Is Wii Sports Better Than Super Mario Bros.?

In terms of units sold, the answer is “yes.” VGChartz, a Web site that gathers game sales data, says the Wii’s flagship title passed Mario’s first big adventure as of December 27, 2008.

But not everyone is happy about this. CNet columnist Don Reisinger says it’s an “insult” to compare Wii Sports to Super Mario Bros. and other classics. “It’s not that I dislike Wii Sports or haven’t enjoyed my time playing it,” he wrote. “I just don’t see how it can be held in the same high regard as Super Mario Bros.”

Respectfully, I disagree. To play Super Mario Bros. now is to experience a rudimentary platform game with slippery controls and repetitive play. In other words, it’s not very good, but it opened the door to a new world of gaming. Reisinger calls Wii Sports a “proof of concept,” but how could we view Super Mario Bros. any differently?

Better games for the Nintendo Entertainment System eventually came along, and I suspect the same thing will happen to Wii Sports, but both games — and the systems they came bundled with — arrived at time where the game industry was at a crossroads.

A year before the NES reached the U.S., the American game industry crashed. Consumers were tired of the same old shovelware, and the bubble of new consoles and games simply burst. Mario and his cohorts opened new creative doors, and suddenly video games were back in style.

Today’s game industry, though healthy, is also in a rut. The core gamers that support blockbusters like Halo and Grand Theft Auto are but a slice of the general population. When Ninendo’s “Revolution” project came along, with its motion controls instead of shinier graphics, the company was laughed at — until the Wii became the most sought-after console on the market. And it’s not because of the system as a whole. It’s because people want to play Wii Sports, a game that offers new possibilities, but remains simple and fun like gaming used to be.

Personally, that’s not what I look for in a video game, and if I were king, I wouldn’t dub either of these titles as the best of all time. But Super Mario Bros. and Wii Sports both equally deserve their accolades, not insults.

Ziff-Davis: The Legendary Magazine Publisher Publishes Magazines No More

This news has more to do with dead trees than electrons, but I can’t resist: Ziff Davis has announced that it’s selling its 1Up network of gaming sites to Hearst and shutting down Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine. Coming around six weeks after the company discontinued the print version of PC Magazine, the news leaves ZD with no paper-based publications at all.

Which is a big deal, since the 82-year-old publisher had as long, influential, and impressive a history of consumer publishing as any company on the planet. Among its titles over the years, other than EGM and PC Mag: Amazing Stories, Car and Driver, Computer Shopper, Creative Computing, MacUser, MacWeek, PC/Computing, PC Week, Popular Electronics, Popular Photography, Stereo Review, Yahoo Internet Life., and many others I’m not thinking of right now. Nobody published more successful mags read by more enthusiasts with a wider range of passions, or made more money doing so.

Ziff Davis remains in business and will be focusing its attention on the PCMag.com Web site network.  Given the state of print publishing and Ziff’s many years of decline as a print powerhouse, its departure from magazine publishing isn’t surprising–and might even be a good idea. It surely won’t be the last old-school magazine publisher that leaves magazines completely behind. But it’s still hard to get my head around the idea that nobody anywhere will read Ziff Davis magazines anymore.

(Necessary but superfluous disclaimer: I spent 18 years working at IDG, Ziff Davis’s principal rival in tech publishing–which is still successfully publishing magazines around the world.)

Another Day, Another Keynote: Live Coverage of Steve Ballmer at CES

I’m  liveblogging as Steve Ballmer does the Consumer Electronics Show keynote. C’mon and join me….

One Last Reminder: Make Predictions, Get Chance at 1TB Hard Drive

We’re still looking for predictions about tech in 2009–and will be giving a hard drive to one contributor chosen at random. More details and submission form here. We’ll stop accepting entries sometime tomorrow (nnon at the earliest, but maybe a bit later since I just remembered I’m on a plane then–if the entry form is still visible, you can still enter).

AMD’s Neo Chip Makes its Debut in Cheap HP Ultraportable

HP is showcasing its new Pavilion dv2 ultraportable notebook at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week. It is the first PC manufacturer to utilize AMD’s value-priced Neo processor, which it is selling for under $1000, and looks like a sensible option for buyers that want to purchase a lightweight–but not bleeding-edge-machine.

The Pavilion is stylish and packs some decently robust hardware. The Neo processor, formerly codenamed “Huron” has a clockspeed of 1.6GHz and is comparable to Intel’s Ultra Low voltage Chips in its power consumption. The notebook offers hard-drive options as large as 500GB, it has AMD-ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3410 graphics, a 12.1-inch LCD screen, and Blu-Ray. Pricing starts at $699; higher-end models cost nearly $900.

