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Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

Belkin JoyPad Game Controller for iPhone?

Belkin
Images: Touch Arcade

Update: Belkin has now confirmed that this story is a hoax.

This past weekend saw the rumor mill go into overdrive regarding iPhone games controllers. While the chaps at iControlPad valiantly soldier on with their home-grown iPhone games controller that relies on jailbroken iPhones, Touch Arcade provided images of a rival (shown above)—supposedly from Belkin—that will have official App Store support.

The two-piece device would slide on to your iPhone, providing a joystick and six face buttons, akin to the configuration on the Nintendo DS. This means games developers wouldn’t have to rely on the iPhone touch-screen and tilting mechanism, instead being able to offer more standard control methods for iPhone games.

Predictably, some screamed “fake” once these images appeared, and others merely screamed, barely coherently ranting something about how AWFUL it would be to have a controller like this, because it’s the iPhone’s bizarre-o-controls that make it what it is regarding games.

Yeah, yeah, whatever. I love innovation, and I love people doing different stuff with iPhone gaming. However, I’m old, and I’d rather like to have a copy of Pac-Man on my iPhone that can actually be controlled via a non-stupid (sorry, non-innovative) method, as I hinted at a couple of months back. (Mind you, I’m probably not going to be totally happy until someone finds a way to run C64 games on iPhone and also plug in a Competition Pro…)

About the author

Craig Grannell

Craig Grannell is Cult of Mac's designer and an occasional contributor. He also runs iPhoneTiny.com, a Twitter-driven reviews site for iPhone apps and games. Follow Craig on Twitter @CraigGrannell and visit his website, Snub Communications.

Email the author | Read more posts by Craig Grannell.

One comment

    [...] on the screen, cunningly making it so players obscure the screen while playing. Woo. (How I wish the Belkin rumor hadn’t turned out to be a [...]

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