PlayBook OS 2.0

Here are my first impressions of the new OS 2.0 that RIM released yesterday:

Bad
The soft Power Off in the apps section still doesn't work. Tapping "Stand By" "Turn Off" or "Lock" will all just restart the PlayBook. That's really unforgivable. It's been a problem for months now. At the very least, they should've gotten rid of the icon.

There's still no way to rename or reorganize bookmarks in the web browser. I can't possibly be the only one who cares about that, and it's not exactly a difficult thing to fix.

The video player will no longer play certain videos. I'm not sure why, but I'm getting a Media Error and a message that says "Please close some applications to free up resources, then try again." even without any applications open. It may have to do with the file size.

Good
The browser itself seems to be a little faster and more responsive, which is good.

There's a built-in file manager, which is really useful, and the spreadsheet and document apps have been combined under Docs to Go. Slideshow to Go seems to be gone entirely, but I never used it, so I don't know how much of a loss that is. There's also Print to Go which allows you to transfer files wirelessly to a computer.

While the app listing used to have pages for "All" "Games" "Media" and "Favorites" now it just has pages. That's probably a better way to go about it. Favourites can now be added to a bar that appears above the regular app listing, so your favourite apps will always be up at the top.

The calendar and email apps seem to work well. I'm not a power user, so I don't know how much use I'll get out of them, but it's nice to know that they're finally there.

App World has also been updated. It's a little slow as of this writing, but that may be because it's seeing a lot of use. The new design splits off apps and games into separate categories, giving a little extra space for new and top releases.

The YouTube app got an upgrade, and now the search function seems to work a bit better. Also it has the option to adjust the resolution at which you view the video, which is good for people with limited bandwidth.

When you minimize(not really minimize but shrink, I guess) an app the title bar with the little, tiny x, has been replaced with a big grey bar with a big, fat x. Aesthetically, it's not as pleasing, but it makes it a lot easier to close apps, so I call it a plus.

There's a PressReader app, which I suppose is for reading newspapers and magazines and so forth, and a straight up news app, that just delivers you interesting news stories. The defaults for the news app seem to be focused on US news, but you can switch up the feeds you get. The options screen is just an acknowledgment screen for the app's author, which is a little strange.

Overall, I'd say it's a decent improvement over the original OS, but some simple features are still missing. If you need some kind of numerical rating, then I give it *** 1/2 out of *****

Time

It's 2012, and that puts us about 25 years after the start of the golden age of the NES. Classics like Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out all came out around 1986-87.

Metroid takes around an hour to complete if you know what you're doing. Even an average player can finish Punch-Out in around 40 minutes. Heck, if you finish the game, it's not even really possible to take more than about an hour and a half in a single play-through, and a good chunk of that will be spent watching fighter intros. The Legend of Zelda theoretically takes a little longer, but it's still only really a two-hour game.

Back in the olden days, games made up for such short play times by having cheap instant kills and punishing difficulty that wasn't so much fun as it was incredibly frustrating. These days that kind of thing won't fly, so the minimum time you'll get out of a full-length retail game is probably about six hours, with most coming in more like 8-10; and that doesn't include multiplayer. Despite the increase in length and vast improvement in graphics and design, a new game will still cost around $60, just like it did in 1987, so you're getting a lot more bang for your buck. Games for handheld devices may not look quite as nice, but they're the same length and generally less than $40, so they're still a pretty good deal.

When it comes to mobile apps, things are a bit different, though. People seem to want a lot more from the play time:dollar ratio. If an app costs a dollar, then even if it's not quite as pretty as a game for a handheld device (and in some cases, they can be just as good-looking), it should conceivably be able to get away with only about fifteen minutes of gameplay; maybe half an hour. But that's not nearly enough for most people. Most people want hours of enjoyment for a mere 99 cents (and a good chunk of them are only begrudgingly paying that small amount), which means developers either have to include far more content than they normally would, or they have to fall back on that old game design stalwart: repetition. Punch-Out takes 40 minutes instead of 30 because you fight a few of your opponents twice, and Metroid is the king of backtracking; and a lot of apps will have the user do the same thing over and over and over again just to pad out the running time. It's not actually more content, but it seems like it is, and that's what's important.

Basically, what I'm saying is that apps are an excellent use of your entertainment dollar, but people don't seem to realize that, and they always want more.

Trying and Buying

Not every app I make is popular. That may be hard to believe, but it's true. Some things I think people will like just don't gain any traction, and languish in obscurity.

When that happens, there are two things I've done to try to boost sales (or get any sales at all): 1)I put out a stripped-down, free version with annoying popups that ask users to buy the full version. 2)I set the app to Try & Buy. They seem to have approximately the same efficacy. The free version will get downloaded many more times than the Try & Buy version, but the total adoption numbers for the full versions of the apps seem to end up about the same.

Putting out a free version is simple, but (in the past, and possibly still today) the Try & Buy system on BlackBerry App World is a bit broken. So, here are some tips to get people Trying & Buying:

1)Start your app as Try & Buy app rather than switching an existing app.
This isn't strictly necessary, but if you know you're going to go the Try & Buy route, it can make things a bit easier.

2)Be wary of your version numbers
There have been problems with users being able to upgrade to the full version without paying, or downloading the paid version and getting the trial. Make sure your full version has a higher version number than your trial all the way down to the packaging level.

