The Online Magazine Focused on App Design, Branding & Marketing

At last, an app for the elite! Who needs apps for the working class?

If you’re a gamer, you’ve been hearing about Minecraft for a long, long time.

Its creators have made it available throughout all stages of its development, from its early alpha build where it was little more than a concept all the way to the recently released final version available for multiple platforms, including PC, Xbox 360 and your smartphone.

At the time that I write this, the $6.99 version of Minecraft that I can play on my HTC Incredible is not the same game as the $19.99 version you can download for your home console. It’s simpler. It has fewer options. It doesn’t look quite as nice (although the game’s intentionally crude graphics don’t make this as much of a factor). But it’s close. Very close. So close, that when I look at Minecraft and how it was released, I start to wonder about the future of gaming in general and what role smartphones and apps are going to play in that future.

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Welcome back to Inside the Design Studio, where we take you behind the scenes and give you a quick glimpse at the app design process! Today, we’ll be teasing DaySince, an upcoming Rocksauce Studios app. We can’t tell you what it does quite yet (but you will soon enough), but after the jump, you can check out the creation of a piece of art — a number, if you want to get specific — in Illustrator. Whether you’re genuinely interested in app design or just want to see hours of work sped up to a brisk 45 seconds, you should definitely hit the jump.

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The Game: Total War Battles: Shogun

The Device: iPhone 4

The Price: $6.99 for iOS (Android on the way)

The Basics: When it was announced that the popular Total War series would be getting an iOS adaptation, many worried that it would be far too dumbed down. In a way people were right right to worry, because there’s simply no way that all of the nuances of the PC version could translate to your phone. What we did end up with though is a surprisingly deep and very fun game that’s a bit of a hybrid of a strategy title and a tower defense game.

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The Apps: Gifture and Jittergram

The Device: iPhone

The Price: Free

The Basics: There is no such thing as a new idea in the app world. Everything has been done at least once (usually about ten times, if you want to be completely honest), so it’s not so important that you think up a great idea, it’s important that you think up a way to refine and perfect an existing concept. In today’s App Spotlight, I’m going to take a look at two apps that, on the surface, appear to do the exact same thing: create instant GIFs by taking a series of pictures and stringing them together. It’s a great idea and it’s the exact kind of thing that has the potential to catch on with smartphone users. But like the Highlander, there can be only one! Which of these two apps takes this golden idea further?

The Examination: Well, I can answer that question immediately and directly: although Jittergram certainly gets the job done, Gifture is the more successful app in every way.

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(We love apps. We make them, after all! Our Favorite Apps is a series where we briefly take a look at an app that we really like.)

Overwhelmed by your Facebook friends? Flooded by a constant stream of tweets? Think Path’s 150 friend limit is still too much? Then try out Pair an iPhone and Android app that is meant for just you and your significant other. Dubbed Super SMS by the developers, the app allows both users to text each other, share photos and videos, and also allows you to sketch pictures. You can even send your current location for impromptu rendezvous.

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There have been some stories floating around the web that Apple offered to buy Loewe, a manufacturer of high-end televisions based in Berlin, Germany. Loewe said it hadn’t received an offer, but that doesn’t mean anything, so I did some research.

Browsing around on Loewe’s website, which is mostly in German, and incomprehensibly to my single language mind, I did discover some interesting facts that lend some credit to the rumors: (1) Loewe is already working to integrate its televisions with the iPad, check out the Loewe Assist Media App in the AppStore – think of it like an awesome remote control; (2) Loewe TV’s are similarly sexy to the Apple designed products we’ve come to love; and (3) Loewe’s financial difficulties make it an attractive target for Apple.

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UpNext: We’ve expressed our love and admiration for Google Maps countless times here at Tapsauce, even giving the mobile version a rare “A” grade in an App Spotlight column. It’s the rare app that we truly cannot imagine living without now that it’s been introduced into our lives. However, UpNext is an app with one simple goal: give Google a run for its money in the field of navigation apps! In terms of basic functions, UpNext doesn’t seem to do too much more than Google Maps (but we’ll find out for sure when we get our hands on it!) but it does have one big, vital difference: it looks sooo much more fun to use. Utilizing 3D vector mapping, the app’s interface is slick and dynamic, letting you seamlessly explore a map in a fashion that makes Google Maps look slightly archaic in comparison. If you don’t believe us, check out the video below!

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(Every Monday, Rocksauce Studios CEO Q Manning will answer your questions about app design, app development and the mobile industry.)

What’s the difference between designing/developing a game and a regular app?

The big difference between designing a game and a utility app is quite simple really: you have to make sure a game is fun. Obviously, a utility or check-in application should be interesting to use, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be fun in the traditional sense of the word. With a game, you have to deal with a lot of balance issues you have to worry about. Take a game like Angry Birds. You have to consider a bunch of questions. How far back can you pull the bird? How far can it go back before it lets go automatically? Does the physics engine work? What happens when things fall? What do the graphics look like? And, most importantly and most obviously, is it fun to use? Once it’s designed, there’s going to have a lot of back-and-forth between you and the developer to ensure that your concepts actually translate into an enjoyable experience. It’s easy to create a fun concept, but actually building interesting mechanics? That’s a different story altogether.

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(Talksauce is the Friday editorial where Tapsauce editor-in-chief Jacob Hall talks about something that’s on his mind. His brutally honest opinions don’t represent the views of Rocksauce Studios, but hopefully they’ll give you some food for thought!)

About a year and a half ago, comedian Patton Oswalt wrote an article for Wired where he declared Geek Culture dead. Naturally, the citizens of the Geek Kingdom (AKA, a significant portion of the entire internet) were none too happy with their way of life being called out in such a way and the article became a subject of debate across the online world for about a week, which, in the sped-up universe of the internet, is the equivalent of six months in the real world. However, many people who railed against the article seemed to miss Oswalt’s point, which wasn’t “Geek Culture is dumb and bad and deserves to die” but rather “Geek Culture has officially become mainstream culture.”

Although Oswalt’s piece was more directly tied to comic books, science fiction and other geek staples, the same can be applied to technology as a whole. Decades ago, computers were used — and understood — by a select few, mainly a handful of nerds. Now, they’re literally everywhere, being used by toddlers, senior citizens and everyone in-between. Loving and understanding the technology in your pocket is an everyday act of pride. Geeks were ahead of the curve on just about everything relevant in modern culture. The world is literally at our fingertips.

With that said, is all of this new technology making us all dumber?

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