest, and a modest bump this summer would do just that.

Despite its flaws, I think Amazon has a hit on their hands with the Kindle Fire. Here’s hoping they take the time to invest in the hardware and user experience even more to create a product that reflects the excellent ecosystem it’s built upon.

Specs and an Elephant in the Room

Let’s get the boring part out of the way first: the Nook Tablet has better specifications than the Kindle Fire. It has more memory. It comes with double the storage. It has a microphone (marketed as a way to record yourself reading books to your kids), and you can add an SD card for even more content. The only hardware drawback the Nook tablet sees is the way Barnes & Noble decided to limit space for sideloaded content, but you can get around that with the SD card. The Kindle Fire offers none of these things. The Kindle Fire doesn’t even come with a micro-USB connector to transfer content from your computer to your new tablet. On paper, it’s anemic.

Still, both tablets compare favorably with the iPad 2 in terms of raw processing power. The Kindle Fire’s processor and memory match the iPad 2, and the Nook Tablet actually has double the memory of Apple’s flagship tablet. Theoretically then, both tablets should be able to match the iPad user experience – the gold standard in tablet performance, as far as I’m concerned. I think the biggest disappointment is that neither comes close. It may seem an unkind comparison, but you can’t talk about tablets without bringing the iPad experience into the discussion. If you can’t match the iPad’s performance (and there is no reason these tablets shouldn’t), then you have to differentiate yourself in some other way. Both the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire do this with price. Where the iPad is at least a $499 purchase, the Fire rings in at $199, and the Nook Tablet is $249. The price points make these tablets much more accessible, and someone might consider these offerings who might otherwise pass on an iPad.

The Hardware Design

I like the look of the Nook better than the Fire. Rumor has it that Amazon used the Blackberry PlayBook as its template for the Fire, and it shows. You know a Nook when you see it. The Fire looks like any generic Android tablet. That said, both felt great in my hands. Both were light enough to hold comfortably for extended periods of time, and they both felt solid. I’d have no concerns about tossing either of these into my laptop bag or a small piece of luggage. Both have soft rubber backs that make gripping the device easy, and both feature bright, vivid displays. In the store, the Nook Tablet seemed to have better viewing angles than the Fire, and colors seemed slightly crisper. In the end, though, they’re both nice devices, and neither feels cheap despite their prices.

The User Experience

When it comes to ease of use, Amazon’s tablet wins hands-down. Both the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire are running a modified version of Android 2.3. (Why do vendors keep sticking users with old versions of Android, especially a version with no tablet-specific features?) The Fire, however, manages to transcend many of Android’s usability quirks with its heavily modified system. If no one had told me the Fire was running Android, I might have never guessed. It’s far easier on the eyes than any Android device I’ve used to date. The Nook, on the other hand, is definitely Android-based. It may be a customized version of Android, but there’s no question about its pedigree.

The Fire is just easier to use. The only real problem it faces is a lack of a hardware Home button. I kept futilely tapping a phantom button where one would be on other tablets. Fortunately, it does not take much effort to adjust to the software navigation. Visually, everything fits together very nicely, and the operating system skin is very unobtrusive and gets out of the way of content. Keep your reading habits clean, though. The top row of icons represent your most recently viewed items, and there is no customizing or removing items from that list. Scrolling is smooth, and the only real hiccough I ran into was when paging through a children’s book with several color illustrations. Scrolling is smooth and responsive in almost all other cases, and shuffling items on the home screen’s bookshelf was a snap.

The Nook, in contrast, felt twitchy. From swiping between screens to paging through ebooks to moving icons around on the home screen, there always seemed to be a jerkiness to how the system responded. It’s a feeling I’ve grown used to on Android devices, a lack of one-to-one correspondence with your finger’s movements and the screen’s responses to those movements. Compounding this is a lack of intuitiveness in the interface. For instance, I was looking for a way to show photos on the Nook. I couldn’t find one. This despite the fact that the Nook’s product page says it supports a variety of image formats. A sales associate was able to help me out by showing me I should have gone to the Settings screen to find the Home Screen settings where I could choose a new background, and I could browse uploaded photos from there. A familiar feeling  of frustration began to creep into my back at this point, and I went back to find photos on the Fire. I did so in one tap.

Both feature great reading software, as they should, but I have to wonder why they both insist on justifying text on such a small screen. It makes for odd word spacing at times. Also, each has a perfectly serviceable onscreen keyboard with which I was able to thumb type with a reasonable degree of accuracy (and the auto-complete suggestions worked well). I wasn’t typing as accurately or as quickly as with the iPad’s keyboard, on which I can type nearly full speed with a great degree of accuracy in landscape mode, but I was not frustrated with the keyboard like I am with the iPod touch.

An Online Note

I couldn’t check out either email client in the setting of a retail store, but I did give them a quick look. They both seem to have pretty bare bones email clients, but you can find some alternatives for the Fire on the Amazon App Store. The B&N store offers far slimmer pickings. As far as browsers go, both feature similar performance, despite Amazon’s claims about Silk. They render pages acceptably speedy, but any Honeycomb tablet or recent iOS device will feel quicker, especially when scrolling and zooming content. Amazon’s browser pulls slightly ahead in the feature department, though. The Nook’s browser is very short on features, and the Fire’s browser makes it easier to bookmark pages. The Fire also supports tabs in its browser, another advantage over the Nook. Neither offers a particularly overwhelming online experience, but neither is unpleasant to use either. Browsing was just slightly nicer on the Fire.

Content Offerings

Amazon trumps B&N in terms of content. There’s no contest. Book and magazine selections are comparable, but Amazon has a far richer ecosystem for apps, music, and movies. If you have a membership to Amazon Prime, the Fire’s offerings are even more compelling. The Nook offers apps for services like Pandora and Netflix to fill in the multimedia gap, but the Fire has full access to every music track, every movie, and every television show in Amazon’s extensive library. The only real drawback is that, due to limited storage space, the Fire relies heavily on content streaming and cloud storage, which is all fine and dandy until you want to watch an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where there is no, or very slow, wireless access.

The app situation is best illustrated this way. In Amazon’s store, you can find Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Bejeweled, Peggle, Plants Vs. Zombies, and numerous other beloved casual games. For the Nook, you can find Angry Birds and a knockoff version of Fruit Ninja called Samurai Fruit. I think Bejeweled is in there too, but the app selection for B&N’s tablet is pretty abysmal right now. There’s not much there, and what is available is not up to par with the quality of apps on Amazon’s store.

Both tablets are at a disadvantage merely due to the version of Android they are running. Because they are operating under such an old version of Android, their apps are basically glorified phone apps. For something like Peggle, it’s not a very big deal, but searching for productivity or email apps brings back several programs that look terrible on the larger screen. Why neither of these supports Honeycomb at the very least, which was released back in February of this year, is a mystery to me. Perhaps one or the other will eventually update their tablet to run a version of Android more suited to tablets.

The Final Word

If money is not an object, the iPad still beats both of these tablets in every category. Neither the Nook Tablet or the Kindle Fire come close to challenging the iPad’s dominance, but the Fire shows potential – the most potential of any Android-based tablet I’ve used to date. It sets a new standard for usability and aesthetic design on the platform, and Amazon features far tighter content integration than any other iPad-competitor. Its digital ducks are in a row, and I could see a future revision of the Fire being a serious alternative to Apple’s tablet. If just choosing between the Nook and the Fire, however, I have to say that if I had bought a tablet at Best Buy today, it would have been the Fire. Yes, the Nook has better specs on paper, but the Fire was more enjoyable to use, and that trumps any spec sheet.

