We mentioned earlier that we were interested in doing a side-by-side comparison of the Jawbone UP’s sleep analysis and that done by the Sleep Cycle iPhone app. Well, user alexw at the official UP forum beat us to the punch with a sample one-day analysis. As expected, because the UP is attached to you, it’s accuracy is better than Sleep Cycle, which relies on the iPhone sitting on the corner of your bed.

Another user compared the UP to another body-mounted device, and the results were very similar. It sounds like the UP’s sleep analysis will be a much better log of sleep activity than what Sleep Cycle offers, so the UP is definitely an upgrade. The downside at the moment is that several users have noted bugs in the sleep analysis display, which at least for one night, didn’t show up at all in the detailed, landscape-based mode. Jawbone has already released an update for the UP, which is a good start, but on our end, the logged sleep from last night remains missing. Hopefully the update ensures that future logged nights display correctly.

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On Friday, we drove by two Targets, a Best Buy, and an AT&T store to see if anyone was selling the Jawbone UP early. None were. The reports we heard about UPs selling early must have been very isolated experiences, though it seems people had more success at Apple stores, who apparently are more likely to not play by the rules.¹ Both Target stores we visited had places set aside, complete with labels, for the three sizes of the UP initially available, yet employees at neither store could tell me whether they already sold out of their UP stock, or if they hadn’t received any yet. We decided to return to the AT&T store on Sunday morning.

We had sized our wrist using the printable template available at the UP site. This proved to be a waste of time, because not only did the AT&T store have demo units out to try on, but the packaging on each UP box has a plastic template included, so buyers can check for their size when in the store. It’s a nice touch, and shows Jawbone’s attention to detail. So we bought our UP, and set it up in the car on the way home.² We won’t bother to give a full review here, because we found Shawn Wall’s review to be plenty thorough for a product that’s only officially been on shelves for less than two days, but we will respond to some points he made for the sake of completeness.

The rubberized bracelet is bendable to a degree. It’s not the simplest task in the world getting it on or off your wrist, but thankfully you don’t really need to take it off given its waterproof nature.

Jawbone actually calls the bracelet water resistant, and only to a fairly shallow depth. The idea is that you can wash your hands, and even take it into the shower, without worrying about it getting damaged. We even saw a picture of someone wearing it in a shallow pool, so the idea that you can wear it most places is obviously something Jawbone wants customers to understand. But don’t think about taking the UP diving. In fact, the notion of taking this thing in the ocean makes us a bit uncomfortable, and we’d rather someone else tried it first.

When we took a shower this morning, our hesitation for getting the UP wet made us take it off. It’s not like you’ll be missing out on too much activity tracking in those few minutes of the morning anyway. Though, we did notice that the black rubberized band³ attracts dirt pretty quickly, so wearing it into the shower may not be a bad idea after all.

As far as bendability goes, the UP has to be somewhat bendable to get it on and off. But that’s only for the “ends” of the band, and the bendability is temporary. In other words, you can’t bend the UP into a different shape, or make it larger or smaller.

There’s really not much in the way of moving parts here; there is a button at one end that is used for switching modes (more on that later), and the opposite end has a cap that is pulled off to reveal the 3.5mm male jack that is used to sync the device with your mobile phone (currently iPhone-only, but Android “coming soon”).

The one thing we don’t like about the UP is that the button on one end, as well as the cap, is painted silver. We’d much rather have these match the main band colour, as we don’t expecially like the accent color. The cap is only silver on one side though, so if you put it on backwards, it appears black to all but the closest observer. A backwards cap also means you’re not proudly displaying “Jawbone” written on your jewelry; we don’t need to advertise for the company we already supported by buying their product. Depending on how much we dislike the button on the other end being an “off” colour, we may end up painting it black down the road.

One really great feature in regards to sleep is that the bracelet can be used as an alarm clock using vibration. Even better, it supposedly will wake you up out of a light sleep instead of a deep sleep by getting you up a little earlier if it can (by looking at your deep vs. light sleep somehow).