Consumers that pay less than $700 for an ultra-portable should not expect every bell and whistle. AMD’s Neo processor has scant cache memory (512K), and is a single-core processor. However, people who are in market for the Pavillion probably will not be using the kinds of applications that take advantage of many-core processors. There isn’t much commercial ‘parallelized’ software on the market anyway.  The Pavilion will pack more than enough of computing power for people to surf the Web and type reports.

AMD will release a dual-core portable chip code-named Conesus in the second half of the year, News.com is reporting. In the meantime, I see no reason why the average person should hold off their PC purchases other than Windows 7 compatibility (although it would seem unlikely that a relatively new machine would not be upgradable).

12 Questions About Phil Schiller’s Macworld Expo Keynote: How My Guesses Last Week Jibed With Reality

I say that I don’t do Apple predictions anymore, but I’m not above musing about upcoming events and expressing opinions about what could happen. Last week, I did just that for Phil Schiller’s first and last Macworld Expo San Francisco keynote, in the form of a dozen questions and attempts to answer them. Now that it’s come and gone, let’s review the questions I asked, the tentative stabs at answers I provided last week, and what actually happened.

Without any further ado…

1. Will Schiller make reference to the unique nature of his keynote?

What I guessed: Yes. But only to joke briefly at the start and break the tension, which will be oozing through the room when the keynote begins.

What happened: Nothing that I remember other than a very oblique thank-you to the audience at the start. Certainly no wacky schtick or self-effacing humor. And if he mentioned Steve Jobs at all, I’m forgetting it at the moment.

2. Will he get all defensive about Apple’s abandonment of Macworld Expo as of 2010?

What I guessed: Nope. It would be startling if he mentioned it at all.

What happened: No direct reference, but a pretty clear dig when he bragged about the number of customers who enter Apple Stores each week, said “I’m sorry,” and pointed out it was equal to a hundred Macworld Expos.

3. Will he announce anything interesting?

What I guessed: Possibly. Everybody’s assuming that nothing any more pulse-pounding than a refreshed Mac Mini will be unveiled, but I’m not so sure. Steve Jobs might be avoiding the show as much because it’ll be a downer as because there’s nothing of note to talk about. Apple clearly wants to shine more limelight on execs other than Jobs. And hey, it’s not inconceivable that even a new Mac Mini could be cool.

What happened: One Apple fan’s snoozer is another’s blockbuster. News today included the end of iTunes DRM (overdue), the new 17-inch MacBook Pro (presumably once meant to launch with its smaller counterparts and with a sealed battery that will be, ahem, controversial), iWork and iWork.com (which are niche products in the Apple world), and iLife 09 (pretty neat looking). There were more things that people reasonably hoped might be announced–new Mac Minis, new iMacs, a 32GB iPhone, a new Apple TV–than were actually unveiled.

4. Will he announce anything hugely newsworthy–on the level of the Intel transition or the iPhone?

What I guessed: Nah. Surely not. Right?

What happened: He didn’t.

5. Will he follow the Jobs keynote format?

What I guessed: No. I’d think he’d want to mix things up to avoid a point-by-point comparison. So the Jobs outline (impressive stats/minor product introduction/bigger product introduction/One More Thing/Acknowledgment of Apple staffers’ contributions/musical guest) will probably not be Schiller’s template.

What happened: It was more Jobsian than I expected, and came pretty darn close to Jobs outline I reference above.

6. Will he pause to gulp bottled water?

What I guessed: Only for yuks.

What happened: I had my head down so I could furiously liveblog for much of the event, but as far as I know, Phil remained parched. Maybe he had a Sprite backstage during one of his breaks.

8. Will he take questions from the audience?

What I guessed: No. Too dangerous.

What happened: He didn’t (but as far as I recall, Jobs never does at Macworld Expo, either–only at smaller events).

9. Will the keynote attract a Jobsian avalanche of press coverage?

What I guessed: Sort of. For one thing, the lack of Jobs is almost as newsworthy as the presence of Jobs. And expectations for Schiller and for the event in general are so low that it shouldn’t be hard to exceed them. I’m guessing that at least some pundits will decide the event wasn’t as bad as they expected it to be.

What happened: There’s certainly tons of coverage of the keynote today. So far, most of the comment on the product announcements I’ve seen has been anywhere from downbeat to extremely downbeat. I haven’t seen much discussion of Schiller as Jobs substitute, but I thought he was OK. (Actually, it wasn’t unpleasant to have a keynote that was low on reality-distortion–though he did refer to the changes at the iTunes Store as “profound.”)

10. Will there be any surprises?

What I guessed: Maybe. It’s not really in Apple’s interest for its final Macworld Expo keynote to be a completely boring downer of an event. If the company can do anything unexpected and upbeat, it might.