Meet the New Boss, Same As the Old Boss

See, I can recycle things to – like the joke in that heading. The DLC’s description promises brand new bosses to encounter, but the reality doesn’t quite live up to that claim. You have two bosses to face. The first is a powered-up version of the last boss battle in the main game, and the other is a creature called the Shapeshifter. He sounds cool on paper, but all he does his change shapes into the four bosses protecting the Fertile Grounds in the main game. He’s four recycled bosses for the price of one! Seriously, I beat these guys six times each already. Why do I want to face them again? Combat is exactly the same as before, only far more frequent in the Epilogue.

The Shapeshifter can, fortunately, be easily disposed of by knocking him off a cliff during his Hunter form. It’s a one hit kill (or one quicktime event kill if you want to be pedantic) if you can get the timing right. The other boss isn’t so straightforward. The first time you encounter him, he’s invulnerable to sword attacks, but Elika’s magical attacks can easily dispose of him. By the end, he’s completely invincible against all attacks, and you have to rely on the environment to finish him off. He’s actually kind of fun to fight, but, by the last encounter, I was growing frustratedwith trying to get a couple of blows in edgewise.

New Mechanics, Tougher Platforming

The Epilogue really shines in the platforming department. There are tougher stunts you have to chain together to make it from point A to point B, and checkpoints are few and far between. If Elika has to save your skin at any point during these segments, it can be distressing to see how far back you get sent. It is very tough, but it can also be very rewarding once you make it through a series of challenges. It’s reminiscent of the daredevil stunts you had to pull off to get life upgrades in The Warrior Within or The Two Thrones – only it’s the entire time. Unfortunately, these brilliantly difficult passages keep getting interrupted by mundane battles and boss fights.

The Epilogue also introduces a new power plate that causes phantom walls and bridges to appear for limited amounts of time. Sometimes, the next ledge or wall you need won’t appear until the last second, so it takes a certain amount of faith that you’re jumping off in the right direction. It adds that much more excitement to the platforming sequences, and it doesn’t hurt that the effect looks pretty amazing.

So Why Did We Do This?

Throughout the episode, you’ll come across ten frescos that earn an achievement if you find them all. That’s all they do though. Some are particularly devious to find and reach, but they affect nothing in the end. They don’t upgrade your character in any way. They don’t have any effect on Elika. They don’t alter the ending in any way. They’re just there to be collected, and that’s it. Getting to them can be a fun test of skill, but the challenge seems shallow when there’s no payoff. Speaking of the ending, it’s abrupt. You’re traveling along, hitting a good pace. Then, quite suddenly, you land on a ledge, and an ending cinematic plays which manages to resolve nothing.

I guess I was hoping that we’d be entering a new region divided up like one of the Fertile Grounds in the main game, perhaps with a new enemy or two. The new power is good. I wish it had been part of the larger game because the two hours it will take you to complete this expansion don’t seem like enough time with the power. I’d have also liked to see something bigger for the ending – not just cinematically but how you get there as well. Too much of Prince of Persia’s epilogue feels tacked on to get a recommendation. Unless you really want to experience the new power and put your wall-running skills to the test, save your 800 Microsoft points for another item.

THE GOOD

• Great new power.
• Challenging platforming sequences.

THE BAD

• Too short.
• Recycled enemies.
• Pointless collectibles.
• Very linear.
• Abrupt ending.

What Lovely Horns You’ve Suddenly Grown

The first and most noticeable change from Origins to Dragon Age 2 is in the character models. Hair looks more natural, colors are more saturated, and curved lines in general are smoother, making for softer faces and more natural-looking clothing. Textures are also much more detailed and less muddy than the predecessor. In addition to visual refinements, players of the original game may be surprised to discover that the protagonist has a voice this time around. Taking a page from Bioware’s Mass Effect series, the main character comes supplied with both a surname (Hawke) and a voice. Personally, I like this change even if it does make the character a little less your own.

Character creation in Dragon Age: Origins

Character creation in Dragon Age 2

Beyond the visual refinements, character design has changed greatly from one game to the next. Returning characters and races look different. Elves are much more slender and have more pronounced eyes. Darkspawn are more skeletal in appearance. Not all dwarves have beards anymore, and the Qunari have transformed from tall humans to something straight out modern interpretations of Dante’s Inferno. (It turns out that there is an official explanation for the physical differences in the Qunari, if you’re interested.) In fact, if you have a specific party member with you when you meet a certain royal heir from the first game, she’ll say to him, “You look different;” to which he’ll quip, “Don’t we all?”

Qunari, old and new. Notice any differences?

It took some getting used to, but I ended up liking the visual overhaul the characters received. More than simply cleaning up their appearance, Bioware has given each race a unique look that sets them more apart in the game world. In Dragon Age: Origins, everyone looked human with variations. Now humans, elves, Qunari, and dwarves have distinctive qualities that reinforce their diverse backgrounds and cultures. As an aside, I missed being able to customize my companions’ gear. Yes, you can upgrade it, but their appearance will only change under specific conditions. Fortunately, most of them have pretty cool default appearances, and your main character’s armor is still completely customizable.

Meet the New Cave, Same As the Old Cave

Alongside the improved character models come richer and more detailed environments. Unfortunately, Bioware pulls a Mako here and recycles those environments over and over. Houses in Kirkwall tend to all have the same interiors. Underground passages in the city all look alike. Dungeons are identical to each other, and, most notoriously, every cave is the same. This isn’t like Oblivion where these caves are assembled in a variety of ways using similar tile sets. The similarities are more than superficial. Each and every cave in the game is the exact same cave – you just start in different places and have different parts blocked off.

I hope you like the view. You’re going to see it many times.

I don’t know if the recycled environments were to save space on the disc, to save development time, or a combination of both. Either way, it detracts from the overall experience. If it was a space issue, Bioware has released multi-disc games before, and the story breaks itself up in a way that would easily lend itself to spanning multiple discs. If time was the issue, then it’s a case for not rushing development. An otherwise engaging quest or storyline loses its suspension of disbelief the moment you walk into a cave that looks exactly like the one from your previous quest. It cheapens the experience.

Fast and Furious Combat

Anyone who’s played Origins will find screenshots of combat in Dragon Age 2 very familiar looking. Unlike its predecessor, though, Dragon Age 2 features true realtime combat with one-to-one correlation between button presses and actions. At the same time, you still have full control over your party, both by taking advantage of programmable tactics and by taking direct control by swapping characters, and you have a rich library of abilities, spells, and attacks to master. It’s every bit as in-depth of a system as Dragon Age: Origin’s, but it’s now paced much more quickly. Like any action-RPG, the battles can quickly devolve into furiously repetitive button mashing, but you will stay on your toes if you want to get the most out of your party’s abilities.

My only quibble with combat is that enemies attack in swarms. You can micromanage your party’s placement on the battlefield, but that work will suddenly be for nothing when the next wave of enemies appear out of thin air. Additionally, the variety of enemies is much smaller this time around. There is now only one variety of ogre and Darkspawn. Ash Wraiths are absent, and thugs in the street all seem like clones of each other. Like the repeated environments, the lack of enemy variety in the main quest can start to degrade the quality of the overall experience. Dragon Age 2 really is a case study of taking one step backwards with almost every step forward. Fortunately, the game pulls ahead in a couple key areas.

Story & Characters

I once read an RPG review that asked what a game would be like if the main characters weren’t setting out to save the world, if the action was contained to a single region instead of spanning continents, if the main goal was day-to-day survival. Dragon Age 2 crafts its story around that exact premise, and it makes for a very unique experience. Kirkwall is the only city you’ll encounter in the game, and the entire plot takes place within the city and in the directly surrounding environments. The story, while ending with world-impacting consequences, finds our hero just trying to survive, and your character gets caught up in larger events as the game progresses. The whole experience is very focused and tight, and the main storyline can be completed in just a few hours. Fortunately, true to Bioware form, there are dozens of side quests available that add to the story and make for a deeper experience. Also, the choices you make throughout the game will impact several key plot points, though they were more careful this time around to make sure all story branches meet the same basic conclusion.

