Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara Review

Two of Capcom's best arcade beat-'em-ups get HD ports worthy of their heritage, providing a good, if easy, co-op experience.


The pair of games in Capcom's Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara collection may very well be the best of its beat-'em-up games from the '90s arcade era, and these ports from Iron Galaxy are the most robust versions of the duo of Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara to date. The 1999 Sega Saturn ports were exclusive to Japan and were unfortunately downgraded from four-player to two-player co-op, but these new HD ports are upscaled versions of the four-player arcade originals with a few modern additions, such as visual filters, unlockable rules, and concept art. Of course, the real draw is the co-op beat-'em-up experience, which has stood the test of time surprisingly well. It's a return to form for these nearly 20-year-old games; for players who remember them, and even those who don't, Chronicles is worth the time it takes to wrangle a party of warriors and suit up for battle.

Coming toward the end of Capcom's stint in side-scrolling brawlers, these games are far more advanced than was typical of the genre at the time, when their contemporaries included only temporarily equippable secondary weapons and a small selection of combo attacks and special moves. Capcom took a more role-playing-game-like approach by including elements of level progression, optional equipment, and supply shops. There are branching paths and conditional events, and even the name you give your character determines certain factors of your character's skill and equipment loadout. These nuances, especially in Shadow Over Mystara, with its advanced Street Fighter-like inputs, provide plenty of depth. There are moments when fighting common enemies becomes repetitive, but it's not difficult to find new ways to play to keep the experience fresh; it's often as easy as choosing a different character and exploring their distinct moveset.

You and your co-op cohorts have four character classes to choose from in Tower of Doom: fighter, elf, cleric, and dwarf. Shadow Over Mystara contains those four and adds the thief and magic-user classes to the roster. The classes differ quite noticeably in speed, power, and abilities, and though you can charge your way through the game with any selection thanks to unlimited continues, it's a far more rewarding experience to plan and build a team of complementary characters. The availability of unlimited continues is good in the sense that it lets you see everything the game has to offer, but it ultimately cheapens the thrill of victory.

Typical thief. Picking up loot while everyone else does the dirty work.

Both Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara were designed for co-op play, and though playing solo can be enjoyable, it pales in comparison to the fun that can be had when joining up with a team. Without expert knowledge of the nuanced controls, such as the proper timing of a riposte with the cleric, it's not uncommon to die quite frequently when fighting monsters on your own. Each class's default abilities are detailed in the main menu, but it will take considerable practice to memorize, and consistently perform, some advanced but crucial maneuvers, a task that's more easily done when someone has got your back.

Health pickups are few and far between, but again, the unlimited-continues system negates their worth. Don't bother spending money on health in shops between levels (unless you're chasing a high score); you're fully revitalized the next time you continue after death. It's the nature of a direct arcade port that doesn't include a coin limit. The unlockable Elimination mode does away with the default continue system--entirely. Once it's enabled, you die the first time your HP runs out. This is good for those trying to prove their mastery, but it doesn't really resolve the hand-holding nature of the default system in a desirable fashion.

And people wonder why dragons get such a bad rap.

Of course, judging classic games by modern standards is tricky. Ultimately, it comes down to expectations. Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara were revered upon release, but their classic traits can be off-putting without a nostalgic perspective to give them context. Players who have graduated from the past and are looking for a more advanced experience may view this collection as a lighthearted diversion. However, for anyone who has waited the better part of two decades to play these games, their arrival on modern platforms is nothing short of awesome. Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara is a great port of two delightful games, and unsurprisingly, they're the very best versions that you can get your hands on.

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State of Decay Review

State of Decay is an immersive and suspenseful open-world zombie adventure that shouldn't be missed.
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The Good

Breakable weapons keep the focus on stealth
Permadeath for characters ensures that you're careful about taking risks
Heavy doses of suspense in a large, immersive open world
Convincing stat-driven survival system Welcome focus on interpersonal relationships.

