Erm, yes! Absolutely! And here’s why;

Gaming owes it’s global transcendence to the leading form of media / entertainment worldwide to many things. But have no doubt that Steve Jobs’ role in this rise is no small part.

A visionary, not just for hardware, software, music & media but for combining them all into mobile gaming...

When you combine his drive of the original personal computing revolution, his leadership at Pixar in the computer animation arena and his genius in pioneering the iPhone “uber-media-mobile”, (which today outsells Nintendo & Sony portables) you can see that he very much has shaped the gaming landscape by truly bringing gaming to the masses. When you look at mobile gaming today you are talking about Nintendo, Sony and Apple, (with Android leading “the rest”), and Apple’s rise and rise to be counted amongst these two gaming giants as an equal, in any form, is quite simply astounding considering the time it has had to do so. The company responsible for moving mobile gaming towards a touch based control method and doing so in such a tiny, pleasing, multi-functional and beautiful package that it was propelled from nowhere to industry leader in, what in industry terms is, little more than the blink of an eye.

Steve Jobs changed the mobile gaming industry, forever and for the better. Fact.

Apple & Gaming? Believe it! The iPhone is the world's "most accessible" mobile gaming platform...

But, today is a day to appreciate not just what he has done for you, but a little more about the man himself, to truly ponder the awesomeness of Steve, so, let’s take a moment to step back and learn about / remember the man behind the myth, the real Steve Jobs…

Steve Jobs was born in San Fransisco on February the 24th, 1955, to Joanne Carole Schieble, an American of Swiss and German descent, and Abdulfattah John Jandali, a Syrian Muslim immigrant. Under pressure from her parents, and fearing scandal, Ms Schieble had travelled to San Francisco to have the baby and give it up for adoption immediately to Paul & Clara Jobs, an Armenian couple. In addition to Patti his adopted sister, his biological parents had married and provided him with Mona, the biological sister he would not meet until he was 27, but of whom he would later say; “We’re family. She’s one of my best friends in the world.”

It was during his later school years that his interest in computing emerged, during which time he spent time working at Hewlett Packard (along-side future Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak), before working as a technician at Atari, the first great giant of computer gaming. Following success at the company he then founded Apple, in 1976, with Wozniak and Ronald Wayne but it wasn’t until 1984 that they had their first major success with the “Macintosh”, the first successful consumer computer with a graphical user interface.

"Think Different"? Never did anyone live more closely by their motto...

Following a period of industry hardship Steve & Apple parted ways, giving him the “space” to once again be “liberated” and allowing him to found “NeXT Computer” (1990) which developed workstations famed for their technical capability, including the first built in Ethernet port, and pioneering object-oriented development environment. He followed this almost immediately with the NeXTcube (also 1990) which featured the first successful “rich” messaging client; NeXTMail, which supported voice, image & video over email. The high cost of manufacture to meet Steve’s exacting standards eventually led NeXT to move complete away from hardware development and into software (1993) by 1996 things had come full circle as NeXT was acquired by Apple Inc, for $429 million, who used it’s WebObjects technology to power the Apple Store, MobileMe and the iTunes Store.

It was in this year, with proceeds from the sale, that Steve bought Pixar for $10 million from LucasArts. Initially a hardware company, Steve moved them into the computer animation space and through a partnership with Disney global success with their series of co-produced CGI family films. Following a less than smooth relationship with Disney Jobs negotiated the sale of Pixar to Disney in 2006 for a cool $7.4 billion. A return of $7.39 billion on his original investment!

Simultaneous with his work with Pixar he now re-took his position at the top of Apple, following it’s acquisition of NeXT, steering them through tough times and completely transforming both their direction and success during the “2000s” by championing the iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad, which catapulted Apple to become the most valuable company in the world briefly in 2011, perhaps the crowning achievement for an adopted boy who never let his passion and vision for technology as an agent of positive & life-enriching change dim in the face of the many, many challenges he faced in life…

Steve, you brought so many amazing things, thank you for helping us game in meetings!

Steve, we salute you, perhaps this age’s greatest innovator, but also never afraid to lead as a maverick, industrialist, polymath, visionary & businessman… Oh, and the dude who finally let us play proper games on our phones… finally!!

You will be missed… and we think more than anyone yet realises…

- Richard “Rax” Burley
@Raxous

It just so happens he’s been fiddling around in his garage (we’d like to think!), as we all do… and come up with a bit of a minor techie stroke of genius!

His new little project involves a USB stick with HDMI out, oh and a 700Mhz CPU & 128MB of RAM, so yes, you guessed it it’s a USB stick sized PC! The possibilities are surely endless!!

Erm... OK, it's crazy cheap, but not quite 20p... Oh! Right! Sorry, that's for size comparison! Apologies!

The included hardware is clearly sufficient to run Ubuntu and other stripped down Linux distributions, so how long before your new gaming system is portable enough to fit on your key ring! These are exciting times people, exciting times!

(It’s probably worth noting at this point that the Wii has a 729 Mhz CPU!)

Admittedly there are no reports of GPUs etc, but surely it won’t take long before ATI or NVidia deliver something usable on this scale and then we just need to stick Steam / Raptr on it and we are off!

Anyway, why not jump on over to Rasperry Pi‘s website and check out the geekily simple website featuring the awesome new tech plaything!

This week the trio bring you reviews from the future, the best games releases of the week, a SUPER edition of Adam thinks, and have a nice little natter about handheld consoles, old and new.

ENJOY

MP3 Download / iTunes / RSS Feed

The kit itself is essentially a standard Rock Band drum kit without the plastic and metal stand. So the pads and kick pedal can move freely, which can cause a few problems. I was actually quite surprised by the overall quality of the hardware itself; for the price I was expecting something very cheap and incredibly flimsy. The pads and kick pedal have a good weight to them, which would suggest they can actually withstand the abuse your drumsticks will assault it with. The kick pedal has a good solid feel to it and the drums actually seem a little quieter than the original Rock Band kit.

As mentioned before there is no stand with this package, and this can cause problems with finding a good place to put the pads. The instructions provided suggest a flat surface like a table, however I find the pads much easier to hit if they are slightly tilted towards you (like they are on the official kit) which lead me to set up an elaborate system of pulleys and levers to find the best playing setup. Also, the pads do have a tendency to move about during play and you are likely to find yourself chasing the kick pedal across the floor.

All of the parts of the controller are wired separately to the navigation panel which has its own USB cable to plug into your console. This means you end up with a lot of wires that are just dying to get tangled up, but these are only minor issues.

Be prepared for wires

In all I found this hardware to be a good cheap alternative to the official kit, which can set you back anywhere upto £60. The small issues it has can start to annoy as you have to constantly rearrange the pads into a comfortable position after every song. The kit does all pack away neatly into a much smaller space than official drums, so if you are living somewhere with limited space then maybe this product is a good idea. For anyone else, if you have the room and the money, by all means opt for the official drums. But if for some reason you can’t get them, perhaps you’re averse to spending so much on plastic peripherals or are just too cheap to pay for it then this is a pretty good package.

Buy this from our Amazon shop and help to support this site: