Craig Grannell - page 3

Copyright Row Sees StoneLoops! of Jurassica Pulled From App Store in Dodgy Manner By Rival

By

Spot the difference: Puzz Loop, Luxor and Stoneloops! of Jurassica
Spot the difference: Puzz Loop, Luxor and Stoneloops! of Jurassica

Are you seated comfortably? Then we’ll begin.

Once upon a time (1998), there was a company called Mitchell Corporation, and it created a game called Puzz Loop, and there was much happiness and rejoicing. The fun-filled game enabled you to shoot coloured marbles at a relentless stream of incoming ones, aiming to create chain collisions of like-coloured marbles, which subsequently vanished.

Like all good action puzzlers, lots of companies were upset because they hadn’t thought of the idea first, and so they went ahead and created their own versions. For example, in 2003, there was PopCap Games with Zuma, and then in 2005, Luxor by MumboJumbo.

For a time, all the Puzz Loops of the world lived happily in Videogameland, until the day they all decided to move to iPodWorld. There, they met Stoneloops! of Jurassica, and MumboJumbo decided to become a great big jerk and have Stoneloops! of Jurassica booted out of iPodWorld.

Stoneloops! of Jurassica might have had a a stupid name, but MumboJumbo’s real problem was that Stoneloops! of Jurassica was wearing a really similar T-short to Luxor, and therefore asked the Big Bad Apple to stamp on its rival’s head until it was dead and buried. And no-one lived happily ever after.

The end.

Clearly, rights infringement is a big concern on the App Store. However, Apple should not be placed in the position of having to nuke a product on the basis that it’s like another one, when the rival making the complaint rips off existing and older IP. If Mitchell Corporation had thrown a hissy fit, it might have had a point, but it didn’t. This incident, however, is the equivalent of TAITO getting the likes of Reflexion pulled from the App Store due to it being somewhat like Arkanoid, while Breakout owner Atari looks on, puzzled. However, TAITO hasn’t done this, because, unlike MumboJumbo, it hasn’t lost its marbles. [You’re fired—Ed.]

iPhone Game Edge by Mobigame Under Threat Again from Tim Langdell

By

Edge: it's back, it's brilliant, it's not been reviewed here, and it's the Cult of Mac App of the Week!
Under threat yet again: Edge by Mobigame.

We’ve reported before about the legal spat between Mobigame, makers of fine indie game Edge, and Tim Langdell, who appears to make his money by suing anyone daring to use the name Edge in a videogame, and makes rather spurious claims regarding how he ‘spawned’ almost any major property with the word ‘Edge’ in its title, including Edge magazine by Future Publishing, Marvel comic Edge, and, er, 1997 Anthony Hopkins movie turkey The Edge. (He’s also laughably stated in the past how he has come to an ‘understanding’ with a guitarist of a very popular rock band.) TIGSource has a great overview of the madness.

Edge returned to the App Store recently, and Langdell will next year be battling EA, a company that’s had enough. Rather than just dealing with issues relating to EA game Mirror’s Edge—Langdell started advertising a game called Mirrors (a game by) Edge, which still doesn’t exist, and yet was in no way an effort to promote mark confusion—EA’s aiming to have Langdell stripped of all his Edge-related marks.

EA’s documentation cites numerous examples of Langdell filing out-of-date and falsified specimens, and the fact Edge Games isn’t a viable commercial concern. (ChaosEdge offers running commentary regarding Langdell’s so-called commercial concerns—a Mythora ‘reissue’ they bought from Edge Games was a home-made burned disc; and despite Langdell claiming its game Racers had sold out, the second purchase ChaosEdge made days later had an order number only one higher than their pre-Racers order.) Last month, company spokesman Jeff Brown said: “While this seems like a small issue for EA, we think that filing the complaint is the right thing to do for the developer community.”

Sadly, Langdell still won’t back down. We today heard Mobigame’s Edge is again under threat, with Apple giving the company five days to respond to yet another threat from Langdell. If you’ve an iPhone or iPod touch, get in there fast, because chances are that Edge is about to vanish yet again, and it may take an EA battering in court next year for Langdell to finally stop harassing indie developers.

