Amazon sells Kindle Fires like, well, a house on fire, screenless games, Rovio tells Zynga to take a $2 billion hike, and Arkham City gets love from Warren and tough love from Todd. Also, Warren puts his foot in his mouth at least 10 times. Yum.
iPod Nano recall, iTunes Match is born, Steam and Safari compromised, and mobile Flash is dead. But it isn’t all bad, as the boys put in an epic length podcast, and let’s not forget that somewhere out there, Google is working on networked dinner plates and space elevators.
The new Nook Tablets are out in the United States, and our august crew declared them servicable, even though two of us are in Canada and will thus never, ever use one.
We also delve into Apple’s App Store sandboxing, the controversy surrounding Growl (for more, listen to this podcast), how Siri is a danger to Google Search, and Warren rants about jetpacks. What more do you need?
The Mac Pro may be dead, iOS 5 battery life is running out, and Google TV is resurrected. With all this spookiness, it’s a shame we didn’t release this episode on Halloween.
Besides that, Todd’s playing Arkham City and reading about Steve Jobs, and Chip is playing with the Doctor Who Encyclopedia on his iPad. Warren couldn’t make this episode, but has regardless pronounced the new GTA trailer to be “rad.”
Once again Steve Jobs dominates this week’s headlines, this time for revelations in his autobiography of an honest-to-goodness Apple TV. Besides that, it’s been a weird week, with Google maybe mulling buying Yahoo possibly, Microsoft gaining tons of cash off of Android (!) patents and Netflix hemming and hawing and not really knowing what it’s doing.
On the plus side, Todd is playing Arkham Asylum, Chip is reading Ready Player One and Warren has backed off from the flu-laden precipice of death he was wobbling on last week, though a lingering cough still stalks him.
iOS5, iPhone 4S, and Siri are out, and pretty damned impressive. Less impressive is RIM’s three-day outage, or the fact that Google is shutting down Code Searh, their University Research Program, Jaiku, and Buzz.
Bits and pieces besides that, but it’s a bit of a short one. Chip is a little injured and Warren is sick, and Todd is grateful for being neither.
Platformer…NEWS EDITION! With Chip out on assignment, Warren and Todd tackle the big issues of the week, including Facebook’s radical and frankly weird changes, Apple’s upcoming iPhone event, the Kindle Fire tablet, and the utter lunacy of Meg Whitman taking the helm at HP.
Windows 8 bursts onto the scene and only our intrepid squad of tech analysts (by which we mean Warren, Todd and Chip) have the savvy to suss out what really matters with Metro, sandboxing and pissed of developers. The Boston Globe got one hell of an HTML5 redesign, Rogers is told to stop throttling games, and we all discuss what we’d do if we were in charge of RIM and/or Nintendo. One of us would wear a lot of costumes, apparently.
Bartz gets the boot, Amazon wants to make a Netflix for books, Star Trek Online goes free to play, and Warren gets a THUNDERBONER, all on this episode of Platformer.
Patent madness this week, and a deep dive by Todd into the machinations and tribulations surrounding high tech and patent law. Here’s a pile of links for you on that subject…
- Samsung and Apple’s battle means worldwide grief for the Korean tablet maker
- more grief for Samsung in the EU
- Google’s Andy Rubin plays fast and loose with violating patents
throw Apple cops, Cory Doctorow on online identity, Amazon tablets, and Michael Arrington being a dink into the mix and you’ve got our first one hour show!
