Well, this is interesting. iPhone OS includes a number of very exciting features, and we can’t wait to start playing with them.

If you want an iPhone or iPad application that takes advantage of the new features in the iPhone, there’s never been a better time to get in touch.

The iPad has had some interesting effects on the geek community at large. The majority of us love it, and a rather vocal minority hate it. They hate it for a variety of reasons – some because of a perceived lack of openness, some because they don’t see the point in using it, and some who just seem to be jealous.

But I’m not talking about that today!

After getting in to the Apple Store (to much cheering and apparently genuine joy on the part of the apple employees), I happened to see Scott Forstall wander in to the store. He was looking about happily as the population of Palo Alto expressed their adoration and love, $499 at a time.

I was planning on going up to him and saying hi, but then I noticed something.

The time on the images of the iPad had changed.

All promotional images of the iPhone show the time as 9:42 AM. Nobody knew the exact reason why, though theories abound.

But on the iPad, the time is shown as 9:41 AM. Hmm.

I wandered up to Scott, who was leaning against a table showcasing the new device, introduced myself, and got right down to business.

“Why’s the time changed? Heck, why does the iPhone show 9:42 in the first place?”

Scott looked around conspiratorially, and then chuckled.

“You want to know the real reason for that time?”

I nodded, with no small amount of eager anticipation.

“We design the keynotes so that the big reveal of the product happens around 40 minutes into the presentation. When the big image of the product appears on screen, we want the time shown to be close to the actual time on the audience’s watches. But we know we won’t hit 40 minutes exactly.”

“So you add a couple of minutes.”

“Yeah! And for the iPhone, we made it 42 minutes. It turned out we were pretty accurate with that estimate, so for the iPad, we made it 41 minutes. And there you are – the secret of the magic time.”

“So what you’re saying is that you picked a number close enough to suit your needs, and used it in the keynote and all promotional images.”

“Yep! It’s as simple as that.”

I thanked Scott, and wandered off in a happy Apple-induced daze. A mystery was solved, and I had an iPad in my hands. It was a good day.

Jon Manning
Lead Developer

We got to San Francisco from Palo Alto via an exciting train journey, where we found that this weeks issue of SF Weekly has an interesting tagline about an interesting sounding article on San Francisco. After that, we had some steak and relaxed; we went to the movies to see both “Cop Out” (awesome, but completely stupid) and “Alice in Wonderland” (typical Tim Burton genius). At the cinema, we were fortunate enough to see the Old Spice “I’m on a horse” ad on the big screen – which would more than made up the price of admission, even if the movie had been rubbish!

Soon enough we registered for GDC and checked in to our glorious hotel rooms. We’re staying at the San Francisco Marriott on 4th, and it really is quite high. After attempting to pose the Secret Lab business cards against the view and miserably failing to show off both the awesomeness of the view or the majesty of the business cards we gave up and got more food, this time far too much pasta (some of which is still sitting in our hotel room fridge!) We went for a wander to Union Square, and wandered around Borders for far too long – and, as usual even though we both use Sony eReaders, came away with more books.

The next day, GDC started! After being welcomed by a threatening Wario banner we proceeded down the grand (ahem) staircase of Moscone North before figuring out that we actually needed to be in Moscone South – after a swift adventure through a maze of tunnels, we found ourselves underneath Moscone South. We planned to attend the 10th Annual Game Design Workshop after having heard so many good things about it.

A host of amusing personalities, led by the seemingly inimitable Marc LeBlanc begun leading us through, and lecturing us on, a variety of fascinating topics on game design. The first thing we did was create a new set of rules, and a new setting, for the game SISSYFIGHT 3000. Paris’ team came up with “Constructing Thermonuclear Robot Wars” in which we used the papercraft Wario that Nintendo gave us as parts to represent building a robot. It got far, far more complex from there.

After some vigorous playtesting, brainstorming and laughing the activity changed, and we started to brainstorm “Epic Performance” moments of a game, with an eye to improving the “epicness” when a player fails. It was fun, but I’m still not entirely sure what we came up with! Following that, we moved to inserting a rule for player behaviour into a game called “100 Zombies”. Let me tell you, trying to figure out how a character labelled “Math Whiz” moves and fights zombies is no small challenge. So far, we’ve come up with a system whereby he “triangulates” the position of zombies, throws set squares and kills the zombies on the tip of a 3-4-5 triangle. I’ll post a diagram when I get a moment. We also, of course, collected our free phones from Google!

After that, we went to Unitys iPhone Networking Reception, and met up with the ever-friendly Tom Higgins from Unity and a whole host of other awesome Unity users and iPhone developers. From there, we set off to Chieftan’s Irish Pub (at the recommendation of Tom) and grabbed some dinner (including Bangers & Mash and Irish Stew!) with a small group of developers, artists and sound designers. It was great to meet so many awesome people in one day!

So, today (Day 2) we’re going back to the Game Design Workshop to continue work on “100 Zombies” and other exciting things! Tomorrow, the conference begins in earnest!

And now, since it’s 8:20 AM and the conference begins at 10AM, it’s time to go and have coffee! More photos are here.