Edge is available on the App Store for $4.99. It’s really good, so go and buy it before it’s too late.

Don’t Panic! Cult of Mac Gets the Background Behind the New Hitchhiker’s Guide App for iPhone and iPod touch

By

post-19346-image-23bd27b3273a8e005841d7e6c43d7215-jpg

If you’re a Douglas Adams fan, there’s a point fairly early on during iPhone ownership where you realise that you’re holding in your hands the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is a nugget of information that hits you suddenly, rather like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon, wrapped around a large gold brick. Naysayers might disagree, but Apple’s handheld enables access to a mind-boggling array of information, via a friendly interface, even if it doesn’t have the words ‘don’t panic’ inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

It therefore only seems fitting that the Hitchhiker’s Guide books are finding a happy home on Apple’s device, the latest of which is Eoin Colfer’s sixth Hitchhiker’s Guide novel, And Another Thing... In the US App Store, the novel is available in extended form, bundling the digital and audio versions, video clips, “bits of brilliance from the first five books”, and a bunch of other extras (App Store link).

Mindy Stockfield, VP of Marketing & Digital Media for Hyperion Books and Stephen Saiz, Director, Marketing for Digital Publishing, Disney Interactive Studios, gave us the low-down on the thinking behind the interactive version, and Eoin Colfer added his thoughts on getting the guide on your iPhone.

Taking a Stand Against iPhone Calculator Censorship: PCalc Gets Another Update

By

post-18993-image-a5ac404210d8db871a54ca22aeddba1c-jpg

As we recently reported, PCalc recently added calculator censorship, protecting fragile little minds from seeing the word ‘boobies’ (and others) more or less spelled in old-fashioned upside-down numbers.

James Thomson, PCalc’s creator, states that the 1.8.1 upgrade is at least three times as draconian, now filtering ‘words’ punctuated by a decimal point, and those in languages other than English.

But wait! A hero looms on the horizon: the self-same James Thomson has rallied against iPhone calculator censorship and calculator-based freedoms, taking a stand against his “cruel paymasters” at TLA Systems, the evil umbrella corporation responsible for DragThing and PCalc, owned by evil, dictatorial James Thomson.

Get your calculator boobies back with PCalc 1.8.1
Get your calculator boobies back with PCalc 1.8.1

Now you can nip into PCalc’s advanced settings, scroll to the bottom, flip your device and turn off iPhone censorship, shortly before reverting to a five-year-old, typing 5318008, and never getting any work done again.

Hurrah for James Thomson and PCalc, freeing us from the calculator tyranny imposed by James Thomson and PCalc!

iPhone Weekly Digest: Fun Unit Conversion, Five-Finger Fillet, One-Thumb Shooting and More

By

Left: Amusing unit converter 5ft Monkey; right: Brave Man loses a finger.
Left: Amusing unit converter 5ft Monkey. Right: Brave Man loses a finger.

It’s Friday and it’s time for our weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac.

Under review this week: AboutTime, Privately, Pro Football Live!, Hanoi Plus, Brave Man, 5ft Monkey, Orbital. As always, all id.gd links are to the relevant App Store page.

Interview: Media Atelier on Retina for Color-blind iPhone Users

By

Retina aims to assist color-blind iPhone users.
Retina aims to assist color-blind iPhone users.

A week back, my interest was piqued by Retina (App Store link), a 99-cent augmented reality app that aims to assist color-blind users. I interviewed developer Stefan Fürst of Media Atelier for some background on the app.

Cult of Mac: What was the inspiration behind Retina? Why did you decide to make it?
Stefan Fürst: The idea was born when my red-green blind bicycle buddy was talking in a very convinced way about his green bike he likes so much. He had been riding it for two years and had no idea it wasn’t green at all.

How does it work, and how did you decide on the interface?
The interface has been kept very simple to make it suitable for everyday use. The list of colors might look very short and inaccurate to non-color blinds—but to figure out if an object is green or red this works perfectly.

What feedback have you had from colour-blind users?
One of them made me to add the saturation indicator and told me that this helps him a lot.