As you progress through the story, you assemble a variety of party members. At first, I was disappointed that there was no stand out party member as in previous Bioware games – one who’s so eccentric and quick-witted you want to keep them in your party every mission. Then I realized that virtually every character fits that description. Every character is so well-written and so well-acted that no one character rises above the rest. The exception is Aveline. She’s no fun to have around. The other letdown is that one of the side quests in Act I introduces an amazing character who seems like they should be able to join your party, but they can’t.

You can always check your friendship/rivalry status with other characters in your party.

Of your party members, four are available as romance options, and gender closes no doors this time. Unlike Origins, the romances are much more scripted this time around and much harder to mess up once you’ve become involved with another character. That said, friendships can be difficult to manage, and it’s very possible to lose multiple party members as the game progresses. Some may even die as the plot progresses. If you’re morally consistant in your choices, it’s not tough. What you don’t want are characters who feel ambivalent toward you. Even if you develop strong rivalries with a couple party members, they’ll learn to respect you and stick around. Losing certain party members, however, can close off whole plot branches, so you want to take care of your team once you have them.

Details, Details, Details

There are a few other details that both add to and take away from Dragon Age 2′s overall appeal. Throughout the game are various fetch quests. They seem odd because you find the lost item first; then you suddenly know exactly where the recipient is. I don’t mind the fetch quests in themselves, just the nonsensical way they play out. Since the Chanter’s Board is heavily underutilized in this game, that may have been a logical place to acquire these quests. I don’t know how often I find a lost ring and then say, “I know exactly where to find the person looking for this.” It’s another one of those elements that shatters suspended disbelief.

On a positive note, leveling characters up is much more manageable. You have a number of skill trees to choose from, and you can clearly see how different skills relate to and unlock each other. Other inherent class skills (such as a rogue’s lock-pick ability) naturally improve as you add points to correlating attributes. It feels very streamlined compared to the previous game, but it doesn’t feel dumbed down. It’s a quality level system that doesn’t get bogged down in needless complexity. It’s yet another one of those small details that testifies of the care and craftsmanship Bioware puts into their games.

THE GOOD

• Rich character models and detailed environments.
• A great, very focused storyline.
• Wonderful characters and voice acting.
• Fast-paced but deep combat system.
• A good leveling system.

THE BAD

• Reused enemies and environments.
• Backwards fetch quests.
• Randomly appearing waves in combat.
• Less freedom than Origins.

The Demand of the Qun

Dragon Age 2 is a game that turns out to be greater than the sum of its parts. It’s easy to criticize parts of the game that feel rushed as well as the continually reused assets, but the good parts of the game ultimately outweigh the shortfalls. The writing and acting is as good as anything Bioware has produced, and the story remains tense and engaging right through to the end. While the game fails to live up to the potential set by its predecessor in some key ways, it surpasses the original in others. I recommend you give Dragon Age 2 a try, but it’s not for everyone. It took a while for the game to grow on me, but, once it did, I began enjoying it immensely. Whether or not you enjoy it will depend on how well you take to its strengths in comparison to its flaws. As far as I’m concerned, the shortcomings are superficial compared to the core strengths, but it won’t stop me from hoping that the inevitable Dragon Age 3 gets a little more TLC before being released.

Images in this post are from Moby Games and the Dragon Age Wiki.

Filed under: Fun & Games Tagged: dragon age, gaming, xbox ]]> http://simplyrobert.wordpress.com/2011/10/23/hack-slash-rinse-and-repeat-reviewing-dragon-age-2/feed/ 5 simplyrobert DragonAge-CharacterCreation DragonAge2-CharacterCreation Qunari-DragonAge Qunari-DragonAge2 DragonAge2-Cave DragonAge2-Combat DragonAge2-Character http://simplyrobert.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/dont-let-me-go-reviewing-prince-of-persia-2008/ http://simplyrobert.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/dont-let-me-go-reviewing-prince-of-persia-2008/#comments Sat, 22 Oct 2011 05:53:00 +0000 simplyrobert http://simplyrobert.wordpress.com/?p=2642 ]]> The Prince of Persia franchise had a very strong outing on the previous eneration of consoles with the Sands of Time trilogy, but, when the Playstation 3 and the XBox 360 came out, Ubisoft decided it was time to reboot the franchise. After giving the Prince a rest for three years, 2008 saw the release of Prince of Persia – no sequel number, no subtitle, just the name. Building on the sprawling world of Assassin’s Creed, the new Prince finds himself in a lush open world, secluded somewhere amidst an unnamed desert, home to a people sworn to protect the world from an ancient evil. (And, let’s be honest. When is the evil not ancient?)

The story is heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism theology, and the story is one of faith and redemption, of sacrifice and selflessness, and of finding a greater purpose to one’s own life. It opens up a wide variety of opportunities for future stories, but the franchise seems to have stalled. I don’t think it spoils much to say the end of the game leaves the possibility for future sequels wide open. Ubisoft, however, has not pursued the series any further. 2010 saw the release of The Forgotten Sands, a game that fits into the Sand of Time storyline and obviously meant to cash in on the motion picture released the same year, but there has been no word of a follow-up for 2008′s princely outing.

With or without sequels, though, Prince of Persia (2008) is a fascinating, if slightly flawed, effort at creating a new direction for the series, and it’s a game that would stand on its own even without being tied to a franchise.

The World Is Your Level

I’m going to be honest with you. Open world games seldom draw me in like a game with well crafted, isolated levels. Too often, open worlds feel flat and uninteresting. They consist of predictable city streets and skyscrapers, or they consist of open field after open field to traverse. Prince of Persia straddles the two desigh philosophies and creates a series of levels that are seamlessly linked to each other in a near-open world fashion. You can traverse from one side of the map to the other without hitting a load screen, and, if a piece of architecture is visible, it’s someplace you can visit.

If you can see it, you can go there.

The world is visually stunning and features a far richer color palette than this game’s predecessors. The way the levels connect to each other reminds me of the amazing Temple of Time in 2004′s Warrior Within – but far friendlier on the eyes. Despite the world being somewhat open, the daredevil acrobatics that has become a halmark of the series does not suffer one bit. Platforming through the regions of Prince of Persia is sublime. Between gravity-defying stunts and powers granted by magical plates, there are numerous challenges and delights waiting for the seasoned platformer.

Gravity is for pansies.

This Princess Waits in No Castle

Definitely not a Disney princess.

When Prince of Persia came out, it was instantly compared to Ico, the 2001 PS2 masterpiece. Both feature a continuous world and a princess to escort, but the similarities stop there. Where Yorda depended wholly and entirely on Ico to keep her alive, Elika has more in common with Farah from The Sands of Time, very capable of watching after herself and very useful in a pinch. In fact, Elika serves as the game’s checkpoint system. Hurl yourself off in the wrong direction (which seems to happen quite a bit as the Prince has a mind of his own), and she swoops down to magically save you. She promptly lands you on the last piece of solid ground you were on. She removes the challenge of the game to an extent, but she also removes a great deal of frustration in a game that demands you take risks.

Thank you for snatching me from certain death…again.

Elika dutifully mirrors the Prince through the platforming sections, and she can be invoked to perform special moves with the press of a button. Except for occasional glitches, she’s programmed very well. She’s just sometimes unsure about whether or not you need her help in some lever puzzles and will stand there watching you try to push a lever obviously designed for two. Beyond puzzles and platforming, Elika can also lend a hand in fights. Besides having her own attacks, she will rescue you from certain death – the sole penalty being that the enemy will regenerate a significant portion of hitpoints whenever she does so.