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The Bad

Many glitches mar the overall experience
Some key concepts are poorly explained.
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State of Decay certainly doesn't waste any time. Mere seconds past the Start screen, it throws you headlong into a zombie apocalypse in full bloom. Tree branch in hand, you clobber the shambling corpses attempting to munch on your screaming camping buddy, and then seek out the few remaining survivors while scrounging for supplies, weapons, and ever-safer home bases. That's just the first 20 minutes, but the core of State of Decay's gameplay never changes as you make your way through its open world and battle an endless cast of zombies. State of Decay finds its soul in the dreary repetition of apocalyptic survival.

                           

                              You'll probably do more running than fighting. Make sure your cardio's up.

State of Decay's open world manages a substantial degree of immersion, complete with an expansive and occasionally intimidating map and the ability to drive cars freely across the landscape. The cars handle poorly, but the ability to use them to mow down roving zombie swarms offers a malicious satisfaction. Yet this isn't some zombie free-for-all; far from it. In developer Undead Labs' impressive first effort, melee weapons break with frightening ease, ammo runs out quickly, silencers break in the midst of careful attempts at stealth sniping, and even vehicles run out of gas unless refueled. There's a heavy dose of "the real" here, and the game is better for it.

You thus quickly learn to fight zombies only if you absolutely have to in State of Decay, and therein lies much of its appeal. This is not a game about Bruce Campbell badassing about in Evil Dead; it's a celebration of the normal person and all of his or her associated weaknesses. Some of the characters you come across (and can befriend and thus control, if you perform enough tasks for them) have no combat experience at all; they're cooks and gaming buffs, and only through taking them out in the world against the undead hordes can you max out their stats in areas like cardio and shooting to their full seven levels.

This might look cool, but this guy probably got a good zombie chomping two seconds later.

Some befriend you easily; others are outright hostile in their worry that bringing in another mouth to feed only weakens your group's strength. Still, there's enough variety among them to warrant answering almost every cry for help you encounter either through your home base's radio or while roving the land. Ignore a plea, and you'll never know if you missed out on finding a world-class zombie killer or even someone who's just witty enough to keep the morale of your home base up.

Just don't get too attached. Death is permanent in State of Decay, which means that even characters with fully voiced storylines and unique dialogue die forever if you let them get overrun. From there, you can only continue through the eyes of another character you've befriended. Because death is permanent, you spend much of the game not in combat but in the more suspenseful act of slinking through bushes on foot. Indeed, every action carries with it the threat of fatal zombie attraction, such as choosing to ram your way through a locked door or even speeding up your usually slow searches through cabinets and bags with a click of the left bumper.

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State of Decay is an immersive and suspenseful open-world zombie adventure that shouldn't be missed.

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Few things add more tension to State of Decay than the terrifying noise guns make, because a single foolish shot can bring an unmanageable horde upon you. And if your character doesn't have the cardio to outrun them? You'll watch helplessly as the zombies rip his legs from his torso. Unfortunately, considering that there are a host of bugs in State of Decay that make zombies pop up out of nowhere or even send them straight through walls, it's possible that will happen anyway despite your most careful efforts.

Hasn't anyone ever told these people that riding in the bed of a pickup truck is extremely dangerous?

Permanent death is a smart addition, though, since losing characters with high skills across the board carries with it a real sense of loss, particularly if their voice quests and customized responses in some quests led you to believe they were an essential (and thus effectively immortal) character. Sometimes they don't even have to die in the field; if a character you've been controlling sustains enough injuries--a few undead chomps don't result in instant zombification in State of Decay--he'll lie bedridden and useless at your home base. The good news is that the need to rest and switch out characters results in you amassing a balanced group of playable characters anyway; the bad news is that the process isn't explained very well, as with so many of State of Decay's essential systems.

You're never told, for instance, that the supplies you place in your home base's storage to earn reputation (essentially State of Decay's currency) may vanish forever, especially if you log out and return to play several hours later. That's right--the world of State of Decay keeps going even if you're not in it. You're never told about the importance of items like coffee, and you're never warned that prolonged absence from the game can leave the morale of your home base so low that key non-player characters start committing suicide out of despair. For the most part, State of Decay maintains the harrowing lack of direction of its first few minutes throughout the entire game, and that lack of hand-holding means that you'll likely lose more characters than you anticipated as you play.