This feature worked well for us this morning, though to be fair, we didn’t sleep all that great last night anyway, and noticeably tumbled around a bunch. In this case, we were quick to feel the pulsing vibration of the alarm, but we wonder if it will wake us on days that we have a deeper sleep. Today, it woke us up 15 minutes early. We’re considering doing a side-by-side test of the UP and Sleep Cycle iPhone app to see how consistent the two are, or if one tends to go off before the other. For now, though, we expect the UP to handle our alarms equally well, if not better, with the only concern being whether the vibration is strong enough to rouse us from a deep sleep.

One of my favorite feature of the device is found in this area. You can set your bracelet to remind you to be active if you are sedentary for too long. The time range is user defined. This is great as it can remind us programmers to get out of our chairs once an hour

We’re rather fond of this feature also. We have it enabled during business hours, and its a great reminder to get up and do something, even if it’s just to pee or get some fresh water.

I do not own another pedometor, Fitbit or anything else along those lines so I cannot speak for the accuracy of the UP. It feels like the numbers are too high though.

Whether they’re too high or not, all we can say is that the “lightly active” category is cake during an average weekend, and that’s not even with workout scheduled. From noon until night yesterday, we scored over 8k steps taken, which means we can easily up our steps goal to the next level. We’ll have to see how our weekend activity compares to the average workday to see whether it’s worth adjusting our goals at this time, though.

The food diary portion of the application is well… a little underwhelming in my opinion.

We haven’t played with this feature too much yet, and honestly, we’re not too tempted considering there’s no way to count calories. We’ve used other apps to compare our caloric intake to our ideal goal (at least 3k calories a day), and the fact that such a simple feature is missing makes us feel like we’d gain little from the UP app’s inclusion of a food log. Maybe once this feature becomes more robust, we’ll be more likely to keep up with it.

Game mechanics are a huge portion to an offering such as the UP, and I feel they currently fall a little short.

We agree with Shawn here, and don’t like how simply accepting a challenge means others who accepted the challenge can suddenly see your progress. We’d prefer “private” challenges that don’t involved any reporting, or at the very least, allow users to select a username instead of their registered (true) name. Sure, the public feed only uses first names, but we’d still prefer a nickname.

The problem of the food log and the game mechanics points at the one flaw the UP currently has, and that’s a very simplistic piece of software. If Jawbone maintains a regular release schedule of updates and bug fixes, however, we can truly see the pair being a useful lifestyle assistant for some time to come.

More thoughts to follow as we spend more time with our new bracelet.

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With the release of iOS 5, we had a chance to try out the upgrade on several devices belonging to us and family. The process, unfortunately, was rather inconsistent across devices, with some going smoother than others:

1. iPad 2 w/3G, 64GB: This was the first device we opted to upgrade. We did a sync first, then started the update. Everything seemed to go fine until the “restoring apps” window appeared to freeze about two-thirds of the way through. The screen on the iPad itself seemed to suggest that it was done, and we continued with the setup there. With the restoring apps status bar still not moving, we unplugged the device and had to force-quit iTunes. The device worked fine, but was indeed missing some apps. Some pictures were still present on the device. When we launched iBooks, all our eBooks seemed present, but they then deleted themselves after the device “phoned home”. The next time we connected the iPad to the computer, it did re-sync all apps, and the status bar actually moved.

2. iPhone 4, 32 GB: Didn’t do a last sync before updating, and the same thing happened with this device as with our iPad 2. Only this time, most of the apps were missing. When we installed a few of them from the on-device AppStore, we found that the data for the apps was still present on the iPhone, so we didn’t need to set every app up again. The same iBooks problem as with the iPad 2 appeared on this device, too. A second re-sync fixed the problem as it did with the iPad.

3. iPad 2, 32 GB: This device had very little stuff on it. Upgrade went perfectly smooth.

4. iPhone 4, 16 GB: This device also had very little stuff on it. Upgrade went smooth as well.

5. iPad w/3G, 16GB: Another smooth upgrade.

6. iPhone 3GS, 16 GB: Upgrade seemed to go fine, but then on restoring the last backup, we received the -34 error.¹ A quick web search suggested that this error was due to the device being almost full before the update, and because the down-convert mp3s to 128 kbps was checked in the sync settings, iTunes defaulted to trying to sync the full-size mp3s back to the updated device instead of down-converting them again. When the dialogue box popped up to try the restore again, we had to cancel out and do a manual re-sync. That worked.

