Maximum Geek Vol 3 Ep 6

Alright it’s another fun filled episode of Maximum Geek. We missed last week do to a raging headache on Josh’s part (for once this wasn’t caused by Jeff). This time we’re all over the place but amazingly on topic and non-confrontational. Maybe we’re pod people and we just don’t know it. Anyway, here’s what we cover.

• Amazons New Kindle Link
• Apples Magic Trackpad Link
• Firefox Beta 4 and Tab Candy
• DMCA updated for the better Link
• Comics: BOOM! POW! Mark Waid and Stan Lee, kicking super villain butt. Link
• Gaming: PCs vs. Consoles FIGHT!
• Gaming: Starcraft 2, it’s here. Link

There you have it folks. This one comes in at just a smidge under an hour, so sit back and enjoy.

New Comic Cast, We Haz It.

Peep the newest Maximum Geek Comic Cast. http://www.maximumgeek.org/comiccast/?p=40

Maximum Geek Vol 3 Ep 5

Alright, two weeks, two podcasts. This is a good sign. Jeff recorded from his iPhone this week so he sounds a little quiter than me, but I’m quite alright with that. This weeks episode is chocked full of Jeff and I going at it over e-book readers. Needless to say we disagree. Here’s the topic list.

• Kin, it’s dead, duh
• Transformers coming to a military near you
• Netflix takes on the big boys
• E-book wars and what we’ll call a, spirited, debate over e-ink

This one comes in at just under 42 minutes. On tap next is an episode of the Comic Cast. Keep your eyes peeled.

Maximum Geek Vol 3 Episode 4

That’s right it’s another cast. In honor of the release of the iPhone 4 we decided to do a phone centric cast and talk about the HTC Evo 4G and the iPhone 4. Then we close out with a short recap of E3. So sit back, relax and enjoy 53 minutes of Jeff and I doing our Maximum Geek thing.

Comics

So on tap for last week I had an article on the future of comics. I went into some last minute rewrites and then ran smack dab into my trip to Cancun. So look for it tomorrow. And while I’m talking about comics. I’m considering reviving the Maximum Geek Comic Cast. Since it went away I’ve received several requests to bring it back and it was something I’ve always loved. I’ve dropped back my comic reading significantly since I started it but I still think I have a lot to offer.

The new and improved Comic Cast will focus on the history of comics and giving people the information they need to get into certain characters. I will also discuss the state of the industry and give a history of some of my favorite (and I believe the best) comic writers in the business, both past and present. So if you’re interested tune in. Like I said, I’m going monthly on this one, which should make it much easier on me and allow me to still do a monthly cast with Jeff. I’ll be putting the links back up for the comic cast page once I’ve retooled it’s look (and given it a significant WordPress upgrade).

As was the custom in the original comic cast I’ll also be answering questions. So if you have questions about characters, stories, the latest news or even just the industry in general let me know and I’ll do my best to fill you in.

Maximum Geek Vol 3 Ep 3

Hey, look, it’s a podcast and it hasn’t even been 6 months. There has been a lot of stuff going on in the tech world so we hit some highlights and banter a bit. Our primary topics are the iPhone HD and HP buying Palm. We finish off with a little talk about MMO’s.

As usual I’m not promising any kind of regular schedule but we’ve been talking about what we can do to improve Max Geek and we’re quite happy to take suggestions. So, enjoy the show, it comes in at just over an hour.

Champions: If You Build It

So I’ve been playing Champions Online lately, mostly because I needed a bit of a change and I like being a superhero. Anyway, this time around I’ve been paying attention to more than just how my character looks and what type of powers he (actually right now she) has. I’ve started looking hard at stats, build, and gear. While you can play and have fun with just about any build it turns out the game is much easier if you pay attention and make a few careful and educated choices. So here’s a bit of a guide to making your Champion all that they can be. We’ll start with the basics and move onto an example character build. At the end I’ll list a couple of tools to help you as you make your way through the world of Champions Online.

