HomeKit just gained a powerful new partner: Communication firm Broadcom announced yesterday that its WICED (“Wireless Internet Connectivity for Embedded Devices”) software now offers full support with Apple’s connected-accessory framework.
WICED is the first software development kit to meet HomeKit’s standards for Wi-fi and Bluetooth Smart, which gives it a head start over other companies looking to get in on Apple’s platform.
Patient iOS developers haven’t had long to wait for their time with Apple’s new App Analytics tool; the beta is now open to everyone with an iTunes Connect Admin, Finance, or Sales account.
Samsung may be the official sponsor of the NBA, but the Apple Watch is stealing the show.
Michael Fassbender is a lot of things: actor, producer, Magneto … but one thing he isn’t is on the cutting edge of technology.
The man playing Steve Jobs in the upcoming biopic from director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) confessed in a recent interview that he is a little behind the times, phone-wise.
A woman claims her employer wrongfully fired and retaliated against her for deleting a location-tracking app from her company-issued iPhone, and she’s taking her case to court.
Myrna Arias, formerly of money-transfer company Intermex, took issue with how the bosses were using productivity software Xora, which includes GPS tracking to monitor and optimize business travel. She claims that her higher-ups were using the data to keep tabs on her and coworkers even during off hours and that they terminated her shortly after she removed the offending app.
A new report from environmental organization Greenpeace has given Apple top marks for its policies and movement toward renewable energy.
The 72-page document by senior policy analyst Gary Cook and media officer David Pomerantz serves as an evaluation of current corporate activities, a summary of the state of renewable tech and progress, and a roadmap for how to institute less wasteful programs moving forward.
Apple, which is currently building an environmentally friendly second campus in Cupertino was one of three “Green Internet Innovators” shown on the graphic below, which groups companies from least to most environmentally friendly.
Early adopters of the Apple Watch have had a few weeks with their new gadgets, and they’re having experiences that may not be worthy of one of Apple’s austere presentations. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t getting a lot of use out of the things and finding occasionally odd ways to integrate them into their lives.
A bunch of reddit users have been sharing their stories, and here are some of the more peculiar things Apple’s new wearable can do.
If you’re looking to plan a heist, you’d probably best stay clear of Hangouts: Google has inadvertently confirmed that its chat platform is susceptible to police and government monitoring.
While the tech giant usually keeps quiet about Hangouts’ security features, the revelation (of sorts) came out of an “Ask Me Anything” session Friday on Reddit that included members of Google’s public policy department and legal team. Its proposed topic was “the current status of U.S. government surveillance law reform and how Google thinks about these issues,” but the questions were less about laws or reform and more about Google’s practices.
Bloodborne’s village of Yharnam is a dangerous place. It’s full of werewolves, trolls, giant pigs and a host of other terrible beasts that want to kill you. And they can. And they will. But that’s all part of the fun.
Yharnam is a towering, Gothic, often claustrophobic place with buildings piled on buildings and dead ends everywhere. It isn’t a vacation spot, and it isn’t here to make you happy. It exists to give those who venture within exactly what they deserve, for good or ill. The village rewards those who take their time, study their enemies, and plan their moves carefully. And it punishes those who rush or are otherwise careless.
If you want to survive Bloodborne, you must be careful and learn everything you can about both your own and the monsters’ capabilities. This might take a while, but it’s a game in which progress really feels like progress, and you have nobody to blame for failure but yourself.
You don’t always have to sit down to an epic, 100-hour slog to get your gaming in. Developers are delivering plenty of great bite-size, episodic games that (usually) release one part at a time.
If you’re looking for something you can play in installments, here are four great places to start. These games are all fully released, so you won’t have to wait for the next episode if you can’t stand the suspense. This is great if you’re like me; I watched all of Breaking Bad in a week once it was all up on Netflix. That’s just how I roll.
Want to try on the super-fancy $10,000 Apple Watch Edition? You might have to do a bit of driving, because in a whopping 75 percent of the United States, it’s totally impossible to demo the solid gold Apple smartwatch.
Only 12 states (and the District of Columbia) have Apple Stores taking appointments to check out the Apple Watch Edition. That leaves 38 states that are apparently not fancy or fashionable enough to offer demos of the schmanciest Apple Watch of all. To see if you live in one of them, check out Cult of Mac’s handy map below, but be prepared to weep.
Marvel’s new show about blind superhero Daredevil swoops into your Netflix queue this Friday, and the looming arrival of “the man without fear” got us in the mood to watch some other comic-inspired TV shows and movies. To make it interesting, however, we’re avoiding the obvious Marvel and DC characters and focusing on lesser-known and original characters.
Here are a few more metahuman stories to help you get your fix of “BIFFs!” and “POWs!” Be sure to tell us some of your favorites in the comments.
The Resident Evil franchise has suffered a bit of an identity crisis in recent years, straying from its survival-horror roots toward something considerably more action-based. The latest entry, Resident Evil: Revelations 2, tries to have it both ways by splitting its four-chapter tale between two storylines. One features two frantic survivors struggling for resources, and the other has you playing as a heavily armed man of action.
It seems like mixing these two extremes would end up diluting them both, but somehow developer Capcom managed to take the best of both play styles and create something distinctive, harrowing and still damned scary.
First Twin Peaks, and now this. Fox is bringing back its seminal monster-of-the-week series The X-Files for a six-episode run, complete with original stars Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny.
We don’t know yet what former agents Mulder and Scully have been up to since we left them floating in the middle of the ocean at the end of 2008 film I Want to Believe (they had a raft; don’t worry). But I imagine it will involve aliens, conspiracies and perhaps an alien conspiracy or two.