In which ways do you think augmented reality apps will evolve in the future?
I believe that there are almost endless possibilities, but most uses would need higher processing power to make them run smoothly on an iPhone or other mobile device.

What are your future plans for iPhone apps?
Actually I am more of a Mac Developer, extending my desktop apps with iPhone helpers. I developed Retina for my color-blind friends and hopefully a lot of other people having problems in recognizing colors.

Having garnered some feedback from early Retina adopters, it seems there’s definitely interest in this kind of app, although Retina itself appears to have trouble with subtler colors, and it often claims it’s ‘too dark’ or ‘too light’ to make an assessment. However, for 99 cents, it’s worth a look for anyone severely color-blind wanting a quick and easy way to ascertain the color of things like clothing.

iPhone Wish-List: Display All Installed iPhone Apps Via Spotlight, and More Springboard Home Screens

By

post-18617-image-c6be2f006b18ab7ce1a4e7cff3c039c7-jpg
A list of all installed apps, which can be filtered, like in Finder on Mac OS X. C'mon, Apple - how about it?

Since getting my iPhone, I’ve become a certified app junkie, justified somewhat by the fact I review apps for various publications on- and offline, and for my own website, iPhoneTiny.com. Despite regular clearouts, my home screens often end up full, not least because many games remain on the device, to avoid my losing my progress. (Apple, in its infinite wisdom, still doesn’t provide any means of backing-up progress and optionally reinstating it when you reinstall an app. It’s like Apple saw the cheapskate end of the DS market—carts without battery back-up—and went “we’d like a piece of that pie!”)

Having been commissioned to write some group reviews recently, I’m now at the stage where I have eleven full home screens and dozens of apps in ‘the void’—that place apps go when they aren’t allowed to sit on a home screen. Apple’s suggestion: use Spotlight, and that’s fine if you can remember every app you have installed. If not, tough. (And rearranging them in iTunes to get the most ‘important’ ones on the 11 visible home screens isn’t a great tip, given that iTunes appears prone to crashing in a nasty fashion when rearranging apps—usually after you’ve spent an irritating 15 minutes doing so.)

Various people have tried designing an improved springboard for non-jailbroken devices, most recently including Bruce Tognazzini, but these tend to lack the elegance of Apple’s existing solution. Tognazzini offers labels and vertical scrolling in pages, but Lukas Mathis argues that this is too complex, and I agree. (Hat tip for these links: Daring Fireball.) The springboard Exposé concept also appears awkward and fiddly.

I wonder whether a simpler solution would assist anyone with lots of apps installed. Along with upping the number of home screens to 14—the most that could be displayed using the current UI before things start looking iffy—Spotlight could have a separate apps list page. This could be accessed by a swipe on entering Spotlight (as in, it would spatially live to the left of the standard Spotlight screen). By default, this screen would display an alphabetised list of your apps, and typing in the Spotlight field would filter them, just like the Applications folder in Mac OS X’s Finder in combination with a Finder window Spotlight-driven search field.

Interview: Makers of Canabalt Talk About Bringing Their Hit Flash Game to iPhone and iPod touch

By

post-18394-image-4da233d344202b9f88bdabb9821d75fe-jpg
Canabalt's detailed pixellated graphics (zoomed here) draw you into the game.

With its simple tap-to-jump gameplay, high-speed scrolling and gritty dystopian atmospherics, Canabalt proved a hit Flash-based sensation when recently unleashed online. The game has now been released for iPhone and iPod touch—one of the first truly successful Flash-based games on the platform. We spoke to Adam Saltsman and Eric Johnson of Semi Secret Software about how the game came to be.

App Store Dev Sick of Whining Morons Raises Price of Alchemize Game to Forty Bucks

By

For one weekend only - buy Alchemize at 13 times its usual price! Barg!
For one weekend only - buy Alchemize at 13 times its usual price! Barg!

