Microsoft Gets Its Chequebook Out

Apple kicked the App market off when it launched the iPhone.  I think it must have been an interesting day when Steve Jobs walked into the boardroom to make his pitch.  What do you mean, you want to allow independent developers to produce apps for the new device?  You'll be letting anyone make docks, next.

Apple were right to let developers have their head.  Some have made a literal fortune out of the app market, and good luck to them.  Of course Apple knew what they were doing - all the apps had to be sold through the iTunes store and they took a skim off the top.  Millions upon millions of skims later and Apple are a cash rich company.  And those third party docks that meant we had a fantastic choice at next to no risk to Apple - I'm guessing there was a licensing fee involved too.  Talk about win-win.

Now everyone has to compete with Apple for the app market.  The savvy app companies develop their apps for all the successful platforms out there, which means Apple of course plus Android, naturally.  Somewhere out there is also Research In Motion's Blackberry devices, but they are hardly leading the way and developers could be forgiven for not prioritising them.

Microsoft are a little late to the party as well.  Windows 8 is still relatively young, although a few months makes a lot of difference in this modern age.  With the advent of viable smart screen PCs to take advantage of the new OS Microsoft are desperate to start to match Apple in the app market.  It's a tall order, with Apple claiming around 900,000 apps on the iTunes store.  Of course many of them won't have sold many units at all, a bit like eBook titles I guess, while others will have been a runaway success.  To be fair, Microsoft reckon that they have 48 of the top 50 apps in the charts in their store.  But looking at the app store on Windows 8 leaves me a little cold - I'm a hard consumer to please in the games market for example because I'm not too bothered about high resolution multi player games and to be honest all I want is some logic games that don't insult my limited intelligence while I'm waiting for the dentist to call me in.  I haven't found a decent Soduko to match the average fare for free in the Android market yet and Everett Kaser has obstinately said that he has no intention of developing a new version of Sherlock for 'another operating system' until it proves to be viable.

But they want more than that, which is reasonable given they want Windows 8 to be a success, especially in the critical smart phone market.  The mobile market is key to Microsoft's strategy because they are banking on us wanting to take advantage of the functionality in Windows 8 that lets us move seamlessly from mobile phone to PC to Xbox, that is we can start watching a film on one of those devices and pick it up where we left off on any of the other two. They're making grudging progress in the PC market which isn't unexpected - while many of us may choose to run Linux at home, corporately Microsoft is still king.

So the call has gone out to developers that the chequebook is open and Microsoft is prepared to pay up to $100,000 for apps that will run on Windows 8.  It sounds aggressive and as always it will be the small print that will decide if it's worth diverting developer work towards Windows 8, but I'm fairly confident that many operations will be sitting up and taking notice.  It's unclear on how the proportion of $100k is allocated, but definitely worth asking the question, I would suggest. If I was running a development house I'd still prioritise iOS and Android, but I'd have my patent pending Slide Rule app (what do you mean - what's a slide rule?  Don't you use log tables anymore?) running to see if the numbers stack up with the Microsoft offer.  Let's face it, they might not be the richest company in the world anymore, but being third or fourth is still pretty good.  Their credit's good for me.

If you know any app developers, let them know Microsoft are looking for apps and they're in a paying mood.  Maybe I'll develop that Slide Rule app for Windows 8 myself. It can't be any worse than the standard calculator app and might appeal to engineers of, ahem, a certain age.

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No Shit, Sherlock

I'm not really a gamer, I'll be honest.  I have PCs and a Nexus 7 tablet but I use them for surfing the web, searching for information, I use Microsoft Office for running spreadsheets and, of course, writing books.  I even write the odd blog entry now and then.  Some contend that all my blog entries are odd.

When I first started with computers, back in the early Eighties, it was with initially a Sinclair ZX81 (known as the Timex ZX81 in the US), then a Sinclair Spectrum (also badged as a Timex over the pond).  My main aim for these was to learn programming and I did a bit of that. But those were halcyon days and there was a large amateur industry that grew up generating games for the new computers.