Welcome to the New Boss, Same As the Old Boss

Combat is probably the weakest element in Prince of Persia. Fortunately, it doesn’t happen often. Combat has a rhythm to it I could never get into my hands, and, just when I thought I had it, the game would start throwing timed quicktime events at me. According to official press releases, this is supposed to make the fight feel more “cinematic.” All it really does is interrupt the flow of the fight. Here I am, finally catching the rhythm of the combat (x, x, x, y, x, y, a, y, x–) when suddenly the screen is telling me to press a specific button. Of course, I simply mash the next button in the combo, mess up the quicktime event, and end up hurt badly.

Okay, what button do I have to– too late.

The other gripe I have with the combat is that you basically fight the same four bosses six times each, interspersed with some generic foes at intersections between regions of the game world. The entire roster of enemies, counting every boss, comes up to eight. And that’s if you include the guards that only show up in the prologue. There are only eight enemies in this twelve hour game, and every fight is essentially the same – combo, QTE, shift form, rinse and repeat. This also means I must be a slow learner…because I never got good at it. Others think the combat is smooth, if not a tad too easy, so I’ll place blame with my combat problems on my reflexes, or lack thereof. Still – fighting the same boss six times?

Restoring Light

The beauty of the game comes when you finish a boss fight and restore an area to its natural state. It’s all very Okami in presentation, and, seeing as that was one of my favorite PS2 games, I’m not complaining. That’s when the game’s graphics engine really shines and the platforming picks up. The already incredible environments open up even further and practically beg for you to set aside time to explore every nook and cranny. Yes, you’ll spend a lot of time on an endless collect-a-thon of light seeds, but the process of collecting those glowing orbs is incredibly fun. Also, figuring out how to capture the more devious of the light seeds can be a very satisfying experience. Incidentally, there are also a quartet of achievements/trophies for racing to and from specific map locations; also very fun to do.

The amazing artistry even extends to the surreal tutorial levels and the incredibly intense final showdown. Without giving any spoilers, the final challenges of the game require you to masterfully pull off everything the game has taught you, from activating every power in your arsenal to flawlessly platforming your way through a treacherous environment. Overall, I found the difficulty to be fairly forgiving throughout the game, but in the final stage, I had to keep telling myself, “I beat Jak II. I can beat this.” Unfortunately, the story doesn’t offer the same payoff offered by the gameplay. It’s amusing, if cliché throughout, but the ending is ridiculously disappointing. It’s well-paced and directed well; it’s just a bad ending.

Saints and Sinners

THE GOOD

• Incredible level design.
• Sublime platforming.
• Fantastic visuals.
• Doesn’t punish risk taking.

THE BAD

Here’s a bit about the project:

Chapterhouse: Dune was to be the penultimate entry in Frank Herbert’s epic Dune saga. Instead, time conquered the author, and the series never saw its creator pen his conclusion. It was the only of the books to end with a cliffhanger. The series could have ended with any of the books, but Chapterhouse: Dune promised more. It would be a promise left unfulfilled for twenty-one years.

When Brian Herbert’s son finished the series with his friend Kevin J. Anderson, I was left disappointed with the results. I did not, however, write any angry emails, nor did I vent on any message boards. I wrote one tongue-in-cheek post on my personal blog about some of their more amusing literary idiosyncrasies, but that was the extent of it.

My wife would keep me up late at night talking about some of the ideas I had formed over the years regarding the conclusion of Dune, and she eventually prompted my to begin writing my own sequel to the events of Chapterhouse: Dune. The results will reside here on this blog, and, if I can live up to my goal of posting one chapter a day throughout the month of November, I should finally finish the project for which my wife has been patiently waiting.

The project is called Gods of Dune. I’m putting some introductory material up now, and I may even start posting the completed initial chapters early. Be sure to check the site often in November. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.

The first time I saw Steve Jobs in action was on a video of the 1999 Macworld San Fransisco keynote presentation where OS X was first hinted, where Microsoft Mactopia was first unveiled, where the iconic PowerMac G3 was revealed, and where the even more iconic multi-colored iMacs were introduced. I’ll always remember him popping open the side of the G3 to show the internals and wishing it was as easy to get inside the IBM Aptiva I was ready to replace. Looking back, some of the demonstrations and promises were painfully theatrical; some technologies fared better than others (remember FireWire?); but one thing sticks out. The energy and enthusiasm with which Steve Jobs approached his new products was contagious, and that enthusiasm never waned.

In recent years, Steve Jobs lost weight. He underwent cancer surgery. His health continued to fail. In his last few public appearances, he began looking older than his years. But he never lost his youthful enthusiasm. He never lost his energy on stage, and the never gave up that excited gleam in his eyes. His life was obstacle after obstacle in pursuit of his vision of technology becoming reality, and we saw that vision finally come to fruition during the last decade of his life. Think of it: ten years ago, there was no iPod. Five years ago, there was no iPhone. Two years ago, there was no iPad. Things we take for granted in today’s technological culture are there because of one man’s dream to never settle for a second-rate experience.

Whether you are using a mouse on your computer, a touchscreen phone, a tablet, or are listening to music you bought off the Internet, your life has been touched by Steve Jobs and his vision. No, he did not invent the mouse. He did not invent the touchscreen. He did not invent the MP3 player. He did not invent tablet computers, but he and those he worked with refined these things in such a way that they captured public imagination and redefined how we think about technology. He took what was once seen as cumbersome, problematic, and imposing and made it accessible, friendly, and inviting.

I think President Obama said it well in his eulogy:

By building one of the planet’s most successful companies from his garage, he exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity. By making computers personal and putting the internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun. And by turning his talents to storytelling, he has brought joy to millions of children and grownups alike. Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last. Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world.

The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.

Others have more and better things to say about Steve Jobs than I. Here are a few places I think you should visit:

• My Neighbor, Steve Jobs – Lisen Stromberg provides a very human picture of the man.
• Steve Jobs Was Always Kind to Me – Brian Lam of Gizmodo chronicles his relationship with Steve Jobs, including the infamous iPhone 4 incident.
• SJ – Matt Drance writes an inspiring eulogy.
• Making a Dent in the Universe – Jason Snell on the connection many in the Apple world had with Steve Jobs.

I felt like I wrapped up my writings on Ubuntu with a fairly negative note, and I want to take a minute to rectify that. While there are some definite areas I believe Ubuntu should improve for greater widespread adoption, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out some of the things Canonical has done very well with their Linux distribution.

1. An Accessible Ecosystem. From Ubuntu One to the Ubuntu music store to the Ubuntu software center, Canonical has created an ecosystem that gives people a clear picture of what you can do with their software. This is a focus that’s missing from the Linux community at large, and Canonical does a great job addressing it with Ubuntu.
2. Security. This is true of Linux distributions in general. Ubuntu is more secure at setup than Windows or Mac OS X. Period. Not only are there fewer pieces of malicious software available, but they have a harder time actually doing anything.
3. Speed. Call it responsiveness. Call it latency. Call it Snappiness ™. Ubuntu gets it right. Under Windows 7 Starter, my wife’s netbook ran like a turtle stuck in molasses on a cold day in high gravity. Installing Ubuntu made it feel like a new computer.
4. Usability and Looks. The Ubuntu site features a quote: “My Ubuntu setup is faster than a PC and prettier than a Mac.” I don’t know if I’d say our Ubuntu setup looks nicer than OS X, but it is easy on the eyes – easier than most Linux distributions and nicer than most versions of Windows. Also, it’s very easy to get into using the software. It’s one of the most immediately accessible operating systems I’ve used.
5. Cost. It’s impressive that OS X Lion is priced at $30. It’s even more impressive that Ubuntu is free. Honestly, open source philosophy aside, I’d not begrudge Canonical charging for Ubuntu. It’s good enough to pay for.

