This sounds an awful lot like sour grapes to me: Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software engineer, told a Professional Developers' Conference earlier this week that it wasn't the apps that would make or break the smartphone platforms. Of course, that's what most press and blog outlets seem to be focusing on (maybe because we all already know what the hardware is like -- apps change every day if not every minute, and the hardware only changes occasionally), but Ozzie says customers won't buy a phone for the apps. The biggest apps, he says, will eventually be available on every platform. To put it in as few words as possible, you'll be able to tweet from everything in the future.

And he's got part of a good point there: it's true, the major functionality of "killer apps" will be available across platforms. But Ozzie forgets (or is just ignoring) that that's already the case on desktops. While yes, you could claim that porting to the various smartphones is easier than porting to the various PC platforms, that doesn't avoid the fact that I can tweet, IM, email, browse, edit photos and movies, and do whatever else I want on both platforms as well. And for some reason (ahem, the hardware and the way both software and hardware are designed), I'd rather do them on the Mac. People love their iPhones not just for the apps but for the way it fits in their hand, and how just plain slick it is.

That's not to say that the smartphone platform war is over -- no way, it's only beginning, and we consumers will take innovative ideas wherever we can get them. But Ozzie saying the apps don't count (and echoing his fellow Microsofters in trying to separate Apple from their software strategy) seems to mean that even he thinks he's already lost that race -- they certainly do play a large part in which platform consumers eventually choose.

OnLive is a company that has been claiming to do the seemingly impossible -- they plan to set up a sort of "cloud gaming" console, where instead of hardware in individual houses (like we have now; you buy a console for your home), they'll have hardware over the Internet, and stream your game to you like watching television. All of the processing and coding will be done on a remote server, but with signals flowing from your controller, it'll seem like you're just playing Xbox at home. It all works in theory, but in practice, Internet connections aren't solid or stable enough to send commands and full HD video back and forth without enough lag to make things unplayable.

Still, without actually releasing a product so far, OnLive claims they can do it, and now they're claiming to do it on the iPhone as well. AppleInsider reports that at a recent event in New York, OnLive showed off the same game service running on "2 iPhones, a tv, and a computer" simultaneously, with gamers on all the devices able to communicate and watch each others' gameplay. CEO Steve Perlman admits it's a "tech demo," but doesn't go into detail on what that means (it could simply be a demo running separately on the devices, to show what it would be like, or I've heard of OnLive events where the server is sitting in the room next door). And of course, there's no date or information on an actual release yet.

OnLive's service definitely sounds possible someday -- as Internet connections get faster and hardware gets even cheaper, it's not a stretch to think we'll eventually move the heavy processor lifting to another location, leaving much tinier consoles and PCs taking up space on our desks and TV stands at home. But so far all it seems they've got is an idea (and the money that excited financiers have put into the project). We'll have to believe it works when we see it.

Electronic Arts has released the Wolfenstein RPG for the iPhone and iPod touch -- the game is available on the App Store for $4.99 right now. It's based in the world of Wolfenstein, but it's not your normal first-person shooter. Instead, it's actually a mobile turn-based RPG, adapted from an older cellphone platform for Apple's handheld. Considering its origins, the game looks pretty good, and it's got a silly sense of humor as well -- you can read books to gain abilities and power-ups, or play a chicken-kicking minigame. Reviews are pretty excellent on iTunes, so if you're looking for something a little different to play as a role-playing game, it might be worth a look.

Even more anticipated than this game is the Doom RPG, with the same type of gameplay, but set in id software's Doom universe (notable, among other things, for its BFG weapon). Odds are that if this game does well, the Doom RPG (and maybe even Orcs and Elves, originally seen on the DS) probably won't be far behind.

It kind of sounds like a developer's dream: create an app in Cocoa that automatically works on Windows, too. But that's what Cocotron promises, and the folks at Ecamm say the dream is there, even if it requires a lot of elbow grease. They tried using Cocotron to port an app called FileMagnet, and two months after they started, they say they did it. You can see the results above, and as they say, "Visual Studio was never opened."