It's also strange that a game that places such a heavy emphasis on interpersonal relationships should have no cooperative mode. You spend your time with State of Decay alone, joining up with other NPCs only for specialized quests and escort missions that bring other survivors back to your current base camp. It's especially odd since State of Decay starts out with a party of two, suggesting that you'll always have a buddy at your side if need be. While the decision undeniably adds tension to the act of exploration, such solo forays seem foolish considering the circumstances, and the experience may have been better if Undead Labs had let you choose whether or not you wanted a friendly NPC with you as you explored rather than forcing you to go without.

Daytime is scary enough in State of Decay. Night is downright terrifying.

State of Decay serves up a near constant barrage of suspense and immersion that leaves even the briefest jaunts away from your home base tinged with the threat of death. Fair warning: it ends too abruptly with an all-too-obvious nod toward downloadable content or a sequel (perhaps, rumors say, in massively multiplayer online role-playing game form), but an option to return to your latest save file ensures that you can continue foraging for as long as you like. And you should. Its flaws are numerous and impossible to ignore, but in spite of them, State of Decay is a captivating survival adventure set in a bleak and harrowing world.

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Mobile Call Logs Can Reveal a Lot to the NSA

Research shows how much the NSA could glean from call records, and why efforts to downplay the significance of such metadata are misleading.



Of all the recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance activities, the collection of metadata from Verizon’s U.S. call records may be the most concerning.

Despite reassurances that the information collected is limited in its scope, academics who study such data say it could still reveal a great deal about the people being monitored. To defend the program, members of Congress have been instructed to refer to these logs as mere “bare-bones records,” according to a set of leaked talking points.

But in reality, the metadata subject to the court order obtained by the NSA—including phone numbers, call time and duration, and information about device interactions with cellular towers—gives intelligence analysts a clear window into sensitive interactions and movements of the U.S. population.

The term “metadata” simply refers to information that is used to track or describe another piece of data, whether that is a cell-phone conversation or a money transfer. One study published this March, using records provided by a European wireless carrier, shows the surveillance power of telecommunications metadata.

Vincent Blondel, an applied mathematician at MIT and the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, and collaborators analyzed 15 months of anonymous call records from 1.5 million people. His team was able to uniquely pinpoint the movements of 95 percent of people from only four records, using only the location of a nearby cellular station and the time each call was made. “You can infer a lot, such as where people work and where people live,” says Blondel. “You don’t need information about the content [of the call].”

From there, connecting such movements with a person’s real identity would be a relatively simple matter of cross-referencing the records with other sources of data. The NSA may be able to do this using credit card transactions or e-mail communications, Blondel says, or simply by knowing who has the phone number. These techniques could reveal sensitive activity such as attendance at a particular church or a visit to an abortion clinic.

Analysts could even surmise where and when two individuals are meeting face to face, Blondel says, or construct a diagram of complex relationships among far-flung communities. It’s not known exactly how and to what extent the NSA is mining Verizon’s data, other than that it is collecting the information every day.

And the practice may well assist the NSA in locating terrorism suspects or networks that are actively seeking to evade detection. “These individuals are very aware that there is a high probability their communications are being monitored,” says Drew Conway, a scientist in residence at IA Ventures, who has studied data mining techniques used in counterterrorism efforts.

But a more computationally intensive “big data” approach, without specific targets or questions in mind, could also be used to flag unusual communication patterns in hopes of predicting suspicious activity, he says. Similar tactics have been used successfully against the U.S. In 2011, the Lebanese militant party Hezbollah was reportedly able to pinpoint a CIA network by mining cell-phone data for anomalies, like phones that were used only rarely and in specific locations. In recent years, some mobile carriers have made various kinds of anonymous metadata available for uses ranging from marketing to development studies and transportation planning .