3)Mind the check boxes
You need a trial version and a full version, and you need to make sure App World knows which is which. When I uploaded my first Try & Buy app, I didn't notice that there was a box labelled "Is this a trial version?" or something to that effect, and I screwed things up and had to do some repackaging and reuploading.

4)Have a link inside your app
Make sure your trial version has an obvious link to your full version in it. I use a big red button that says "Upgrade" You can link directly to your app in App World by using an URL that looks something like this: appworld://content/67275 Linking to the app's page on the web will also work, but brings up the browser first and is not quite as elegant.

5)Test if for yourself
After your app goes live, be sure to download the trial version and test uploading to the full version. If it doesn't work, take the app down immediately and try to figure out why. Nothing's worse than people who want to give you money being unable to do so.

Inches and Miles

There's an old saying that says "Give them an inch, and they'll take a mile." Basically, it means that people are greedy and if you give anything, they'll just keep taking and taking. In terms of app development, it goes more like "Give them an inch, and they'll complain that you haven't given them a mile."

For example, I have an app that uses some random images as the background just for colour. It would be reasonably simple for me to give people the ability to snap a picture with the camera on their device and use that as a background. I won't, though. While the vast majority of people would be either happy to have the new feature, or at the very least, indifferent, a small minority would complain that they can't just use any image file on their device as the background. And, unfortunately, that minority is far more likely to rate an app than other people.

As a developer, I need to constantly be aware of people comparing what they have to what they could have. Right now, I have a dozen or so backgrounds, and most everyone seems to compare that to having no background at all, so I come out on top. But, if I let them snap a picture and use that as the background, then suddenly they'd be comparing that to using any photo they want as a background; a comparison which does not favour me.

Sure, some people might wonder if it would be nice to use their own photos as backgrounds anyway, but as long as I'm doing my best not to put that idea in their heads, it'll be a much smaller number than if I gave them the new feature. Essentially, some people are never satisfied, so it's best not to let them know what they don't have.

Privacy Policy for BB Apps

Your privacy is important to you, and it's important to me, too. In general, I have no need of or interest in your data. However, to make things more explicit...

I will not, under any circumstances, collect, sell, trade, transmit, or otherwise make use of any personal or identifying information for personal purposes.

In the event that certain information is required for an in-app purchase or other type of purchase on BlackBerry World/BlackBerry App World, such information will only be transmitted in whatever manner is necessary to complete the purchase.

Under some circumstances, certain applications may require access to your device's file system beyond simple storage of application data. In these cases, explicit permission will be requested, and only files related to the application will be read/written.

This policy is subject to change from time to time at my sole discretion. Your continued use of any applications will constitute acceptance of these changes.

Psychic Test

Do you think you're psychic? There's only one way to find out: Test yourself.
Psychic Test keeps a running tally of just exactly how psychic you are from 0-100%.
Now with three ways to test your psychic abilities:

Pick a card from the standard 52-card deck and see if you get the value, suit, or both correct.

Or, pick a number from 0-9 and see if you can get the number right, or even just whether it's even or odd.

Or, just flip a coin!

This is the app that features not one, but two kinds of 3D graphics. And it's only 0.99! How can you beat that deal?

Two Kinds of 3D

I am in no way a great artist. Sure, I can cobble something together if necessary, but most of the time I'd prefer to farm my art work out to someone else. However, since artists can be fickle, I've been working on improving my art skills, so that one day I can truly be a one-man design house.

For my latest app, I found it necessary to create some 3D graphics, which was a challenge because I'm not terribly good at creating 2D graphics, so adding an entire extra dimension was quite daunting. Fortunately what I was doing wasn't too complicated, but it still required two entirely different techniques, which is surprising since all I wanted to do was flip two things: a coin, and a playing card.

Flipping a coin and flipping a card actually aren't as similar as one would expect at first glance. Whereas a coin is always either heads or tails, a card has 52 different possibilities, and although it's relatively flat, a coin is a full 3D object and a card is more or less a plane.

The coin took a bit of learning, but was fairly simple. All I had to do was create the appropriate model in Blender, skin it, create a simple rotation animation, and then output the frames. Ultimately, drawing the faces of the coin took longer than creating the animation.

The card was a different matter, though. With 52 possibilities, it would've been far too time-consuming and required too much storage space(although that's a relatively small matter nowadays) to pre-render every card, so I had to make them during run time. Luckily, there are a few tricks available to make things easier.

Since a playing card is roughly rectangular, and fairly thin, it can be treated as a 2D rectangle for rotation purposes, and one way to fake rotation of a rectangle is to simply change its scale in one axis: as it rotates, less and less is visible, so shrinking it in one axis gives the same general effect. But, it still won't look quite right. As a rectangle rotates, one edge gets closer to the viewer, and the other edge gets further away. To simulate that effect, you can subtly skew the rectangle as it 'rotates' so that the 'forward' edge is slightly lower than the 'rear' edge. It took a little tweaking, and a bit of math to make sure the card rotated around its midpoint, but with those two tricks, achieving the desired effect wasn't terribly complex. Generating the appropriate faces was kind of a pain, but once I had that down, it was a simple matter of swapping the back of the card for the front while it was midway through its rotation (and thus scaled down to 0) and then reversing the process.

All in all, I'd say I prefer the Blender method for its simplicity, but using trickery and a little math to flip the card was a lot more satisfying.