My week with Ubuntu was a relatively positive experience, but it was not without bumps and frustrations. For every nice thing Canonical does with Ubuntu 11.04, there seemed to be a what were they thinking moment to serve as counterpoint. Some of this is just the nature of tradition in the Linux world. For example, when setting up a printer, I was asked to create a “human-readable” name for the printer (i.e. “Kitchen Printer”). I understand the terminology perfectly well, but I can’t think of anywhere I’ve seen the words “human-readable” in Mac OS X. It places a barrier between the user and the machine. It says, “This is not something created for normal people.” If asked to name their recently installed printer, most people will give it a simple name they’ll remember. They don’t need to be told to make it “human-readable” because they are humans. This may seem like a digression, but I think it sums one of the underlying reasons Linux distributions fail to capture the public imagination more.

This isn’t unique to Ubuntu, either. OpenOffice for the Mac feels similarly prohibitive to use; Inkscape and GIMP seems particularly bent on offering no concessions to an average user. (If you can’t bother to work in the native window environment, I’m not using you.) For years, using Firefox on my Mac felt very artificial, and Audacity is perhaps the most unpleasant application I use on a regular basis. That Ubuntu rises above most of these other open source applications is a testament to the devotion and care that has gone into its development. In a world where function always trumps form – to the point where common computer users may just give up in frustration – Canonical does give some concessions to the simplicity and user-friendliness of their system. Still, there are some areas where the experience could be improved.

Easy to Mess Up

Just in working on this post, I managed to somehow disappear the Launcher and the system menubar. With great customizability comes great responsibility. I was messing with some settings that seemed completely unrelated when I was suddenly looking at this.

Okay, seriously. Where did everything go?

Feelings of panic were immanent. Fortunately, I was able to get the Terminal up and running, and I found this command on a quick Internet search (sing my MacBook):

unity --reset

Note that there is a space between the word unity and the first dash. It’s like a system-wide undo button.

Updates, Updates Every Day

Software updates are very important, and Ubuntu’s Update Manager will seem very familiar to anyone used to Apple’s Software Update, but it is far more aggressive. It’s not unusual for Update Manager to notify that updates are available every day. The computer aficionado in me loves this because it means the development community is working hard to keep things secure and running smoothly. It’s also quite common, however, for me to notice that my wife has let several days’ worth of updates accumulate. She simply starts to ignore it after a while, and, after only a week, I fell into the same pattern.

It was frustrating to break routine to go and pay attention to the Update Manager so often, especially when many updates required restarts. It became easier to simply ignore it, which defeats the purpose. While I don’t recommend Canonical take Apple’s incredibly infrequent approach to updates (“We’ll get to patching that security hole in a month or two.”), perhaps they could take a page from Microsoft’s book and release updates on a schedule.

Update: Just as I posted this, I noticed a button at the bottom of the Update Manager where you could change settings to check for updates less frequently. I was looking for this in a menu that didn’t exist, and my eyes never went to the bottom of the screen. Is it fair for me to bring up interface inconsistencies at this point? It’s one thing to have superficial inconsistencies (think the Window chrome on GarageBand versus other OS X apps). It’s another for common functionality to be accessed in inconsistent ways. It is worth noting that a goal of the Unity operating environment to create a more consistent experience, but developers will need to sign on to help deliver that better future.

Reliance on the Terminal

In previous posts, I lamented the lack of user-accessible customization to interface elements like the Launcher. What I failed to mention was just how many customizations are possible if you open the Terminal. Quite simply, who but the most hardened of geeks is going to do that? Sure, I’ll open the command line to download the latest Songbird beta for Ubuntu, but my wife will never do that. For example, if I want to install the Equinox GTK theme, the easiest way is to open the terminal and type:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tiheum/equinox
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-equinox equinox-theme faenza-icon-theme

Why? Again, it falls back on the history of Linux, and a community love for non-GUI interfaces. Perhaps there are easier ways to install themes on Ubuntu (as well as to complete a number of other tasks) , but search after search for how to do xyz ends up with Terminal solutions. This makes the system seem awfully inaccessible to a number of potential converts.

Visual Quirks

With the new Unity desktop environment, Canonical is making a daring break from traditional Linux environments. Overall, I’m happy with the change. I find Unity a more pleasant environment and more responsive than GNOME. That said, I’ve run into some quirks that might hang newcomers up. First is the fact that not all windows seem aware of the bottom of the screen. It’s not unusual for windows, especially dialogue boxes, to hang off the bottom of the screen, obscuring essential interface elements. Many times, this can be rectified by clicking the maximize button in the window controls, but I’m not sure how many people would immediately think of that.

This happens more often than I care to admit.

The new scrollbars are interesting. They take a cue from OS X Lion and hide when not in use. I personally like this. I like it better with inverted scrolling. I’m not calling this a bad thing, but people coming over from older versions of OS X and from Windows may take some time getting used to this.

Another element borrowed from OS X is a system menu at the top of the screen. It serves as a consistent place for application menus to reside, at least in applications that take advantage of the feature. LibreOffice, for example, stands out as a notable exception. Coming from the Mac, I like the idea, but the implementation leaves me scratching my head. For one thing, the menu is invisible unless you mouse over it.

The menu is hidden right now.

And it appears upon mouseover.

If all of that functionality is going to reside up there, then it should stay visible by default. The other problem is that apps can ignore that space. To compare: Chrome on the Mac uses the menu bar despite not having a comparable menu in the Windows version. In Ubuntu, even though the menu bar is there, Chrome leaves it empty. Things like that make the experience inconsistent and potentially frustrating.

Chrome with a menu in OS X.

Chrome has no menu in Ubuntu.

Conclusions

While I’ve been liberally picking nits, I need to conclude by saying Ubuntu 11.04 is the most pleasant Linux distribution I’ve ever used. It’s the most accessible. It’s the most consistent. It’s among the most responsive. It is a good piece of software, and I don’t want my perfectionism to cloud that. In fact, that I’m able to be so minutely critical of the system sets it apart from many other Linux distributions that are far more daunting to tackle. Yes, a learning curve is involved here, but it is not an insurmountable one. With every release, Ubuntu gets closer to fulfilling its vision of being Linux for the people.

If you are looking at cutting computer costs, or you just want to try something fresh and different, Ubuntu is a good place to look. Like Mac OS X, you’ll have few worries regarding the viruses or malware that plague Windows users. Unlike OS X, though, there is a very low cost of entry. Chances are, your existing laptop will run Ubuntu just fine. In our case, my wife’s netbook seems more responsive now than it did when Windows 7 Starter was installed. Entering the Linux community comes with its own challenges, but you may be pleasantly surprised. Fortunately, Canonical offers a couple of different options that allow you to test drive Ubuntu or install it alongside a Windows partition, so you have a safety net before switching. I’m a Mac user through and through, but I did not find my week with Ubuntu as unpleasant as I had feared it would be, and it was still a more pleasant experience than my daily excursion into the world of Windows at work.

You can check out Ubuntu at its website. Be sure you have a thumb drive to download the installer, and then you can find detailed instructions for getting started. Also note that Ubuntu 11.10 is right around the corner, and that will bring a number of improvements and enhancements to the system that may address some of the concerns I wrote about in these posts. You may have to have Windows at work, but you don’t need to use it at home, and there’s very little risk involved in trying Ubuntu. Check it out, and let me know your own experiences in the comments. Who knows? Before long, you might be firing up the Terminal yourself to see what’s possible.