Note: this guide is based on game play as of April 26th 2010. Patches can change things at any time and the builds I suggest today may not, in fact, work as well as intended after future patches.

Stats

Stats are more important than you might think and they’re not all as intuitive as they could be. So let’s start with a list of stats, what they mean, and what characters need them. When you’re selecting pre-configured power sets the game recommends statistics to focus on. These are generally accurate and you could do far worse than follow the advice. Still understanding these stats is important as you level up and equip your character.

Strength (STR): Strength is, pretty obviously, your characters raw physical power. This one isn’t tricky, it determines things like damage, knockback, knockback resistance, and ability to break tangible holds (it also determines how much you can pick up and how much throwing damage you can do, but that was obvious). This skill is very important for melee characters, without it you’ll really struggle with damage and that is very, very bad up close. Other than that it’s mostly good for showing off. If you’re a ranged character this should be one of the stats you worry about the least.

Constitution (CON): Con is another obvious one, it’s all about your health and how many hit points you have. Every character should worry about this at least a little but it’s very important for certain kinds of builds. If you want to be the guy in the group leading the charge you should invest in this. This is the stat of the classic tank. In my experience this is one of the best builds for a melee character, you’re always on the front line and you’re usually taking serious damage. This is also an important stat for someone who wants to solo.

Ego (EGO): Ego is one of those that’s a bit ambiguous. It’s your mental strength. In most games I would call this your characters will power. It helps determine the strength of your characters holds, the severity of your critical hits, and your chance at breaking out of Intangible holds. If you’re focused on crowd control this is the stat for. It doesn’t hurt to put some points in here for damage dealing classes, the extra crit severity is nice, but not essential.

Recovery (REC): Recovery is important in two ways. First of all it determines how quickly you generate power. So it’s important for anyone who’s going to eat up a lot of power. In fact it’s an important stat for just about anyone because power is your bread and butter, it’s what keeps you able to use those wonderful super abilities. It also determines your Equilibrium. Equilibrium is the point your power always regenerates to. To get power beyond this point requires using your energy builder skill. Pay careful attention to this stat, every character should put something into this one.

Dexterity (DEX): Dex determines your characters critical chance and effectiveness of stealth powers. This one is in some ways a companion to Ego. While Ego helps determine how much damage your crits do, this one helps determine how often you crit. Critical attacks can be very important for damage dealing classes. The stealth attribute I’d say is quite obvious, it helps determine how sneaky you are when using stealth powers.

Intelligence (INT): Intelligence is another one of those skills which can be important to anybody. It determines several things, such as pet damage, power cool-down, stealth detection, and how much energy a power costs. This one has nice features for all characters in its power cool-down and cost. Characters planning to specialize in pets should definitely invest in this stat.

Presence (PRE): This stat is important to a few types of characters. First of all it determines how much you heal, so if you want to specialize in healing invest in this. It also determines your pets heal rate, so this is another for pet based characters too. Finally this helps determine how much aggro you draw, so if you’re a tank and want to make sure you’re the center of the bad guys attention invest here.

Endurance (END): Endurance is another one of those stats you’ll definitely want to pay careful attention to. Like Recovery it also helps determine how fast you gain energy from your energy building attack. Endurance also helps determine just how much energy you have. This is critical if you’re a class the uses a lot of energy and a lot of charge up attacks. The more energy you have the more strong attacks you’ll be able to get off.

Types of Powers

The types of powers in a normal MMO can get complicated, well Champions adds a couple of new types into the mix. I’ll get more into how these types really work when I talk about character builds later on. Here are the basic types of powers though.

Note on attack powers, some of these types of attacks can be combined like an AoE with a DoT. There are ranged and close attacks and all of the following can apply to either type.

Energy Builder: An energy building attack increase your energy level but costs no power of its own. These attacks come in many types, there’s one for each power set. All of these powers are low damage.

Direct Damage (DD): These are the simplest kind of attacks. You use them and they do damage just once.

Damage Over Time (DOT): When you use these types of powers they do damage over a period of time. They usually do a lump sum first and then a smaller amount of damage every few seconds after that until they wear off.