I quickly gravitated to games that were puzzles - text adventures featured highly in my software list.  I'd like to see someone try to make a living out of text computer adventures today now that 3D virtual reality web-based interactive gaming is the rage.  To be fair, I'm not sure I'd be up for them either, but nostalgically I  have a soft spot for them in my memories.

As the computer industry matured, affordable PCs arrived.  I say affordable, but of course that's a relative term.  I paid £1200 for an Amstrad PC 1512 with twin floppy disk drives and no hard drive in 1989 to help me with my Open University studies.  That's over $1800 at today's exchange rate.  For that kind of money I reckon I could buy a pretty powerful PC or a stock Macintosh today.

Although the PCs were still very expensive in real terms, a new industry grew up.  It was called Shareware and amateur programmers produced games and other software that was very competitively priced.  Some of the companies that are huge today started out as Shareware programmers. However I suspect most peaked at about this time, when software was simple enough for one guy to write and complex enough to make it worth buying.  Hardly anything from that era has survived as a commercial prospect, such is the rate of change.

There was one program that I bought way back then, not Shareware but similar in that it was produced by a one man band and sold at a modest price.  Like most of the leisure software I've enjoyed over the years, it was a game that stretched my braincells.  It was, and is, called Sherlock, and it has recently been ported over to Android and iOS platforms.  The brains behind it is a guy named Everett Kaser.  I don't know a whole lot about Everett - Wikipewdia doesn't seem to know much about him either - but anyone who has taken the time to read his notes or has received his newsletters will realise he has a wicked sense of humour. He's also almost pathological about logical paths.  Sherlock is almost certainly his finest hour.  So, what is it?

It's a game where 6 people, 6 coloured houses, 6 numbers (1-6 inclusive, who'd have thought?), 6 fruit, 6 road signs and 6 letters (H, O, L, M, E & S) are arranged in a unique way.  At the start of the puzzle one or two of the items (people, houses etc) are revealed, although not always.  Some puzzles start with no pieces in their resting places.

Then, below the playing area are a series of visual clues.  Have a look at this screenshot from the Everett Kaser website:

Now this tells me that the Neanderthal Man is in the same column as the number 4 and the letter H.  Looking at the horizontal clues I notice that the number 4 is between the banana and the yellow house.  This means two things straight off:  Number 4 cannot be in either of the outside columns (because it's between two other items) and therefore the Neanderthal Man and the letter H are also not on the ends.  A good start.  You work through the clues and solve the problem.  Sometimes it's like a war of attrition, sometimes you get to make leaps of logic.  Wild stabs in the dark are rewarded with maniacal laughter - this is a game for the thinker, not the gut instinct soldier.

It works great on the Nexus 7 in Android (I haven't seen it working on iOS, but I've been buying this game for years for various platforms - Everett doesn't let us down).  It costs £2.50 for the full fat version, which is probably the least expensive version I've bought over time, available from Google Play store and Amazon (presumably for the Kindle Fire users).  For the Apple version, pop along to the iTunes store.  There are free trial versions available for you to download to see if it works for you - whatever your favoured platform. Once you get the hang of the game, it's easy to play, always challenging to win.  There's always one single solution and it's always solvable.  Everett provides a hint service for those times you can't see the wood for the trees, but it rapidly becomes a badge of honour (cool name for a game, I think) to avoid hints, swerve notifications and yet to beat the clock.  

A great game to while away a few minutes or even hours.  Everett has helpfully made the clock hold automatically if you close the app down, so you can dip in and out of the same game over the time it takes to commute to work, stopping as you board your train or cross the street.  Don't even think of trying it while you're driving!  If you prefer to use a PC or Mac for your leisure, then Sherlock plus a whole host of other logic games await you on Everett's website.

If you enjoy a cerebral challenge and have a tablet computer, mosey over to Everett's webpage and help keep a computing legend rolling.

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