One would expect these types of issues to have been resolved by Apple before the iOS 5 release. Whoever is behind the iTunes and iOS testing process, however, seems to be less serious about hammering out bugs than in other Apple products. After all, the iOS upgrade process has not been without error in the past, and this is a pretty significant update. At the very least, we’d expect there to be more system feedback on what iTunes is doing at any given time. For instance, instead of “restoring apps”, we’d prefer some indication of what app is being restored, and maybe even a count of how many apps have been restored so far, versus how many are left. Some window of where we stand in the process, and what’s left, would also be nice.

It also doesn’t help that the post-update things-to-do is not very intuitive.Our family was quick to note how they would have never known what steps to take after the update, which boiled down to getting their Mobile Me accounts upgraded to iCloud, and ensuring that syncing and the iTunes store were set up properly. To make most use out of iCloud, all of the options like Photo Stream need to be turned on, but they’re not all on by default. Further, the iCloud backup option wasn’t on by default either, nor was the ability to sync with iTunes wirelessly.². Owners who started using Mobile Me after using iTunes may also have two accounts, so they need to configure their devices with their Mobile Me/iCloud accounts, and then manually switch their AppStore username even if it was correctly configured before the update already.³

Fortunately, iOS 5 is a nice update, so the struggles are ultimately worth it. Still, it’s surprising that there are as many hiccups out there as people are reporting, especially this late in the game.

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Following up our post on handwriting apps for the iPad, we recently revisited some of the apps we tried, and replaced, with Notes Plus. We’ve been waiting for the new version of Notes Plus to hit the AppStore, but it’s likely still some weeks off, and in the meantime, the competition has released point releases offering more functionality. Maybe Notes Plus will retake the crown when 3.0 hits later this autumn, but for now, it’s not the clear winner in this genre anymore.

Penultimate has a paper store now, where you can download additional backgrounds to write on. It also allows importing of pictures to mock up, and as always, it offers arguably the best “ink” feel of any of the apps in this category. While a zoom feature is planned, the current lack of this feature keeps it from being a serious note-taking tool for more than quick sketches and notes.¹

We also took another look at Noteshelf, which now sports a zoom window that’s configurable and auto-advances. We’ve actually grown to like the non-auto-advance zoom window that Notes Plus has, if only because the auto-advance feature tends to introduce momentary lag; the Notes Plus zoom box is simply quicker to write on. That said, since the zoom window can be customized, it’s easy to write at exactly the size you want, regardless of paper style used. (And Noteshelf has a paper store too, now.)

Noteshelf has better notebook organization now, too, as notebooks can be grouped, which somewhat emulates folders. The design of the app is overall more aesthetically pleasing, too, and the inking is nearly on par with Penultimate. Between the design and ink quality, this makes using Noteshelf a far more pleasing experience than Notes Plus. Another new feature is importing photos, and while they can’t be resized once placed on a page, this is a top feature we want in this type of app, and the fact that it remains lacking in Notes Plus is unfortunate. What we’d prefer is if our scribbles over an imported photo remain independent from the photo, but this and the lack of image resizing isn’t a deal-breaker.²

Notes Plus still offers audio recording, which is an awesome feature, but one we don’t really use. It’s nice to know that the feature is there, but since we don’t rely on it most of the time, Notes Plus has fallen off our main screen and was replaced by Noteself. It’s interesting how close these apps are to one another in terms of quality, however, and we can easily see Notes Plus regaining the throne in short order, or even Penultimate launching itself to the top with the inclusion of zoom functionality.

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Instapaper’s developer, Marco Arment, seems sure that Instapaper has a future despite Apple’s sherlocking of the idea. At WWDS, Apple announced that all future versions of Safari would support a Reading List function in which people could “save” articles to read later, by grabbing the article’s text and presenting it in a streamlined fashion outside of the web site it was originally found on. Yeah, basically what Instapaper’s been doing for a while now. And an Apple offering means one less login and app to worry about, with the spit-and-polish Apple is known for. But maybe Arment is right in thinking that Instapaper still has a future. We don’t totally buy the argument that Instapaper will live on simply because a lot of people are already using Instapaper. Rather, Instapaper will live on because it offers features that Apple’s Reading List doesn’t offer for several revisions.