On my blog a couple of weeks back, I wrote the article More proof the iPhone App Store destroys people’s understanding of good value, highlighting rampant idiotic reactions to Loren Brichter having the audacity to charge three whole dollars for a complete rewrite of his stunning Twitter app Tweetie. Patrick Jordan referred to Tweetie 2’s price-point as a “very,very,very Bad Call,” (his emphasis), suggesting it was “spitting in the face of existing Tweetie users”. My thinking: You’d pay more than three bucks for a crappy sandwich or a luke-warm beer in the pub. But, apparently, three bucks is too much of a ‘reward’ for the hard work a dedicated indie dev has put into a leading and brilliant product.

The dev of Alchemize has clearly had enough of this kind of attitude. On the TouchArcade forum, he reveals that his company has received an astonishing 3400 emails in one month moaning about the price of his three-dollar game. Although its Puyo Puyo-style mechanics won’t win too many awards for originality, Alchemize is a fairly good game, and one that would set you back considerably more on competing platforms. To that end, the dev’s now upped his app’s price to an eye-watering $39.99 in protest at people constantly complaining about paying a few bucks for a videogame.

It’s pretty clear that something needs to be done regarding App Store pricing and value perception, because the race to the bottom is hurting many developers. Apple’s recent ‘top grossing’ chart doesn’t really help. Personally, I like Eucalyptus dev Jamie Montgomerie’s suggestion that the App Store should split its chart in two, along the lines of British 8-bit videogames during the 1980s and early 1990s, offering separate ‘budget’ and ‘full price’ charts.

Alchemize is available on the App Store, and really isn’t worth 40 bucks; but it’s probably worth a shot at three, after the 12th.

iPhone Weekly Digest: the Return of Edge, the Bonkers Mr.AahH!!, a Great FTP App, and More!

By

Left: FTP On The Go; right: the wonderful Mr.AagH!!
Left: FTP On The Go; right: the wonderful Mr.AahH!!

It’s Friday and it’s time for our weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac.

Under review this week: Edge by Mobigame, Concertimatic, Juiced, Formula 1 Live Racing Free, Dude, FTP On The Go, Mr.AahH!!, Pinch n Pop!, iSplume, Edge by Mobigame Lite. As always, all id.gd links are to the relevant App Store page.

Mobigame’s Edge Returns to App Store

By

Edge is back! Weeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Edge is back! Weeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Earlier this year, we ran several articles about Mobigame‘s excellent iPod game Edge getting a legal smackdown from Tim Langdell, owner of Edge Games. Over time, his claims to the Edge marks have, according to commentators, become increasingly dubious and troll-like, to the point where internet sleuths have clubbed together as ChaosEdge to provide a legal fund for Mobigame and information repository that built on the investigative work of TIG Source.

Recently, EA filed suit against Langdell about an entirely different Edge trademark spat, but, to aid indie devs, EA aims via the suit to obliterate all Langdell’s Edge marks, making the world safe for people to use the word ‘Edge’ in the title of a videogame without someone who had a company that was marginally famous in the 1980s popping up and having a major hissy fit.

Possible upshot? Edge is back in the App Store ($4.99 US/£2.99 UK). Somewhat like what you’d get if Marble Madness was built from cubes, and then a load of other cracking gameplay components were added, Edge is a top game for iPod touch and iPhone. And while we hope it’s around for good this time, we strongly recommend you go and buy it right now, just in case it vanishes again.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNUcD-FXgDI

GymFu Adds New Voices to iPhone Exercise Apps

By

GymFu apps use your device's accelerometer to track 'reps'
GymFu apps use your device's accelerometer to track 'reps'

GymFu has carved itself a niche on Apple handhelds, coming across like an affordable Nike+ for crunches, push-ups, pull-ups or squats. CrunchFu was also an app of the week on this site recently.

A criticism of the suite of apps has been the built-in ‘Fubot’ robot, which counts your reps and barks instructions, sounding like an angry, dispassionate Dalek with a sore throat. As of today, GymFu reports that you can switch out the voice for one of the alternatives from the ‘Sarge and Missy’ voice pack. Of those voices, one sounds like an angry drill instructor and the other resembles a schoolmarm. (Cult of Mac leaves it to you to decide which one is which.)

