Monday, October 7, 2013

E3 and WWDC weren’t all that impressive

Originally Publushed: June 10, 2011 http://blogs.republicanherald.com/tech/?p=80
It’s been a busy week, which we had two big events, E3, probably the world’s largest gaming convention, and WWDC, Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference. Starting with E3, there were lots of impressive games and Sony’s newest portable now called the Playstation Vita(originally NGP) was awesome as well, but there was one announcement that was met with a lot of disappointment. I have to admit I’m a bit disappointed as well. This was Nintendo’s new system coming out next year, the Wii U.
While Nintendo only showed off the controller at E3, that was enough to put me off. Also in the demo video they showed games from the new system that will be in full HD in 1080p, but the footage was from current Xbox 360/PS3 games (that’s another issue I won’t tackle now). I know that everyone will go out and buy it when it comes out in 2012, I’m guessing a November or holiday launch, but the new Wii U controller, which touts a a 6.2-inch touchscreen with dual analog dual analog controls, two shoulder buttons and two triggers, a front-facing camera, gyroscope and accelerometer, doesn’t make sense. I’ll admit it is cool that you will be able to play the games directly on the controller if someone is using the TV, but this isn’t the statement that Nintendo has been making the past couple years. They were the pioneers in motion controlled games. When they first showed off the Wii, they wanted you to play a tennis video game similar to the way you would in real life. I feel that the ease that came with the Wii and the family aspect is fading with the new system, especially since they called it Wii U (the U stands for YOU). Everyone groaned when Wii was shown off all those years ago, originally called the Nintendo Revolution, but it gave people who aren’t hardcore gamers a chance to get involved, like your 90 year old grandmother. I also heard that the controller is light while holding it, but it still looks big and bulky to me. We’ll just have to wait and see what comes about in the next year when more is revealed. What are your thoughts on this?
Secondly, I’d like to rant about the announcement of iOS5 from WWDC, which is coming to everyone this fall for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. If you know me well, or even have visited my desk at the Republican-Herald, you probably noticed I’m a huge Android fan. I have the little Android figurines, have an Android decal on my car and I’m in love with my Nexus One, the first official Google phone. If you’re an Android user, you know where this is going.
For iOS5, Apple showed off pull-down notifications, OTA (Over-The-Air) updates, tabbed browsing, cloud services, a mobile IM program, and the ability to activate a device without having to connect to a PC. While I’m thrilled that iOS users will have these features, please note that for today’s standards, they aren’t that innovative and these features have been in Android for quite a while now. The new notifications bar seems a direct rip-off from Android, we’ve had OTA updates and tabbed browsing, an IM program– try Google Talk, it’s also in Gmail, cloud services — everything syncs to your Google account automatically plus for music we have Google Music, now in beta, which is free unlike iCloud, and you never needed to connect your Android device to a computer to activate it, it was always meant to be usable on its own.
Apple has always been known for being innovative and it seems they’re starting to lose their edge. The Apple II, Macintosh, OSX, iPod, and iPhone were all extremely amazing creations, but Apple needs to come up with something new if they want to keep their title. I’m not saying iOS isn’t a good mobile OS and I do own an iPad 2 also, but for a company that was created by two men in a garage in Silicon Valley who wanted to change the tech industry, this doesn’t seem to hold up to their standards of creating something before anyone else. I will give them though, Apple did have the first great tablet, still the best on the market in my opinion in software, maybe not completely innovative, but they have a great developer community and great apps, and the hardware is the nicest and sleekest around.
If you got all the way to the end, I just wanted to give some details about the future of this blog. In the last couple months I transferred from The News-Item to The Republican-Herald, which is why you’ll notice it says RH blog now. With all my work as a reporter it’s hard to constantly update this since there’s so much news to cover and I have lots of other responsibilities. I’m also an editor for a tech news site called Akihabara News, which you’ll notice I will be linking to them for certain things. So, expect more in-depth editorials about different trends or products from the tech industry in the future. Thanks for reading and I would love to get more feedback on my posts!

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