A Social Butterfly

Twitter and Facebook are really the only major social networks I frequent at the moment. I’m just getting my feet wet with Google+, and I pretty well missed out on the whole MySpace/LiveJournal thing (not something I particularly regret). My needs are few, but I find that I’m a picky social networker. I like my experience to be “just so,” and I delved into trying some social network clients on Ubuntu with a certain degree of trepidation. Up front, I’ll say that I tend to interact with Facebook through whatever browser is handy on a mobile device or my MacBook. I’ve never found a Facebook client I’ve been happy with. I do, however, upload photos both to Facebook and Flickr using iPhoto, and I’ve been very happy with Twitterific on the Mac. While nothing on Ubuntu particularly surpised me, I was glad that I was able to replicate my preferences for social networking pretty closely.

Saezuri, Spaz, and Gwibber, in that order.

Ubuntu has a built-in social client called Gwibber, and, for many, it will serve well. I ran into the usual limitations when syncing it with Facebook (limited interaction with comments and photos, for example) and gave up on it pretty quickly, going back to the safe haven of Firefox for booking faces. I found the interface too bulky to be an enjoyable Twitter client and quickly looked elsewhere. Fortunately, Adobe Air is ported to Ubuntu, so I could run Spaz – one of my favorite alternative Twitter clients. In the process, I also discovered another Air app called Saezuri, and I enjoyed using that one as well.

When it comes to sharing photos through Shotwell, the built-in photo manager, things couldn’t have gone more smoothly. Adding images to Facebook worked as expected, and, while I didn’t use this functionality, everything was there to integrate as seamlessly with Flickr. I will note that Shotwell is a new addition to Ubuntu, as F-Spot used to be the default photo manager. Shotwell will be instantly familiar to anyone who has used iPhoto, and it’s much easier on the eyes than F-Spot. I’m glad Canonical made this change.

I’m not going to talk about blogging. Anything I write will be biased negatively because of the HP Mini’s keyboard. Suffice to say, the WordPress web interface works flawlessly in any modern browser, but I was unable to find an alternative to MarsEdit that I liked.

The Beat Goes On

I was less thrilled with digital music in Ubuntu. Most of my digital music purchases come from AmazonMP3, and they go into iTunes after download. Occasionally, I’ll purchase some music in iTunes if I need to find something in a pinch, but I like having a bit more freedom with my purchases. Again, personal music goes into iTunes, but all the music I own for my classroom gets managed through Songbird. Both applications are very friendly and easy to use. I tested two music applications available for Ubuntu – Banshee and Clementine – and both left me longing for my usual music apps.

Of the two, Banshee is your best bet for a decent music experience. I found the interface annoyingly reminiscent of Windows Media Player circa 2003, but browsing and interacting with my media was fairly simple. Banshee also features good support for video formats, successfully importing and playing Windows Media and QuickTime movies. You can listen to Internet radio through Banshee with services like Last.fm; you can download podcasts and some television shows through Miro; and you can even purchase tracks directly from AmazonMP3 or through Ubuntu One from within the application. Unfortunately, many times Banshee felt terribly unresponsive, but that may have been a side effect of the netbook hardware it was running on.

Watching a WMV file in Banshee.

Shopping for music in Banshee.

I found Clementine to be nice and uncluttered, but the interface felt unresponsive until I realized how many items in the sidebar had to be double-clicked. Still, once I got the hang of it, Clementine was a perfectly competent media player, but it refused to open some AAC files that posed no problem for Banshee. Like Banshee, Clementine integrates with a few different Internet radio services like Last.fm, SomaFM, and others, but the real downside to Clementine is that I can’t find any easy in-app way to purchase and add tracks to your collection. Again, since I usually use AmazonMP3, this didn’t pose a challenge to me at all, but it might be a stumbling block for others used to more integrated experiences.

Unfortunately, Songbird, my favorite alternative to iTunes, is no longer actively supported for Linux-based systems. There is a fork available if you don’t mind invoking the command line (which I don’t), but, because I’m trying to look at this system from a general user’s point of view, I didn’t go down that road. Yes, you can make Songbird work on Ubuntu if you know what you’re doing, but many making the transition from Mac OS X or Windows won’t want to jump through those hurdles to obtain an experience they take for granted on those other systems.

Popping Some Popcorn

I can’t say much about watching television and movies in Ubuntu because the hardware I was running choked in almost every test. In theory, sites like Netflix and Hulu should work fine. Flash performs much better in the most recent version of Ubuntu than in previous iterations. It could be improvements in Flash, in Ubuntu, or in both, but it’s noticeable even on very modest hardware. Also, some television is available through Miro in the Banshee media application, and Amazon Prime can also provide a fix for video rentals should you need more choices. Everything should work fine. So many services work in browsers anymore, and they don’t care about the underlying operating system so long as you are running a competently modern browser.

I will mention that the excellent home theater application Plex is available for Ubuntu, though I could not even launch the app on my hardware configuration. Still, I enjoy Plex on OS X, and I see no reason it should be less of an experience on Ubuntu.

Wrapping Up

I guess this is the part where I say something like: “If all you use your computer for is listening to music, watching videos, and visiting websites, then you can’t go wrong with Ubuntu,” and, to an extent, that may be true. While I was able to find a couple of Twitter clients I like, and Shotwell was a very pleasant surprise, managing my media on Ubuntu was merely passable. Banshee worked well, but it just wasn’t as enjoyable an experience as iTunes (or even the Zune media player), and I like Clementine less the more I look at it. Also, I can give some leeway to movies and other videos running slowly on this hardware, I don’t feel that switching music tracks should cause hiccoughs, nor should searching through my music collection. Again, it’s an okay experience, and it’s one I could probably get used to over time. Fortunately, I didn’t have to.

In the final post, I’m going to focus on the general user experience, some interface quirks, and try to come to some sort of final conclusion on Ubuntu as an alternative home operating system. Hopefully I’ll wrap this up before the next version comes out.

Getting Software

The same myth surrounds Linux distributions that surrounded the Mac a few years ago: “There’s no software available.” That’s absolutely untrue. Tons of software is available for both Mac and Linux-based systems. The hang-up just may be that a specific application you’re used to using only has a Windows version. This leads to the hurdle of software discovery – an incredibly difficult task when you don’t know where to look. I remember knowing little about Mac software in the early 2000′s, when I got my first Mac, outside the meager offerings you could find at CompUSA. Then I started getting MacWorld and MacAddict magazines, and they began turning me toward the hundreds of indie developers that code for the Mac platform. From there, I discovered the now abandoned ResExcellence, a site that served as a starting point for me to discover a whole community of Mac coders and developers.

Anyone remember ResExcellence?

Sometime after the launch of OS X, Apple began hosting a downloads page on their site that showcased several applications for their platform, eventually leading to the launch of the Mac App Store. When it came to finding software that works with Ubuntu, I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the prospect of starting the discovery process over. It urns out that I didn’t have to. Ubuntu has an application called Software Center that serves as a sort of repository for the numerous applications that work with Ubuntu.

It’s easy to browse the Ubuntu software center and find apps to get the job done. Applications are sorted by category (i.e. Office, Games, Graphics), and you can see how much the community likes a particular app by a star rating next to it. You can search the Software Center, but my results have been hit-or-miss. I found Chromium quickly by searching for “Chrome,” but searching for “financial” or for “bank” did not return HomeBank, a personal finance app I was trying to remember, nor did searching for “goo” return World of Goo. Speaking of World of Goo, the Software Center is also home to paid apps, something that caught me a little off guard. There’s nothing that says a Linux app must be free, but most are.

