Butt out of the way, gaming developers. Apple’s coming in!

Woe to all iPhone developers out there. It seems that Apple has recently become more certain about developing their own iPhone and iTouch game applications. Suddenly, the post I read yesterday that asked whether the iPhone could be considered a serious gaming device (here) seems all the more relevant.

For the record, I said it wasn’t. The iPhone tries to be everything, which makes it not that great at anything. It’d be great for small games to play while you kill time, but I believe that beyond that, it can’t really stand against the PSP or DSi. Of course, I will eat my words if I am proved wrong.

But there are those out there that believe that iPhone represents a significant threat. id Software’s John Carmack says,

“I think mid- to long-term it’s a significant threat,” he says.  “I don’t carry a DS or a PSP around, but I’ve got my iPhoen [sic] everywhere.  So if it plays good games, I’m less likely to pick one of the others up. … I think the stars could align and it could start to eclipse those other systems in terms of unit sales.”

Plausible, but doesn’t the same concept apply to cameras? Sure, the best camera is the one on you – I still find myself whipping out my cell phone with its measly 1.3 megapixels because it’s the only camera on me, but it doesn’t mean that I would throw away my cameras even if I found myself with a 5 megapixel camera phone. The iPhone has way too many limitations to be a serious gaming platform and it isn’t plausible for Apple to ramp up its platform to turn it into more of a gaming device. OR MAYBE IT IS! I DON’T KNOW! Also, all I know is that I tried to play ngmoco’s Eliminate game…

…and could not get over how limited the controls were. I kept standing in one place and getting shot at… and dying. “BAH!” I said, “where is my real gaming console!” Or maybe that’s just me being an old geezer out of touch with today’s technology.Well if anything, iPhone developers are soon going to have a hell of a lot more competition soon.

Read the whole article, it’s pretty interesting. Has a quote from Steve Jobs about how he started viewing the iPhone as a gaming device.

[SlapApp]

Facebook app tries to organize the mess that is Apple’s app store

Good news, everyone! Apple’s app store is notoriously messy, disorganized, etc, etc, etc and mplayit has decided to do something about it!

And in a rather ingenious way too, may I add.

Who better to recommend apps to you than your friends? mplayit has built a Facebook app on which you can recommend and share iPhone apps with your friends. Additionally, apps come with full videos, pictures, and text describing functionality.

The smartest thing about this is that the social media network already exists. The developers don’t have to wait for the iPhone app sharing network to slowly build itself. Oh Facebook, you really are useful after all!

[theAppleBlog]