1. Offline Reading: One of Instapaper’s biggest selling points, even if it’s not advertised as such, is the fact that everything on your read-it-later list can be cached for offline access. That means people on-the-go who aren’t always connected to the internet can still catch up on the articles they’ve saved, and then synchronize the article’s read status once they’re next online. No word on whether Reading List will offer this feature.

2. Web Access: Reading List’s thus far been advertised as a way to keep cached articles available to all of Apple’s devices, so even if you mark an article to save on your iPhone, you can pick it up on your iPad or MacBook. That’s all well and good, but just as Mobile Me offers access to Apple services on computers that aren’t Apple devices, the strength of a service like Reading List is in it being always-accessible. Instapaper does this, thanks to a web site that users can login to in order to see what articles they’ve saved. Again, there’s no word yet on whether Reading List will offer a similar feature, though we seriously hope it does.

We like Instapaper, and use it fairly often for tagging blog posts and articles for later review. Despite this, we’d be lying if we said that we wouldn’t strongly consider replacing our Instapaper workflow with Apple’s Reading List. It all depends on how much functionality Apple decides to build into it early on.

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We make a lot of impulse buys on Apple’s AppStore, usually because we figure that we’ll use a given sale-priced app eventually, so we may as well pick it up now at a discount. Other impulse buys are apps that we figure we’ll eventually use, which we don’t expect to go on sale soon. These tend to be staple apps that one can expect to find on any computer, such a word processors and spreadsheet apps. Such is the case with iPad’s version of Pages and Numbers, both of which we picked up because we realized they’d be useful down the road. In the case of Numbers, we knew having a program that could read Excel files would come in handy, and occasionally we do dabble with a spreadsheet for some purpose.

As far as Pages goes, we initially expected to use the app as our go-to word processor, but we quickly found that just as on a normal computer, we found much more efficiency in something more minimal. Pages thus became relegated to handling Word files, or those necessitating richer layout, like when a document contains tables.

Last night, we downloaded a couple inventory files that included tables, which we intended to edit and add items quantities to.¹ The documents should have been spreadsheets, but were instead put together in a word processor. We couldn’t copy/paste the tables into Numbers, nor open the documents in Numbers for conversion. So, we opened the documents in Pages, and off we were. But we quickly ran into a couple annoyances:

1. For every physical item we were indexing in these documents, we needed to search the document for an item name, since the item names in the tables weren’t arranged alphabetically. Just getting to the find menu required two taps of the screen, which didn’t prove as fast as it would with a simple Ctrl+F. Since we wanted a full-screen view and knew we’d be using the keyboard a lot,² so we turned our bluetooth keyboard on. However, Ctrl+F doesn’t do anything in Pages, so the keyboard didn’t make searching faster at all.

2. There was considerable lag when editing a table field. Double-clicking a field resulted in the character-input cursor, but when we hit a number on our keyboard, the number would take a second or two to show up. If a number was already in the field, hitting backspace to delete the number and then hitting a number on the keyboard resulted in the last-typed number to appear twice. So if we wanted to delete, say, the number “1″ and replace it with “5,” we ended up with “55.” The only way to fix this was to wait an extra second or two for Pages to catch up – once Pages caught up to the lag, the last number typed would not be entered in the field double. Strangely, we found lag to be worse when editing table cells near the bottom of a given page, while cells near the top of the page had noticeably less lag.

3. One of the things that makes data entry on a normal computer quick is that beyond shortcuts, you have arrow keys on your keyboard. So after I input something into a cell, I can navigate to nearby cells using the arrow keys on my keyboard. In Pages and Notes, the arrow keys on my bluetooth keyboard do not do this, necessitating me to tap on a new field in order to edit it. Every time we remove our hands from the keyboard, our data entry speed becomes slower.

Generally, we’ve been very positive when it comes to using our iPad for real-world tasks, and we maintain that for most tasks, using the iPad quickly is a mere matter of adjusting to a new work-flow. In this case, however, Apple’s lack of proper keyboard support hinders what a user is capable of. Why not allow certain functions, normally accessible via screen taps, to be replicated using keyboard shortcuts that users may be familiar with? Why not allow a physical keyboard to further add to a user’s experience, rather than limiting it artificially to force people to keep tapping the screen?

