We’ve thrown this around in our head for some time now, and we finally decided to pull the trigger and disable site comments. There was no particular event that forced us to do this, and we weren’t encumbered by moderation problems like much larger sites are. So why bother nixing comments?

Over the past several weeks, we read various opinions across the blogosphere on commenting, and we decided that we agreed with the camp that many single-author sites fall into, which sounds something like this: “This is our blog, and if you want your own voice, comment on your blog.” It’s not a matter of control, or humbleness, but rather a philosophical stance that we believe harbors more useful commentary and discussion.

For one, mendax.org doesn’t get a lot of commentary to begin with. Of the commentary it does get, a good percentage is from people we’re already familiar with, who we already follow on Twitter, or Google Plus, or simply know in real life. Those people can just as easily comment using any of these networks, and we can easily comment back. The rest of the individuals who want to comment probably use one of these social networks also, so it’s easy for them to utilize these networks to comment here if they so choose.

Of the remaining individuals who choose not to have a social networking account, and still want to comment, there’s always e-mail. This should cut down on the number of non-productive comments we get, as feedback that’s direct (either via an @WyldKard at Twitter, else a direct e-mail) tends to be more constructive.

Two, we believe that a lot of useful information sometimes gets lost in a site’s comments. We’ve felt this when leaving commentary elsewhere, and we took a stance some time back that, if we have a real position worth leaving a comment for, we’d sooner write about it at mendax.org and give a link back to the post we’re commenting on. Not only does this help drive traffic to the person we’re commenting to, but it tends to make our response more thought out.

In a way, we liken this to the back-and-forth that philosophers and scientists had yesteryear, which was by way of letter. This slow, almost tedious approach provided both detailed thoughts, as well as a more three-dimensional banter between parties. The same can be done across blogs thanks to trackbacks and tweets, as a more detailed picture of the involved parties can be drawn in the context of their own blogs. As a bonus, this fosters a more personal exchange, and therefore, one less prone to personal attacks.

Three, our own comments to our posts often get lost over time, when a detailed response to a reader could just as easily become its own post. We believe it makes more sense to flush such responses out as a new entry, than to minimize its importance to our position in a sub-comment.

Four, the decision follows a more minimalist approach.The site is simpler, and in our opinion, cleaner because of it. No longer do we need to worry about whether our anti-spam plugins are working, and no longer do we need to worry about catching a comment alert via e-mail, or in WordPress’ admin section. Rather, we can rely on notifications we check for other purposes daily, and be better engaged with our audience. From a plugin perspective, it also means there’s less WordPress needs to handle, and less load the server needs to provide.¹

We’re not necessarily attached to this change long-term, but would like to try it out to see how well it fosters discussion and cross-linking over the near future. If it doesn’t seem to be working out, we can always go back, but this change seems right for what we envision the site to be.

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On Friday, we drove by two Targets, a Best Buy, and an AT&T store to see if anyone was selling the Jawbone UP early. None were. The reports we heard about UPs selling early must have been very isolated experiences, though it seems people had more success at Apple stores, who apparently are more likely to not play by the rules.¹ Both Target stores we visited had places set aside, complete with labels, for the three sizes of the UP initially available, yet employees at neither store could tell me whether they already sold out of their UP stock, or if they hadn’t received any yet. We decided to return to the AT&T store on Sunday morning.

We had sized our wrist using the printable template available at the UP site. This proved to be a waste of time, because not only did the AT&T store have demo units out to try on, but the packaging on each UP box has a plastic template included, so buyers can check for their size when in the store. It’s a nice touch, and shows Jawbone’s attention to detail. So we bought our UP, and set it up in the car on the way home.² We won’t bother to give a full review here, because we found Shawn Wall’s review to be plenty thorough for a product that’s only officially been on shelves for less than two days, but we will respond to some points he made for the sake of completeness.

The rubberized bracelet is bendable to a degree. It’s not the simplest task in the world getting it on or off your wrist, but thankfully you don’t really need to take it off given its waterproof nature.

Jawbone actually calls the bracelet water resistant, and only to a fairly shallow depth. The idea is that you can wash your hands, and even take it into the shower, without worrying about it getting damaged. We even saw a picture of someone wearing it in a shallow pool, so the idea that you can wear it most places is obviously something Jawbone wants customers to understand. But don’t think about taking the UP diving. In fact, the notion of taking this thing in the ocean makes us a bit uncomfortable, and we’d rather someone else tried it first.

