Apogee is the first name that pops into my head when I think “mobile, Mac-powered music-making studio.” Today, the company has revamped three of their user-friendly recording devices: the One, the Quartet and the Duet, upgrading their capabilities and making them all iPad-compatible.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy was created. (OK, so it wasn’t that far away, but Wisconsin, apparently home at the time of developer Raven Software, is an alien world.) But now this classic first-person shooter is available at the Mac App Store — so you can experience how much fun your PC friends were having a decade ago.
Photopoll is a sort of mashup between Instagram and Polldaddy, the super-useful poll tool we often use here at Cult of Mac. Just plug in some photos from Instagram, Amazon.com or your iPhone’s Camera Roll, and ask friends to vote for photos based on an accompanying question. Wild-yet-informative wackiness ensues.
Securifi’s new Almond+ router, a touch-screen router — really the touch-screen router, since the only other router available with a touch screen is the earlier version of the Almond, released mid last year and still available on Amazon for $80 — went live today on Kickstarter. It’s already lassoed over $90,000 in backing as this post goes live, with a goal of $250,000; that’s a third of its funding goal, just within its first day on Kickstarter.
We caught wind of the Mauz iPhone dongle from Spicebox last week during CES, and promised you a closer look; here it is. You’ll remember that the dongle connects to your Mac over wifi and lets you control it from your iPhone in three unusual ways: by flicking your iPhone, waving your hand over it or making a 3D-model on your Mac mimic the movements of your iPhone in real space.
LOS ANGELES — It felt like a wrap party for a big-budget Hollywood flick at Disney’s El Capitan Theatre, complete with fancy food and big names like Pixar chief John Lasseter in attendance. But Disney’s Infinity announcement on Tuesday was a massive project in which Pixar, the Disney-owned digital animation studio that once belonged to Steve Jobs, played only one of the major roles.
As it was revealed, Infinity is an amazing, massive, cross-platform, multiplayer game system based on figurines from the Disney catalog of movies — right now most of them specifically from Pixar titles.
“It will be global, and it will live across all platforms: console, mobile and online,” Lasseter said on Tuesday.
All platforms? Unfortunately not. Perhaps Disney has forgotten that Steve helped build Pixar into the powerhouse it is today; because while a Windows version will be present along with versions for all the major console systems at Ininity’s June launch, there won’t be a Mac version — at least, not at first.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Y’know how we said something or other about how iHome had an avalanche of new products? Yeah, forget we said that; the amount of new products at the Philips fort (really, they had, like, an encampment) made the iHome avalanche look like a powder dusting. And amazingly, most of it is actually worth talking about. Here’re the highlights from our booth tour.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – With seven groovy, psychedelic colors to switch between for backlighting, Luvvitt’s new Ultra Thin Keyboard Cover would no doubt have been Timothy Leary’s keyboard of choice — had iPad Minis, iPads or technology in general been around in the ’60s.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – I always pack two cases when I’m about to embark on heavy travel with my iPhone: a battery case and my trusty Incipio Feather Ultralight case. I realize toting extra juice is a necessity I have to live with, but I haven’t yet found a serious battery case with dimensions I can live with — I simply hate the bulkiness. This means I’m often stuck balancing my need for my juice with my want for less bulk by constantly swapping cases, and frankly, it’s a pain in the ass.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – This is one of those simple ideas we’re surprised no one has come up with before. The PhotoFast i-FlashDrive HD is a flash drive with two different interfaces at each end — one 30-pin, one USB — that makes it super-easy to tranfer files between a desktop and anything with a 30-pin connector. It’ll also work with a Lightning connector through a Lightning adapter.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – After four trips to CES, it’s not often I find a gadget that ambushes me straight out of left field; this one comes from the bleachers. And judging by all the buzz that’s erupted at the show and on the blogosphere about this ungainly Bluetooth utensil variously referred to as the HAPIfork, HapiFork or Hapifork (we went with the latter), I’m not the only one.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Once, a few years ago, I begged my dad to let me set him up with an email address. “Don’t do it now, I’m moving,” he said with a baffled look on his face. For my dad, whose familiarity with technology went little further than his solar-powered calculator, Flicpost would have been awesome.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Back when I was a kid, I had all kinds of Fisher-Price toys I loved playing with. But I don’t think I remember anything quite as magic as Fisher-Price’s new line of Apptivity sets for preschoolers that combine child-safe cases and toy figures with slick augmented-reality apps (though my little Classic Xylophone came close).
