waffle

Strange but true.

(Pictured, courtesy Gizmodo: All known 30GB Zunes, failing.)

Moreover, I advise that the iPhone software platform must be opened.

I’ve previously posted things as fact about MWSF, but those weren’t my predictions. Once again, there’s a difference between me thinking something is likely to happen and me being convinced that someone else isn’t lying in telling me something.

So here are my predictions. These are ANDs, not ORs. If any one of these turns out not to be announced during the week of MWSF, partial fail.

• iPhone nano. With two case manufacturers having shown signs, I think it’s likely, but I’m still really unsure how they’re gonna shrink the product. They can’t shrink it by lots until the screen is made useless, and if anything, the damn thing needs more technology in it, not less.

• Mac mini remade. Either a smaller version that’d go down in price or one that’s noticeably more like the revered “xMac” (more ports, better, maybe even putty-knife-less, expandability) that’d go up in price.

• 10″-ish tablet with something that qualifies as “full Mac OS X”. I believe in my source. My source said “the first half of 2009″, and this could perhaps be a special event of its own later in the year, but I think it’ll go down now while the world’s watching anyway.

  In my mind (and for the purposes of scorekeeping), “full Mac OS X” doesn’t disqualify something that’s Mac OS X and UIKit, but it does disqualify something that’s not full Mac OS X, where one or several functionality pieces that would make sense (say, manual software installation) have been ripped out and possibly replaced (say, by some App Store-like creature); and by “make sense”, I mean that not including mouse drivers for a multi-touch tablet wouldn’t qualify as crippling anything of being “full Mac OS X”. I am now done qualifying my earlier statement.

• Apple TV ignored or dramatically revised. Dramatically revised means “unconditionally a bigger revision than last year’s remake”. It still hasn’t set the world ablaze.

• iLife ‘09, even if it’s not released immediately, or only works with Snow Leopard.

• Snow Leopard preview. A price is announced (and if the price is $0, I still count that as “announcing a price”), a release quarter (or finer) is given, features are demonstrated or a speedup comparison chart (2x or faster or they wouldn’t bother) is presented.

• More DRM-free iTunes music. At least one of the three abstaining major labels, likely two or more.

• MacBook Pro 17″ in a unibody case. Possibly labelled something like “thinnest full-featured notebook ever”.

• Steve Jobs on stage some time during the keynote, possibly to present “one more thing”.

Moreover, I advise that the iPhone software platform must be opened.

Rolando is quite possibly the best iPhone game yet. I don’t care if it’s a Loco Roco ripoff — which I’m not even sure of, since the last time I touched something called PSP, it was Paint Shop Pro 9, but which I don’t suspect since the key pieces are missing in PSP’s hardware.

Look at Katamari, which was finally released for the iPhone. By any means an interesting and different game in its original guise, but on the iPhone it’s slow as molasses and you have to border on turning away the screen from view to perform a fucking 45° turn. Laggy and unplayable, and this is a good game in a bad port. And I’ve seen worse by far.

Rolando was conceived and made for this purpose, and it came out of yet another independent company. This hit ratio isn’t a coincidence. Not every independent game is a hit, but nearly every hit is from an independent company.

But I digress. If you need something to do during your days off this and next week, try beating Rolando. It’s not perfect, but it is that precise mix of neat gameplay, fitting looks and calibrated difficulty that’s maddening and makes you want to improve. Rolando, Mega Man 9 and Portal are the three best games I first played during 2008.

Moreover, I advise that the iPhone software platform must be opened.

Merb to be merged into Ruby on Rails 3. Neat.

Having source and a permissive license available is good for the health of a project for two reasons: if everyone deserts it, it can be picked up and continued; and if it starts focusing on the wrong thing, it can be forked and continued. Having parallel projects are good to the extent that they focus on different things.

Merb and Rails have different outlooks but their implementations by necessity overlap greatly. Their different focus is mostly the result of a slightly different mindset. From the beginning, Rails was extracted from a product, and the decoupling has been a continual process. If Rails is decoupled further, the parts of the framework that you have to use will be able to shrink and you’ll be able to plug in parts to a much greater extent, fulfilling Merb’s stated difference from the Rails philosophy. This can happen while Rails continues to act like Rails. Assuming they can pull this off, Rails and Merb users both benefit and there’s no duplication of effort.

Moreover, I advise that the iPhone software platform must be opened.