Ultimately, these are more shots at Pages and Numbers than they are on the iPad, as there’s no reason these complaints couldn’t be mitigated with a more streamlined app interface. At this point, however, we’re ready to look into competing solutions for editing Word files and handling large spreadsheets, because Apple’s offerings fall short. Hopefully, Apple continues to improve their office suite for iOS, and addresses some of these issues.

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With Apple’s iCloud on the horizon, TUAW’s Steven Sande is speculating a death-knell for Mobile Me’s offerings, even though Mobile Me is supposed to transition over to the new iCloud. One of the features Sande thinks will disappear with iCloud is web-based apps:

I’d speculate that the web-based versions of Mail, Contacts, and Calendar will get less attention going forward, and might even disappear on June 30, 2012. Seriously — who needs them? If you have a Mac or three, you’ll sync Mail, Address Book, and iCal through the free iCloud service.

The people who will still need these services are the people who don’t have access to an Apple device all the time. Most major corporations, for example, haven’t jumped on the Apple bandwagon, and so their desktops are still Windows-based PCs. Employees who use Macs at home require Mobile Me web apps to access mail, calendars, and contacts while in Mac-restricted environments. To remove this ability is to spit in the face of many of your customers, who will then just jump ship and move over to a service that can be accessed from a Windows computer, like Google’s suite.

For Windows users, you’ll be using Outlook 2010 or 2007 to sync to the iCloud. The only scenario in which you might not be able to get to your “stuff” is when you’re using a public computer of some sort at a hotel, on a cruise ship, or at a cybercafé in Spain. Of course, you don’t want that to happen, so you’ll have your iOS device with you. Hook up to Wi-Fi or use your 3G data service, and the problem is solved. That’s why they call them mobile devices.

Sande, perhaps, doesn’t know how things work in many large corporations, where one can’t simply add accounts to Outlook (it’s restricted), nor install third-party software. Nor does everyone have the capability of toting their iOS device into their workspace, and even if they did, not letting them access their mail from a local desktop isn’t in the spirit of the cloud.

In reality, what we would hope to see with iCloud is an even more robust and featured web suite, to include accessing of bookmarks and saved online articles from the web. iCloud shouldn’t just be about consistency of access across Apple devices, but from all devices, until such a time that Apple devices are more ubiquitous across industries.

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A little over half a year ago, we reported on our experience using an iPad as our go-to computing device, after an iPad replaced our MacBook Pro. That wasn’t the first time we addressed the issue of the iPad being a tethered device, but it framed the issue with real-world experience in mind:

Right now, the iPad is a great travel companion, but if we were to go on a major trip lasting several months, we’d question whether not having any backups during that time-frame, or missing a key iOS update, is something we could live with.

We actually brought up a tethering fix over a year ago, when we talked about how some people might still need a computer for certain tasks, even though the iPad would be a fit device for most people:

What Apple should do to address the backup issue is roll out over-the-air syncing, either at the local level with the Apple Time Capsule, or via the cloud with a an enhanced Mobile Me service. A cloud-based iTunes solution would be perfect, allowing you to keep all your media files on Apple’s servers, and choose which ones to stream or copy to the iPad directly.

With Apple’s iOS 5 reveal, our concerns regarding tethering have finally been addressed with an upcoming software upgrade. It’s an important move for Apple, because with the roll-out of iOS 5 and iCloud, Apple is effectively acknowledging that the iPad is not designed to be just an extension of the Mac, but can indeed replace a PC for those who don’t require PC-specific functionality. Since the vast majority of PC-users have simple requirements that can either be met with an out-of-box iPad (or with the addition of a couple apps from the AppStore), the iPad will now become a true PC replacement for the general populace, no reservations required.

At this stage, there’s little reason not to recommend the iPad for the general populace, particularly for those who are computer illiterate and could benefit from an intuitive device that they won’t “mess up” by playing with. The iPad was already a great seller before, and accused of crushing netbook and even notebook sales, but now it’s positioned to truly dominate the market.