When we took a shower this morning, our hesitation for getting the UP wet made us take it off. It’s not like you’ll be missing out on too much activity tracking in those few minutes of the morning anyway. Though, we did notice that the black rubberized band³ attracts dirt pretty quickly, so wearing it into the shower may not be a bad idea after all.

As far as bendability goes, the UP has to be somewhat bendable to get it on and off. But that’s only for the “ends” of the band, and the bendability is temporary. In other words, you can’t bend the UP into a different shape, or make it larger or smaller.

There’s really not much in the way of moving parts here; there is a button at one end that is used for switching modes (more on that later), and the opposite end has a cap that is pulled off to reveal the 3.5mm male jack that is used to sync the device with your mobile phone (currently iPhone-only, but Android “coming soon”).

The one thing we don’t like about the UP is that the button on one end, as well as the cap, is painted silver. We’d much rather have these match the main band colour, as we don’t expecially like the accent color. The cap is only silver on one side though, so if you put it on backwards, it appears black to all but the closest observer. A backwards cap also means you’re not proudly displaying “Jawbone” written on your jewelry; we don’t need to advertise for the company we already supported by buying their product. Depending on how much we dislike the button on the other end being an “off” colour, we may end up painting it black down the road.

One really great feature in regards to sleep is that the bracelet can be used as an alarm clock using vibration. Even better, it supposedly will wake you up out of a light sleep instead of a deep sleep by getting you up a little earlier if it can (by looking at your deep vs. light sleep somehow).

This feature worked well for us this morning, though to be fair, we didn’t sleep all that great last night anyway, and noticeably tumbled around a bunch. In this case, we were quick to feel the pulsing vibration of the alarm, but we wonder if it will wake us on days that we have a deeper sleep. Today, it woke us up 15 minutes early. We’re considering doing a side-by-side test of the UP and Sleep Cycle iPhone app to see how consistent the two are, or if one tends to go off before the other. For now, though, we expect the UP to handle our alarms equally well, if not better, with the only concern being whether the vibration is strong enough to rouse us from a deep sleep.

One of my favorite feature of the device is found in this area. You can set your bracelet to remind you to be active if you are sedentary for too long. The time range is user defined. This is great as it can remind us programmers to get out of our chairs once an hour

We’re rather fond of this feature also. We have it enabled during business hours, and its a great reminder to get up and do something, even if it’s just to pee or get some fresh water.

I do not own another pedometor, Fitbit or anything else along those lines so I cannot speak for the accuracy of the UP. It feels like the numbers are too high though.

Whether they’re too high or not, all we can say is that the “lightly active” category is cake during an average weekend, and that’s not even with workout scheduled. From noon until night yesterday, we scored over 8k steps taken, which means we can easily up our steps goal to the next level. We’ll have to see how our weekend activity compares to the average workday to see whether it’s worth adjusting our goals at this time, though.

The food diary portion of the application is well… a little underwhelming in my opinion.

We haven’t played with this feature too much yet, and honestly, we’re not too tempted considering there’s no way to count calories. We’ve used other apps to compare our caloric intake to our ideal goal (at least 3k calories a day), and the fact that such a simple feature is missing makes us feel like we’d gain little from the UP app’s inclusion of a food log. Maybe once this feature becomes more robust, we’ll be more likely to keep up with it.

Game mechanics are a huge portion to an offering such as the UP, and I feel they currently fall a little short.

We agree with Shawn here, and don’t like how simply accepting a challenge means others who accepted the challenge can suddenly see your progress. We’d prefer “private” challenges that don’t involved any reporting, or at the very least, allow users to select a username instead of their registered (true) name. Sure, the public feed only uses first names, but we’d still prefer a nickname.

The problem of the food log and the game mechanics points at the one flaw the UP currently has, and that’s a very simplistic piece of software. If Jawbone maintains a regular release schedule of updates and bug fixes, however, we can truly see the pair being a useful lifestyle assistant for some time to come.

More thoughts to follow as we spend more time with our new bracelet.

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Searching for a good iPad stand solution that incorporates a keyboard has proven difficult. We settled on the InCase Origami because it’s a somewhat sleek solution that keeps Apple’s bluetooth keyboard protected, and when unfolded offers a convenient stand for the iPad that works in both landscape and portrait modes. The chief downside to this solution is that this setup works incredibly well on a flat surface, but is less useful when used on a lap.¹ That’s because the way the Origami works, the full weight of the iPad below its center, and that means there’s a slight balancing issue when on a surface with a central gap.

