(iPhone) SimCity

That’s the only iPad joke you’re going to get from me.  Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few hours, the biggest topic of the day is Apple’s new iPhone XL iPad, their revolutionary tablet designed for media and entertainment in mind.  By looking at the various photos and information, I cannot see a justified reason why this really exists.  It looks beautiful and I do kind of see myself wanting one…I just don’t have a reason good enough to warrant owning it.  Have to say that the prices aren’t that bad… $499 for the 16GB, $599 for 32GB and $699 for 64GB.  3G models are an additional $130.

Now let’s get to the important part – gaming.  EA stepped up and introduced a new ‘Need for Speed’ game, which for only 2 weeks, looks quite nice.  No Sims/Spore related games were discussed but they did mention that the games from the iPod Touch will work with the iPad – the resolution may be distorted a little bit but other then that things are dandy.  Apparently companies can update their games to make them compatible with the iPad, so that will solve that problem.  Kotaku gave it a test drive and reports that games that use menus (like The Sims 3) or that uses the tilting movement (Spore Origins) plays very nicely:

The games that were successful were ones that relied simply on touching and tilting, not a complex combination of both. PopCap’s gem matching casual hit Bejeweled 2 was, unsurprisingly, easy to play with its simple taps and small swipes. Super Monkey Ball, admittedly not the easiest game to control via accelerometer anyway, worked as well as it does on the iPhone platform.

I was less successful with Tetris, which I played with the iPad resting flat on a table, tapping and swiping tetrominoes down screen. The iPad’s rounded posterior reduced some of the reliability of touchscreen control

Need For Speed: Shift was one of the more positive control experiences, as it relies only on tilting and braking with a touchscreen press. EA’s other offering, The Sims 3, was also completely playable, relying less on twitch gameplay and more on menu based controls to play.

The biggest downfall in my opinion with the iPad is the fact that after 2+ years, Apple has yet to give a damn about supporting flash on the phone.  Hello!  What about Hulu?  Flash based websites?  You know how pathetic it looks for not getting around to supporting it?  If a $299 netbook can do it then so can you, Steve Jobs.

Eh, guess I’ll wait a few years until they are on the 4G setup and slap on a camera for video conferencing.  In the meantime I’ll stick with my iPad Nano aka the iPhone.

oops I meant to show this video