Initially, GymFu users can grab the voices for the princely sum of ‘nothing at all’ by sending a message to Twitter of Facebook via a GymFu app. “We’d originally intended it as an in-app payment but then we came up with a better idea; why not reward users for tweeting about us from within the app?” says Jof Arnold of GymFu, noting that other companies have tried rewarding uses for inviting friends, but GymFu’s enabling users to write whatever they want. He adds: “There’s nothing quite like getting shouted at in aggressive pseudo-army tones to inspire you to squeeze out some more reps,” and Cult of Mac agrees this is certainly better than being yelled at by a Dalek.

GymFu’s apps are available on the App Store, and are currently a buck cheaper than usual at $2.99 each (or £1.19 in Brit-o-land, and €1.59 in the Euro zone).

iPhone Weekly Digest: New Games, Sporting Apps, and a Clock Detailing DARKNESS

By

Left: Bust-a-Move/Puzzle Bobble; right: ESPN ScoreCenter
Left: Bust-a-Move/Puzzle Bobble; right: ESPN ScoreCenter

It’s Friday Sunday and it’s time for our weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac.

Under review this week: Diorama, Bust-a-Move/Puzzle Bobble, Darkness, Nag-O-Meter Deluxe, Glypha, Rugby Zone, Otakukous and EPSN ScoreCenter. As always, all id.gd links are to the relevant App Store page.

PCalc Profanity Filter, Or: Satire Is Dead When It Comes To iPhone Boobies

By

post-17794-image-a5ac404210d8db871a54ca22aeddba1c-jpg

When I was a kid, digital calculators were roughly the size of a brick, and had satisfyingly chunky displays. They also, in those pre-internet days, provided a means of minor technical mischief. Type in 5318008, flip your calculator upside down, and it appeared to say ‘boobies’. If you were five, this was the most hilarious and original gag in the history of the world.

In this modern and rather less innocent age, the media would have you believe that personal technology devices in the hands of children merely teach them how to joyride while murdering innocent puppies and simultaneously fashioning bombs out of string, jelly babies and bits of twig. It’s presumably for this reason that Apple considers it a good idea to warn you (Every. Single. Time.) when you download an eReader from the App Store that it—shock!—potentially enables you to view content that some people might deem objectionable.

Enter, stage right, James Thomson, creator of iPhone/iPod touch calculator PCalc. In a minor slice of design genius, he combined the two issues mentioned above and PCalc now slaps a huge ‘Censored!’ sign across ‘naughty’ words when your device is flipped, thereby ensuring fragile little minds aren’t warped beyond all recognition.

This is a smart, funny, satirical swipe at the recent trend towards over-zealous censorship. Unless you’re, say, Sajid Farooq of NBC, who, inexplicably takes Thomson’s joke seriously (and, sadly, he’s not alone) and states PCalc’s change would “make even George Orwell shudder in his grave”. I’m thinking Orwell would be more likely to laugh his CENSORED off.

PCalc is available on the App Store for $9.99/£5.99.

This article originally appeared on Revert to Saved.

On iPhones and Game Data Back-ups: Restore Data With MobileSyncBrowser

By

I lost all my game progress, and all I got to show for it was this lousy dialog box.
I lost all my game progress, and all I got to show for it was this lousy dialog box.

One of the dumbest decisions Apple made regarding iPhone and iPod touch is devices wiping all traces of an app when it’s deleted, but providing no means for saving preferences and progress. Unless you use an uninstaller to remove an app or game from your Mac, you can usually pick up where you left off after a reinstall; savvy Mac owners can also fiddle around with preferences, moving them between Macs to ensure consistency across machines in app environments or videogame progress.

iPhone and iPod touch don’t allow such things. Spend hours making headway in Peggle and then, for whatever reason, delete and reinstall Peggle (by accident, or through having a restore go wrong), and your progress is gone—you have to start again. It’s like 1980s arcade games after the plug has been pulled, or cheap, miserly Nintendo DS games that lack a battery back-up in the cartridge, erasing progress and high scores when the device is powered down. For a platform Apple’s pushing as the best solution for handheld gaming, it’s asinine that you cannot export and import videogame progress and save states.

