Slanted Viewpoint

One of the more intriguing revelations from Apple’s recent WWDC was that iOS 7 will ship with support for physical game controllers, much like the ones that now come with game consoles from the likes of Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony. While this nugget was barely mentioned during the keynote, its ripple effects may be huge — as I’ll get to shortly.

But before getting there, I want to explore what initially struck me as two likely obstacles in the way of success for iOS game controllers.

Touch vs. controller

First, iOS is all about a touch interface. Touching the screen is the main way, almost the only way, you interact with an iPhone or iPad. With a game controller in your hands, you won’t be touching the screen at all — at least not during game play. As such, the game controller is in conflict with a core property of iOS devices.

The same can be said, I suppose, about physical keyboards for iOS. Yet they have proven to be a popular peripheral. However, with keyboards, there is a direct translation of the actions taken: you can almost seamlessly switch back and forth between the two types of keyboard inputs without needing any significant relearning of how things work.

With most iOS games, especially ones that depend heavily on touch actions for game play, shifting to a game controller will likely require a significant amount of work, both for the game developer to modify the code and for the user to learn a different way to play.

In many cases, I expect such efforts will get “lost in translation.” One example of this is the mega-popular Angry Birds. There is a Mac version of the iOS game; you play it mainly using a trackpad or mouse as an input device. While not identical, this is similar to shifting to a game controller. No matter how many times I’ve tried, the Mac version never comes close to matching the simple intuitive experience of playing the game on an iOS device. To put it bluntly, Angry Birds on a Mac is a dud. As such, I do not look forward to a game controller version of Angry Birds.

On the other hand, the best candidates for conversion to a game controller are games that already work via a virtual version of such a controller, such as car racing games and many shooter games. Here, at least, I can see physical controllers having success. They may actually improve the game experience, as your fingers will not get in the way of seeing what’s on the screen.

Small vs. large

Even without the touch obstacle, there remains a second notable problem: size.

A typical game controller is at least the same size as an iPhone or iPod touch, usually larger. It strikes me as awkward to have a game display be significantly smaller than the controller you’re holding. There’s also the matter of convenience. Will iPod touch owners want to carry a game controller in their pocket, ready to pull out whenever they wish to play a game? I don’t think so. Doing so significantly lessens the appeal of the iPod touch as an on-the-go gaming device.

The iPad is a better match for a game controller here, but is not completely immune to these size problems.

Wait! There’s another iOS device…

Given these obstacles, it seemed to me that the potential market for iOS game controllers was a limited one at best. I’m confident that Apple is aware of all these considerations. Yet, they appear unconcerned. Why? With a bit more thought, the likely answer hit me…

There is another iOS device, beyond the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. It’s the Apple TV (ATV). Despite running on a variation of iOS, ATV doesn’t use a touch interface and it typically connects to large displays. In other words, ATV circumvents the very problems I’ve described here, making it a perfect candidate for working with a game controller.

Recall that earlier this year, Apple enabled Bluetooth keyboards to work with ATV. This dovetails nicely with forthcoming Bluetooth game controllers that would similarly work with ATV.

The final piece needed to make all of this fit together would be a separate Apple TV App Store, accessible from the ATV itself. From here, you could purchase games specifically designed to work with ATV and its non-touch interface. My Macworld colleague, Dan Frakes, came to a similar conclusion, as we tweeted a couple of weeks ago.

An Apple TV App Store might additionally include apps beyond games, such as TV network apps. This would allow users to add channels such as HBO GO without having to depend on Apple updating the ATV iOS to do so.

An Apple TV, combined with a game controller and an App Store, would quickly emerge as a serious contender for the top of the heap of game consoles. A recent article expanded on this theme, exactly predicting that “Apple TV will…dominate the console gaming market.” (Thanks to The Loop for pointing me to this article.)

I do see at least one obstacle for ATV to overcome: storage. Unlike iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads, there is no user-accessible internal storage in an Apple TV. So where will users save all the apps that they purchase and presumably download? Will Apple release a new ATV model, one that includes user-accessible space on an SSD? Will an ATV App Store only work with these latest devices? Or will Apple find some way, possibly via iCloud streaming, to make the system work with existing ATV’s?

I don’t know the answer. But I strongly suspect that Apple already has one. When iOS 7 gets released this fall, I predict that Apple will simultaneously announce a modified (either via hardware or software, or both) Apple TV as a primary target for game controller support.

In a recent column for Macworld, I opined that the time was nearly perfect for Apple to make some bold announcements at the opening keynote of this year’s WWDC. Guess what? Apple delivered. In spades.

Mac Pro

For years, I’ve been waiting to see what Apple was going to do with the Mac Pro. It’s still hard to believe that the current Mac Pro doesn’t have support for Thunderbolt or USB 3. It’s been that long since Apple gave it a major upgrade.

