Shigeru Miyamoto has confirmed that Nintendo’s upcoming iPhone game Super Mario Run will require an always-on internet connection to play, which Miyamoto said is “a requirement that’s been built into the game to support security.” The security element is one of the big reasons why the company decided to launch on iPhone first, Miyamoto said, and it helps the game’s three separate modes function together while always keeping the software secure and safe, preventing piracy in the process.
I get why Nintendo is doing this but it makes the game less functional for a lot of people. Not everyone has a solid internet connection or unlimited data plans on their iOS devices.
The Christmas tree: it’s a quintessential part of the holiday season. But it turns out not all festive trees are made equal — at least not when it comes to environmental friendliness.
So, which is better for the planet — a freshly cut tree or a fake one?
The short answer, which may come as a surprise to some, is a real tree. But it’s actually more complicated than that.
No surprise to me. I’m from Nova Scotia, a large tree farming area. I won’t allow a fake Christmas tree in my home for aesthetic and economic reasons.
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The first thing to say about The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York” is that it is absurd when described in words.
Take an ever-soused Irish folk/punk band that includes a tin whistle player named Spider. Put them within a soaring orchestral arrangement, and task the shambolic front man with delivering a Christmas song. Make it a duet with a stage-fright afflicted singer who never quite became the pop starlet she wanted to be. The result is possibly the most sentimental Christmas song ever constructed, yet loved by people who spend December telling you, oh, how they despise sentimental Christmas songs.
While I wouldn’t call it the “greatest Christmas song of all time”, it is a great song and the article does a good job of describing its power.
You know how when you sit on your couch, the Wi-Fi on your laptop cuts out? Or when you’re in the bathroom your phone refuses to connect? From Google to Netgear, everyone’s rolling out expensive “Mesh Network” kits that promise to fix Wi-Fi dead zones. But only some people should shell out the $300-$500 for one.
Mesh networks have become the “new cool thing” for tech blogs to talk about and the article does a good job explaining what they are. But it also points out they are really only useful in very specific situations. It’s why I don’t think, hope and rumor to the contrary, Apple is intending to replace their wireless products with mesh networking ones.
Most Christmas customs in the US share two characteristics. First, it’s usually hard to pin down their origins to a single source. And second, their roots almost always reach back to religious custom — Christmas being the second most important feast day (behind Easter) on the Christian calendar — but have been happily adapted and, in some cases, scrubbed of religious content to make them more broadly palatable.
The celebration of Advent — whether with wreaths in church or calendars at home — is among these customs. On the one hand, it’s one of the major seasons celebrated by most Christian churches in the Western tradition: Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and many additional Protestant churches mark the roughly month-long period with special observance.
But the word Advent comes from the Latin word for “arrival” — adventus — which means non-Christians can celebrate it simply as a fun countdown to Christmas. In that respect, it’s also become a marketing opportunity for retailers, mostly through Advent calendars, which have been around since the 19th century and have, of late, grown steadily more, shall we say, creative.
Many of us (non-religious) people know of the Advent Calendar but do you know its origins? When I was a kid, it was just a way to get more chocolate.
A mirror, with built in display elements, all based on iOS 10.
From the Apple Mirror site:
Design includes the time and date in the upper right hand corner and weather in the top left. All apps can be moved around and placed anywhere on the mirror. After 45 seconds of inactivity the mirror goes to sleep (appears as any ordinary mirror), simply tap anywhere to wake back up and resume use. Some useful things you can do with this mirror: Request an Uber, watch Netflix, read the news, control smart thermostat / light bulbs, control Sonos speaker system and more.
Seems to me, there was an Android project a while back that did something similar. Search, search, search. Ah, here it is.
Zac Hall, writing for 9to5Mac, details his three weeks of experience with his 15 inch Touch Bar MacBook Pro. Zac really puts his machine through its paces and focuses on the details. Definitely worth the read if you are considering a Touch Bar Mac.
Apple recently made a quiet update to its Apple Support site, introducing a new feature that allows customers to find and schedule repairs for iPhones, Macs, and iPads from Apple Authorized Service Providers.
When troubleshooting a product, choosing “Bring in for Repair” after going through Apple’s support prompts now brings up all repair centers near a customer, including Apple’s own retail stores and retail locations where customers can get repairs from Apple Authorized Service Providers.
And:
In addition to including all nearby Apple Authorized Service Providers, the new repair site also lists availability, so customers can find the fastest repairs and get same-day service in many locations. There’s even an option to book a repair right from the site.
On Thursday, YouTube, which is by most estimates the most popular destination for music online, announced that it had reached a settlement with the National Music Publishers’ Association, a trade group, over the complex issue of unpaid songwriting royalties.