Area of Effect (AOE): As the name suggests these powers effect an area around the target. Any enemies within that area will take damage, whether you’re currently battling them or not. There are different types of area effects. A cone AoE effects an area directly in front of you. Point blank effects the area around you. A standard AoE effects a circular area around your target.

Crowd Control (CC): This refers to a set of skills which immobilize an opponent in some way. In general there are two types of CC, holds and roots. A hold (or immobilization) keeps the target from doing anything, leaving them completely useless for a time. A root keeps a target from moving but allows them to attack. Most of these break on damage, so if you attack CC’d opponent you’ll most likely set them free, so to speak.

Buffs: Buffs allow you to improve a character in some way. Some buffs are shields, others increase stats, still others increase regeneration rates for powers. Some of these work only on you, others you can use on other members of your team. There are a lot of types of buffs and all of them have different durations on abilities. Some buffs are slotted powers (more about these under builds).

Debuffs: These are the opposite of a buff, in general they reduce energy, stats, or health. Their intention is to make a target easier to kill.

Heals: There are several types of heals. Heal over time, direct heals, life drains (both self and target). The first two act like their attack counter parts while the third is something new. A life drain takes health or energy from a target and gives it to you. You’ll even find self life drains which will allow you to convert health into power. Life drains can generally only effect the caster.

Blocks: Champions has something called an active blocking system. When you hold down your shift key you can’t attack but you take less damage and are less likely to be knocked back by enemies powers. Block powers improve and modify the players default block skill. These are slotted skills (more about this under builds).

Making Your Character

I’m not here to tell you what your character should look like and costume is usually the most time consuming part of building your characters. The first thing you pick though is your power set. There are two ways to pick, build your own or take one of the presets. If you’re new to this or don’t have a really specific set of powers in mind I recommend taking a preset.

When you pick a preset you get an innate talent. This talent determines what your characters starting stats are. This gives you +5 to most of your stats but focuses on 2 stats giving them +12. Once that’s done you’re on to your costume.

Leveling Up

As you level up you’ll not only get new powers but new talents. These talents add bonuses to your stats. They come in several types and can increase one stat or several stats. The choices you make here are important. When you go to make these choices you need to keep in mind your build and what stats you want to focus on. Every build is different and every play style is different.

Builds

In an MMO you’ll find yourself filling many roles. Champions has a unique way of making life easy when you need to switch between roles. You may want to switch from a solo to a group role, in groups you may be a damage dealer one time and a buffer or healer another. This is where builds come into play. Builds allow you to change your characters gear, powers, role, and costume with the click of a button. It gives a whole new meaning to jack-of-all-trades when it comes to MMO’s.

As you level up you get builds which show up just above your shortcut bar, you get your first build at level 10 (which is to say you now have 2 builds to choose between). Under the menu (the one on the mini-map) there’s a builds option which brings up the builds panel, this lets you manage your builds. Builds consist of several things. Let’s look at each piece of a build.

Costume: This one is simple, you can change the costume associated with each build. I find this is a very good way to tell at a glance what build you’re in without having to look down at the tool bar. That is assuming you have enough costume slots to have one for every build.

Equipment: The simplest part of a build is equipment, you have a set of slots where you place the equipment for that build. When you switch builds it switches out your equipment too. Sadly you switch in and out of your inventory so you have to be careful when selling not to sell all the items from your other build. This allows you to focus on different stats in different builds. Although you cannot switch out talents so you can’t completely change your character.

Devices: There is also a set of device slots for each build. This is essentially the same as equipment and subject to the same problem, you have to have room in inventory.

Powers: Part of this is simple, it’s just your set of powers that are in your quick bar. If you have a build that focuses on healing and a build that focuses on damage you’ll probably want different skills in your skill bar for each. The other part is a little different. Each build has 4 slots, 2 for travel powers, 1 for block powers and one for passive powers.

