
Carmack says Apple is not proud of the iPhone being a game machine - cesare
http://www.edibleapple.com/doom-creator-john-carmack-on-working-with-apple-and-their-view-of-gaming/
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lsb
Imagine all the satellite engineers, dismayed that people use GPS to geocache
junk in tupperware around the world.

Imagine all the thousands of man-millenia of research in CCDs and computer
networking and systems engineering and UI design just so that some people can
upload cat videos from their phone onto Youtube.

There's no reason not to celebrate when something gives others joy, even when
it's not Serious Business.

~~~
stcredzero
In the words of William Gibson: "The Street always finds its own uses for
technology."

Only in his vision, those uses were mostly dark and gritty. In real 21st
century, we find a lot of those uses cutesy and banal.

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jsz0
It's too bad he didn't supply a bit of context with his opinion. Apple has
spent a considerable amount of time in public events over the last 2 years
promoting the iPhone as a gaming platform. The run run ads on TV spotlighting
iPhone games. They buy ads on gaming sites. The iPhone as a gaming device
doesn't limit it's functionality in other ways so there would be no rationale
reason to blame gaming as holding back the platform's potential as this
article suggests.

~~~
9oliYQjP
Yes this does strike me as being odd. I have source code for a video game demo
that Apple made and provided to developers if you asked them nicely for it.
There were two sessions out of a 5 session long day (I believe) dedicated
specifically to OpenGL and other game related technologies.

One thing Apple has been very good at with marketing the iPhone is
specifically not pigeon holing it as a device best used for a specific task.
Their whole campaign right now centres around the premise that the iPhone does
just about anything. Contrast that with the Blackberry which people pigeon
hole as the device for business people and folks that like a keyboard.

Perhaps Apple isn't promoting the iPhone as a gaming platform to the fullest
extent that it can. But this may very well be by design and should not be
confused as Apple being ashamed of it as a gaming machine. Apple just wants
the iPhone to have the universal applicability of the PC and corner other
smartphones like the Blackberry, into being to its PC what electronic
typewriters were.

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matthew-wegner
This reminds me of the Vimeo move to disallow gaming videos. They wanted Vimeo
to be for "creative expression", and straight said they didn't think game-
related videos met that test. Original 2008 blog post here:
<http://www.vimeo.com/blog:140>

I think some of the iPhone's gaming success is the market--players demanding
more games--but some of it is also the lure of game development itself. If the
whole point of the App Store was to let developers make whatever they wanted,
and they want to make games...isn't that kind of the point?

(And yes, it is pretty naive to assume all iPhone games were made for the love
of it instead of trying to cash in on a gold rush).

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sahaj
so what do they want it to be, if not a gaming machine?

from their ads and the dev conferences, it seems like they actually do want it
to be a gaming platform.

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gchpaco
I suspect they're savvy enough to understand that just 'cause Steve doesn't
want it to be a gaming machine doesn't mean that he can't make a ton of money
by having games on it.

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NathanKP
Right, the powerful graphics technology and the multi-touch ability makes it
ideal for interesting games. It only makes sense to play up the gaming
aspects.

But I can understand how Apple might be interested in getting more powerful
"real" applications on the iPhone. I heard the Android ad on the radio for the
first time yesterday and was slightly fascinated by the way Google is
advertising the Android as a "powerful" robot tool that gets things done.

In contrast the iPhone feels more like a fun tool for geeks, perhaps not so
much a business oriented device as an entertainment device.

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pyre
Well, Mac in general aren't marketed as being business-oriented (unless you're
a design firm maybe). Why would Apple change things drastically for the
iPhone?

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gaius
The _are_ very much marketed as devices to enable a lifestyle, tho'. This is
the same market that consumer BlackBerry competes in too.

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chrischen
To be honest most non-casual games on the iPhone suck. And I rarely spend any
time playing games on the iPhone. It just wasn't _designed_ to be a gaming
device. As great as the touch screen is, controls usually end up sucking.
There's no way most people would ever see it as a gaming device. It may play
games better than other phones, but it's other features still outweigh it in
its definition.

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jstevens85
>There's no way most people would ever see it as a gaming device.

I think that hardcore gamers will probably never see it as a gaming device,
but for _most people_ , the iPhone is fantastic. It's something they already
carry around, and has bucket loads of quick, simple arcadey games to play to
kill some time on the train. The iPhone probably logs more hours of gaming
than any other portable device out there.

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axod
I was with you up until the last sentence. I think the Nintendo DS probably
has a billion percent more.

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jstevens85
Yeah, sorry, definitely underestimated the number of DSs out there.

Nintendo DS: 113 million

iPhone: 21 million

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jodrellblank
"""when the device is truly capable of so much more"""

Like what?