What happened: Schiller did treat the iTunes announcements as a “one more thing,” although he didn’t really engage in the kabuki of a real Steve Jobs one-more-thing announcement. (It was more like “Aw, you know we saved one more thing.”) But I’d say the biggest surprise was the appearance of Tony Bennett at the end. He got the kind of response from the audience they usually give Jobs, and was wonderful. (Schiller was received politely. Very, very politely.)

11. Will Apple hold its own independent “keynote” event?

What I guessed: Yes, as soon as whatever wasn’t ready for Macworld Expo is ready to go, and with Steve Jobs. As soon as in the next couple of weeks, and likely by the end of February.

What may happene: I still think this is a likely scenario, although I don’t know how Jobs’s statement that he’s going to spend the next few months reversing his weight loss plays into this.

12. Who will keynote 2010’s Macworld Expo?

What I guessed: It’s gotta be David Pogue. Definitely David Pogue. And you know, he could be great.

What may happen: I dunno. But I’m doing a post-show interview with Macworld Expo show manager Paul Kent later this week–maybe I’ll ask him.

I maintain that what I was doing last week wasn’t making predictions, so I’m not going to give myself a grade. But I will be back with further thoughts about the event…and would love to hear yours. (Thanks, by the way, to the hundreds of people who attended our live coverage today–I had fun, even if this wasn’t the keynote was a little less than historic.)

Apple’s Brilliant Video Engineer: Anonymous No More

My favorite moment at this year’s Macworld Expo keynote had nothing to do with any of the products that were unveiled–it was was about the unveiling of a person.

At last year’s Macworld Expo keynote, Steve Jobs waxed rhapsodic about the Apple engineer who had gone on vacation to the Cayman Islands, shot video, and had trouble editing it–and who then invented the all-new, simpler iMovie as a result. He couldn’t have spoken more highly about the guy, but he never mentioned his name. I pinged an Apple contact to ask who this brilliant Apple employee was, and got a prompt and polite note back saying that they wouldn’t disclose his name.

After I wrote about this experience and said that I thought Apple should give its developers some glory–as it did in the early days of the Mac–I got an e-mail from someone who said that the iMovie inventor was surely Randy Ubillos, one of the creators of Adobe Premiere. My correspondent provided some pretty compelling evidence. But I decided not to identify Ubillos as Jobs’ video engineer–not because  I was afraid of ticking off Apple but simply because I had no idea if Ubillos wanted to be identified, and didn’t want to invade his privacy or cause trouble for him.

Today, Phil Schiller devoted a meaningful chunk of his Macworld Expo keynote to an ugrade to Ubillos’s version of iMove that brings back some of the powerful features that folks missed, and adds some interesting extras like the ability to create animated maps. (Let’s face it: Ubillos may be enormously talented but iMovie 08 received a mixed reception at best, a fact Schiller pretty much politely acknowledged today.) But Schiller, who demoed iPhoto himself, didn’t show off iMovie 09–instead, he brought Ubillos onstage. The software’s creator got to do the demo and receive the applause.

Steve Jobs has often compared computer scientists to artists–and it was a delight to see one such artist get some credit today. May some of this colleagues come into the spotlight at future Apple product launches…

DTV Coupon Program Is Out of Money

Analog TV users without cable beware: if you have not gotten your coupons to offset the costs of the digital converter box, you may be out of luck (and without TV) when February 17 comes around. The Washington Post reports that the program is nearing the limit of the $1.34 billion it was appropriated to subsidize the cost of the set-top boxes. Each coupon takes $40 off the price of the boxes, which cost between $50 and $80, and expire in 90 days. Possible sources for more funds could be through either the economic stimulus package, or a new bill funding further coupons.

Stevenote? Here’s Your Stevenote. Or, More Specifically, Your Woznote.

Call Steve Wozniak the anti-Steve Jobs. He’s far nerdier than Jobs ever was; he’s not a polished presenter; he has a zillion passions beyond Apple (Segway Polo, anyone?); and nobody’s ever going to spend any time worrying that he’s looking gaunt. But Woz was at least as important to Apple’s success in the 1970s and early 1980s as Jobs, and therefore hugely important to Apple as it exists today–since there might never have been an Apple that existed for more than a year or two if it weren’t for the genius of Woz’s Apple II design.

And even though Steve Jobs skipped this year’s Macworld Expo, Steve Wozniak didn’t. He did a demo of the Modbook, the modified touch-screen Mac tablet which is manufactured by Axiotron, a company whose board he recently joined. Woz’s demo of the Modbook was preceded by 20 minutes of presentation by Axiotron’s CEO, who gave a straightforward walkthrough of the product assisted by PowerPoint (er, Keynote) slides and who seemed to have problems with the booth’s amplification system. But Axiotron shoulda reversed things and put Woz onstage first, since his geeky glee in the Modbook was a far more potent sales tool than anything a CEO could say. And even if he’d had audio troubles (he didn’t) you would have been able to tell how much he liked the thing.

