Neither Sony or Microsoft have told me why I need to buy one of their next-gen consoles.
I own a PS3, Xbox 360 and a gaming PC. The 360 came first and combined with Xbox Live it became my default gaming device. Probably 60% of my games are for my Xbox 360. After a few years with my 360 I bought a PS3 because there were some exclusive games I wanted to play. In 2010 Battlefield 3 came out and I built a gaming PC for it because in my opinion the Battlefield series excels when played with a keyboard, mouse and servers that can accommodate large scale battles.
A strange side affect of building that gaming PC was that I started buying games for my PC instead of my consoles because the games looked and played better on my PC then my consoles.
This next console generation is going to be the most homogenous yet. Developers will be able to make a game that works on PC, Xbox One and PS4 so easily that brand loyalty will mean a lot less.
Unless Microsoft actually releases some TV features that actually work outside of the United States I don't know if I'll be buying one of these new consoles. I'll probably continue buying games for my PC until a platform exclusive game (which are becoming increasingly rare) comes out.
I've built a gaming PC before. What I underestimated was how nice it was to have my console in my living room. Having to get up and go into another room to play games meant that games never got played. And then the PC started getting flaky and then it was old and new games didn't look good any more. This happened very quickly.
My consoles always work (no red ring on my 306 yet, knock on wood) and the new games always play great. I'm almost definitely getting one of the Microsoft or Sony next-gen consoles. I would definitely consider a steambox as well, as I love the idea of a living room game PC... Though I'm not sure how I'm supposed to manage the wireless keyboard and mouse while sitting on my couch.
Just plug an xbox gamepad into the PC, most newer games will let you use it instead of keyboard/mouse (assuming it's a game that actually makes sense to play on a gamepad).
> Developers will be able to make a game that works on PC, Xbox One and PS4 so easily that brand loyalty will mean a lot less.
Developer effort hasn't been the limiting factor in the current gen either. Exclusivity is all about politics/marketing. And I don't see any signs of that changing.
So the reason to buy a next-gen gaming console would be the same as for the previous: games.
The example here is somebody who apparently needs to take one to access some confidential information - and clearly they take a pass/fail seriously, so it seems some (presumably US?) government agencies do take it seriously enough to make passing one a security requirement.
Good point. A quick Google search doesn't seem to bring up any laws that prevent employers from using polygraph results in determining whether to hire or fire someone.
How come it is always "Designers Will Code" and never "Developers Will Design"?
Is there some sort of assumption that it is easier to teach a designer to write code than have a developer learn to design?
In my experience the best designers are not the ones who write code but understand how their designs actually transition to the implementation. They structure their mockups and comps so that all the pieces are divided up in their mind in the exact same way a developer would. At that point it becomes the inevitable monkey work of cutting assets and implementing them but because the designer and developer are on the same page there is very little friction.
The designer doesn't know about the code written and the developer doesn't understand how the designer chose those colours, text sizes, gradients, spacing, etc but there is a simple common language that allows them to bridge what they don't understand.
The perfectly round "O" was the giveaway for me. Helvetica just feels more "literal" to me, if that makes any sense, with its perfectly horizontal endings on "C" and "S" and "t", so the round "O" seemed more likely. Mattel nearly tripped me up too, but I noticed that Helvetica was bolder throughout than the Arial equivalent, so it wasn't hard.
O isn't perfectly round in Helvetica. The Toyota logo is modified to use perfect circles for the Os. The real O is a bit rounder than in Arial maybe, but still not a circle. Futura is the one with the perfect circles (for both O and o).
I used the same rational. Whichever font looked bolder, I choose and got it correct. Also, the Staples Arial version didn't have the "registered" mark so I got that one easily.
But in the Mattel example, Helvetica is the thinner font. Instead notice the varying letter width, the M being wider than the A with Helvetica in the Mattel example.
As the GP said, the caps on the S, C, T, etc were usually the giveaways.
The flourish at the bottom right (not sure the correct term) of the R in TARGET gave me at moment's pause. But each of the logos was customized to an extent.
I realised it must be Helvetica because of the "R". I reasoned thus: I am more familiar with Arial than Helvetica, and I'm sure I would have seen that "R" before if I were spending a lot of time with it because it's just so ugly, so since I didn't recognise it, it must be Helvetica. And I was right.
It's funny, because I universally prefer Helvetica over Arial otherwise.