While we intially dismissed the WINGStand, we later opted to fund the project at Kickstarter after we realized that it might be a more elegant solution. The WINGstand is a two-part solution, where you slide two clips onto Apple’s bluetooth keyboard. If the clips sit towards the center of the keyboard and iPad, it obviously wouldn’t work on a lap because of the gap between your legs. But if the clips are positioned near the iPad’s corners in landscape mode, then the iPad’s weight is distributed across both legs. Portrait mode still presents a problem in this configuration, but works beatifully on a flat surface.

So for true mobile warriors who find it necessary to type on a physical keyboard resting on your lap, consider the WINGstand as an alternate solution. You’ll lose out on the keyboard protection that the Origami offers, but this shouldn’t be a big deal depending on your briefcase setup.²

As an aside, we’ll mention that the WINGstand project at Kickstarter was a wonderful experience. The timeliness of updates was great, and once shipments went out, funders were given a free WINGstand for their support. The WINGstand comes in two colours, though we didn’t realize that only the black version was “eco-friendly”. While we ordered the white, we got a black one for free, and it turns out that we like it better (even though we have a white iPad).

The WINGstand works with the Apple SmartCover, and will likely work with other thin cases/covers as well, though we tend to let the SmartCover hang over the WINGstand slot instead of keeping it against the iPad in the slot. This provides a greater angle between the iPad screen and keyboard, which we find more useful than the iPad standing straighter with the SmartCover tucked in. Granted, the WINGstand can be rotated around the battery compartment of the Apple bluetooth keyboard to alter the viewing angle of the iPad, but we like to have additional points of contact with the surface we have the iPad and keyboard on.³ Mind you, if you’re not using the WINGstand with a keyboard for some reason, the viewing angle of the iPad is not adjustable, as the clip needs the keyboard for this function.

About the only thing we’d like to see a future version of the WINGstand have is rubber feet. Each clip is currently made out of a single piece of plastic, and for production purposes, that means the cost is kept down. However, on a very smooth surface when the WINGstand is not positioned all the way “down” where it has maximum contact with the surface, the setup has a tendency to want to slide. Rubberized feet would fix this.

For most people, the real trade-off between the Origami and WINGstand is keyboard protection vs ability to adjust viewing angle. Setting the Origami up may be a couple seconds quicker than sliding the WINGstand onto your keyboard, but it’s a negligible difference in time.

For us, the WINGstand will likely replace the InCase Origami for our mobile needs. The Origami may act as a reserve, so we have a place to keep our iPad at our desk when we need to pull the physical keyboard out and don’t want to fiddle with the WINGstand, but unless we anticipate needing the Origami’s keyboard protection when traveling, the WINGstand seems like it offers a more covenient mobile footprint for traveling light.

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As a former World of Warcraft (WoW) gamer, we found ourselves intrigued when Order & Chaos (O&C) was announced for iOS. Gameloft titles are known for cloning gameplay, art, and themes from blockbuster titles, and O&C is no different. The title offers to do one thing that no one else hasn’t, however, and that’s delivering a solid MMO experience to mobile devices¹. And in this respect, Gameloft delivered.

WoW lite.

Let’s get this out of the way immediately: Order & Chaos isn’t going to replace WoW. At least not for most people. That’s because WoW has a rich, established setting that’s interesting the moment you enter the game. O&C may share an aesthetic style, but it’s WoW watered down. The quests are just as simple as vanilla WoW, and while the world appears to have a decent scope to it, the atmosphere isn’t reflective of racial or cultural differences. New characters are basically dropped right into the game, and while WoW eases new players into game mechanics in way that’s mind-numbingly slow your second or third time around, O&C throws you into the mix a bit quicker, expecting you to get the hang of things before you’ve even explored the full interface. So maybe the tutorial could use some buffing up for people new to the genre, but maybe Gameloft expects most people downloading O&C to already be MMO veterans.

Let’s back up a bit and talk about character creation. The game limits players to four races (two per “side”), and players can choose either male or female gender. Model customization is limited to skin and hair color, hairstyle, and face style. There are about four options in each category here, so the customization isn’t horribly robust, but it’s plenty for a first attempt. What surprised us is that there are no racial bonuses, so other than appearance, there’s no benefit to which race you decide to go with.

There are also four classes to choose from, each being available to every race: Warrior, Mage, Monk, and Ranger. We’ve only played around with the Monk thus far, which looks like it can be specced to do extra healing, or be combat-proficient. It’s unclear to us as yet whether O&C is a true Diku-style MMO, but at first glance we didn’t see any threat-reducing spells available at our class trainer. By level nine, we had a one go-to healing spell, and we grouped up twice to take on some named monsters, where we were more useful healing than fighting.