(some) Games are some of the most demanding things computers _do_.

Besides, I'd be more inclined to go with that if they hadn't hobbled the dock
connector, bluetooth and SDK to severely limit what it can do for the first
two years or more.

~~~
stcredzero
I wonder what kind of kit one would need to turn a 32GB iPhone into some large
fraction of an OQO? What would that do to netbooks? What would it do to
laptops and Macbooks? And should Apple care?

How about something with about the same form factor as the Macbook Air, but
convertible to a Tablet, which is really just a sort of "Thin client"
accessory to the iPhone or some smartphone? Price it low enough so that it
plus an iPhone will add up to mid-tier laptop in price. (Read: cheaper than
the cheapest Macbook. Parity with Mac Mini?)

I suspect that a lot of people would just get one of those instead of a
laptop.

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rick888
I'm amazed at how far technology has advanced..even since I was a kid (I'm
28). I just got an HTC snap and I loaded it up with a bunch of old game system
emulators. I can now play NES, SNES, Neo Geo, and any other game system that I
played as a kid...right from my phone.

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pyre
> _SNES_

Really? I would think that this would be controller limited. Any game that
made full use of all the controller buttons might be difficult, especially on
a touch-screen.

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xcombinator
I don't like this kind of journalism. He cites something like "Apple is not
proud..." in two lines and we have three paragraphs from other person
interpretation, telling whatever he wants. Just give me the entire
conversation and don't get out of context.

Classic trick for manipulating information.

When Carmack says Apple is not proud on the iPhone I believe is about Steve
Jobs when he thinks that computers are powerful machines and you can use it
for doing amazing creative and scientific work but you can use it for wasting
all your time too.

I'm trying to remember the exact real interview he said that, I think it was
in the famous Playboy magazine interview, long long time ago.

They get a ton of money from that, but feel more proud of other things.

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tjogin
They're marketing the iPod touch primarily as a game machine, I don't think
Carmack is right — maybe they're just not as _extraordinarily_ enthused about
_gaming_ as Carmack is.

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moron4hire
But they do nothing but market the iPod Touch, which is nothing more than a
crippled iPhone, as a hand-held gaming device. Big ol' Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
on that one.

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DanHulton
They may not be happy about it, but come on, the Apple of today isn't stupid.

There's MONEY in them thar gamin' hills.

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moron4hire
Well, they aren't stupid _for this reason_. I'm just saying that it doesn't
compute that "Apple hates gaming". They are pushing gaming rather much harder
than any other smartphone platform right now.

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teej
Just like Facebook doesn't like the platform ben used for games. That's the
beauty of a market economy though - the consumer always wins.

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wmf
It's interesting that you chose that phrase since both Facebook and the iPhone
are tightly controlled "markets".

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pchristensen
Well, no matter how controlled the internal market for Facebook and the iPhone
are, they compete in external markets as well and in order to stay relevant,
they have to allow games. Ergo, consumers win.

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elblanco
Jobs has never understood the value of the gaming market w/r to building a
computing platform. Something that pretty much _everybody_ does one a
computing platform as soon as they have a spot of free time. Hell, people were
figuring out gaming on cathode ray tubes in the late 40's.

To be fair, I think he's desperately trying to not turn Apple into Commodore.

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blasdel
Well, the entire App Store release model seems to be designed explicitly for
games and media content, and actually seems to be fairly decent in that regard
(certainly better than any predecessors). As for _Applications_ , especially
those that interface with the Internet, it's fucking abysmal.

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jrockway
"It could be so much more"

Really? It's a 3" screen without a keyboard. It's good for web browsing and
pinball. I am not sure what anyone else would want it for; netbooks are much
better for anything that involves more than 10 minutes of concentration.

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jsz0
Touch & motion input works really well for some types of games. More
traditional games have adopted on-screen buttons with mixed success. There's a
pretty wide variety of games out there for the iPhone that seem to be very
popular.

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stcredzero
Meteor Blitz does an _awesome_ job with its controls. (Emulating two analog
sticks in the lower corners.) It's like a cross between Asteroids and
Robotoron. Once refinement like that, plus a little design savvy, make it out
into the programming community in the form of libraries, you'll have a more
consistent level of quality.

Design savvy: minimalist. Get as much as you can out of just one or two
control elements, plus a few accessories.

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mdemare
That goes for the Mac too. I've got several friends who'd have switched to the
Mac long ago, if it wasn't for the fact that they were enthousiastic PC
gamers.

These people are power users. Convert them, and their friends and family will
follow.

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83457
This is one of the reasons I went Mac when they switched to Intel. I knew I
could have a Mac laptop and also gaming laptop (via BootCamp) in one machine.

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mdemare
Are you implying that Bootcamp is Apple's gaming strategy on the Mac?