But of course it wasn't exactly one-click. They had to implement a number of Apple-specific methods, and there were UI bugs, strings support, and dreaded Vista compatibility to work out. But the good news is that Cocotron is all open source, and from what the Mac Daddies say, the devs working on the project are super helpful and supportive. So, not only is it getting better every day, but every bit of implementation that gets done is something that won't have to be repeated. Sounds like a lot of "fun" (for varying values of "fun" of course) for developers to be had here.

The lines between Mac and PC, no matter what the commercials say, are blurring more and more every day, and this could turn out to be a way to develop in an environment as welcoming as Cocoa, and then bring programs back into an environment as widespread as Windows.

We've mentioned the Torque gaming engine from GarageGames here a few times before -- it's a pretty powerful 3D engine that makes developing great games on the Mac that much easier. And now, they've released a version of it for the iPhone, complete with support for multitouch input and even screen gesture recognition.

I am hardly a game programmer, but my understanding is that this sits on top of the OpenGL ES system in the iPhone -- you use the Torque engine to develop, and then the iPhone runs the games developed without any other special software. The benefits are that you can use the Torque Game Builder software (which is also available for many other platforms) to put together iPhone specific games, which makes it not only easier to develop native games, but to port games from those other platforms as well.

At any rate, this is good news for both iPhone game developers and players -- the easier it gets to create quality software on the platform, the more games we'll have to choose from.

[via IMG]

I'm here at E3 in Los Angeles all this week (come say hi at the Joystiq meetup tonight if you're in town!). Yesterday, I got to sit down with Brad Pitser, the Director of Global Production for THQ Wireless, a company that makes games for mobile platforms like the iPhone. Pitser has helped oversee two iPhone games so far: De Blob (now on the App Store) and Star Wars' Force Unleashed (coming out later this year -- Joystiq has my impressions of both). He said that developing for the iPhone so far has been "a dream." They've partnered with Apple to publish on the iPhone and iPod touch as much as they can. "Apple was interested in our brands," Pitser said, "and we were interested in their platform."

One concern he does have about the App Store so far is the pricing -- "everyone thinks $9.99 is too much," he told me. THQ released De Blob at the $6.99 price point. He says THQ has a lot of licensing fees and costs to pay for every game they make, and when those games compete with software that sells for 99 cents, they don't necessarily have a money-making proposition. But at the same time, he'd rather let the market figure things out -- the App Store has a lot of settling down to do, and Pitser is sure that companies will find their place in the price plan soon enough.

I asked him what he thought of what he'd seen in the software that wasn't his, and he said he really enjoyed the iPint visual gag, the UrbanSpoon restaurant finder, and Aurora Feint (all very nice choices). It's great to have a bigger company like THQ interested in getting some good licenses on the iPhone, and hopefully we'll see more come out of Pitser and the division he oversees.

Roughly Drafted has a nice, long analysis of the iPhone as a gaming device, and they hit on a lot of great reasons why the iPhone seems destined to be a great gaming platform. Not only will it have the hardware chops to play games (including a few input devices that no other handheld gaming consoles have ever had), but Apple's SDK implementation, when it finally gets off the ground in June anyway, seems poised to let almost anyone develop any game ideas they have for the device.

Throw in a great distribution platform and a relative lack of competition on the handheld platform (Nintendo is undoubtedly working on a successor to the DS, but other than that, there are no real next-generation contenders so far), and Apple apparently has the potential to do very well in the gaming market.

In fact, the only problem that Apple might bump up against in building up in the iPhone as a gaming device is the cost -- at $400, it'll be the most expensive gaming handheld out there. But given that it's actually a smartphone, and thus actually benefits from an already installed user base (people who have the iPhone may very well be people who will have never purchased or used a handheld gaming platform before), the price may not be that big an obstacle to ownership.

And if they can build up a respectable library of game titles, they could even brand an iPod touch/phoneless iPhone as a gaming unit, and sell that at a price that would compete with Sony's PSP and Nintendo's DS. Apple has never historically pushed for the forefont of anything in gaming, but if their showing at the SDK event is any indication, they may be lining up to make the iPhone the place to play handheld videogames in the future.

[Via IMG]

Man, remember how excited we were that Guitar Hero III was coming to the Mac at a reasonable time? Yeah, well, guess what. Aspyr has no love for Mac owners. Our friends at Joystiq say that while the PC version is sitting happily on shelves, we're still waiting on the Mac version. "Later this year," Aspyr says. I'll believe it when I see it.

