With the release of jailbreak-based BluTrol and untethered jailbreak for all iOS devices (iPhone 3GS, 4, 4S; iPad 1, 2; iPod touch 3rd, 4th gen) running the most current iOS version, 5.0.1, if you are seriously into iOS gaming, you can't afford NOT taking a closer look at either the iCade arcade console (if you have an iPad 1/2) or iControlPad (if you don't have an iPad and/or want something portable).
You may have heard of the Tron clone Hard Lines, one of the best games in AppStore.
I've always liked playing on my mobile devices, even back in the Pocket PC / Windows Mobile / Palm OS days. They revitalize me quite a lot, particularly after a hard, exhausting day.
Playing without physical controls (buttons), only using the touchscreen, is pretty hard. This includes a lot of game types, particularly ones where quick direction changes are needed and / or you can't make the smallest mistake and must be absolutely sure even the smallest movements on the directional pads (D-pad for short) is registered. In games like these, physical D-pad / button feedback is of extreme importance.
Some of my recent tips you, assuming you're interested in programming mobile devices, may be interested in.
Ruby
HERE, I've answered a question on whether it's possible to run Ruby (a dynamic, reflective, general-purpose object-oriented programming language that combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like features) scripts under iOS. It is.
Back in July, I've devoted a sizeable part of my multimedia article to the question of dynamic video de-interlacing. Back then, the only way of (dynamically) getting rid of the pretty ugly effects of interlacing was jailbreaking your iDevice and installing the not very finger-friendly, pretty awkward XBMC on it.
Today, I've decided to completely abandon the “old” 3.x series of Xcode, the development environment for iOS (and Mac OS X).
Up until now, I didn't want to switch as moving to the new Xcode required an almost complete re-learn of the system – even the basic keyboard shortcuts have been changed, to my “delight”.
Since 2005 (the initial debut of the first version), I've dedicated several articles to the alternative Web browser Opera Mini. Back in the Windows Mobile / Symbian S40...S60 / BlackBerry days, Opera Mini offered a viable and, in many respects, much better alternative to the built-in browsers of these operating systems – for example, on my Blackberry 8800, it was the only browser I ever used. On my more capable Windows Mobile and Nokia devices / phones, I also tended to prefer it to other, in general, clumsy and slow browsers.
(retina iPt screen screenshot)
If you come from Windows Mobile and are into playing MAME arcade games, you may well remember my full article dedicated to the emulation of arcade machines, including MAME, on the platform. (Note that the linked article doesn't show inline images; if you need them, check out THIS instead.)
Fortunately, on the iDevice, it's also possible to play MAME games. No, unlike on Windows Mobile, not the newer, vastly superior (NeoGeo / CPS), “only” the older ones, but it's still more than nothing, isn't it? And it's free – and is also compatible with several Bluetooth game controllers (see below).
At last, I was able to afford an iPhone 3G without an expensive data / phone plan (meaning a much higher starting price). Of course, I've been playing with the device since then.
In my Wednesday's article, I've quickly mentioned PhoneDisk by Macroplant as the most recommended application for (Mac) OS X computers to access the installed ( AppStore or Xcode) applications' home directories on non-jailbroken devices.
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