Unlike what the NSA is collecting, these data sets don’t include actual phone numbers or other unique personal identifiers. However, the methods of mining and gleaning information are similar, and so are its potential uses. In the aftermath of this month’s revelations, privacy advocates are worried about what other kinds of metadata the NSA may collect now or in the future.

The Wall Street Journal has reported, for example, that credit card purchases and Internet service provider (ISP) metadata may be part of a similar program, along with call data from AT&T and Sprint. Technology companies like Google and Facebook have denied that they hand over metadata on a comprehensive basis, but they have also said they fear an order to do so.

What, exactly, metadata means is fuzzier online than in the context of phone calls. If this type of data were gathered, it would deeply extend the reach of the government’s surveillance. “One of the problems here is that metadata is kind of a relative term,” says Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. “There’s information that is metadata to Facebook and Google that might be data to the ISP.”

In the context of e-mail, for example, metadata might mean the IP addresses of the sender and recipient and perhaps a time stamp or, arguably, the subject line. For Facebook, perhaps it’s information about when a friend request is being made. More broadly, whether the security benefits of this sweeping surveillance scheme outweigh the privacy costs won’t be clear unless the Obama administration declassifies detailed information about instances in which such data proved crucial to combating terrorism but would have been difficult to obtain with a warrant.And Sanchez believes it is unlikely the government will prove its case.

“It may well be the case that this kind of thing is of some utility in some situations,” he says, but only “in the same way a general warrant to search any house you please might be useful in preventing crime.”

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MacBook Air review (13-inch, mid-2013)

What once was a fresh and exciting design has now, it must be said, become rather familiar. That's in part because of the success of the MacBook Air -- we see them popping open on trains and airplanes all the time these days -- but largely this is thanks to Apple not significantly revamping the design for nearly three years, a period over which we've seen radical changes on the PC side of things. Is this the result of priorities being committed elsewhere? Or, is it simply a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"? We'll let the reader decide on that front, and while we tend to lean toward the latter option, the net result is the same: we won't spend an awful lot of time describing this now-familiar machine.

This 13-inch MacBook Air maintains its wedge-shaped profile, a maximum of 0.68 inch thick at the back tapering down to a 0.11-inch terminal edge at the front. It's 12.8 inches wide, 8.9 inches deep and weighs just a hair under three pounds (1.35 kg).

These specs were nothing short of amazing a few years back, but today, devices like the Samsung Series 9 and Sony VAIO Pro 13 manage to be even thinner and even lighter. 

Though its thin-and-light crown may be long gone, the Air is still a very sleek device, the sort that may leave you peeking in your bag one more time before you leave home to make sure you didn't forget your laptop.

It also retains its impressive overall feel, with a very stiff chassis that does not flex and a keyboard tray that can stand up to the most vigorous of typists. There's still just the one color option, the matte, raw-aluminum color that looks clean and lovely out of the box, but, as we've seen, can be scratch-prone.

Ports are exactly the same as last year. On the right, you get a USB 3.0 port flanked by Thunderbolt on one side and an SDXC card reader on the other. Move over to the left and you'll find the MagSafe 2 connector, a second USB 3.0 port and a 3.5mm headphone / mic jack.

Look very closely next to that and you'll marvel at the one, single, solitary external difference compared to last year: a second hole in the side for the integrated microphone, intended for active noise cancellation. And that's it. So, if you're a current Air user who packs a USB hub and Ethernet adapter wherever you go, that won't be changing this year. That said, with the new 802.11ac support, maybe you won't need that Ethernet adapter after all.

 KEYBOARD AND TRACKPAD

Neither the keyboard nor the trackpad have changed this year, but that's a good thing. In 2011 the MacBook Air finally received backlit keys with what felt like a slightly springier feel than before, making an already great typing experience even better.

That design is retained in 2013, leaving a keyboard that not only has great tactility, but also has a very broad and comfortable layout. Also broad and comfortable is the glass trackpad, which, along with the keyboard, remains one of our favorites.