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Apple is being asked by the U.S. Senate why they haven’t removed iOS apps from the AppStore that report on the location of sobriety checkpoints. That may be a reasonable question to ask if safety is on your mind, but the issue quickly gets muddled when you consider that what many of these apps are doing is re-reporting published information. Further, apps like Fuzz Alert, which TiPb specifically calls out do not limit reporting to DUI checkpoints, but on the location of speed traps, speed cameras, et al.

The obvious question is whether it is illegal to report the location of a DUI checkpoint. Apple can ultimately make a decision based on ethical grounds¹, but it appears that they’re relying on their lawyers for this one. So far as we can tell, an individual can freely publish information about a DUI checkpoint via other means², so reporting such information via an app is no different. Has the U.S. Senate asked similar questions to those operating web sites, or manufacturing GPS units, that offer similar information?

While you can argue that drunk drivers may use such information to avoid getting caught, thereby potentially injuring or killing someone, isn’t there a similar issue with other published information? Having access to information on how to build a bomb isn’t illegal, but actually building one with the intent to use it illegally is. Police officers organizing in public locations is not a secret³, so simply making this information easier to access shouldn’t be an issue. Should we next ban apps that report on where local playgrounds are, because child molesters could use them to more quickly identify where young children hang out?

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As a former World of Warcraft (WoW) gamer, we found ourselves intrigued when Order & Chaos (O&C) was announced for iOS. Gameloft titles are known for cloning gameplay, art, and themes from blockbuster titles, and O&C is no different. The title offers to do one thing that no one else hasn’t, however, and that’s delivering a solid MMO experience to mobile devices¹. And in this respect, Gameloft delivered.

WoW lite.

Let’s get this out of the way immediately: Order & Chaos isn’t going to replace WoW. At least not for most people. That’s because WoW has a rich, established setting that’s interesting the moment you enter the game. O&C may share an aesthetic style, but it’s WoW watered down. The quests are just as simple as vanilla WoW, and while the world appears to have a decent scope to it, the atmosphere isn’t reflective of racial or cultural differences. New characters are basically dropped right into the game, and while WoW eases new players into game mechanics in way that’s mind-numbingly slow your second or third time around, O&C throws you into the mix a bit quicker, expecting you to get the hang of things before you’ve even explored the full interface. So maybe the tutorial could use some buffing up for people new to the genre, but maybe Gameloft expects most people downloading O&C to already be MMO veterans.

Let’s back up a bit and talk about character creation. The game limits players to four races (two per “side”), and players can choose either male or female gender. Model customization is limited to skin and hair color, hairstyle, and face style. There are about four options in each category here, so the customization isn’t horribly robust, but it’s plenty for a first attempt. What surprised us is that there are no racial bonuses, so other than appearance, there’s no benefit to which race you decide to go with.

There are also four classes to choose from, each being available to every race: Warrior, Mage, Monk, and Ranger. We’ve only played around with the Monk thus far, which looks like it can be specced to do extra healing, or be combat-proficient. It’s unclear to us as yet whether O&C is a true Diku-style MMO, but at first glance we didn’t see any threat-reducing spells available at our class trainer. By level nine, we had a one go-to healing spell, and we grouped up twice to take on some named monsters, where we were more useful healing than fighting.

There’s a talent tree for specializing, and it looks pretty deep, so the customization here may be interesting. There are some talent dependencies, and other talents that require a certain amount of pre-spent points in a given tree in order to buy them. Unlike WoW there are two trees per class, with the Monk being the sole healing class. The Ranger looks to be a cross between a WoW Hunter and Rogue, while the Warrior and Mage are more obvious. Again, without any indication of a threat meter, we don’t know whether the Warrior has a taunt-like effect, but we imagine this must exist, if only because his armour is clearly more robust.

Like WoW, each class has a trainer, but unlike WoW, you buy books that contain skills. So rather than buying the skill, you buy the book and then use the book to learn the skill, which is really just a pain in the ass considering the extra step. There are a lot of extra steps like this littered throughout the game, like when you click an item in your inventory, and you have to click another little icon in order to bring up a smaller window comparing it to the item already occupying the respective item slot. These things just go to show how polished WoW was when it came out in 2004, and how even after all this time, a clone isn’t getting everything right.