There’s a talent tree for specializing, and it looks pretty deep, so the customization here may be interesting. There are some talent dependencies, and other talents that require a certain amount of pre-spent points in a given tree in order to buy them. Unlike WoW there are two trees per class, with the Monk being the sole healing class. The Ranger looks to be a cross between a WoW Hunter and Rogue, while the Warrior and Mage are more obvious. Again, without any indication of a threat meter, we don’t know whether the Warrior has a taunt-like effect, but we imagine this must exist, if only because his armour is clearly more robust.

Like WoW, each class has a trainer, but unlike WoW, you buy books that contain skills. So rather than buying the skill, you buy the book and then use the book to learn the skill, which is really just a pain in the ass considering the extra step. There are a lot of extra steps like this littered throughout the game, like when you click an item in your inventory, and you have to click another little icon in order to bring up a smaller window comparing it to the item already occupying the respective item slot. These things just go to show how polished WoW was when it came out in 2004, and how even after all this time, a clone isn’t getting everything right.

O&C includes crafting, which seems limited to tailoring, leather-working, and smithing. There’s a quest you can complete which lets you choose one of those three, and we don’t know why you wouldn’t choose the one that lets you craft your own gear. The only gathered we’ve yet seen is mining, and it doesn’t require special gear – you just click on a resource node on the map, and your character pulls a pick-axe out of her ass and starts hammering away.

Yet, decent gameplay.

It’s pretty remarkable that Gameloft got O&C to run well, particularly given the low resolution. The game does feel a tad cramped compared to playing WoW on your big-screen monitor, and we can’t help but think that reducing text sizes and some icons wouldn’t alleviate our virtual claustrophobia a bit. But the gameplay is pretty smooth, with a virtual control-stick appearing on the left side of the screen, wherever you decide to drop your thumb. This only gets in the way when you want to loot a mob whose corpse is on that side of the screen, but it’s not too annoying to move the camera to the left so you can loot easily. Yes, your right thumb controls camera movement, as well as jumping and using your hotkeys on the bottom-right of the screen. There are three hotspots near the jump button where you can place spells and items, but if you need more (and you will), you can place less-used abilities on a shelf that you can pull up or hide on the right side of the screen. This is where we stashed our potions and food, and definitely beats bringing up the player inventory just to use a potion mid-combat.

The lack of addons is actually nice. We don’t know how many hours we spent working on an ideal addon configuration, and compiling it for others to use. Needless to say, it’s somewhat refreshing knowing that every player is on equal footing, and that when you want to play, you don’t have to first update all your addons or mess with your screen layout. Since there’s no O&C version of wowhead, you have help with quests thanks to a blue arrow that points in the direction of a selected quest objective. Presumably, this won’t be as helpful when you have to travel half-way across the world, so paying attention to quest descriptions will be necessary, but in the initial levels of the game, it’s a foolproof guide.

WoW-like “groups” are called “teams” in O&C, and they work decent enough. The chat system includes a global channel, which, as in every game, can be a royal annoyance. This is perhaps even more true in O&C, if only because players come from various countries, using various languages. There are regional servers, but this hasn’t stopped Korean players from creating characters on the American servers, complete with names that we don’t have the proper keyboard set up for, even if we did want to type them.

About the only major gripe we have with the game is the business model. The game costs $7 to download, and after a free, three-month subscription, costs $1/month. That’s not bad, but there’s also a “freemium” model here, where players can buy gold and other items for real money. How this will affect balance is still up-in-the-air, but it seems as though many of the for-pay items are temporary buffs and aesthetic enhancements (like pets)².

Moving forward.

O&C is certainly deep, in the sense that player progression isn’t super-quick. It doesn’t seem to be super-slow, either, but we’ll have to play more to see what kind of curve the game offers. Right now, the game feels like more complex Gauntlet. That is to say, it’s a hack’n slash emporium with various MMO elements, but not offering enough to foster a complex community³. That’s not to say that Gameloft couldn’t expand on O&C as time goes on, offering new abilities, races, classes, emotes, customization, et al. If anything, O&C blows games like Dungeon Hunter out of the water, because of the MMO complexity.

What we hope to see in the next 10 levels or so is more Diku styling, with areas that require grouping and the holy triad of classes (tank, healer, DPS)⁴. We also hope to see varied class builds, and a world with considerable atmospheric changes. The background “lore” has been weak thus far, and we hope this will change; right now, we don’t see a reason to separate races into Order and Chaos factions, because both races are seen pretty close to the get-go near starter areas. With no clear faction contest, Order and Chaos offer even less context than Alliance and Horde in WoW does.

