Wilde’s original argument is less to do with our minds grasping for systems to help make sense of social horrors and more to do with beauty. “To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing,” he wrote. “One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it come into existence.” His idea is that we look at the trees and hedgerows of the countryside, but we don’t see the beauty of the countryside until Constable paints it. Do games have a similar relationship to beauty? Do we only see the English countryside after playing The Chinese Room’s Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture?
Whatever the case, whether we’re talking about beauty or horror, games are maps we use to both pinpoint and distance ourselves from unconscious experiences. The world is a beautiful, terrifying place, and games help us organise these impulses at a comfortable distance. What happens in the gaps between those structures is another matter entirely, when games turn less to John Constable and more to Kazimir Malevich's Black Square. For the representative artist, however, reality is a source of inspiration and now it’s reality’s turn to play the game.CES 2016 is set to be the biggest technology show of the year. Taking place in Las Vegas from 6 to 9 January, it’s traditionally been the best place to see pretty much the whole range of consumer electronics, from smartphones to cameras and a lot more.
However, for the past couple of years, there’s been another category that’s gradually been growing: cars and automotive technology. This year, cars are set to be even bigger – despite the fact that CES is the week prior to the Detroit Motor Show – and there will be a big presence from car makers and third parties.Why is it such a big deal? In short, almost everyone will be there, which means there’s a lot of pressure on companies to have a presence (if you’re LG, and Samsung is attending, you have to be there too – and vice versa). So what’s going to happen? Here’s what we know and what we think will happen ahead of the official announcements.
It hasn’t been a straightforward year for Elon Musk’s vision of privatised space exploration, with a SpaceX rocket exploding moments after launch in June, but in the past week there was a massive breakthrough: the return of a launch rocket, potentially cutting mission costs in half. With a fresh wave of enthusiasm for space exploration, helped in the UK at least by Tim Peake’s six-month visit to the International Space Station, 2015 could be a landmark year for space.Anyone who’s tried to stick a cable into a USB slot the wrong way up will appreciate the joy of USB-C, which hit the mainstream in 2015. For a start, it works either way up. Genius! Not only that, but it’s fast – up to 10Gbits/sec – and has a much higher power output than previous USB standards. Apple’s 12in MacBook uses its USB-C socket as its sole means of charging, for instance. That points to a bright future too: super-fast USB-C external hard disks with just one cable for charging and connections. No more proprietary power adapters. In short, one connector to rule them all.
This has been an amazing year for streaming music, with the UK finally catching up with the US when it comes to music services – and then some. Summer saw a flurry of activity, first with Apple Music for £10 per month and then Amazon Prime Music bundled “free” for Prime customers. Audiophiles also have more services to choose from than ever, with Jay-Z’s Tidal joining the likes of Deezer Elite. Heck, even HP has joined in the fun with its Windows 10 app, HP Lounge. If you love music, you’ve never had it so good.
Photos are a problem. We take them on our phones, our cameras, and we’ve got years’ worth sitting on CDs and hard disks. How on earth do you keep track of it all and find what you need? At this year’s Google I/O, Google announced Google Photos, an extension to its existing photo-storage system, that will converge all your photos into one place – and tag them so you can find all the photos of your cousin Jean, should you need to. Yes, this raises privacy issues, but it also solves one of the great problems of our time.
Think a laser toner innovation is too dull for this list? Not if you think about the benefits first of all. Incredibly low warm-up times so that the first page emerges from your office printer in under ten seconds. Much less wasted toner, meaning the cartridges can be smaller and the printers themselves more compact. Fuss-free swap-outs, with no risk of toner leaking onto your crisply ironed white shirt. More pages per cartridge. And as it happens, all the new printers are quieter (and a tad sexier) too. Read all about HP ColorSphere 3 on our sister site IT Pro.There’s no doubt that tablet sales are in the doldrums. Recent research from IDC claims that sales have fallen 12.6% between the third quarter of 2014 and the same period this year. That’s not a new phenomenon, either – research from Forrester suggests that the global tablet market has plateaued, and a July report from ABI Research estimated that tablet sales in the first quarter of 2015 were 13% down on Q1 2014.
Business isn’t bad across the board, though – far from it. The two market leaders are struggling most, with iPad sales down by 19.7% and Samsung tablet sales down by 17.1%, according to IDC. ABI sees the biggest players hit even harder, claiming a 23% decline for iPads and a 30% decline for Samsung back in the first half of the year. That’s not good news for them, but some of the smaller players are growing. LG, Lenovo and Huawei are all doing well by finding their niche, whether it’s competing hard at lower price points or, in Huawei’s case, concentrating its efforts on 3G-/4G-enabled tablets.
When the iPad emerged in 2010, tablets were widely seen as the disruptive force that would herald a post-PC world. By 2011, analysts from Gartner, Forrester and IDC predicted massive sales, with the more excitable ones predicting that tablet sales would eclipse laptop sales by 2015. Yet while PC sales remain poor, tablet sales have also stopped growing, even fallen into decline. Apple’s earnings call for fiscal Q3 2015 showed that revenue from the iPad business was lower than revenue from its Mac business – the first quarter in several years where this was the case – and the trend only continued in Apple’s Q4 2015 results, with the Mac family generating 61% more revenue than the iPad.
So, why is the superstar device of recent years on the wane? Analysts generally put it down to three core factors. If you own an Apple device, you’ll know that the iTunes Store is the best place to get your fill of content. As well as a huge range of music, films and TV shows on offer, iTunes also includes the App Store – the only place to download free and paid-for applications to your Apple devices. It makes sense, then, that you might have bought, or been given an iTunes voucher this Christmas – but how do you redeem it? If you’ve just been presented with a voucher and want to spend it as soon as possible, this is quick tutorial is for you.iTunes vouchers can be sent electronically or physically, with the latter available at most supermarkets and department stores. If you’ve just got one, here’s how to use it.