Tag: iPad

Tech I Have Known and Loved

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This photo was only taken a few years ago, and everything here already looks (even more) ancient, except maybe the MacBook Air. Even so, they look incredibly even intimately familiar, in the way a CRAY-2 never would, immediately recognizable as portable, personal computing. It’s obvious yet still noteworthy that the laptop form factor is still largely the same as it was a couple decades ago, still a screen and keyboard+trackpad united by a hinge.

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We can easily mentally update this image; we know what would sit on this desk to the right of the MacBook Air in this lineage of personal computing. We’ve got the new MacBook and MacBook Pro models and most recently the iPad Pro, and those still look much like these ancestors that came before them. Are future iterations of being productive with personal technology just going to be thinner, lighter, more powerful renditions of the laptop and tablet form factors?

Diabolically Simple, Fiendishly Unforgiving: Super Hexagon

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super hexagon

I’ve spent a sizable chunk of time over the past few days fatiguing my neurons with the iPad/iPhone game Super Hexagon. After finding it in the Impossible Games section of the iTunes Store with a high rating, I decided to spend the $2.99 and go go for it. Impossible indeed. For the first several attempts, I didn’t last more than 3 seconds; the little triangle I was trying struggling to keep from colliding into the lines closing in, that small shape near the center of the screen quickly crashed into the converging stripes as I dizzily fumbled with the controls. Since then, I’ve managed to make it through about 30 seconds of the game.

I love how the game’s concept is so simple, yet the gameplay is unrelentingly challenging. That along with the high-energy, retro-video-game soundtrack keep me coming back for more—and pleasantly getting a little more each time. I didn’t think I’d be able to make it to 30 seconds so soon. Just hope that progress keeps up.

The video below shows what successful gameplay looks like. I can’t believe someone can do that. Then again, it’s pretty amazing what we can train our brains to do.