O&C is an awesome next step in the future of mobile MMOs. While the inability to play over 3G is a hit against the game, the fact that you can take an MMO along on an iPhone, iPod, or iPad, is still remarkable. Even better is the proof-of-concept that Gameloft managed here, showing developers that an MMO on these devices is not only possible, but that the control scheme can be good, and needn’t be hampered by the lack of a physical keyboard. So even if O&C fails to deliver an experience even marginally as robust as beta WoW, it’s already challenged other MMO developers to create something better. For that alone, O&C should win a prize.

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Twenty-one months ago, we expressed skepticism over OnLive, the gaming service offering streaming video games over the internet. In that time, OnLive has left beta, and recently offered it’s “microconsole” for $100. Still, OnLive’s growth has been slow, to say the least.

After our article went live, it didn’t take long for someone (Darq) at onlivefans.com to respond.

On the topic of OnLive struggling to have an attractive library, they already have some of the leading names in the gaming industry partnered up with them… I think right now is a poor time to judge the game library. I imagine that there are many skeptics out there that will decide to partner with OnLive and offer their games after the beta this summer.

Twenty-one months later and OnLive has 38 games available (we’re not counting expansions). And if we discount sports titles with “2010″ subtitles that now have 2011 releases, the already-abysmal library is even smaller. That’s today. Is now the right time to judge OnLive’s game library? The sad thing is, how many games were available 21 months ago? Is OnLive even meeting the goal of one new release per month?

Maybe it’s a testament to the service that OnLive was able to bring games like Borderlands and Batman: Arkham Asylum to the table, but these titles do not make up for the many other big-name games that are available for the XBox 360 and the PS3, which are simply missing from OnLive’s library. And, even these former big-name titles are yesterday’s news in the console world, where pre-used prices are less than OnLive’s pricing.

Yes, OnLive is cheaper than a console because there’s no necessary hardware cost if you already own a computer and a controller, but the lack of titles is a serious matter; even the Wii has a more enticing library for hardcore gamers than OnLive does. Maybe with OnLive, you have a few more dollars to spend on games, but since there’s a real limit on how many games you can feasibly buy (never mind how many games you’d actually want to buy from that limited selection), the price savings for OnLive may very well be irrelevant.

One of OnLive’s more promising offerings is the idea of streaming MMOs, since this is a gaming niche that many console gamers simply can’t participate in. Yet, OnLive has nothing to show in this area, either.

I believe you’re exagerating OnLive’s inability to cater to the add-on/modding or customization community. OnLive already has started promoting their SDK, and with their push on a community driven player experience I see them have a large focus on being able to mod for games that wish to support it.

Why still no MMOs On OnLive (a gaming niche that PC gaming is known for)? Not only has OnLive not addressed whether they can realistically support client addons for MMOs, but they don’t even have a single MMO announcement yet. There’s no point in us even addressing addons/mods for other games, since these are clearly a pipedream at this stage in the game.

Does OnLive have potential? Certainly. But given its performance on our home FiOS connection, and the absolute lack of games, the service doesn’t seem to be doing well for itself. If subscription numbers are going up at all, it’s certainly not because of the gaming library, and we can’t imagine people sticking around for more than a couple months if things don’t change for the better soon.

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Following up on our comments regarding the iPad and MacBook Air, we’d like to address Ben Brooks’ arguments about the iPad being more cumbersome in a classroom setup, which we find to be blatantly bunk.

…think about how much more cumbersome setting up an iPad for note taking would be if you add a keyboard dock or bluetooth keyboard to the mix – it really becomes a pain in the ass at that point. No student wants to be the nerd in the corner that takes a few minutes to set up his note taking system before class, and another few minutes to put it away after class.

Maybe Brooks felt overcome by his pro-Air sentiments and reality started to whisper by, but in what world does it take minutes to set up an iPad with bluetooth keyboard? At minimum, we remove the iPad from our briefcase, plop it on the table, then remove our Apple bluetooth keyboard from the same briefcase, and start typing away. Grabbing the keyboard takes about as much times as opening a notebook. Maybe we’ll add another three or four seconds into the mix by grabbing our dock connector to sit the iPad up, but how does anyone joke that the process is a few-minute ordeal?