The sensation of dragging a finger across the matte glass is as good as ever and the responsiveness is perfect for executing all of the many and myriad gestures that OS X has on offer.

DISPLAY AND SOUND

It's no Retina, a fact that can be confirmed with a quick glance. Still, this remains a great-looking LCD, making the most of its 1,440 x 900 resolution.

Viewing angles are as good as ever and brightness does not disappoint. Color reproduction is spot-on and the LED backlighting is both good for your battery and the environment.

The Air's built-in speakers are capable of getting impressively (and uncomfortably) loud if cranked all the way, so hearing a concall from across a room won't be an issue. Still, it's hardly an ideal machine for music playback, with flat, bass-free renditions of all your favorite music.

It'll certainly do in a pinch, but you'll want to make use of that 3.5mm jack (or, indeed, a Bluetooth connection) to enable something with a bit more acoustic range.

PERFORMANCE AND BATTERY LIFE

As usual, we're testing the base-spec 13-inch MacBook Air, the one most consumers are likely to buy. For $1,099 we get a 1.3GHz Intel Core i5 processor of the Haswell generation, paired with integrated Intel HD 5000 graphics.

The graphics themselves are a nice bump up over the previous-generation machine, but the clock speed is a step down. Last year's base Air came with a 1.8GHz CPU, and as you can see in the table below, this machine does indeed test slightly slower.

But, there is one area where this new machine is significantly faster than before: I/O. This year's Air moves to PCIe storage internally, which means significantly faster speeds in theory. And in practice, as it turns out.

The BlackMagic benchmark showed us 433.4 MB/s for writes and 725.4 MB/s for reads, considerably quicker even than the current Retina MacBook Pro. That helps the boot-up time too. Last year was a speedy 18 seconds. This year? Cold boot to login screen occurs in just under 12.

CONFIGURATION OPTIONS

The base-spec 2013 13-inch MacBook Air starts at $1,099, $100 less than last year. But, as we've just seen, the lower-performance CPU must certainly be taken into consideration here. If you'd like to step up to a 1.7GHz Core i7 processor, you're looking at a $150 premium. Doubling the storage from the default 128GB to 256GB is $200 and, if you want to go all the way up to 512GB, you'll pay another $300. 4GB of RAM is standard, though you can get 8GB for $100 more and, other than the usual bevy of accessories that Apple would love for you to tack on to your purchase (SuperDrive, Thunderbolt display, etc.) those are all the boxes you're able to tick. Fully loaded, you're looking at $1,849. Of course, you can save $100 by going with the 11-inch MacBook Air. That machine starts at $999 for the 128GB model (up from 64 before) and from there you're looking at the same price increments as on the 13-inch model: $150 for more a better CPU, $200 or $500 for the two increased storage options and $100 for more RAM. Predictably, then, a fully specced model also costs $100 less: $1,749.

THE COMPETITION

To say that the laptop space has shifted in the past 12 months since the 2012 MacBook Air shipped would be a gross understatement. PC makers have invented and reinvented their wares to stay relevant in this incredibly competitive (and shrinking) market, adding touchscreens, removable keyboards, crazy convertible designs and lots of other features -- some needed, some not. Still, even if you strip away all the tricks, it's clear that the MacBook Air, with only its new Haswell CPU and faster storage, is facing far stiffer competition than ever before. And, that competition will only get better as more machines move up to Intel's latest and greatest. Of those that have already made the shift, the Sony VAIO Pro looks to be the most compelling. At 2.34 pounds, the 13-inch model is lighter than the Air and it's exactly the same 0.68-inch thickness. Promised battery life is 13 hours -- but to get that you'll have to use an additional sheet battery. It does cost a fair bit more, starting at $1,249 for the 13-inch model, but for that you get a full 1080p IPS LCD. We'd guess that many potential Air buyers would spend another $150 to get the same. (We certainly would.) Another Haswell-having machine is the recently announced Dell XPS 12. We haven't had a chance to test out this year's iteration, but last year's model left us reasonably impressed and, at $1,200 again with a 1080p display, it's even closer in price to the Air. And then there's Samsung's Series 9. It was one of our favorite Ultrabooks of last year and remains a top contender, standing toe to toe with the previous Air. But, with a presumed Haswell refresh not far off, we can't say we'd be seriously considering this model right now -- unless you find it discounted well below its $1,300 MSRP. Finally, there's the sibling rivalry with Apple's own Retina MacBook Pro machines. Last year we were quite fond of both the 15-inch and 13-inch varieties and, indeed, both are still powerhouses. But, again, Haswell updates there can't be far away, and so it's hard to recommend either model now. That said, if you're not in a big rush, it wouldn't hurt to wait a month or three. With any luck, Pros with faster I/O and killer battery life are right around the corner.

