[Kde-games-devel] The iPhenomenon

[Ian Wadham]

A year or two ago my wife bought an iPhone, one of several mobile phones
she has owned, including a high-end Nokia previously, but the iPhone was
the first on which she was able to use all the functions, or at least willing 
to make the effort.  On the iPhone she plays Sudoku, color Sudoku (using
colors instead of numbers), Mahjongg solitaire (in 3-D) and Whirlyword
(a game to extract 3-6 letter words from 6 randomized letters).

Recently, in June, she went out and bought an iPad, on the first day of
availability in Australia.  Now she has given up using KDE/Linux.  She
does all of her browsing, gmailing and game-playing on one iBox or the
other and is starting to manage photos on the iPad.  She even reads
books on the iPad.  This is a woman in her sixties we are talking about!

Yesterday came the killer ...  We have been discussing Palapeli on this
list, but when our four-year old grandson was round at our house, she
brought up this iApp called Tozzle and he was entranced ...

http://appshopper.com/games/tozzle-toddlers-favorite-puzzle

It's not the same game as Palapeli ...  In Tozzle you just have to fit shapes
into holes, but the quality of the graphics, animations and sound effects
is amazing!  Watch a two-year old playing it on Youtube ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1GNMKtkHxA

One key to the iPhenomenon and its ease of use is the touch-screen.
I wonder when/whether they are supported in KDE and when/whether
we will have touch-screen laptops.  The iPad has a few limitations ...
no USB port, difficult to print anything and it is even less flexible than
Linuxes at handling Microsoft-oriented and other proprietary-format
attachments received on emails.  I get a couple of forwards per week
from my wife asking me to play the attachments.

What I am wondering is whether KDE Games will ever be able to catch
up or keep up with this kind of stuff?  Or should I switch to writing iApps?

All the best, Ian W.