EVE Online Meets Excel

Move over, MCU, there’s a new most ambitious crossover event in history: EVE Online is getting integrated with Microsoft Excel.

The game already had a “user interface only” mode that removed all graphics that weren’t vital to gameplay. It was billed as a way to allow more players in a battle area without making life impossible for those with the most graphics power, though it didn’t do much to counter digs that the game is just “spreadsheets in space.”

Now developers CCP Games are leaning in to that with the Excel mode. Sadly it won’t involve playing the game in the spreadsheet. Instead there’ll be an option for “seamlessly” exporting game data into a spreadsheet so players can carry out more detailed analysis. Supposedly this will “help players access and calculate everything from profit margins to battle strategy.”

The feature was announced at the 2022 EVE Fanfest in Reykjavik. Although CCP announced a host of graphics, audio and user interface improvements, the Excel announcement reportedly received the biggest applause from the audience.



Farewell To The iPod

Apple has officially stopped making iPods. It didn’t invent the portable digital music player, but certainly popularized the concept.

The company said iPods were no longer necessary now that so many of its other devices, including phones and watches, have comparable audio capabilities.

By 2001, several portable music players had already taken advantage of the mp3 format to let users play music on the move without needing removable media. The main limitation was the trade-off between bulk (with models based on hard drives) and limited capacity (with flash memory models).

Apple pitched the original model with two selling points. One was capacity, with the company claiming it was the first such device that could store 1,000 songs. The other was design, with Jonny Ive masterminding the minimalist interface of a wheel that combined buttons for core functions and a finger movement for other controls.

2004’s mini edition replaced the mechanical wheel with a click-based model, quickly adopted for the “classic” range as well. Later ranges including the Nano (increasing capacity while cutting space) and the shuffle (which had no screen, with the emphasis on a random play function.)

The last survivor was the iPod Touch, which took the operating system and app support of the iPhone, but removed the cellular data and phone functions, using Wi-Fi only.

Despite smartphone handsets and mobile data becoming more affordable, the 7th and final generation model was only released in 2019. It will remain on sale while supplies last but no new units will be made.