And:
In a persistent problem for the online music business, large numbers of songs have missing or incorrect data about their songwriters and which music publishers represent them, leaving what is widely estimated to be millions of dollars unpaid.
And:
The agreement with YouTube, which is owned by Google, will give participating publishers — the companies that traditionally manage songwriting rights, which are separate from those of recordings — access to a list of songs for which YouTube has missing or incomplete rights data. YouTube will then pay any accrued royalties from a fund it has set aside for this purpose.
The best solution would be to get the data right in the first place, to make sure the songwriters who wrote the song that drives YouTube’s music views get paid properly. But this seems a step in the right direction.
It’s a jazz lover’s dream come true. Created by recording engineer William Savory, the Savory Collection includes more than 100 hours of recordings made from live New York City radio broadcasts between 1935 and 1941 and never heard since their initial airing. Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Fats Waller, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson, Django Reinhardt, Coleman Hawkins, Louis Jordan, Lennie Tristano and Bunny Berigan are all showcased in The Savory Collection.
Tech giant Apple argued in a Beijing court on Wednesday that its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus mobile designs do not copy a Chinese product and should be allowed to be sold on the Chinese mainland.
There was no verdict announced, but they argued the case in court for 8 hours.
The digital music marriage that many wanted to happen isn’t happening after all. Spotify has given up on its latest effort to buy SoundCloud following months of talks between the two, according to a source at Spotify who is familiar with discussions.
I never understood the appeal of this deal for Spotify.
Apple buys a lot of companies, but it doesn’t talk much about them, making it hard to keep track. So we put together nine of its acquisitions reported this year. This list is not exhaustive, we know for sure some purchases have never been revealed.
As expected, artificial intelligence companies remain the dominant category, but the list also includes a TV series spinoff and an education-tech startup.
Always interesting to track these and see if they lead to anything directly.
It’s the bane of every web surfer, the internet’s version of fingernails on the chalkboard. Click almost any link that dates back to pre-2005 and brace for the inevitable: “HTTP 404 Not Found.”
Anyone who’s spent time near an internet connection is familiar with the 404 error, a webserver’s way of saying you’ve reached a dead end. What’s less well known is that this very error is what allowed the World Wide Web to exist in the first place.
I didn’t realize the number 404 actually stood for something.
I was captivated when Apple opened its first set of physical retail stores in 2001. But in the last few years, the stores have really turned me off. I don’t like stepping into them. They don’t make me feel welcome — rather they make me feel like I need a good reason to be there. Of course I have a reason to be there, but I don’t like the fact that I have to declare it upon entry.
The irony of this web site’s name is not lost on me. This is a lot of noise that brings to mind Yogi Berra: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
Greenery is a fresh and zesty yellow-green shade that evokes the first days of spring when nature’s greens revive, restore and renew. Illustrative of flourishing foliage and the lushness of the great outdoors, the fortifying attributes of Greenery signals consumers to take a deep breath, oxygenate and reinvigorate.
Arguably one of the most influential figures in the history of gaming, this is a big moment for Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo. From the Verge interview:
“Super Mario Run is going to introduce millions of more people to the fun of Mario, and it’ll become the entry point for them,” Miyamoto explains. “And then the question becomes, once you’ve gone through that entry point, then what comes next? Is it a more traditional Mario experience? Is it something like the Mario Galaxy games? We’ll then have to look at what it is these new fans want from a Mario game, and we’ll continue to see Mario evolve in that way.”
Nintendo is exploring some new paths (Investment in Pokemon Go, Nintendo Switch, and porting Mario to iOS), all of which seem to be working very well.
Looking forward to next Thursday’s rollout of Super Mario Run and, in March, to the Nintendo Switch and the open world version of The Legend of Zelda.
May 2, 2006: The first spot from the “Get a Mac” campaign, “Better,” airs in the US. It is one of eight spots that Steve Jobs approved out of the 12 that were produced from the first three-day shoot.
This was delightful, infectiously fun. Turns out, Jimmy Fallon is pretty good at this game. Great marketing for both Super Mario Run and the Nintendo Switch, which they showed off midway through the video, with Jimmy getting a chance to explore the open world of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the Switch.
I love that they had Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto in the audience to watch. My favorite part of the show was Miyamoto playing the Super Mario theme with the Roots.
Nintendo’s Super Mario Run will debut one week from today, an iOS exclusive at least through the end of the year.
Interested in the gameplay? The video embedded below will take you through the highlights. To me, this feels like a Nintendo game worth of Super Mario. The fit and finish is just what you’d expect, the sound effects spot on.
