As one of the founding members of an iPhone app development group, it was my privilege to receive the new iPhone OS a little early. I’ve been playing around with some of the new features this morning and took a couple screenshots. Here’s my favorites for you all to look forward to!

“Mass Photo Management”

This is my favorite new update! Do you have a couple thousand photos and don’t have the time to weed through them? Now you can mass delete, share, or copy your photos. This is great for me. I have several dozen photos of a very blurry cat I need to remove.

OS 3.0 also brings us Notifications. This is another great feature that I’ve been looking forward to. With my early access to the new OS, I also got a beta for the new AIM app. This app will alert you to incoming IMs even if the app isn’t open. You can edit the Notification options regarding audio and video cues.

“Search Function”

Is your phone full of crap? It’s OK, I don’t judge. Until you get a chance to trim your iTunes collection, use this handy search function to browse anything on your phone. It looks through your contacts, music, emails, apps, and more.

Apple also rolled out their built-in audio recorder. It’s very slick, in classic Apple form. It’s very easy to use and has amazing audio quality. My only complaint is sharing. You can only send out your audio memos via email. If you want to tweet your mini-audio-blogs, I recommend picking up TweetMic.

“Copy and Paste”

Of course there is the one feature people have been clamoring for since the phone came out. Copy and Paste has now come to the iPhone! The tap-and-hold interface is pretty slick and it saves tons of time if you find yourself re-typing the same text a lot. Great for Flickr, Twitter, and more.

Those are just a few of the great new features coming up in OS 3.0, not to mention the new soon-to-be-release iPhone. I can’t wait to see what the video recording is like!

“Taska Saves the Murlocs”

Taska has risen to level 70 and shows no sign of slowing. It’s odd though, these first few Northrend areas. It feels like just yesterday that I was slaying Magnataurs and saving baby Murlocs with Mufin. At least I have a sweet new eye-patch that looks much cooler on Taska!

So what is on the horizon for our brave Orc Shaman? I have my eye these two fist weapons out of Nexus and Utgarde Keep. What’s even better than the stats is the fact that the models match! I know, I’m dealing with my OCD the best I can.

I’ve already cleared out Borean tundra, netting myself the quest and exploration achievements. I’m heading over to Howling Fjord next, as is my custom. I want to clear the lower level quests while they still get me some experience. I’m also looking to disenchant all the greens for mats.

I’m really looking forward to the big changes that are coming down the pipe with patch 3.1. Even though I may not be ready for Ulduar, I’m still looking forward to the Shaman changes, and the possibility of dual-speccing is interesting. We’ll see what the future holds for Taska.

“Sad Mufin”

Poor Mufin. She’s been parked in Light’s Hope Chapel, waiting to be repaired from farming Strat for that badass mount. Decked out in some dusty Northrend dungeon drops and quest gear, it has been some time since she has seen the thrill of battle. Why has she been forsaken?

At the kind request (read: constant berating) of my coworkers, I started a new character on their horde server. With all the possibilities that come with making a new character, one might believe it would take some time. After about five minutes, spending most of that time picking a random name, destiny pulled me back to the Shaman.

Taska, mighty combatant of Thrall’s Horde and powerful conduit for elemental energies, has consumed my WoW time. Even though this is my second time leveling a shaman, things somehow feel fresh and new. Maybe it’s playing the “original” shaman, maybe it’s the new Horde specific quests and rewards. For one reason or another, I don’t feel burnt-out.

“Mighty Taska!”

Normally I’m not a proponent of either faction, but I have to admit there are some great Horde perks to playing a shaman. My most recent Horde-specific prize: Grunt’s Waraxe. Not just one, either. No, I’m dual-wielding those badboys like no one’s business! These are purchased for no small fee from the Thrallmar quartermaster when you reached honored. Attaining honored is not difficult given the number of Hellfire quests and dungeons that can be done.

So world, meet Taska. Taska, world. There, now that we are all acquainted you can look forward to some more entries as I progress through Outlands, run some dungeons, and push northward once more into the frozen reaches of Northrend.

PhotoTalk got it’s first review the other day and while I’m happy to be noticed I do have a gripe about the review. I’m not even talking about the 6/10 either (though I would be interested to know how one assigns an arbitrary value like that to an app when there’s no breakdown whatsoever). What bothers me is that my app is being reviewed not what it is, but what they want it to be.

The review starts with:

Since iPhone owners are still without a video-shooting mode, Metacreature Apps is trying to help ease the pain with PhotoTalk, an application which allows users to add up to 30 seconds of audio to their photos.

What? No I’m not. This app has absolutely nothing to do with trying to “ease the pain” of a lack of video recording. It most certainly is described as a “talking picture frame” application. Does anyone think a talking picture frame is trying to replace the video camera? I’d certainly hope not.

The review goes on to describe the app and explain how the author believes that:

the most obvious use, to me, is probably for concerts or other similar events. Again, it’s not quite as nice as video would be, but PhotoTalk is still a decent way to capture a moment, and a concert photo with an audio clip seems like a decent souvenir.”

Ok, I guess. The app certainly is good at capturing moments, but again, the app isn’t trying to do video or be a video replacement so why mention that it’s not as nice as video? Of course it isn’t.

And then the review ends by saying that the app is anticlimactic because he can’t transfer the images and audio off the device. Are there talking picture frames out there you can hook up to a computer to transfer your audio message off the device? Not that I’ve seen.

So my problem boils down to my app getting a somewhat unfavorable review because it isn’t what they wanted. It’s one thing to fail at the described tasked and get written up about that, but when my app makes it very clear that it is acting as a replacement to talking picture frames, not video cameras, it hardly seems fair to say the app is “anticlimactic” and give it an arbitrary 6/10 when it does what it set out to do well enough.

So people, if you’re going to review apps or games, just review them on what they are, not what you want them to be. Anything else is both unfair to developers and your readers. 

Well it’s official. I’m using Apple’s awful search suggestion as the name for my next game. The game actually does involve cupcakes so it’s not that bad of a title. I don’t have a whole lot I’m ready to reveal just yet other than “yes that’s my next game” and “here’s a video of what the game start up looks like”. Mad props to Sang for the artwork you see in there (and the rest of the game). The game should be done by the end of this week or early next week.