The Ubuntu Software Center was a pleasant experience overall, and I found tons of apps from vector illustration applications, to complex image manipulation tools, to a plethora of coding and development environments, to word processors. The only apps I felt were under-represented were video editors and visual web design tools (like iWeb or Freeway). Still, the app selection is impressive, and chances are good you’ll find an application for about any job you have to get done.

The Office Manager

A competent office suite is one of the most important software offerings a platform can have. The psychological impact the presence or absence of such a suite can harm or help a platform. I have friends who write nothing on their home computers but family letters and the occasional recipe, but they insist on getting the highest-end version of Microsoft Office, so their computer is “compatible with work.” Well, Ubuntu doesn’t come with Microsoft Office, but it does come with a nice suite of productivity applications called LibreOffice 3.

If you are familiar with OpenOffice, LibreOffice will feel very familiar. It’s a fork of the OpenOffice project that aims to be independent of Oracle’s influence. It’s a very capable suite of applications, featuring a word processor called Writer, a spreadsheet program called Calc, a presentation application called Impress, a database manager called Base, a formula editor called Math, and a vector graphics editor called Draw. I’m not going to go into an in-depth review of the office suite, but I will say this: if you are comfortable using Microsoft Office 2003, LibreOffice will not be a difficult transition. Some things require some investigation, but, overall, the applications here feel very familiar to their Microsoft counterparts (before the Ribbon came about).

There’s Writer in action. Again, it feels almost exactly like Word 2003 on the computer in my classroom.

And here’s Impress. I will say one odd thing about this application. For some reason you can scroll the slide right out of the central workspace. It seems like a poor design choice to me. Sure, I might need to scroll up and down the slide, even side to side; but I can’t think of a single good reason I’d want to completely hide the slide I’m working on. Regardless of interface quirks, LibreOffice does a good job filling the productivity requirement.

Other Productivity Tidbits

Ubuntu comes with a nice email client called Evolution. If you’ve used desktop email clients before, you’ll be right at home in Evolution, and, I have to admit, I subjectively like it better than Thunderbird. Additionally, Evolution has a built-in Calendar similar to Outlook’s for those of you who like to keep your messages and your scheduling all in one place.

One of the better financial management programs I found was HomeBank. I didn’t delve too deeply into this application, but it seemed fairly intuitive and had a good set of features.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see that Ubuntu has its own dedicated PDF and image viewer. It works well and is very lightweight, so you don’t have to deal with the bloat of Adobe Reader if you don’t want to.

Getting the Job Done

It’s hard to approach a topic like this without getting staggeringly long-winded, but, on the other hand, I don’t want to seem like I’m skimming an important topic. Simply put, most anything you want to do on your PC, you’ll be able to easily do in Ubuntu. On top of the apps available for the platform, you should also know that Ubuntu ships with Firefox, and a version of Chrome is also available for it. Having these standards-based browsers so readily available ensures any web apps you use for productivity (like Google Docs, SlideRocket, etc.) will work exactly as expected.

Getting things done in Ubuntu is not difficult. In fact, the Software Center makes finding the right tools for you all the easier. That most (but not all) of these apps are free is just an added bonus to the nice selection of programs available for download. Don’t let the myth of a lack of software keep you from trying Ubuntu out. In the next couple of posts, we’re going to look at staying connected in Ubuntu as well as enjoying movies and music on the platform. Then we’ll wrap up with some miscellaneous observations and some final recommendations.

Introduction

Early last year, when my wife was confined to a hospital bed for several weeks prior to the birth of our daughter, I went out and bought her an HP Mini netbook. Yes, her room was equipped with an Internet TV, but she found it terribly frustrating to use, and, therefore, never did. The Mini was intended to keep her connected to friends and family, and I think it was great for retaining her sanity during her extended confinement. Had the iPad been available for purchase yet (as opposed to pre-order), she might have gotten one of those. Instead, we got the netbook, and it served its purpose well, excluding one detail: Windows 7 Starter Edition.

Windows 7 Annoying Edition. Image from Supersite for Windows

The netbook was incredibly sluggish doing simple things like opening a folder of pictures. The possibility of viruses were a real concern for once, and the computer was loaded with software trials and timed versions of apps and services. Flash videos ran more like slideshows than movies. And, as if a final insult to users, the desktop background was unchangeable. About a week into the netbook’s life, I tried an experiment. I backed up Windows and installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) as the primary operating system. The wife seemed pretty happy with it, and that was that.

A little over a year later, I finally upgraded her to the most recent Ubuntu release (11.04 Natty Narwhal). About the same time, my Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro bit the dust. There had been warning signs that the computer was reaching its end, but I was trying to get it to last until the New Year. As it was, I was without a MacBook for about a week, and I was instead using my wife’s Ubuntu netbook. Here are some notes about that experience.

First Impressions

The first thing I noticed when using Ubuntu 11.04 is how much more like Mac OS X it is than its predecessors. Canonical seems to be clearly inspired by the team in Cupertino when it comes to the visual aesthetic of Ubuntu. Yes, it’s darker and more subdued, but the similarities are striking at first glance. Of course, this means I won’t be able to help but make comparisons to OS X throughout the post, but I think it’s fair to do so. Ubuntu bills itself as Linux for the people, and it’s only natural then for it to be compared to other consumer-friendly operating systems.

Here’s Ubuntu with its new Launcher docked on the left side of the screen, its tasteful drop shadows, its system menu at the top with widgets on the right, and left-side window controls.

Click to embiggen. The same is true for screenshots below.

Now here’s OS X Lion with the Dock to the left, its tasteful drop shadows, its system bar with widgets on the right, and its window controls in their default position on the left.

My initial impressions were one of a visually familiar environment, but the aesthetic touches only serve as a coat of paint over the Linux underpinnings of the system. Still, the team at Canonical have worked hard to make this as friendly a Linux experience as possible.

The File Browser

The Ubuntu File Browser will be familiar to anyone used to navigating around Windows or Mac OS X. The home directory contains the basic folders for music, pictures, movies, and documents. As long as you are staying within those confines, things should be safe, and, if you are migrating from Windows, you are unlikely to stray from those folders. Having come from the Mac, though, I was pretty used to an Applications folder that easily presented all installed apps in one convenient location.

Ubuntu isn’t quite as friendly.

Now you could argue that I have no business poking around directories like these any more than I should poke around the Program Files folder in Windows, but I’m a firm advocate that all directories (save those at the deepest system levels) should be organized in human-understandable ways. I also don’t advocate telling a general user like my wife to launch the Terminal to access her apps. Again, it’s user-hostile. In truth, OS X has all of these complicated directories as well, but it hides them from the user. Perhaps Ubuntu could do the same, keeping the option alive to show them with the knowledge that power users will want these directories easily accessible.

Fortunately, Ubuntu 11.04 contains some custom tools for keeping track of and launching your installed apps.

The Launcher and Dash

Ubuntu has introduced a couple of new tools in recent releases to make finding and using your apps easier than in traditional Linux installations. The first of these is a dock similar to the one in OS X simply called the Launcher. It sits on the left side of the screen (and I haven’t found an easily accessible way of moving it yet). It shows all running applications; you can pin applications to it for easy access; and it also contains icons for browsing your apps, searching files and folders, using removable media, and accessing system trash. Again, it’s strikingly similar to the Dock OS X users have grown familiar with, for better or worse.

If you right-click an icon in the Launcher, you can select whether or not you want to keep it in the Launcher; you can quit the app; and several apps have custom selections in the menu. Of course, if you have screen with limited vertical space (as the netbook I was using does), the Launcher gets overcrowded very quickly. OS X handles this problem with icons that shrink as the Dock becomes fuller.