Continue reading this story…

One Last Thing, And It’s About iTunes

I guess Steve has “one more thing” trademarked. Phil wrapped up this years keynote with a little news on iTunes, which involves three things: price, which would now be in three tiers: 69 cents, 99 cents, and $1.29; the ability to purchase music over AT&T 3G; and what we’ve been waiting for, 8 million DRM-free tracks on iTunes from the four major labels, with the entire store DRM-free by the end of the quarter.

More details as we get them..

17-inch MacBook Pro Coming

Along with the other announcements from what has been a really low-key keynote is a new 17-inch MacBook Pro model. Inside will be Core 2 Duo up to 2.93-GHZ and up to 8GB of RAM. Dual GeForce graphics will be standard as well as a 320GB HDD. Biggest news here? The battery within the laptop is embedded, and non-removable. However, enhancements are making it possible to have an 8-hour battery life and can be charged up to 1,000 times. Phil indicated this is the future for Apple: soon none of its laptops will have removable batteries. No price change will come with this model: it will remain at $2,799.

More from SchillerNote: iWork.com

Well, if this is it, I have to say this was probably the most boring MacWorld keynote ever, and its probably obvious now why Steve Jobs isn’t giving it. These announcements, save for the work on iLife, are missing any punch.

iWork.com is not a full blown online version of the productivity suite as some had predicted, but instead is more of a collaboration site. Users will be able to upload and download documents from the site, and you can add comments and notes on the document. Multiple people can view and annotate.

The feature launches in beta today as a free service, but eventually will be fee-based, Phil says.

Second up from SchillerNote: iWork ’09

Phil said he had three things, and honestly so far I’m kinda unimpressed. Well, his next subject is iWork. Here’s what’s being announced here.

Keynote: Will support “magic move” transitions, which are essentially can animate objects between two slides, movement of objects in a 3D space, new text transitions, and so forth. New themes are also available, and Keynote Remote allows the user to employ a Touch or iPhone to control presentations.

Pages: New “full screen view,” new “dynamic outline” feature in Pages, and mail merge with Numbers spreadsheet, new templates.

Numbers: New and improved formulas. Schiller seems to admit that Numbers needed a lot of help in order to make it the primary spreadsheet for people.

Overall, a muted announcement in my book. $79 seperately, $49 when purchased with a new Mac. A family pack option will also be available for $99, and users can get iLife and iWork together for $169, which would be available in mid-January.

MacRumors Live Keynote Feed Hacked

Somebody forgot to check their security on their webserver. A group identifying themselves as 4chan.org has hacked MacRumors Live Feed and for all intents and purposes completely taken over their site. I would post a screenshot, however the material being interjected into the feed is pretty R-rated, and now the site has taken down the feed completely. Note to MacRumors: next time make sure hackers can’t use a backdoor to get into your site…

First Up from SchillerNote: iLife ’09

Some neat enhancements in iLife ’09 coming out of the keynote so far. Noteably the enhancements to iPhoto are catching my eye, and come in two new features: Faces and Places.

Faces is actually a face recognition algorithm of sorts. Pictures of the faces of your friends are posted on a corkboard. Clicking on that face will actually search through your photos and attempt to locate all pictures with that person in your photo album. It will even ask for new faces and ask you to identify them so it can automatically categorize them.

Next is Places, which incorporates geotagging into the application, then displays where photos were taken on Google Maps, which is built into the application.

Camera doesn’t support geotagging? No worries, you can do it manually. Other enhancements: uploading of slideshows to iPhones or Touche and direct upload of photos from iPhoto to Facebook or Flickr.

iMovie will get advanced timeline control, and new single click themes. Video stabilization is now built in, and you can create Google Earth-like 3D maps of your travels.

GarageBand is also getting a really cool new feature called “Learn to Play.” On-screen video teachers will help novices learn how to play either the keyboard or guitar, which would teach the basics in nine lessons, each costing $4.99.

One of the lessons? John Fogarty teaching you how to play “Proud Mary.” Call me crazy, but I prefer the Ike and Tina Turner version…

Microsoft MVP Tells Mobile Team to “Build Something Innovative”

When Robert McLaws does not like something, he has no issues speaking his mind about it. Robert is what’s called an “MVP,” which are people who essentially are unpaid evangelists for a particular product as well as beta testers for their particular product. His target this time is Windows Mobile, and particularly IE Mobile, which he seems to suggest is pretty much rubbish. He is calling on fellow Windows fanatics to boycott the browser until Redmond “gets its act together,” and making whatever enhancements come a downloadable update. Will Robert get what he wants?