Passive Powers: There are a lot of different slotted powers you can pick as you level up. You can only have one slotted power per slot for each build but you can have multiple powers available. A few examples of slotted powers are some energy forms, regeneration, and power reduction abilities. These passive powers are always on. The passive slot in the rolls allows you to switch to different passive powers. To make things more complicated each role has a different type of passive slot associated with it. So you can’t slot just any passive under just any role. Confused yet? Read on and I’ll hopefully clear things up a bit.

Roles: There are 4 roles available. You select the role for each build in the drop down right next to the name. Here’s a breakdown of the different roles.

Note: When figuring bonus hit points you subtract your base hit points (which can be found by mousing over your constitution stat) from your Guardian total hit points and multiple that number by the percentage. Then subtract or add as required.

Guardian (Balanced)

• This is your standard role. This is where all the other builds start from, if you see a percentage in another build it modifies these base numbers.
  
• This role can slot any passive power.
  

Avenger (Offense)

• + 20% to all damage
  
• -50% to bonus hit points
  
• -20% to healing powers
  
• -20% hold and root potency
  
• -20% hold resistance
  
• Power decays at half normal rate
  
• No energy generated when blocking
  
• 1 offensive passive slot (you can only slot offensive type passives here. Duh)
  

Protector (Defense)

• Standard damage
  
• +25% bonus hit points
  
• Standard healing and root power potency
  
• +20% to hold and root resistance
  
• Power decays at twice normal rate
  
• Double energy generated when blocking attacks
  
• increased threat generation
  
• 1 defensive passive slot
  

Sentinel (Support)

• -20% damage
  
• -25% bonus hit points
  
• +20% to healing power potency
  
• +20% to root and hold power potency
  
• +20% to hold and root resistance
  
• Power decays at half normal rate
  
• 1 support passive slot
  

These roles are what really make builds powerful. But if you don’t understand them they can get you killed (I do not recommend accidentally using Sentinel while soloing, this is very bad). Pick your role for each build carefully.

Equipment

Equipment is simple once you understand stats. I’m looking for the best combination of stats for my build. I also look at the defense values since they definitely help. Although I generally don’t give up much in the way of stats to increase defensive stats. There are many pieces of equipment with special abilities. Those really come down to what you want to do and I feel they tend to work best as parts of builds since many are only useful under certain circumstances. Basically just take a look at the stats and keep in mind what you’re most interested in increasing.

Example Build

This is a look at the stats of my main character, Culture Shock. Her base power set is electricity.

As you can see I put a premium on Constitution and Endurance. I do a lot of soloing so I need the hit points to keep in the fight. With my power set I use a lot of energy so I went high on Endurance. Next is recovery so I can get my power back ASAP. The others really just fall completely by the wayside, at least at level 26. Here’s a look at my talent and innate characteristics I’ve chosen.

Again the concentration on Con and End are pretty obvious. Finally here’s a look at my powers (not shown are my electric shield which replaces block and my travel power, which is flight).

There’s a pretty strong focus on offense. Sparkstorm and Gigabolt are my bread and butter powers. Electrocute comes in handy when things get a little out of control and Thunderstrike is always a nice way to start a party. This is a very effective build. As long as I’m a little careful I can solo just about anything through level 26 at least, we’ll see if this all holds up for the last 15 levels. It seems like I’ll have no problem though.

There you have it, a guide to building a successful Champions Online character.

Tools

There is an excellent quest tool which will tell you what quests you’ve missed, their level and where to get them check it out here.

http://www.crimecomputer20.com/index.php

If you’re looking for a character builder this is the only one I’ve found but it’s not bad. It does have a few bugs though.

http://champions.zarzu.ch/download.html

 

Does Microsoft Get It?

An article a week, that’s the plan. I’ve already started my next two articles, so we’re well on our way. For this week a peek at the Courier.

So I just wrote an article about the iPad and looked at the closed system it’s built around. I discussed how it’s supposed to be the future of computing and I hinted at the fact that Steve Jobs wants one of these in every home, my thoughts on it were quite clear I think. I also mentioned that there are a lot of other closed systems. So it’s time to take a look (probably a premature look but what the hell) at Microsoft’s next tablet entry, the Courier, its closed system and how it’s different.