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Jabra makes some nice stuff, but the last time I played with a pair of Jabra’s headphones I really felt like doing this to them. If I had, they would have broken; the new Jabra are probably better, and they have a nigh-indestructible headband to boot.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – UK-based Fitbug is new to the U.S., and makes gadgets very similar to Fitbit — but they weren’t shy about letting us know they were the first to come up with the idea.
“We were first.” Fergus Kee, Fitbug’s Executive Chairman, stopped short of actually saying fitness gadget-maker Fitbit is a wholesale clone of his company — but he got pretty close.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Earlier today we posted a snippet about the Mauz dongle, and how it can turn your iPhone into a remote that can control your desktop through gestures, through either waving your iPhone around, or waving your hand over it. Now the Israeli-designed device has hit Kickstarter, with a funding goal of $150,000.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Apple accessory powerhouse iHome unleashed a mighty avalanche of products last night, the lion’s share of which was Bluetooth in nature. Highlights from the deluge include a Bluetooth version of the perennially popular iMH series portable speakers and the quirky iBT44, a Bluetooth boombox — not simply a Bluetooth-equipped speaker that some marketing guru has slapped the term with, but an honest-to-goodness, FM-equipped stereo circa 1983, only covered in rubber. Oh, and there was also a double-Lightning clock-dock. And Bluetooth headphones. And more Bluetooth speakers. And regular speakers.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Withings has now added a heart-rate monitor and an air-quality sensor into their WiFi Body Scale, which previously just measured weight and body-fat percentage. In fact, their scale now has so many sensors, they’re not even calling it a scale anymore.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – When I videochatted over Skype with one of Belkin‘s PR people a few days ago, I told them I was dumbfounded at the sound coming from the tiny speakers built into the pre-production Thunderstorm case they sent me to play around with (the review notes I scrawled down actually read “pretty fucking amazed with this thing”). Nate, whose face I could see gazing at me from Belkin’s Los Angeles office, seemed stoic. “Invariably people have that same reaction… we call it ‘the thirty seconds of wow.’ ”
Borderlands 2 from Aspyr is now available to download at the Mac App Store, almost exactly a month after it debuted on Steam — and there’s good news and bad news.
A very long three years ago, one of the very first appcessories we ever saw was this crazy-looking hardware clock that mimicked a virtual clock on the face of the iPhone. Whee! Yeah, we weren’t too impressed either. But these guys have the right idea about how to make the iPhone a better clock: add a massive snooze button.
Ever since 2008, when its first smash-hit, Ocarina — an app that turns your iPhone into a playable flute — debuted, Smule has proved itself over and over again as a magical outfit guaranteed to drop jaws with every release. Their newest app, Strum, is out today, and it’s no less wondrous an app than any of their previous efforts. But there is one very big difference: Instead of sticking to their musical background (one of Smule’s founder is, after all, an assistant professor of computer music at Stanford), they’ve taken their music fairy dust and sprinkled it on the world of video.
We’re continually seeing examples of how the iPhone has exploded its horizons to become much, much more than just a phone. Case (ha) in point: Why shell out $300 for an action cam when you already own a video cam with stellar optics and image-stabilizing, a big, beautiful screen and the ability to upload your exploits whenever you damn well please? All you need to turn your iPhone from video cam to action cam is a rugged, weatherproof case with a wide-angle lens, and the ability to stick the whole thing onto a helmet or such. And that pretty much describes the $150 Mophie OutRide system.
The Larklife fitness gadget doesn’t just lifelessly track all the mundane details of your life, like calories burned, miles trudged and hours snoozed away. No, this little thing actually learns your habits and tells you, in realtime, exactly what you should do to make yourself healthier.
The jury’s still out on what effect the firing in August of some key players at Hipstamatic will have on the app itself — but the toy-camera simulator is still pumping out the FreePaks, those cute virtual lens-and-film pairings that often tie in with some pop-culture reference. This time it’s based off the star-stuffed Gangster Squad flick, set to be released early next year. Oh, and they’re giving away a Canon 5D Mk III in a contest, if you’re interested.