In an absolute worst-case scenario, we’re pulling three items out of our bag, and going into the iPad’s settings to re-enable Bluetooth (in the event that we were previously using the iPad with the onscreen keyboard). That setup time still takes less than 25 seconds (yes, we timed it). More time than throwing a MacBook on the table and opening it up, maybe, but still not even a minute. And remember that this is a worst-case scenario; if you’re coming from another class and your iPad is already synced with a keyboard, then you’re looking at maybe twice the time it takes to throw a MacBook on the table. Negligible difference.

Carrying a keyboard for the iPad has the same implications for the business traveler as it does for the student – you again become the guy with all these little parts and pieces that need to be assembled just so you can work. Not to mention: on an airplane, where would you prop up the iPad, and where would you rest the keyboard?

An 11″ Air may fit on the little airplane table fine, but so does an iPad sitting in a dock. The iPad is smaller than the Air, remember. Better yet, we can situate the iPad at the edge of the table and place our bluetooth keyboard in our lap, which feels far more ergonomic, and offers a better view of the screen, too. The Air will always be further away because the keyboard needs to be on the table.

And this doesn’t even take into consideration a suitable case, for which there are many. Unlike the Air, the iPad can be configured per a user’s preference on a physical level; whether you use the iPad in landscape mode or vertical, you can get a case for that orientation, or one that does both. Want the iPad to feel like a notebook when on a plane? Get a case that does just that. With the Air, you only have one option.

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When the mp3 was created, it didn’t take long before people wanted a way to play these digital music files in vehicles. Juggling cassettes and compact discs was cumbersome, and “skipping” discs were exceptionally annoying. The mp3 was a perfect solution for audible, mobile content, but the adoption of this format has hardly been seamless.

Around the year 2000, we rocked a hacked Netpliance i-Opener, which we hooked up to our car via auxiliary input, if not through a cassette adapter. The whole point was playing mp3s via Winamp, but our solution required a sizeable footprint near the dash, and didn’t work out long-term. We sported an another auxiliary-in solution with our first mp3 player, the Creative Jukebox. The solution remained poor, and even though a later car of ours sported the ability to play mp3s via compact disc, the interface for this implementation remained poor, just as it still is in most disc-based mp3 solutions today.

Even when we picked up a Volkswagen R32 in 2007 and had a built-in iPod interface, we weren’t happy – the console-based solution meant that we had no access to the actual iPod controls, and instead had to use the poor deck-based interface of the stock audio system. Even in 2007, some developers still refused to show full song identifiers on LCD screens, let alone a truly integrated iPod solution. At least the system functioned with our 2G iPhone, but upon upgrading to a 3GS iPhone, the iPod interface stopped working as a charger. Worse yet, audio through the iPod interface would only work via the main music app, which meant that apps like Pandora wouldn’t push audio through the car’s speakers. So we were back to using a basic aux-in solution.

Some people maintain that given how poor most car stereos are with handling mp3s, that we should continue relying on disc-based solutions. But why rely on an older technology that didn’t even work well at its peak, when adequate technology for a solid digital music experience exists today?

The turn-around for us was playing with a stock Toyota sound system in a 2010 Prius. Between an aftermarket ProClip mount and power cable, and A2DP bluetooth audio, the ability to listen to our digital audio on our iPhone via the vehicle sound-system is nearly flawless; as soon as we start the car up, the Prius finds our iPhone and immediately begins playing from where it left off, not only via the iPod app, but via Pandora as well.

Why rely on an aftermarket iPod interface when the one on your iPhone works fantastic as-is? With the various mounting options ProClip offers, for nearly every modern vehicle out there, the only obstacle is a sound-deck sporting bluetooth audio. That’s a pretty cheap requirement for production, too, so it’s nearly inexcusable for audio decks not to incorporate this feature for all but the most bare-bones of systems. Props to Toyota for figuring this out.

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We haven’t weighed in on Microsoft’s Kinect (formerly “Project Natal”) because we haven’t seen anything exciting about it yet. Maybe it’s better than Sony’s Move, and advancing what the Wii provided from a technological perspective. But let’s step back for a moment and look at where this all began, with Nintendo’s current console offering.

We picked up a Wii on release. We waited in line overnight, for crying out loud. And we did thoroughly enjoy the initial titles we played, but let’s be clear: they weren’t groundbreaking titles. Good titles with motion control, yes, but not groundbreaking titles in and of themselves. Maybe motion control is what made the Wii unique, and sold casual gaming to the masses, and maybe even pushed consoles into family entertainment centers where parents were previously skeptical of consoles as family-friendly entertainment. But as far as titles go, there’s no single Nintendo Wii game that’s more fun to play than any great title on any other console lacking motion control. (For example, the original Mario Kart was no less fun than the current Mario Kart is today.)

