Weekly Tech Recap - № 240 - Angry Birds 10th anniversary, Apple wheels, Salt remote, Guardian XO, Interpreter Mode
Angry Birds 10 years later
Angry Birds. © Rovio Entertainment Corp.
Created by Finnish company Rovio Mobile Oy, the mobile game that went on to take the world by storm was launched for iPhone and iPad on December 11, 2009, 18 months after the debut of the iOS App Store. After selling over 12 million copies on iOS, the game was ported to several other platforms of the time: Palm Pre (August 2010), Android (October 2010), Symbian^3 (November 2010), Windows Phone (June 2011), among others. Who can truthfully say that they’ve never wasted a few dozen hours of their lives hurling chubby birds at green pigs with a slingshot? However, this kind of overnight, global success is never long-lasting. In 2014, after many variously successful versions of the original game, Rovio’s revenues collapsed by 73%, and the company that grew too fast had to lay off nearly a third of its employees. By 2015, the company had turned an operating profit of €10 million into an operating loss of €13 million. Today, the saga of angry birds continues, with the launch, a year ago, of Angry Birds Dream Blast, a game that uses artificial intelligence to optimize the difficulty of the different levels. It has met with success, with sales of over €60 million.
⇨ YouTube, “Angry Birds 10th Anniversary highlights!.”
⇨ ZDNet, Stan Schroeder, “At 10 years old, Angry Birds is keeping players hooked with machine learning.”
⇨ GamesIndustry.biz, James Batchelor, “How Angry Birds broke the limits for mobile games.”
Apple’s deal on wheels
Mac Pro wheels. © Apple.
When the newest Mac Pro was unveiled at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference last June, we wondered how much the optional wheels might cost, given that they might not be an option if you’re called to move your 40-lb machine around. We wrote: “Apple allows you to swap out the feet for wheels, for an undisclosed price (though we’re pretty sure that a set of four Apple-designed wheels will cost at least a hundred bucks)”. Now that the Mac Pro has been available for order since December 10, we have our answer: the set of four wheels will set you back CAD480 (USD400), or CAD120 per wheel! While we weren’t technically wrong in our prediction, neither did we come even close to the truth. If you find the price a little steep, you can always mount your very expensive Mac Pro on a skateboard. That said, if you can afford to buy a CAD7,500-to-CAD63,000 machine with a CAD7,500 Pro Display XDR (plus CAD1,300 for the equally optional support), you can probably afford to throw another CAD480 after it for a set of four wheels that will win you any Mac Pro race event down your company’s hallways.
⇨ Mashable, Stan Schroeder, “From the $999 stand to the $400 wheels, Apple is straight up trolling us.”
Apple TV not remotely friendly
© Salt Mobile SA.
While Apple likes to tout its experience designs and user interfaces, it is not above your odd fail. Take Apple TV’s remote, which is a disaster of usability and intuitiveness. Sure, it’s understatedly elegant (and probably designed by Jonathan Ive), but you can’t tell its head from its tail in a darkened TV room. Cue Salt, a Swiss TV and Internet service based on Apple TV 4K. Rather than alienate its client base with the original Apple remote, the company decided to develop its own, which is both compatible with Apple TV, without any pairing or configuration, and very ordinary, i.e. easy to use even for dummies. Stranger still, the remote was developed in collaboration with Apple. If you live in Switzerland, you can purchase the remote for CHF19.95 (CAD26.5) in any Salt store, even if you don’t have the service.
⇨ Circuit Breaker, Chaim Gartenberg, “The Apple TV remote is so bad that a Swiss TV company developed a normal replacement.”
⇨ MacRumors, Tim Hardwick, “Swiss Fiber TV service ‘Salt’ launches alternative Apple TV 4K Remote Control For Frustrated Customers.”
Interpreter Mode coming to a mobile phone near you
© iStock.
Quick, pull out your cellphone: does it have Goole Interpreter Mode yet? Yes, Google is pushing it out to phones worldwide! Google Interpreter Mode already supports 44 languages on iOS and Android phones, and hopes to expand that number soon. Just turn on the mike and, based on your current location, Intepreter Mode recognizes and transcribes whatever you and your interlocutor say. For the moment, Interpreter Mode only works with Wi-Fi or an Internet connection, but may work off-line in the future. Bon voyage!
⇨ Gizmodo, Sam Rutherford, “Google’s Interpreter Mode comes to phones and will make traveling a helluva lot easier.”
Guardian XO exoskeleton
Guardian XO. © Sarcos.
The Sarcos Guardian XO is a 24-degrees-of-freedom full-body robotic exoskeleton. While wearing it, a human can lift 200 pounds (90 kilograms) while feeling like they’re lifting just 10 lbs (4.5 kg). The Guardian XO is fully electrical and untethered with a runtime of 2 hours, and hot-swappable battery packs can keep it going for a full work day. It takes seconds to put on and take off, and Sarcos says new users can be trained to use the system in minutes. The amount of help that the exo gives you is easy to adjust; it’s got a graphical control panel on the left wrist. One Guardian XO costs USD100,000 per year to rent, and the company will be shipping its first batch of alpha units to customers (including both heavy industry and the U.S. military) in January.
⇨ YouTube, “Sarcos Guardian XO Powered Exosuit Demo.”
⇨ IEEE Spectrum, Evan Ackerman, “Sarcos demonstrates powered exosuit that gives workers super strength.”