O&C includes crafting, which seems limited to tailoring, leather-working, and smithing. There’s a quest you can complete which lets you choose one of those three, and we don’t know why you wouldn’t choose the one that lets you craft your own gear. The only gathered we’ve yet seen is mining, and it doesn’t require special gear – you just click on a resource node on the map, and your character pulls a pick-axe out of her ass and starts hammering away.

Yet, decent gameplay.

It’s pretty remarkable that Gameloft got O&C to run well, particularly given the low resolution. The game does feel a tad cramped compared to playing WoW on your big-screen monitor, and we can’t help but think that reducing text sizes and some icons wouldn’t alleviate our virtual claustrophobia a bit. But the gameplay is pretty smooth, with a virtual control-stick appearing on the left side of the screen, wherever you decide to drop your thumb. This only gets in the way when you want to loot a mob whose corpse is on that side of the screen, but it’s not too annoying to move the camera to the left so you can loot easily. Yes, your right thumb controls camera movement, as well as jumping and using your hotkeys on the bottom-right of the screen. There are three hotspots near the jump button where you can place spells and items, but if you need more (and you will), you can place less-used abilities on a shelf that you can pull up or hide on the right side of the screen. This is where we stashed our potions and food, and definitely beats bringing up the player inventory just to use a potion mid-combat.

The lack of addons is actually nice. We don’t know how many hours we spent working on an ideal addon configuration, and compiling it for others to use. Needless to say, it’s somewhat refreshing knowing that every player is on equal footing, and that when you want to play, you don’t have to first update all your addons or mess with your screen layout. Since there’s no O&C version of wowhead, you have help with quests thanks to a blue arrow that points in the direction of a selected quest objective. Presumably, this won’t be as helpful when you have to travel half-way across the world, so paying attention to quest descriptions will be necessary, but in the initial levels of the game, it’s a foolproof guide.

WoW-like “groups” are called “teams” in O&C, and they work decent enough. The chat system includes a global channel, which, as in every game, can be a royal annoyance. This is perhaps even more true in O&C, if only because players come from various countries, using various languages. There are regional servers, but this hasn’t stopped Korean players from creating characters on the American servers, complete with names that we don’t have the proper keyboard set up for, even if we did want to type them.

About the only major gripe we have with the game is the business model. The game costs $7 to download, and after a free, three-month subscription, costs $1/month. That’s not bad, but there’s also a “freemium” model here, where players can buy gold and other items for real money. How this will affect balance is still up-in-the-air, but it seems as though many of the for-pay items are temporary buffs and aesthetic enhancements (like pets)².

Moving forward.

O&C is certainly deep, in the sense that player progression isn’t super-quick. It doesn’t seem to be super-slow, either, but we’ll have to play more to see what kind of curve the game offers. Right now, the game feels like more complex Gauntlet. That is to say, it’s a hack’n slash emporium with various MMO elements, but not offering enough to foster a complex community³. That’s not to say that Gameloft couldn’t expand on O&C as time goes on, offering new abilities, races, classes, emotes, customization, et al. If anything, O&C blows games like Dungeon Hunter out of the water, because of the MMO complexity.

What we hope to see in the next 10 levels or so is more Diku styling, with areas that require grouping and the holy triad of classes (tank, healer, DPS)⁴. We also hope to see varied class builds, and a world with considerable atmospheric changes. The background “lore” has been weak thus far, and we hope this will change; right now, we don’t see a reason to separate races into Order and Chaos factions, because both races are seen pretty close to the get-go near starter areas. With no clear faction contest, Order and Chaos offer even less context than Alliance and Horde in WoW does.

O&C is an awesome next step in the future of mobile MMOs. While the inability to play over 3G is a hit against the game, the fact that you can take an MMO along on an iPhone, iPod, or iPad, is still remarkable. Even better is the proof-of-concept that Gameloft managed here, showing developers that an MMO on these devices is not only possible, but that the control scheme can be good, and needn’t be hampered by the lack of a physical keyboard. So even if O&C fails to deliver an experience even marginally as robust as beta WoW, it’s already challenged other MMO developers to create something better. For that alone, O&C should win a prize.

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