WRAP-UP

So, is this a case of a great thing getting even greater, or an aged product getting the bare-minimum upgrade required to keep it relevant?

The truth lies somewhere in between, but it goes without saying that the MacBook Air isn't quite the straightforward "buy" that it has been in the past. While I/O performance and battery life definitely set it ahead of the crowd, and its overall design and keyboard / trackpad combo are as good as ever, that middling display resolution is evolving from an excusable omission to a proper handicap.

Still, it's hard to knock the Air for what it is: a very thin laptop with incredible battery life and good performance for a minimum price that puts it ahead of its competition. If you want a portable Mac with a real focus on portability and can live without a Retina display then we'd say this is still the machine to get. But, if you're not tied to the platform or are a stickler for pixel density, it might just be time to look elsewhere.

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Facebook’s Wi-Fi Spreads in the Wild

The idea of offering people free Wi-Fi in exchange for their physical coordinates began at Facebook as a one-off experiment, a project by two engineers during an all-nighter in May 2012. Since then, Facebook has gradually spread what it now calls “Facebook Wi-Fi” further and further beyond the company’s corporate walls, deploying the system to cafes in Palo Alto and San Francisco and even into a line of routers made by Cisco.

The growth of Facebook’s free internet offering underscores the extent to which the social network is trying to vacuum up more and more information about its members, including their physical movements, and how valuable such data has become in selling advertising. Intended for use in businesses like cafes, Facebook Wi-Fi asks users to “check in” at the business location using their Facebook account.

Once they do, or once they click a small opt-out link, they are granted wireless internet access. The system was developed during a hackathon at Facebook’s Seattle office by engineers Mohit Talwar and Adrian Potra. After winning raucous applause at a “prototype forum” after the programming marathon, it was forwarded to top Facebook brass, who assigned a team of three at the company’s Menlo Park, California headquarters to develop the idea further.

When we first wrote about Facebook Wi-Fi in November, Facebook told us the system was highly experimental, “a small test with a few local businesses” around headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Within a few months, reports on Twitter indicated the experiment had spread to San Francisco locations of the Philz Coffee chain.

We were able to use the system at the Philz location near AT&T Park and have been told it’s up and running in Philz’s Castro location as well. In May, Facebook Wi-Fi graduated beyond experiment as Cisco announced the service would be included as an optional service on its Meraki line of routers.

Facebook is in discussions with other router makers to get Facebook Wi-Fi adopted more broadly, according to Facebook mobile product manager Erick Tseng. Where Facebook Wi-Fi goes from there remains to be seen.

It was impossible not to wonder if a major expansion might be in store last week, when Facebook sent out java-stained invitations to the press, inviting reporters to “join us for coffee and learn about a new product… a small team has been working on.”

But with Facebook in deals to harness grocery store purchase data and with the company having reportedly considered spending $1 billion to buy an app that shares car location data, there’s no question the social network is hungry for data on where you’re going and what you might be buying.

That’s precisely the sort of siloed information internet giants like Facebook, Google, and Yahoo are increasingly being asked to use for ever-more-precise ad targeting. Given all the private location that’s shared without people even realizing it, Facebook Wi-Fi has the virtue of at least offering the user something valuable in return for her location. Which is why we won’t be surprised to see the long steady march of the system continue.