Would Apple abandon the Pro (as I speculated back in 2009)? Or reinvent it? It turns out, Apple sort of did both. The new Mac Pro is so radically different from the old behemoth that it really belongs in a separate category. Apple did kill the old Mac Pro and it replaced the computer with something entirely different — something so different in design that it easily qualifies as the most revolutionary new product since the iPhone. As Phil Schiller put it succinctly at the keynote today: “Can’t innovate any more, my ass.”

The new Mac Pro isn’t shipping yet. So we’ll have to wait awhile for any hands-on analysis. My only personal look today was to gawk at the ones on display in several glass cylinders outside the keynote hall.

Here’s what I can say for sure: Answering the prayers of all those who hoped that Apple would downsize the Pro from its current huge, heat-emitting, energy-sucking size — the new Pro is about one-eighth the size of the old model. The only potential downside here is that there is no longer any internal expansion. All additions must be external, including an optical disc drive. On the other hand, the new Mac supports a faster Thunderbolt 2 connection, which can drive up to three 4K displays. Hmmm…is a 4K Cinema Display coming later this year?

In every other way, the new Pro seems like very much…a pro machine. Specs indicate that it is at least twice as fast as existing Pro models in almost every measure. This device is already on my wish list for the fall.

Bottom line: Wow! Wow!!

iOS 7

In the Macworld column I cited above, I suggested several key things that Apple should do, almost needed to do, to improve iOS. A bit to my surprise, I was very much on target. Apple delivered on almost every one of these features in iOS 7. Not satisfied with that accomplishment, Apple added more than a few additional features I did not anticipate.

Will there be widgets? Almost. The new Control Center comes close. Just swipe up from the bottom and it appears. You can access Airplane mode, Bluetooth and more. There appears to be no room for third-party additions to Control Center. And no sign of calculator-type widget apps. But I’ll give Apple a pass on that for now.

Expanded multitasking? Yes! Every app can now multitask, with intelligent updating of content based on how you use the app. You now swipe through apps in a way that shows each app’s current screen — providing a far superior multitasking feel than the current bar that appears at the bottom of iOS 6. The only thing missing is the ability to have two or more apps share the screen. I guess we’ll have to wait for iOS 8 for that.

Expanded options for the Lock screen? Yes! Yes! You will be able to access Notifications and Control Center without having to unlock your iPhone or iPad.

There is so much more. Personal highlights for me were automatic categorizing in Photos, the inclusion of AirDrop (to improve sharing among Macs and iOS devices), and the brand new iTunes Radio music streaming service.

Finally, there is the complete redesign of the interface, as had been promised. Skeuomorphism is gone, leaving the OS with a much cleaner, more consistent look across apps. Changes such as the elimination of button borders, in favor of colored text to indicate what is clickable, give the OS a more open feel. Even the small touches, like wallpaper images that show a parallax tilt when you tilt the iOS device, were delightful to see.

There are a few things I would have liked that did not appear. I would have preferred to see improvements to the virtual keyboard and text editing. I would have liked a greater revamping of Game Center (including the ability to talk to other players) and numerous changes to Documents in the Cloud. Still, Apple acquitted itself nicely with what it did deliver.

I’m sure there will be a few more surprises when Apple releases updates to the iPhone and iPad this fall. But I can already say that iOS 7 lives up to Apple’s assertion that it is the most dramatically redesigned iOS since the iPhone was first released.

Bottom line: With iOS 7, Apple has begun a reinvention of iOS. Kudos.

OS X

The new version of OS X will be called Mavericks. Cat names are now part of history.

In my prior Macworld column, I pondered whether Apple might continue its iOS-ification trend, pushing changes to an extreme that few would welcome. Happily, Apple did not.

For starters, the Finder not only remains a key component of OS X Mavericks, it is significantly enhanced. [And by the way, Launchpad was not even mentioned at the keynote.] I am particularly looking forward to the Finder’s new tags feature. As a way to organize and quickly find files, tags may finally get me to use All My Files and to drift away from organizing files into folders.

Perhaps my favorite new Mavericks feature is Maps, an export of the iOS app to the Mac. What makes it especially great is that Maps syncs across platforms. Among other things, this means that, if you create a route on your Mac, the route will transfer to Maps on your iPhone. No need to do the same thing twice.

Another really big deal in Mavericks is full support of multiple displays. Finally! Most notably, when you go into full screen mode on one display, your other display(s) remain unchanged. This may be the tipping point that finally gets me to use full screen apps.

iCloud Keychain promises to provide the sort of support for remembering passwords and credit card numbers that has been thus far only possible with third-party apps. Of course, it will sync across all your devices, Macs and iOS.

Once again, this is only the tip of the iceberg. There are major redesigns of Safari and Calendar, as well as iBooks for the Mac.

Bottom line: Apple managed to thread the needle. It made significant improvements to the OS, ones that stand on their own (such as Finder tags) and ones that allow it to work better with iOS devices (such as Maps). It seems to have struck a near perfect balance, not tilting too far in either directions. Once again, kudos.

My only big disappointment today is that none of these products will be available until the fall. Mark your calendars now. I am confident they will be worth the wait.