There is a workaround, however, using the shareware app MobileSyncBrowser, but it’s not for the faint-hearted…

Craig Smith Interview: How Frotz Brings Interactive Fiction to iPhone and iPod touch

By

Frotz: text adventure goodness on your iPod touch or iPhone
Frotz: text adventure goodness on your iPod touch or iPhone

When people talk about classic gaming, they usually rattle on about really simple, playable games that are challenging but that a five-year-old could conceivably master. Such people were clearly traumatised by text adventures (now referred to using the rather loftier term ‘interactive fiction’) and have therefore removed them from memory.

These games were primarily text-based, with you solving puzzles via verb-noun parsers. As time went on, adventures gradually became increasingly complex and elaborate, with Infocom arguably leading the genre to its height.

Sadly and perhaps predictably, text adventures eventually got a thorough kicking. In the words of Richard Harris: “Graphics came along and the computer-using portion of the human race forgot all about 500,000 years of language evolution and went straight back to the electronic equivalent of banging rocks together—the point ’n’ click game,” which, he argues, signalled the arrival of the post-literate society.

But via the magic of the internet, interactive fiction clings on, and apps for playing the Z-machine format are commonplace. Frotz is one of the best, and it now exists as a free iPod app. I interviewed its developer, Craig Smith, to find out what he thinks of interactive fiction and why he brought Frotz to Apple handhelds.

iPhone Weekly Digest: A Big Pile of Retro Games and the iPhone’s Best Clock, Now Even Better

By

ipt-20090925
Left: FlipTime gets even better; right: Monster Pinball - how Pixar would do pinball

It’s Friday and it’s time for our weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac.

Under review this week: Arkanoid, FlipTime 2.0, Shockwave, Squareball and Monster Pinball.

Interview: Finn Ericson and Squareball – the iPhone Game that Mixes Pong, Super Mario Bros. and Breakout

By

post-17080-image-9c8787bc8ef1a9bf8c3dafa4cae650c0-jpg
Squareball: don't apply if you're a gaming wuss.

Every now and again, a game comes along that makes you feel like a ham-fisted idiot, as though you’re clawing at your iPhone or iPod touchscreen with all the grace of a lobotomised monkey wearing boxing gloves. But the game is so compelling and addictive, you play on anyway, getting killed approximately every ten seconds, going ARRRGGGHH and then having another go anyway. Eventually, you realise that it’s you, not the game. The game isn’t unfair—you’re just rubbish, and you need to learn how to improve, just like in the old days with the likes of Defender.

Squareball by Finn Ericson ($1.99/£1.19, App Store link) is one such game. The concept is simple: drag the levels left or right to ensure your ever-bouncing ball doesn’t disappear into a hole or hit red tiles, and collect all the green tiles before the timer runs out. With graphics akin to Atari’s Adventure in pseudo-3D and a fab soundtrack, this game’s had me addicted and loving it and hating it in equal measure since its day of release. Today, I interviewed its creator to find out how this retro-themed mix of Pong, Breakout and simplified Super Mario-style platformer came to be.

Video: An Entirely Different Type of Microsoft Party

By

ca
You may want to **** them, but you have to make sure you have the right devices to hand.

Nicole posted about the somewhat crazed Microsoft Windows party video earlier today. Just when you think Microsoft advertising and marketing can’t get any worse, it does.

Funny as the original is, Fraser Speirs suggested on Twitter: “I bet that Win7 party video would be an internet sensation if someone just beeped out all the references to Windows 7.”

As if by magic, Panic‘s Cabel Sasser duly obliged, with his own take on the Windows 7 Party video. Watch it below.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyas7BrbUFY

iPhone Weekly Digest: Updated Arcade Classics, Handy Utilities, and a Map of Brussels

By

THIS is how you revamp an ageing arcade classic.
THIS is how you revamp an ageing arcade classic.

It’s Friday and it’s time for a weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac.

This week, I review Smart Maps – Brussels, Who’s Buying, Tasks – Tick If Off, Pac-Man Remix, FortuneBall, Mr.AahH!! Lite, Space Invaders Infinity Gene, A Quest of Knights Onrush, Power Toppler, and CrunchUrl.

iPhone Weekly Digest: Two Weeks for the Price of One! Best iPhone Clock, Fab Music Toy, and More!

