Something has been bothering me. In the grand scheme of things it’s nothing too major. But it’s such an irritating little thing and it could be solved ever so easily.
It’s widescreen iPhone games. This isn’t a dig at the games themselves, but rather at developers who simply haven’t looked at the design of iPhone properly before releasing their products. For the mostpart, developers seem to like having the game play in widescreen when you rotate the phone 90 degrees anti-clockwise. Why is this such an issue, you may ask?
It’s an issue because that’s the side Apple added the volume controls. And given the natural resting position of the fingers along the edge of the phone, it means you’re likely to inadvertently push the volume control whilst playing. Not only does this obviously alter the sound, but it also displays a big box in the middle of the screen showing the current volume level. So just as you’re about to score the winning goal for England, up pops this big black box because your finger happens to have slipped.
Why not have the game play rotated clockwise? There are no buttons or controls at all on that side. It’s not a difficult thing to do. In fact, as far as I’m aware from the limited experience I’ve had with the API, it would simply involve changing one little word in the code. If I’m wrong, please let me know. But I don’t think I am.
So why do you do it?!