The Courier is not an iPad killer. Hell it’s not even designed to be a web tablet, although it does have a browser. Based on leaks here’s what we know about the Courier. For some video and pics click here.

• The focus is on it being a journal
• It does NOT run full blown windows, it’s based on the Windows CE 6 core like Pink (now the Kin)
• Built in camera and headphone jack
• Storage in the Cloud
• Multi-touch
• Pen interface for drawing and handwriting
• Dual Screen
• Easy sharing through the web
• When closed not much larger than a 5×7 photo
• E-Books

While the iPad focuses on the web, apps and games, the Courier is focused on letting you get your ideas on “paper”. This device is very different and has a very different focus than the iPad. The Courier is a whole new ball game.

Windows CE

The Courier is based on Windows CE, so I’m going to make a few assumptions. First of all, based on what we know about the Kin, I’m going to assume that the Courier is a closed system. That’s right, my guess is no apps on this bad boy. This isn’t a gaming machine, you want apps you’ll have to use web based games. The second assumption I’m going to make is that we’ll see a version with built in 3G. That’s probably a no brainer since it’s heavily Cloud focused from what we know. I’m also going to predict easy sharing between Kin, Courier, Windows Phone, and Windows 7.

OK, so I just wrote an article on the evils of Apples closed system on iPad and iPhone. So before I get to my thoughts on the Couriers closed system let me explain something. The entire purpose of the iPads interface is to make sure people do things Apples way. Apple decides on your work flow and how you create. They shun the pen interface but encourage you to draw. Well not all drawing is painting and there’s a whole set of people who are out of the creative loop because Apple doesn’t like the way they do business. As usually Apple is all about limiting your options. OK, no more iPad talk (probably).

The Courier is about enabling your creativity and allowing you to find your own work flow. It really is trying to create a better version of an old fashioned pen and paper journal. It’s got tools for drawing, writing, exploring the web, and it lets you pull it all together. It’s got options for painting, the pen can be used as a pen or a brush or whatever and so can your finger. Whatever works best for you. It’s even got multi-touch for helping you get around.

Now I still see some downsides to the closed system. If it’s really closed we won’t have a Kindle reader for the Courier, I probably wasn’t going to ditch e-ink for this anyway, but it’s a bit disappointing. We also won’t see dedicated versions of apps like Evernote, so there are downsides to every closed system. The point is the interface encourages creativity, which is an extremely important thing in my mind.

The Cloud

The Courier is cloud focused. Journals you create will be shared on the web via a blog like interface. This interface allows you not only to share the content with friends but it allows them to comment directly on the journal. It’s also designed for collaboration. I have no idea if it is real time (although that would be extremely cool) but still, it looks like a great tool for working together on a project. It would have made some of the projects Jeff and I have tackled together much easier.

I’m quite sure the Cloud on this isn’t just for storing journals. Much like the Kin I expect we’ll see Zune streaming on this device. Zune is about to become a big focus for Microsoft. It’s becoming the center of Microsoft’s multimedia strategy and it’s all about getting your content any time anywhere. So expect Zune Pass streaming like the Kin (and the new Windows Phones). Microsoft has embraced the cloud and streaming technologies. I think the Courier will really showcase that, as well as Microsoft’s ability to design touch interfaces.

Content

One interesting rumor is that Microsoft sees the Courier as its e-book platform. We all know I’m sold on e-ink as the best reading platform. But with the size of the Courier and the book like feel this could bring other people into the e-book fold. I just hope they open it up enough so we can get our Kindle and other e-book libraries on our Couriers. It’s a different kind of e-reader device to be certain and I’m curious as to what comes of the e-book aspect. It won’t be my e-book device of choice though.

The big question with content is storage. Nothing we’ve seen hints at how much internal storage this device will have. It’s quite likely that it will have solid state memory, I’m guessing 16 gig and 32 gig models. With what I believe to be the intention of storing journals in the cloud and streaming music, that should be plenty of local storage. The thing about the Courier is, it’s not primarily a content consumption device but a content creation device.

Creation not Consumption

The Courier is different from that other tablet because the Courier is primarily about creating new content not consuming other peoples content. It’s not just about creating from scratch with handwriting and drawing either. It’s about allowing you to grab inspiration from the web. The system is designed to make it easy to pull images, videos, text, and anything else you want from the web and store it in your journal. You can use these things for research, inspiration, collages, whatever you want. The Couriers design focuses on giving you the tools to create, to brainstorm, to innovate, and to share all of that.

The One?

I guess the question becomes is this the one? The defining moment where Microsoft steps up and figures out that the world has changed. That not everything should look like Windows. The moment when a device finally comes out that truly improves all aspects of the creative process and allows us to enjoy all that together? The moment when someone goes, “Wow, maybe Microsoft gets it.” Right now all we have is rumors and promotional leaks. We won’t know until someone gets it in their hands and even then it will take a couple of months to really get it run through its paces. So I’m hoping, but since all this is rumor, I’m not holding my breath.

Why Steve Jobs Hates Creativity

Just think of it, a future where everyone works the same way. Where everyone experiences art and literature in the same way. Where people draw and think and create in the same way. Where collaborations are easy because everyone has the same ideas and the same way of getting things done. Just imagine how much more productive that future will be. How much less conflict we’ll see. How much more sterile, boring and uncreative we will all become. Branded across this future is the Apple logo and in everyone of these soulless zombies hands is an Apple computing device. If this is the revolution the iPad is starting then I’ll have to quote the Beatles “You better free your mind instead”.

Now I realize the picture I’ve painted above is incredibly extreme. It’s not meant to be an accurate predictor of the future but more of a cautionary tale. First of all let me set one thing straight, I fully realize that Apple has over the years done much to foster creativity by giving people the tools to create. Up to this point they’ve given people a robust set of tools and set them loose. While Apple’s desktop and laptop hardware and software are more restrictive than most they still give you options on how you handle your work flow, where you place things and allow you the opportunity to add several sorts of input devices so you can work your own way. This last bit is very important.

Every creative person works differently. They often spend a lot of time finding he work flow, tools, and methods which will allow them to be the most creative and productive. The way we create and the tools we use is as important as what we create and how we come up with the ideas. In fact many people find inspiration in the way they create. Let’s use the example of a writer. There are a lot of theories on how it’s best to write a story, some people think software is the way to go, others insist on doing first drafts on paper. Some combine the two forms taking notes in one medium and doing the actual writing in the other. There really are any number of ways to write something and a vast number of tools to use to write them. This is true of pretty much all creative endeavors.

Apple is trying to usher in a new age in computing. They’re trying to create a world where the PC fades into the background and is replaced by dedicated devices like the iPad. Pioneering the future is what technology companies should be doing and they should be applauded for that. There’s a significant problem with Apple’s approach to the future. Over the centuries of technological advancement we’ve seen that individualism and thinking outside the box have been key elements in progress. Some of the most important discoveries have started as rebellious ideas which were considered dangerous. Things like the earth being round or orbiting around the sun have been rejected by traditional science until someone looked at things differently and took action in their own way. What does this have to do with Apple and the iPad? I’m glad you asked.

Cory Doctorow referred to the iPad saying that it should use “screws not glue”. I whole heartedly agree, although I look at it quite differently. Cory Doctorow was referring to the hardware, on that point I disagree, hacking the hardware isn’t going to progress us the same way it once did. In fact hardware is tertiary in much of the creative process today. While we still need engineers poking around and making things better, they’re not the corner stone of the industry they once were. Now the corner stone of the industry, especially iPhones and iPads, is software. Apple has been locking down its hardware more and more over the last decade, what people seem to not notice is how drastic the leap to locking down software was with the iPhone and iPod Touch. They went beyond just rigidly and dictatorial control of what software you can run on your device but they locked down how you do things on your device. All of the sudden people weren’t free to design interfaces, they were locked into Apples idea of what the best way to do things is. They had to beg for things as simple as counters on text messages.