Yes, we’ll make a small exception for workout titles; EA Sports is a fantastic at-home workout for those without a gym who want to get into better cardiovascular shape, and traditional control schemes obviously wouldn’t work in this regard. But EA Sports, and games of this ilk, are not exactly fun gaming titles in the traditional sense.

So now with Kinect set to release late this year, we have another motion control scheme, albeit without a physical controller necessary. And this may work well for casual games, and probably pretty good for workout titles also (there will, after all, be an EA Sports title for Kinect). But for other gaming? If anything, Microsoft is looking to grab more Wii users and capitalize on the fact that a good chunk of gamers own both a Wii, and an XBox/PS3. Capturing the “casual” gaming crowd is an expected move for Microsoft, who has already moved in that direction during the XBox dashboard re-do (avatars, et al).

We’re highly skeptical that Kinect will bring anything worthwhile to the table if one already has a Wii sitting next to their XBox; Kinect is the Wii peripheral for the XBox. It’s a cool idea, but nothing more than a novelty, which conveniently comes out mid-way through the XBox 360 lifecycle. If anything, it combats Nintendo’s move of potentially releasing an HD Wii, forcing Nintendo to up their ante and delay a new product release more in line with Microsoft and Sony’s next generation, else simply throw in the towel like Sega did after the Dreamcast.

Either way, the Kinect alone won’t win Microsoft the battle here; the Kinect is a reactive move by Microsoft. Not in the way that the Move is Sony’s reaction to the Wii (which is playing catch-up more than anything else), but in the sense of allowing the XBox to be a competitor to the Wii on all angles – not just meeting the Wii’s capabilities, but arguably exceeding them without adding cumbersome, physical controllers. This move will likely pay off in keeping the 360 situated as the premiere US console, but probably won’t force Nintendo out of the console business entirely, unless Microsoft is able to capture some choice IP for Kinect-based games.

We just don’t see the Kinect doing much to sway the console wars one way or the other at this point. The Wii has already been widely adopted, and so the potential installation-base in Wii-less households appears very small. Unless there are some killer titles out there that make having Kinect outrageously desireable (and we haven’t seen any yet), why drop the money on Kinect?

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We didn’t give much thought to iPhones overheating last summer, when reports were going around about iPhones shutting down after a certain internal heat threshold was met. But that’s because we never encountered this behavior, since we evidently didn’t put our iPhone through these types of paces. Things took a turn when we began using our iPhone 3GS as a daily GPS device.

The problem.

In the car, while we’ve experienced exceptional heat emanating from our iPhone 3GS, we still haven’t witnessed the device overheating and shutting down the active program. We guess that’s because of where we mounted the iPhone; it sits right in front of a vent. During summer months on the east coast, we usually run with the air conditioner on, so the iPhone isn’t at the same temperature as the outside world. Since it sits so close to a vent, it’s also getting the benefit of air flow, which isn’t the situation in our second use case.

On a motorcycle, our iPhone is more exposed to the elements, or at least the heat. This is doubly-problematic because air flow is effectively neutralized since a motorcycle-mounted iPhone is generally enclosed for protection, so the iPhone doesn’t benefit from the motorcycle’s movement. On hot days, this means that whatever case the iPhone is in acts like a greenhouse. Eventually, east coast summers with temperatures in the 80s will shut down any iPhone mounted to a motorcycle, making navigation-by-iPhone impossible.

Possible solutions?

Moving the iPhone to an unenclosed case, snapped into some sort of mount, may be a part-time solution. Mounts like this exist, but their protection is questionable; do you really trust a mount where the iPhone “snaps in” and “snaps out” by pressing a plastic tab? With the vibrations common on motorcycles (not to mention bumps from off-road riding), it becomes a huge question as to whether such a mount won’t suddenly pop an attached iPhone off mid-ride.

A better mount system might still work here, but an off-the-shelf solution doesn’t seem to exist. Touratech makes decent aluminum mounts for other GPS devices, but not for the iPhone (probably because the iPhone isn’t water-tight).

Relocating the iPhone’s mounting location may be possible with the proper hardware. For example, if the iPhone could be mounted in a position that offers more shade, where it’s not always getting direct sun, perhaps it would last longer before shutting down. Still, this likely wouldn’t fix the problem entirely, and GPS coverage may be hit too.