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The iPhone 5S rumor roundup

It's inevitable...but when will it happen? The rumor roundup for Apple's next iPhone starts now.

iPhone rumors are like flies at a summer picnic: they're nearly unstoppable. Collected in one batch are all the iPhone 5S/6 rumors CNET has reported so far, with some commentary on where these rumors came from.

We always have long wish lists for newer features and further redesigns, but the bottom line is this: nobody knows exactly what we'll get until Tim Cook reveals it on stage later this year.

That said, we've got plenty of educated guesses. But before we get started:

When will we get it:

Odds are strong that the immediate successor to the iPhone 5 will debut in September or October-- the last two iPhones were announced within the same window.

The release will all but certainly coincide with the availability of iOS 7 and the new phone's design should follow the iPhone 5's.

Beyond those obvious notes, the areas that seem most ripe for updating on the "iPhone 5S" would be the resolution of the cameras. And now that there's a 128GB iPad, maybe there will finally be a 128GB iPhone option, too.

What we don't know:

Everything else is pretty much a crapshoot. A bigger screen? CEO Tim Cook says no -- but saying one thing and doing the opposite would hardly be a first for Apple. Beyond a screen size change, though, Apple could also go with a different technology -- say, Igzo or OLED. There are plenty of other unknowns, too.

Will there be another iPhone that debuts with a fall model? Could the iPhone product line split into several differently sized models? Will an affordable "new" budget-line iPhone emerge? Will Apple finally add NFC to the iPhone, as part of a new mobile payments scheme? Anything could happen. Or not.

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In iOS 7, Twitter takes over social -- again

New integrations turn Twitter into an intelligent content provider for iOS device owners, and make Facebook seem less relevant. It's like 2011 all over again.

Showing some repeat favoritism, Apple has once again picked Twitter to power the coolest social experiences for its 600 million iOS device owners.

During a keynote address at its annual Worldwide Developer Conference, the Cupertino company lifted the veil on iOS 7, its next-generation mobile operating system that reflects a new way of thinking around design. Aside from its altered appearance, the redone OS -- coming to consumers' iPhones and iPads this fall -- features a new Control Center, improved multitasking, iTunes Radio, better Camera and Photos apps, and an updated Safari browser.

Twitter is also ever-present in the release, having been upgraded from dumb social pipe to intelligent content provider. The information network has had an intimate connection to Apple and iOS customers since getting system-level integration in the 2011 release of iOS 5. The blessing helped Twitter instantly triple its iOS sign-ups. A year later, Facebook got the same treatment. (Curiously, both Twitter and Facebook status update options have been removed from the Notification Center in iOS 7.)

With iOS 7, Twitter will further infiltrate your device, going deeper into the operating system and becoming one with the system. Facebook not so much.

For starter
s, in the new version of Safari, iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch owners will find something called Shared Links, a pre-populated reading list of articles as shared by the people they follow on Twitter. Here they can scroll through all the URLs from their Twitter timeline, as plucked out by Apple and Twitter. The Twitter browser addition, also coming to the new version of Safari for OS X Mavericks, acts as an alternative to searching, and gives people a no-nonsense, all-content view of what's happening on Twitter, as it's happening.

But when it comes to searching, Siri and Twitter can do that too. In iOS 7, Siri has sucked in Twitter intelligence so that when you ask what people are saying about certain topics, she (or he now!) can tell you by showing you their tweets.

As an extra bonus, Twitter gets to play along with Apple's iTunes Radio, the brand-new Pandora-like digital radio service for Apple devices. iTunes Radio comes with more than 200 promoted genre-based stations, including one featured station that plays tracks trending on Twitter.

The music inclusion means that Twitter's own two-month old radio offering won't be getting trounced by the far bigger digital media player. Instead, it will be boosted by the association.

It's not as if Facebook has been booted from Apple handsets -- it's still a part of share sheets for one-click posting -- but the social network has certainly being pushed to the background, relegated to a distance second place in social in Apple's world.

History could repeat itself with Facebook eventually getting the same treatment, but for now Apple is team Twitter.

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