{"id":25357,"date":"2019-05-23T16:32:54","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T20:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=25357"},"modified":"2019-05-31T13:43:38","modified_gmt":"2019-05-31T17:43:38","slug":"playdate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/23\/playdate\/","title":{"rendered":"Playdate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cabel Sasser<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

After more than 20 years of making quality apps you love for Mac and iOS, Panic was ready to try something new…<\/p>\n

…and that something was hardware.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Playdate<\/a> (tweet<\/a>, Hacker News<\/a>, MacRumors<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

It’s yellow. It fits in your pocket. It’s got a beautiful black and white screen. It’s not super cheap, but not super expensive. It includes brand new games from some amazing creators. Plus it has a crank.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

FAQ<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Panic built every part of Playdate from scratch, starting with early board designs (using the hotplate in our kitchen to flow solder), our own Playdate OS, a full-featured SDK supporting C and Lua development, a Mac-based simulator and debugger, and more.<\/p>\n

We then brought Playdate to one of our favorite companies on the planet — Teenage Engineering, the Stockholm-based creator of synthesizers and so much more — to begin a cross-company collaboration, designing and engineering Playdate’s look.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

No, it’s not April 1st. They’re really building this. I don’t play video games, but I’m so happy to see Playdate. I love the ambition to try something new of this difficulty and seeing the care and craft that’s gone into it. So often we think of technology at massive scale. It can be powerful and useful and even dangerous. But this is like a statement that it can also be a little product, not intended for everyone yet not elitist, that exists because some people wanted to have fun trying to brighten your day.<\/p>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a> (tweet<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

In today’s world all the new computing devices and platforms come from huge companies. Apple of course. All the well-known Android handset makers building off an OS provided by Google. Sony. Nintendo.<\/p>\n

Panic is almost cheating in a way because<\/em> they’re tiny. The Playdate platform isn’t competing with the state of the art. It’s not a retro platform, per se, but while it has an obviously nostalgic charm it is competing only on its own terms. Its only goal is to be fun. And aspects of Playdate are utterly modern: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, apps and software updates delivered over-the-air.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Anil Dash<\/a> (tweet<\/a>):<\/p>\n

You can read up on all the details elsewhere, but suffice to say, this little game machine looks like one of the most fun and joyful new efforts that any<\/em> company has done recently, and that a tiny indie software company in Oregon has the ambition to even attempt such a thing makes it only more endearing.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

I don’t know if Playdate will succeed in the market. I don’t know what kind of risk it represents for Panic as a company. But I know that people see this cute little device, and are reminded that they used to get excited<\/em> when they saw cool new technology, instead of wondering how it would warp their reality, or steal their information. Here’s hoping for a return to tech that’s fun, that’s thoughtful, and that’s created with a little bit of soul.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Eli Schiff<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Almost no one realizes that @panic’s @playdate has @Kenichi Yoshida’s fingerprints all over its design. It wasn’t just Teenage Engineering @jugendingenieur.<\/p>\n

Icon designers deserve more credit in this world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2019-05-24): Jesper<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

What I love about it is a recently recurring theme that’s, amidst a polarized and increasingly de-humanized society, been easy to disregard: the glimmers of hope. A group of under a dozen people can still create a little thing like this, including its own damn OS, just because they love the feel of technology built by those who care.<\/p>\n

There were a thousand reasons to not build it. There were a thousand reasons to run in the opposite direction, to give up, to completely cede the ground to consoles and touch and game streaming, to things that can be screen captured to Twitch.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Pádraig Kennedy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

My connection with Apple is largely thanks to Panic; back in 2003 their lovely polished apps are what made me want to make Mac software.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Playdate<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Playdate in 24 Hours:<\/p>\n

• 70,000+ people on the wait list
\n• Thousands of interested devs
\n• Some skeptics (we understand)
\n• 23k Twitter followers (hi!)
\n• Most importantly… an overwhelming flood of positivity + excitement from people who also want this weird thing we want (!!!)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2019-05-30): Brent Simmons<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

On seeing Playdate, I realized the question we should ask ourselves is: are we working on our own Playdates? I don’t mean hardware necessarily — I mean the thing that seems very difficult, maybe even impossible, that may fail, but is the best expression of our talent and love.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Zhuowei Zhang<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Panic’s @PlayDate console prototype uses a STM32F7 CPU, running at 216MHz with up to 512 KB RAM.<\/p>\n

Compared to Game Boy Advance, PlayDate has:<\/p>\n

- 62x the CPU power (462 vs 7.65 DMIPS)
\n- 33% more RAM (512KB vs 384KB).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Linda Dong<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

So delighted to have contributed a teeny piece to this enormous beautiful endeavor.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Nathalie Lawhead<\/a> (via Joshua Nozzi<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

Last year I was one of the organizers for Playdate. That year we received an email from Panic basically telling us we can’t use the name anymore because it would be a shame if our event got confused with what they are doing. It came off as incredibly self-important. It left me thinking “Wow, what a dick move.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Cabel Sasser<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Our goal was to find a way for our two things to coexist. We didn’t want to force them to do anything. We do have a trademark, but only for “handheld game devices”, so we COULDNT make them change anything even if we wanted. It was just a worry about us overshadowing their work.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2019-05-31): The Talk Show<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Special guests Cabel Sasser, Steven Frank, and Greg Maletic join the show to talk about Playdate, Panic’s exciting and surprising new handheld gaming system.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cabel Sasser: After more than 20 years of making quality apps you love for Mac and iOS, Panic was ready to try something new… …and that something was hardware. Playdate (tweet, Hacker News, MacRumors): It’s yellow. It fits in your pocket. It’s got a beautiful black and white screen. It’s not super cheap, but not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2019-05-23T20:32:56Z","apple_news_api_id":"820c1a8f-cb69-4df2-aba1-14d9532f1830","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2019-05-31T17:43:44Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAw==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/Aggwaj8tpTfKroRTZUy8YMA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[77,418,452,545,420,1808],"class_list":["post-25357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-design","tag-game","tag-hardware","tag-icons","tag-panic","tag-playdate"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25357"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25428,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25357\/revisions\/25428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}