Angry Birds update makes people angry

Not me as I won’t be updating.

I just went to the Angry Birds page at iTunes. See, a new update came out on the 17th which added 15 more levels. And added in your face ads selling Rovio merchandise. Every time you pause, you get an ad when you restart. You have to wait for the ad to finish before you can begin playing again.

The game play of Angry Birds forces rapid restarts. Often to get a three star level you have to hit the right spot. Miss it slightly and you might as well start over. Which is what everyone does. But to do this now requires that you watch the same animated ad over again. Not only does watching ads over and over again infuriate people, it also rapidly slows down game play.

People are not happy seeing ads in an app they paid for. Of course, there have been many levels added along the way for free, so I can see Rovio wanting to get some of their older customers to add something to the kitty.

But the way they have done it is not very smooth. So, here is the latest count for this update of Angry Birds: 344 five stars and 301 one star.

It is now a 3 star game. Used to be 5 star. I won’t be downloading the update as I have made it a habit to refrain from updating apps when there is a sudden decrease in the star rating. I’d rather wait for the developers to fix what ecer caused the decrease in rating before i add it to my iPad/iPhone.

I think they could have done a better job with the intrusion of ads into game play. Forcing people to sit through ads over and over again before they can resume game play, especially when they have not had to do it before and especially for a game costing $5.00.

And anyone going to their page at Apple is being warned not to buy the game.  As hard as it was to build the trust of their original customers, it is really easy to lose it. Perhaps Rovio has other ways now to make a lot of money now but angering those customers who originally made it successful is not a good long term strategy. Others expect you do to it to them eventually.

Mototrola Xoom orders done by June

Motorola not planning orders for iPad-competing Xoom past June – report
[Via AppleInsider]

Motorola will reportedly reduce orders for its Xoom tablet starting in the second quarter of 2011, and no orders are apparently scheduled past June, suggesting a Xoom successor and newer competitor to Apple’s iPad 2 is already in the works.

[More]

I’m not sure it’s a good idea to tell people that in 3 months they will not be taking any more orders for a tablet, that they may “may launch a new Xoom model in the second half after evaluating the situation.”

Sounds like it’s coming to an end. Is this going to make anyone enthusiastic about buying a product?

What a great product when they can tell that fewer of them need to be made each month. I guess that Super Bowl ad did not work at all. Or at least it did not work the way they thought it did.

They used to give graduation certificates for parenting

HOWTO raise a Eugenic Baby (old ad)
[Via Boing Boing]

This Physical Culture ad for The Correspondence School of Gospel and Scientific Eugenics (whose principal had the comedy name of “M.E. Teats,” no less!) manages to capture everything abhorrent about both faith and science, and is a kind of perfect parcel of awfulness, from the mad, stary schoolmarm and pinch-faced schoolmaster on the letterhead to the great! abundance! of exclamation!! marks!!!, to the testimonials from proud parents of “Eugenic Babies.”

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I wonder if the Certificate was useful. Could you show it to your child to overwhelm them with your competence?

Old time ads are so much fun. ‘Six Civilized Nations!” Certificates to demonstrate that graduates are qualified to intelligently be a parent. The testimonial from a Gentleman Student really sold me.

Thank goodness we don’t have ads like this now. Way too much text and poorly formatted. Too many font changes.

Of course, I’m sure ours will look as silly in 80 years.

Finally a competitive price for a tablet

from Wikipedia

RIM’s iPad-competing BlackBerry PlayBook will launch for $499 on April 19
[Via AppleInsider]

Research in Motion on Tuesday announced the details for the launch of its BlackBerry PlayBook 7-inch touchscreen tablet, set to arrive on April 19 for a $499 starting price that matches Apple’s iPad.

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But that is all that seems competitive.

Of course, with a much smaller screen, one would expect to pay less. Its like saying ‘Oh, this Toyota is the same price as a BMW’. May be true but the value is not the same.

The ”world’s first professional-grade tablet?”  Really!

Sorry. I do not see how any 7-incher can be called professional grade. The keyboard takes up most of the screen for one thing. Reminds me of the old, old ‘portables’ that had like 8 lines of text.

Apple is giving us 21st Century tools. Others are giving us tools from 1983.

How about editing and uploading a professional level video for the news? Will it be able to do that?

From what I read, the Blackberry tablet will have to be tethered for syncing  to a Blackberry phone to be useful. Apple does not make you buy an iPhone to use the iPad. But Blackberry wants you to buy a Blackberry also. It won’t ship with the very tools – like email – that I need.

Out of the box it can surf the net. What else?

So, to have a Playbook and use it for my professional work, I have to have a Blackberry also. This from a company that does not like Apple controlling my choices. Seems to be doing a great job by itself.

And no word of battery performance? A smaller form factor means a smaller battery. I don’t see this coming anywhere close to the iPad’s 10 hours or more.

It took them a year to come out with a competitor that does not even match the usefulness and professionalism of the first iPad much less the iPad2.

Reason #143 why Apple marketing is far ahead of other companies

Wife says ‘no’ to iPad 2, but Apple says ‘yes’
[Via MacDailyNews]

“Apple is paying close attention to all iPad 2 returns during the first few weeks to make sure there are no major production defects,” Arnold Kim reports for MacRumors. “This policy has led to an amusing story that… comes by way of an individual close to Apple:”

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Very nice marketing ploy.

Sure hope it is true but even if it is not, it should be. Just like Jobs answering email every once and a while, this sort of thing provides a nice vision of Apple as an adaptive, resilient company with a wicked sense of humor. Everyone else just seems dull.

When will these biochips work with my iPad

Scientists separate plasma from blood with working biochip
[Via Engadget]

Disposable biotech sensors won’t let you diagnose your own diseases quite yet, but we’ve taken the first step — a research team spanning three universities has successfully prototyped a lab-on-a-chip. Called the Self-powered Integrated Microfluidic Blood Analysis System (or SIMBAS for short, thankfully), the device takes a single drop of blood and separates the cells from the plasma. There’s no electricity, mechanics or chemical reactions needed here, just the work of gravity to pull the fluid through the tiny trenches and grooves, and it can take as little as ten minutes to produce a useful result. It’s just the first of a projected series of devices to make malady detection fast, affordable and portable. Diagram after the break!

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So, a couple of drops of blood and some serious analyzing. Then my results get sent to the doctor, right? Seems there could be quite a lot of medical labs looking for business when these babies come online.

I’m downloading Angry Birds Rio right now

Angry Birds Rio available on iTunes
[Via Edible Apple]

Tempter that irritating Angry Birds addiction with the latest installment from Rovio. The birds now find themselves in Rio and are ready to take on new puzzles and new enemies. Check it out on iTunes here.

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Only $2.99 and I can feed my habit. Great timing since I have 3-starred all of the Seasons levels and almost all of the regular App. I was worried I might not have something to waste some time with.