Behold the microscopic icons of death! One could argue that the Dock is not supposed to be used this way in OS X, but, until Lion, this was the simplest ways to keep your most commonly used apps easily accessible. While Ubuntu can’t make this problem simply go away, I think they handle it in a fairly elegant way.

As icons fill the Launcher, they skew and collapse at the bottom of the screen. Mouse over the Launcher, and all collapsed icons expand. They will scroll up or down depending on where you go with the cursor. Still, since the Launcher auto-hides and is therefore not a liability to screen real estate, this problem would be minimized if there was the option to put the Launcher across the bottom of the screen. As it is, there is virtually no way for the user to customize the Launcher except for how to trigger it.

The other big usability addition to Ubuntu is the Dash. For OS X users, the Dash would be akin to Spotlight and Lion’s Launchpad having an open source baby. It’s very handy, and I found it quite useful during my week with Ubuntu. By default, you access the Dash by clicking on the Ubuntu icon in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. Alternatively, you can tap the Windows key if you prefer keyboard navigation.

Immediately upon launching the Dash, you are presented with a set of icons for common tasks as well as a field to search all installed apps. Being one of those people who uses Spotlight like a launcher on OS X, I naturally gravitated toward that search box.

Not only did searching happen almost instantaneously, but I’m also happy to report that hitting enter will launch the first result by default (even though it’s not immediately apparent that hitting enter will do anything). Other than search, you can browse through the apps installed on your machine through the Dash by clicking More Apps on the main screen.

The Dash sorts apps by your most frequently used apps and directories; then it lists installed apps; and finally, for some reason, it lists some apps you don’t have. You can expand those lists, or you can sort by an array of categories (i.e. Education, Games, Office, Internet) in the upper right corner. When in a category, the downloadable suggestions make sense, but I don’t understand the logic of them being on the first uncategorized screen. It seems like the Dash is behaving like a slightly more organized version of OS X Lion’s Launchpad, but it takes some time to navigate this way. Still, it alleviates much of the problem behind the age old question: “Okay, I installed that application. Now where did it go?”

Wokspaces

The last usability feature we’re going to look at in this post is Workspaces. It’s a virtual desktop manager that should feel familiar to people who use such features on Macs or Windows PCs. As an avid user of Spaces on OS X Snow Leopard (and now Mission Control in Lion), I instantly jumped on this feature. Unfortunately, I ended up avoiding using Workspaces after a short time.

The Workspace Manager is sitting in the Launcher, and clicking on it brings up a grid of four desktops.

When this grid is displayed, you can drag open windows between desktops and even select which window is foremost on that desktop. Double-clicking on a desktop or an active window will close the grid and zoom into that desktop. The thing I’m not sold on is how Workspaces treats all virtual desktops as one big desktop. If you drag something partially off the sreen, it appears on the next desktop as well.

Control-Alt-→ will take you to the desktop to the right relative to your current desktop, and the other arrow keys will function similarly. Unfortunately, there seems to be no user-accessible way to assign applications to always open on a specific desktop as in OS X Spaces (i.e. making a workspace for productivity apps, another for Internet apps, another for games), nor can you drag objects between spaces without invoking the Workspace Manager. I was also unable to find a way to add to or subtract from the default grid of desktops. As it’s implemented, Workspaces on Ubuntu adds the complexity of virtual desktops while doing little to simplify the system for common users. It’s there. It works. Power users will love that it’s there, but I doubt most people will find it very useful at this time.

So Far Not Bad

Except for a few head-scratchers, things are looking good for Ubuntu so far. In the next three posts, we’ll look at getting applications onto the system and getting things done. We’ll later go over media consumption in Ubuntu as well as look at Canonical’s cloud-based service, Ubuntu One. Then we’ll wrap up with some miscellaneous observations and final recommendations. I’ll spoil some of the fun right now and say that I did like Ubuntu overall, but there’s no way I’m going to abandon my Mac for it. If I was a Windows user, however, things might have turned out differently, but that’s a topic for another post.

“We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job. And if others are going to help us that’s great, because we need all the help we can get, and if we screw up and we don’t do a good job, it’s not somebody else’s fault, it’s our fault.”

- Steve Jobs 1997

I rediscovered this quote a couple of days ago while looking through some YouTube videos of old Apple keynotes and conferences. The context of the quote was a difficult situation for the returning former-CEO. He had to convince a crowd of the Apple faithful — those who had waged war against the giant Wintel juggernaut for years now — that it was okay for Apple to make some concessions to Microsoft in return for a $150 million dollar investment from their Redmond competitor in a move that basically amounted to a corporate bailout. It was a tough pill for that audience to swallow, and it’s a lesson others in our culture could stand to learn.

From the modern tech industry — the one that posits that only one successful mobile OS can thrive, only one ebook vendor can flourish — to the book industry to education to foreign policy to energy companies to the auto industry, we have this notion that for one company or concept to win, all others must lose. GM must dominate Ford and the others. Oil can never be replaced or enhanced by other means. It’s winner-take-all. Any and all compromise or concession is a sign of weakness and eminent defeat. It is, however, an unsustainable model, but it is the model in which our partisan-divided government has become entrenched.

Look no further than the current deficit reduction and debt ceiling talks. An issue that could disrupt the lives of millions who rely on our social security, veterans affairs, and Medicare services to function as smoothly as they can, an issue that could create an economic roller coaster, an issue that could put thousands of hard-working people in government service out of work, an issue that could further cripple the running of our public schools — this has become a stage for political theater where catering to extreme partisan ideals has become more important than just doing the job.

There is more than enough blame to go around, but the House Republicans have been the most egregious in their insistence that they have to win this debate at any cost. Former presidential speech writer and conservative blogger David Frum observes:

They raised the menace of deliberate default in a way it has not been raised before.

Then having issued the threat, they discovered that their own core supporters would not allow the gun to be holstered again.

They issued demands they knew could not be met, for budget cuts much bigger than Republicans ever enacted when they had the power to enact them. They cocked the weapon. And now here we are: the demands are unmet and Republicans find themselves facing a horrible choice between yielding on their exorbitant demands or pushing the United States into financial upheaval.

(emphasis mine)

Party politics in the United States has escalated to a winner-take-all battle in which people gleefully embrace extreme ideals on one side or another and disregard the destructive nature of such extremism. We can lay the blame at the feet of extreme rhetoric in our politicians — whether from Grayson and Kucinich on the left or Bachmann, Palin, Pawlenty, Boehner, and Perry on the right. We can lay the blame at the political indignation broadcast by cable news and talk radio commentators — whether Keith Olbermann, Michael Moore, and Ed Schultz on the left or Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Tucker Carlson, Greta Van Susteren, and Michelle Malkin on the right. We can even lay blame on anyone who listens to highly partisan sources and never thinks to hear another perspective or check facts. There is blame to go around.

With or without blame, though, it’s time to stop. And it starts with you and me. We have to stop buying into the notion that for us to win, one party or the other has to lose. They are not on your side or mine. They are on their own team, and they temporarily recruit us every few years to bolster their support against the opposition. It’s time for us to stop thinking in terms of parties and sides, and, if we can do that, then maybe some real progress can be made if the politicians figure out we no longer want to play their game.

As it stands, as long as they keep fighting, and as long as we keep enabling the fight, we all lose.

My favorite part has become the album art on the ReverbNation page, though:

Except for the nearly-illegible text toward the middle, it’s pretty good, but I instantly thought something looked familiar about it. It took my wife to make the connection. (Have I ever mentioned how amazing she is?) She thought the artwork looked a lot like the box art for a certain action-rpg we’ve been enjoying:

I might be wrong, but I don’t think Mr. Cain would much like our support of the mages. Something tells me he would be more of a Knight-Commander Meredith kind of guy.