Another solution may be to simply keep the iPhone in a vented pocket, so it’s not getting sun and benefits from airflow directed against the rider. Unfortunately, this means the rider only has access to audible cues, can’t see the map, and needs to pull the iPhone out whenever the navigation software needs to be accessed.

In the end, no obvious solution exists if one wants to use iPhone-based navigation year-round on a motorcycle (at least in areas where it gets hot).

The 4G iPhone.

The latest iPhone, releasing later this week, uses the A4 processor, which we know to be faster than previous iPhone processors. This new iPhone should also sport better power efficiency, which may imply cooler operation. However, we couldn’t find any claims as to how much cooler the 4G iPhone runs compared to the 3GS. For us, this becomes a major factor in whether or not we upgrade, because if this new iPhone can handle higher heat environments, then it immediately challenges other GPS units for motorcycle use; potentially, with an aluminum case, heat dissipation may be easier for this latest iPhone.

For those early adopters, drop us a line to let us know if the 4G iPhone seems to run cooler than the 3G or 3GS.

Update (06/23/2010): TiPb is proposing that [Apple may have down-clocked](http://www.tipb.com/2010/06/23/iphone-4-teardown-apple-a4-1ghz/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed: TheIphoneBlog (TiPb: iPhone, iPad, iPod)&utm_content=Google Reader) the A4 processor in the 4G iPhone in order to get better battery life and “lower the thermal impact.” This would mean that the new iPhone has more RAM than the 3GS, but a slower processor, explaining why the iPad may still be faster than the 4G iPhone. This still begs the question as to how much cooler the 4G iPhone would run than the 3GS, however.

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While the iPad won’t sport much more than a dock connector for interfacing with other devices, that dock connector may be pretty flexible. In addition to the obvious use for syncing iTunes media to and from a Mac, Apple will offer numerous adapters. For instance, there will be a camera “kit” consisting of an SD and USB adapter, presumably to download pics and videos without having to get a Mac. This means that on-release, the iPad will have access to external media, as well as an external keyboard, all via the dock connector.

The obvious question is whether external storage access will be extremely limited. We guess it will be, but if the iPad could write to external storage devices, that would open a whole new world of possibilities for the device, making it ever-so more versatile. Otherwise, the iPad relies exclusively on networking to transfer files to and fro. There are other interesting possibilities for future accessories, however, which could leverage the USB adapter, or otherwise leverage the 30-pin iPod dock connector. Two such examples follow.

iSight, anyone?

One of the disappointments people have with the iPad is the lack of a front-facing camera. Some will remember that PowerBooks didn’t have iSight cameras embedded in the display frame, but that the original iSight form factor was rather large, and slide onto a laptop via a plastic attachment. These iSights sold for over $75 on release, and releasing a new, smaller version, is a financially considerate move for Apple, who may not want to tack on more money to the iPad’s currently alluring price-tag.

We can see Apple releasing an iSight attachment to the iPad later this year, or early next year, once the mobile version of OS X is more mature, and when its distribution includes a mobile iChat application. The camera could simply orient itself to however the iPad is positioned, and potentially, this attachment could be used on the iPhone and iPod Touch as well, since the connector is the same. Releasing such an iSight would allow it to be used on all mobile Apple devices, and test the popularity of video conferencing on mobile devices before Apple decides to include it in a later iPad revision. In the meantime, the fact that the iSight remains an out-of-box option for the MacBook lineup serves as just another example as to how the iPad fills a category between the iPhone/iPod Touch and the MacBook line.

Drawing tablets.

Apple’s demo of the redesigned Brushes app made for a great presentation, but for many artists, the feel of a pen/brush, along with pressure sensitivity, is important. There’s a clear market for drawing tablets out there, which is why Wacom products sit in every Apple store we’ve ever stepped in. If such tablets could be used with an iPad, we could certainly see many artists jumping on board Apple’s new product niche, as the portability of such a canvas, with a drawing interface aimed at the more artistic crowd, makes for a solid combination. Rather than sitting in front of a computer at one’s desk, artists could bring their iPad/tablet combination outside, to practically anywhere, and expect amazing battery life in a more inspiring location.

Understandably, Apple is all about pushing multitouch, but there’s no reason that the two input mechanisms can’t go hand-in-hand. Literally smudge paint with one’s fingers, but finely draw lines via the tablet, in a more controlled and usual fashion that many artists are used to. Turn the iPad as though manually plopping a canvas on its side, and continue working with virtual brush. Even as non-artists, we find the prospect enticing.

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