I don't want to get off on a rant here, but who the hell put Aspyr in charge of Mac gaming anyway? Their incompetence has reared its ugly head time and time again. They deliver late, buggy ports all the time, and yet game companies still seem to flock to them for development and publishing jobs.

There is something rotten in the state of Mac gaming, and it is Aspyr Media. Have they ever kept a promise for release? Have they ever delivered a worthy, on-time port? Or have they continually and constantly profited off of placing junk on Apple Store shelves, forever confining Macs to the bottom of the list for gaming platforms? I won't tell you what to buy, but I'm done seeing Aspyr's name on Mac games. Until they show that they actually have the capacity to release a game that even slightly compares to the PC release version (or even shows up on time -- I'd settle for punctuality at this point), the Aspyr name is a complete dealbreaker for me in terms of both interest and purchases. As far as I'm concerned, they're out.

Now this is what I like to see-- Wil Shipley's mind is already working overtime dreaming up fun stuff to do with the iPhone's SDK when it drops in February ("times nicely," he says, "with my being done with Delicious Library 2 and looking for something to do before I start on v3"). As good as a game like Battlefleet is (and it is good-- I finally got my iPhone last weekend, and I've been playing Battlefleet quite a bit), browser games aren't going to cut it. We need games that take advantage of that multitouch screen to track dynamic input, games that take advantage of the fact that we're carrying little computers capable of great graphics around in our pockets, and games that take advantage of the fact that these phones can network like no other.

A platform like the iPhone was made for casual, persistent gaming. I want a little virtual pet in my iPhone, ready for me to take care of and level him up at a moment's notice, polished with quality and creativity. I want awesome little pick-up-and-play games that save my progress and track my stats. Shipley's idea of a virtual collectible card game, or the networking game in which "pets" on iPhones close to each other start fighting is perfect.

I like what the iPhone devs have done so far-- the NES emulator was one of the first iPhone apps that really "caught on," and as soon as it can be done "legally," it probably will be. But this is a system that, if given the right software, could compete with the most popular handheld systems. Even the DS doesn't have multitouch. If the right folks have the right ideas and implement them the right way on the iPhone (and why wouldn't they?), this little gadget is going to become one of the best handheld software platforms (for gaming or anything else) ever made.

John Gruber has posted an interesting analysis of Apple's treatment of Windows in light of Boot Camp and the rampant speculation as to the possibility of Windows virtualization built into Mac OS X 10.5, due out this fall.

While many publications are cranking out guesses (regardless of their education) as to what Boot Camp means to Apple and the future of Mac OS X, Gruber's analysis brings some clarity to the noise as he delves into the various ways that Apple has marketed Boot Camp's abilities, including the interesting language they used on Boot Camp's site, which we briefly pointed out at the product's release.

Check out John's analysis if you're interested in a thorough analysis from a respected Apple pundit on what all this Boot Camp business means.

Inside Mac Games has a nice roundup of reactions from various Mac OS X game developers on the news of Boot Camp. Reactions on the whole are positive concerning the opportunities that Boot Camp offers, and speculation from the likes of Aspyr, MacSoft, Freeverse and Ambrosia are hopeful that this will help boost the Mac gaming platform even faster.

Check out the roundup, as there are some great comments from individuals at these companies that touch on where they think the market is headed, and what we can expect in the not-too-distant future of Mac gaming.

A USB stick, that is. Our pal Jordan Running over at DownloadSquad found a cross-platform version of Firefox you can install on an external drive, such as a USB flash drive, iPod shuffle, or iPod nano, that can be plugged into and run on both Windows and OS X. There's some simple file editing involved, but once you get over that minor hump you'll have one fully portable copy of Firefox - including all your search history, settings, extensions and bookmarks - ready to roll in your pocket that can run on Windows and OS X.

One word of caution: I'm pretty sure that not *all* Firefox extensions are going to work between Windows and OS X. Some extensions are platform independent, others most certainly are not. Your portable Firefox should run just fine on both OS's, but the platform dependent extensions will simply be disabled.