I'm 100% with you. I used nibs a lot when I started out but now I've slowly drifted away from them. The only thing I use them for is setting the frame so I can get a general idea of the layout of the view. Sometimes I'll set a few properties like text color and font size but I'll then move those lines into viewDidLoad: so I know exactly what my view will be like when it is loaded.
I've dealt with far too many bugs involving Interface Builder and it's random changes and "upgrading" the second I touch a nib that it's more of a liability now.
People who say it's less "code" are just delusional. Setting the font in IB versus a single line in viewDidLoad: doesn't save you anything. At some point in time that line of code is getting executed and you will at some point have to maintain it.
But storyboards read and merge very nicely, in my experience.
With two caveats:
- the classes section will sometimes be removed by IB. Ignore it
- the last section, inferred something (priority? segues? metrics?) with 5-6 entries, can cause the storyboard to be unopenable. So, when merging, if there are changes to that section in both versions, just delete the contents of the section.
UIKit is designed to be built upon. A lot of Apple stuff may be a black box but it is designed to be subclassed. This is really an all or nothing affair. Either this works perfectly for you or you are shit out of luck and you have to compromise to fit inside their box.
A lot of Apple stuff may be a black box but it is designed to be subclassed.
Aside from a small number of top-level classes[1] UIKit isn't designed to be subclassed. When you subclass things like UIAlertView, UIButton, UISwitch, UITextField, UIWebView… etc, you're in for a world undocumented gotchas and spending hours to do small simple things.
1. UIView, UIControl, UITableViewCell, UIScrollView, UIGestureRecognizer, UIViewController, UIApplication and maybe one or two other classes.
And you've listed about 90% of the things I usual end up subclassing because I've hit some limitation.
Also I wasn't talking specifically about UIKit. Foundation is another great framework that I've subclassed many times.
It's not perfect but Apple puts a lot of work into documenting how to subclass their frameworks. Third-party UI frameworks like this are much less forgiving.
Well in this case I subclassed them so I could have the backing data source only weakly reference the items in the dictionary/array and because I subclassed them I can use them wherever NSDictionary or NSArray is an accepted parameter.
Are there any examples of really successful big name projects using third-party UI frameworks that cost money?
Anything I use in my apps has to be open source in case either I come across limitations or support is dropped. I can't create a dependency in my app that could severely cripple me in the future.
It seems like using Pixate would introduce a huge dependency on your application and everything that Pixate does is mapping down to something already done in UIKit or perhaps CoreGraphics. I can understand the allure of this framework because it would save you writing a lot of code yourself but when you come across a limitation (which you undoubtably will because not even the mighty UIKit does everything we need) and you implemented it yourself you can then easily make improvements rather than waiting for a third-party. Sure you could make requests but if Apple honoured every single improvement request on UIKit they would never ship.
As an iOS developer I'm already in bed with Apple but their track record with AppKit and UIKit speaks for itself. Their frameworks are black boxes but I can build upon the shoulders of giants. Third-party UI frameworks like this feel like I am constraining myself to very explicitly defined limitations and the second I cannot adhere to those limitations I must be the one to compromise instead of striking out on my own.
Is there something that I am missing with these third-party UI frameworks because the opportunity cost has always seem to be too high for me.
I'm very curious how much Pixate differs from NUI.
I looked into doing something like this and it seems like a pretty straight forward idea. Map CSS properties to UIView properties. It felt like it was lot of brute force work. Creating a parser and some sort of renderer for every supported UIView seems like the majority of the work.
I own a PS3, Xbox 360 and a gaming PC. The 360 came first and combined with Xbox Live it became my default gaming device. Probably 60% of my games are for my Xbox 360. After a few years with my 360 I bought a PS3 because there were some exclusive games I wanted to play. In 2010 Battlefield 3 came out and I built a gaming PC for it because in my opinion the Battlefield series excels when played with a keyboard, mouse and servers that can accommodate large scale battles.
A strange side affect of building that gaming PC was that I started buying games for my PC instead of my consoles because the games looked and played better on my PC then my consoles.
This next console generation is going to be the most homogenous yet. Developers will be able to make a game that works on PC, Xbox One and PS4 so easily that brand loyalty will mean a lot less.
Unless Microsoft actually releases some TV features that actually work outside of the United States I don't know if I'll be buying one of these new consoles. I'll probably continue buying games for my PC until a platform exclusive game (which are becoming increasingly rare) comes out.