It’s almost unsettling how many choices you have when deciding what kind of iPhone case you’d like to buy.

Do you get one that charges your phone, or looks cool?

Is it a wallet?

Or a steering wheel?

The BookBook fits into the wallet category.

It’s small enough to fit in your pocket, though of course it adds a bit of bulk to encompass a few cards, some cash, and your iPhone.

Lets talk about the look.

The spine and sides of it are designed to look like a worn, pocket-sized, tome.

You can alternate between being insulted that it is phony, or charmed and amused.

There isn’t any way to get around this, you either like that look or you don’t. I wasn’t convinced until I saw the thing in person, having dismissed it previously as a trifle.

There are cutouts for the sensors, speakers, mic, dock, sleep/wake, home button, headphone, and the mute switch, though the volume buttons do not get a cutout.

The BookBook is about as smooth as you’re going to get for removing a case and docking it. Pull a red tab on a strap from behind your phone to enable removal, and push the phone up and out. Simple and not frustrating.

Unfortunately this is also the process for taking pictures or video. Though you don’t have to slide the phone out all the way to do so, if you choose to keep the phone in the case the top edge and speaker cutout will block some of the screen. An unexpected upside is that it gives you something to grip that isn’t the screen when shooting, so I find that to be a little more stable. Of course you’re also now going to be slightly concerned with the phone tipping out when held horizontally in landscape mode.

The friction of the leather’s grain holds your phone in until you’ve tipped it at a fairly extreme angle. If you slide the phone out for picture-taking until the volume-down button is resting inside the cutout for the mute toggle switch it’ll feel fairly secure. Of course, this is on a day-old product, and I can’t say that this will remain the case (rdrr) after several months of use.

There is minimal screen protection when the case is open. Nothing to prevent an object from impacting with the screen, but the leather frame that holds the phone in should be enough for any drop that isn’t face down. I actually like that this case doesn’t include a screen protector, most of the plastic built-ins would lock dust and pocket lint in and make touch controls that much more difficult.

It is actually a little difficult to hold the phone and use it one-handed. You have to flip the front cover back over the rear and the springiness of this configuration changes the way you touch the screen and the distance from thumb to edge. It isn’t an issue for quick taps, or reading, only for swipes and more complicated thumbage. I don’t find it too impractical, but this is actually the limitation that is the most bothersome from day-to-day.

I chose to be amused by the faux-book style, and am surprised at how well this case functions. For about $60, you’re getting what is actually a quite good leather wallet and iPhone 4 case. If you’re bothered by the style initially, the functionality may win you over.

via Hidden warning message found in Samsung’s Galaxy tablet » Technology Blog » Chipworks.

Lots of interesting stuff including Ryan discussing OS/2 at length. This portion is especially compelling:

I find if you’re targeting Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X right from the start, your code will probably work anywhere else that you might try it later.

Not to long ago, people would say, “why bother? Everyone runs Windows!”

But then the consoles became important.

And smaller shops might still say, “well, I’m not targeting those anyhow!”

But now they wish they had an iPad port.

You never know what will be important tomorrow!

via Interview: Ryan C. Gordon.

The English version of the interview is unfortunately lacking this great picture so I have provided it for reference.

Ask any game developer and they’ll tell you that publishers are the scum of the earth. It’s never a question of “if” the publisher screws you, it’s “when”. During my 15 years as a developer I have seen publishers pull every dirty trick imaginable, from telling the dev team of a certain AAA title to remove all the black kids from the game (“it hurts sales in Germany”) to informing a small studio that they were only going to pay half what they owed for work already completed, and then only if the studio signs a legal waiver first (knowing full well that because of late payments the studio would be out of business long before it reached court). This story is not about publishers, but it is about the kinds of situations that publishers create and the lengths that we developers are often forced to go to in order to clean up the messes they leave us with.

via The Day MAME Saved My A**.

Game Dev Story is a business simulation about choices.

What genre, what platform, and what theme do you want for your game?

Is the game cute and simple or realistic and innovative?

Do you want to use an in-house art, story, and audio folks or outsource assets and writing?

There are quite a few choices and you’ve got the freedom to make larger decisions about advertising campaigns and which development path to focus on.

Nothing is free, you’ve got to pay platform holders for devkits, employees their salaries, and fees for everything and everyone in the studio. Game developers won’t choose to grow on their own, you’ve got to prod them forward with research data gathered during development. Once they’re more talented their salary has to rise too. Though at least the game doesn’t simulate headhunters to recruit your developers out from under you.

Your team of developers will approach you during the various stages of development with costly suggestions that could result in a dramatically superior game or it could fail and fill the game with bugs. You’ll pay for those in development time before the game ships. Alternatively you can choose to ship early and chance critical disaster.

Maybe you should show off a vertical slice at Gamedex, or you could spend that money on advertising instead. Buy some Dead Bull to keep the developers motivated and read the latest Game Guy magazine to see what people are saying about your studio. Lets hope you don’t suffer a power outage and no-one else releases a similar game before you ship your own.

What makes Game Dev Story fun is interacting with your staff to create the best game, watching it develop, taking risks, making a name and shipping it. Was it well-received or did it fail miserably at the hands of critics and the gaming public? Maybe you’ll do better next time and eventually the fans will be lining up for launch day.

It is a never-ending dream come true for anyone who enjoys simple simulation games and is curious about game development.

The default interface left two black bars at the top and bottom of my iPhone screen, didn’t support landscape mode, and doesn’t support task-switching. Just enable the superior virtual gamepad and save often. This initial release is otherwise extremely promising and bodes well for future games from Kairosoft.

10/10 Magical Aardvarks Will continue to waste many hours into this sim, and heck it even got me to write my first game review in a year.

Buy Game Dev Story for $3.99 on the iOS app store. it is a truly special once-in-a-lifetime sim that will ruin your life with its addictive gameplay.