By

Left: TonePad Pro. Right: FlipTime. Both: really good.
Left: TonePad Pro. Right: FlipTime. Both: really good.

It’s Friday and it’s time for our weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac. Except this article didn’t show up last week, due to me ending up in Belgium, so this time it’s a one-off, extra-special iPhone Fortnightly Digest!

APPS OF THE WEEK

TonePad Pro: Addictive grid-based musical toy. Many editing/sharing options. Ringtone exports a tad distorted. 5/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/36AZt

FlipTime: Cute clock/calendar akin to old-style airport/train station boards. Lsc. & portrait modes. No alarm. 4/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/2NJnC

Terminator: Death Valley 1: So-so ‘humanoid killer robots’ vs contemporary ‘human cannon fodder’ comic. Nice UI. 2/5 Free https://is.gd/2JTvQ

Remix David Bowie – Space Oddity: Simple but limited multitrack ‘mixing’ of a famous Bowie track. 3/5 $1.99 https://is.gd/2LtRo

Adrenaline: 32 basic, quickfire ‘blitz’ games. Sometimes fun but would benefit from much shorter level times. 3/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/2Qryw

Leaves: Tranquil leaves-based toy. Slightly iffy 3D and physics, but calming, and fun for a short time. 2/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/30cmL

Score-Em: Virtual scorecard app with varied graphics and relevant audio. Works fine, but throwaway in nature. 2/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/32bBx

Gem Ninja: Mindless prod-based tile-match game. OK for a free time-waster, but not worth paying for. 2/5 Free https://is.gd/32cQy

Looptastic Electro Edition Lite: Loop remix tool. Fantastic UI, varied audio stems, and ten loops to play with. 4/5 Free https://is.gd/34Hp2

StarTime: Vibrant, bold Star Trek-like clock. Optional random sounds & can run iPod music in background. 3/5 $0.99 https://is.gd/39xOi

Since this column didn’t happen last week, it’s only fair to highlight FlipTime, which would have been ‘app of the week’ last week. It’s one of those apps that shows you don’t need something that’s all-singing and all-dancing to make an impression. Instead, charm sometimes goes a long way. All FlipTime does is show the time and date, sporting a visual appearance like those old-fashioned flip boards you’d see at railway stations and airports. Sounds are optional and the numerals are bold enough to see at a distance. Aesthetically, it’s also the nicest iPhone clock I’ve seen.

TonePad Pro is this week’s favourite. It’s been described as iPhone musical crack elsewhere, and it does have a certain addictive quality about it. Again, it’s a simple app—this time, you toggle grid spaces to play notes in an ever-repeating loop. However, this time it’s the attention to detail that wins through, the developer having provided plenty of options for editing, saving and sharing your creations. The Pro version is ad-free and enables you to email ringtones that can then be dropped into iTunes and synchronised with your iPhone. But if you don’t care about ringtones and ads, the free version of TonePad is just as good.

Follow iPhoneTiny on Twitter, or visit iPhoneTiny.com

iTunes App Store: Does Anyone Even Care About Top Grossing Apps?

By

Top Grossing apps. But does anyone care?
Top Grossing apps. But does anyone care?

iTunes 9 and OS X for iPhone 3.1 brought a bunch of refinements, but one strikes me as odd: along with charts for paid apps and free apps, we now have one for ‘top grossing’ apps.

It’s pretty clear this an attempt to appease developers, increasingly annoyed at the rush to 99 cents on the App Store. But here’s the thing: will anyone care? I can’t see too many consumers rushing to see which apps have grossed the most and make buying decisions based on that. ‘Top grossing apps’ also sounds pretty ugly—not really what you’d expect from Apple.

That said, there’s definitely a need to push apps with slightly higher price-points more prominently. Higher-priced apps (and I’m talking maybe $5 and above, not the likes of $50+ sat-nav apps) enable longer development periods, often leading to richer end products.