So by now some of you see where I’m going with this, let me spell it out for you. Apple’s limitation on not just what software we can use on devices but how we can use that software will start to stifle creativity. As Apple tries to bring about this revolution they are trying their damndest to make sure future developments follow their track. If it’s good enough for Stevie J it’s good enough for everyone. News flash, not everyone is Steve Jobs and not everyone should be locked into doing things the way Steve Jobs does things. The points I made at the beginning of this article may be exaggerated but they’re still valid. By discouraging people from doing things their own way we limit their creativity and stop them from developing their own work flow, tools, and methods. Now at this point I’m talking about the way we interact with our applications. I know what some of you are thinking, you’re thinking I’ve missed the point, that what Apple has done with their software development is what’s really important. Hell there are tons of teenagers writing applications out there, being creative. You couldn’t be more wrong.

Let’s look at the applications in the app store for a minute. Go ahead, grab that iPhone or iPod touch I know you have, browse through a few apps, I’ll wait… all done? Ok, now tell me how many of those apps you just saw were variations on the same thing, shopping apps, or Netflix apps, or blogging apps, or twitter apps, or drawing apps. Several of each right? Not a lot variety and not a lot of difference between applications either. Tell me how encouraging people to make the same apps using the same tools and same interfaces is helping people be creative? A 13 year old making yet another drawing program for the iPhone isn’t creative, just because you wrote software doesn’t mean you’re creative. While I’m at it, I’d like to point out that forcing people to do said development under OSX isn’t all that creativity encouraging either, although it’s not that great a sin it’s a symptom of the larger problem. So now you’re sitting thinking to yourself, “What about games, there are lots of creative games out there.” Again, you’re missing something.

Let’s do our little visit to the app store again. Check out some games. Any games. I’ve played plenty of those games. The first five or six made me go “Wow, they’ve really done some cool things with this tilt stuff haven’t they.” Then reality set in, a handful of people had created interesting and unique games, then people had copied them. Now I realize this is always the case. I also realize that I could easily be proven wrong on this particular point, so I’m in no way saying this is set in stone (see that’s me hedging my bets, but only on the gaming aspect). The bottom line is, Apple has locked down how people interface with these devices, you don’t have the freedom to dig at the hardware programmatically and really see what this stuff can do. The ability to really push the envelope and create unique and wonderful things is stifled by these lock downs. Alright, we’re almost done, just one more point I want to cover.

iPads and iPhones aren’t the only devices in the world which are locked down. Far from it. They’re not the only devices in the world which restrict what software can be installed on them or carefully monitor things. However, they do take it to levels above and beyond most companies. They lock people out of more than they give them access to. They’re the worst offender, but even then it’s not the end of the world. The problem is Stevie J has shown that once he’s got a strangle hold on something he only tightens it. For every inch he seems to give he’ll take a mile when you aren’t looking. I don’t have a problem with the hardware of the iPad, or the concept (although I think people have blown things way out of proportion). I have a problem with the way they do business and where things are heading. This is a philosophy they’re supposedly building a revolution on, not all revolutions are good. I hope I’m wrong, I’d love for this to be me spouting off about nothing. I don’t think I am and I think things are going to get worse.

At it again

So, Jeff and I have been talking a lot lately, we’re interested in doing something with Maximum Geek. It’s near and dear to our hearts and we’d like to see it not just fall apart because we’re disorganized and sometimes not all that mentally stable. So, as has happened in the past I’m posting a couple of articles this week. One on the iPad, the other on comics (and the iPad, mostly comics though).

Beyond articles, well we’ll see. I’m not going to go making promises I can’t keep. Although I have a couple of ideas to keep us and our fans (which has probably dwindled from a couple hundred to 2, and their names are Josh and Jeff) interested and entertained.

So look for article 1 “Why Steve Jobs Hates Creativity” in the next day or so. I think I can piss a number of people off with this one. Article 2 “The Silicon Age Begins” wills how up later in the week.