If you’re excited about these series making their returns, here are five ’90s cult TV shows to take you back to the world of crappy computer effects and even worse pants. And be sure to let us know more of your favorites in the comments.
If you’ve snatched up one of Nintendo’s nifty New 3DS handhelds, you’ll be glad to know the updated hardware will help you get a lot more out of the 3DS gaming library.
Here are four games you should check out now that you have the latest, greatest 3-D gaming gadget.
Your iPhone and iPad are decent options for gaming on the go, but they can’t do everything. Sometimes touch controls work, and sometimes they don’t.
If you’re a dedicated gamer who wants something that combines the simplicity of touch controls with the precision of actual buttons, I recommend Nintendo’s newest handheld gaming device.
The latest incarnation of the 3DS handheld system is appropriately named the New Nintendo 3DS XL (North America didn’t get the smaller version, but my massive man hands and I are not complaining). It offers a wider viewing angle for its glasses-free stereoscopic 3D graphics, a faster processor and even more buttons than the old one. And if you can swing the $200 price, you’ll be buying a lot of fun. But as commenters love to point out to me, this is Cult of Mac and not Cult of Whatever I’m Writing About, so we’ll skip to the big question:
Will this replace your iPhone or iPad for gaming?
We’re just weeks away from the Apple Watch’s launch, but maybe you’re not as excited about it as some of us are. It’s understandable; not everyone needs a $550 watch that offers many of the same capabilities your phone already does (albeit more conveniently).
If you’re in the market for a cool new watch and don’t need all the smart features and gadgetiness of Apple’s offering, here are a few less-shiny options you could check out. And they are, in fact, far less shiny than the Apple Watch. Because they’re made of wood.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of Zombeavers, but it’s out now. And, true to its name, it is about beavers who are also zombies, and they lay siege to a cabin full of hapless, idiot teens on a weekend trip to the woods.
Watch the Zombeavers trailer if you don’t believe me, but this is a thing that is happening to all of us. And I can’t actually speak to its quality without having seen it, but it absolutely looks like something I would watch on Netflix at 2 in the morning. But only then.
What I’m saying is that you can probably wait to see Zombeavers, which will screen in select theaters starting today and is also available to stream on demand. And while you’re doing that, you should check out these other films that blend horror and comedy into something special (and don’t forget to share all the ones I missed in the comments).
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is back from its mid-season break to resolve some cliffhangers — and introduce new ones, because absolute closure has no place in TV shows based on comic books.
If you don’t like waiting a week between episodes and want to fill that time with more stories about secret agencies, government-sanctioned or otherwise, that are charged with sorting out the crazy junk your civilian brain just couldn’t even handle, we have a few suggestions for you. Kick your TV into super-secret-spy mode with these shows and movies that are guaranteed to give you your daily allowance of secrets, acronyms and people in suits with guns.
Netflix’s super-political drama House of Cards returns for its third season Friday, and if the Muppet version wasn’t enough to hold you over before you watch all the new episodes in one sitting this weekend, we’re here to help.
You should check out these shows if you need a fix of shenanigans and power plays that go all the way to the top.
The third season of Netflix’s amazing political drama House of Cards drops on February 27, and our friends at Sesame Street are apparently pretty excited. They put out a parody video today that recasts Kevin Spacey’s conniving, political shark as Frank Underwolf, a drawling villain with eyes on the “White Brick House” currently occupied by one of three pigs. Of course, he has to go through a couple of other little house-hogs first….
Not only does this video perfectly capture the tone and winking evil of the show, but it also will teach you a valuable lesson about counting to three. Check it out below.
AMC’s mega-popular show The Walking Dead has returned for the second half of its fifth season, and if you are as excited about it as my Twitter feed is, you’re probably looking for something gory to hold you over between episodes.
But don’t worry — we have you covered. Here are some more undead-themed shows and movies that will satisfy your need for fake blood while you’re waiting to make sure Daryl Dixon’s zombie-proof vest made of “fan favorite” is still holding up.
Devilishly bonkers new game Saints Row: Gat out of Hell features a final boss fight against the Prince of Darkness himself. That’s pretty satisfying, despite the fact that this version of Satan possesses a beautiful singing voice.
But not all video-game devils have redeeming qualities. Here are four demonic bad guys so devious, difficult and/or annoying that it’s not enough to defeat them in the game — you will wish you could rip them out of your screen and smack them until they can’t damn straight.
Soda Drinker Pro lauds itself as “the original FPS (first-person soda) simulator,” and that’s probably true because that description is mad specific.
The weirdo game, which looks straight out of Cartoon Network’s stoner-centric programming block Adult Swim, just landed a spot on digital-distribution platform Steam after a successful Greenlight campaign. Greenlight lets the Steam community vote on which indie games earn a place in the store, and developer Snowrunner Productions celebrated by releasing a brand-new trailer (below) that looks like the kind of soda commercial that surrealist filmmaker David Lynch would make.
Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell is a weird game. And I’m not just saying that because it’s about two members of a street gang going to hell to rescue their boss before he or she is forced to marry Satan’s daughter. Because that’s super-weird, don’t get me wrong.
Other than that, Gat is an expansion to 2013’s Saints Row IV that doesn’t require you to own the main game but doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you haven’t played it. It has a six- to eight-hour story with an additional dozen or so hours of open-world gameplay. Whether you’re new to the series or not, you’re in for its special brand of relentless fun.