I wonder whether the App Store should instead have taken a leaf out of the 1980s games industry—at least as it was in the UK. Around 1985, publishers started toying with ‘budget’ videogames, selling cheap, relatively throwaway titles at £1.99, with full-price games being four or five times more expensive. Such publishers typically advertised less, and developers of full-price games started to get antsy. (Sound familiar?)

The solution then was simple: the chart was split. So you had a ‘full price’ chart and a ‘budget’ chart. One might argue this would only serve to push people away from high-price apps, but it would also provide a mechanism for highlighting stuff that’s unlikely to be crap. And ‘full price’ or ‘premium’ certainly sounds a whole lot nicer than ‘top grossing’.

Why Apple is Right to Pitch iPod touch as a Games Console to Beat the DSi and PSP Go

By

post-16141-image-ea30ead95c0a1dcde6a9cff44095275e-jpg
GAGAGAGAGAGA!! Giant Metal Robot unhappy with anti-iPod-gaming crowd!

I’ve been a gamer since the very early 1980s, and have owned more systems than you can shake a stick at. A year ago, I happily penned an article for this very site, suggesting iPod gaming was a crock of shit. And you know what? I was dead wrong… absolutely, painfully, utterly, astonishingly wrong. The fact is, iPod is the most exciting platform for gaming we’ve seen in years.

Where Is My App Store Wish-list, Apple?

By

Thanks for not letting me build an apps wish-list, Apple!
Thanks for not letting me build an apps wish-list, Apple!

I’ve been poking around iTunes 9 since yesterday evening (UK time), and there’s some good (app management), some bad (stability issues) and some “beaten repeatedly with an ugly stick until unconscious” ugly (most of the UI, the hideous column nav). But one thing with the App Store refresh within iTunes 9 just baffles me: the lack of wish-lists for apps.

As shown in the pic, access a song’s menu and you get to add the item to a wish-list. With an app, you can merely ‘tell a friend’. I’m sure owners of the many websites that provide wish-list functionality for the App Store are breathing a collective sigh of relief, but it strikes me a strange and inconsistent that Apple’s not enabling users to store a list of interesting apps for later purchase.

Snow Leopard Kinks: Photoshop CS4 Cursor Bug – NOW UPDATED WITH PROBABLE FIX

By

post-15561-image-fe9b5e9d5234cc43c7f85f9c016ddd52-jpg

Update 2: Thanks to Cult of Mac reader Gus, who noted that certain websites were screwing up his Photoshop. I started playing around with Safari and noticed that sites with embedded Flash were causing the cursor issue. I then recalled Adobe UK PR bod Emma Wilkinson’s tweet from earlier today:

Info: Snow Leopard ships w/earlier version Flash Player, recommend all update to latest, more secure which supports SL https://bit.ly/yP2VA

Sure enough, after installing the Flash update, the problem seems to be gone.

I’ve been a quite vocal critic of Adobe of late, but I’m damn impressed with the company today—it looks like someone is listening, and that’s always a good thing.

Update: Kudos to Adobe. Shortly after this post went up, a ‘Senior Software Product Quality Specialist – Photoshop’ was in touch, and we’re now involved in a discussion to try and figure out what’s going on. Also, Nack is keeping people up to date regarding some of the reported CS3 and CS4 problems.

With any new operating system comes a certain amount of pain, but the transition to Snow Leopard has been relatively easy for me. I’ve had one incredibly nasty hard crash that locked up the Mac, painted vertical stripes down the screen and looped about a quarter-second of audio at maximum volume (it was like the iMac decided to do its own really small horror film), but nothing bad before or since.

A minor exception is Photoshop CS4, which on the face of it works well, but is becoming increasingly quirky. Two bugs I’ve so far discovered that have hampered my workflow quite significantly are: 1) Photoshop deciding to ignore drags from Finder to its Dock icon—half the time, it opens just one of multiple documents; 2) insanely useful Photoshop custom cursors vanishing when the mouse button is held down.

For the latter of those things, I made a quick video (with an exasperated tone of voice). If anyone knows what the hell causes this and how to fix the bug, please post in the comments. (Note the hardware in this case is a 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac.)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZQRSMzOvKw