John Brownlee - page 119

After what seemed like an endless wait, Infinity Blade II is almost here! The follow-up to Epic and Chair Entertainment’s elegiac App Store masterpiece has just hit the App Store in New Zealand, and will creep out slowly around the globe from there, hitting the US App Store at 11pm ET tonight.

We’ll have a review in the next couple of days, but so far, early reviews suggest it’s even better than the first one. We can’t wait to give it a spin.

When it is released, you should be able to find Infinity Blade II at this link for just $9.99.

Yesterday we heard word that Microsoft is planning to bring the Microsoft Office suite to iPad, but how will Microsoft adopt Office’s clean ribbon interface to a tablet? Here’s your exclusive first look, thanks to Gadget Lab’s brilliant blighter, Charlie Sorrel.

Back in April, Apple had a bit of a PR problem when it was discovered that iPhones were storing a cache of data on which GPS locations that handset had visited in an unencrypted file. The whole thing was just a bug, but the controversy was dubbed LocationGate, and Apple even had to testify in front of the Senate about the matter.

The whole fiasco even prompted an email from Steve Jobs, which dropped something of a bombshell: he said Apple doesn’t track anyone’s location, but that Android tracked everyone.

At the time, there wasn’t a lot of proof to back up Steve’s assertion, but as it often does, time has proven Steve Jobs right. Android phones do track you. In fact, software that comes pre-installed on millions of Android, BlackBerry and Nokia phones log everything you do with your device, and sends them off secretly to its own servers.

Apple’s release of Final Cut Pro X earlier this year was controversial, to say the least. While the update finally brought 64-bit support to the flagship video editing application, it left behind loads of functionality that users of Final Cut Pro 7 and Final Cut Pro 8 had come to depend upon.

In fact, the debacle was so bad that except for the speed increases that came from Final Cut Pro X’s 64-bit support, many video professionals thought the update was effectively a downgrade from FCP8. Which makes today’s report even more incredible, because a prominent Final Cut expert is now asserting that Apple killed off a completed 64-bit version of Final Cut Pro 8 at the last minute. What?

It’s probably not very popular to say on a Mac blog, but Windows Phone 7 is actually pretty damn good. Not iOS good, of course, but it does a lot of cool, unique things, and unlike Android, doesn’t just rip off Apple’s ideas wholesale: its tiled Metro UI is very pretty, very informative, very smart and its own thing entirely.

Even so, if you’re on an iPhone, you aren’t likely to envy Windows Phone owners very much, but if you want to see how the other half lives — and find out for yourself that it’s not actually that bad — Microsoft has just posted a WP7 emulator in HTML5 on their official site.

So far, nothing in the iOS 5.1 beta seeded yesterday has supported the rumors that Apple would add new capabilities to Siri with the first official point update, but there is at least one big new addition to Siri with the release of yesterday’s beta: it gives developers limited Siri integration.

The U.S. Government isn’t exactly known for smart spending, but at least that $10,000 hammer actually works. That’s more than the Department of Labor can say after they blew almost $200,000 on an utterly crappy app for the iPhone and Android.

Sometimes an image just speaks for itself.

[via Flickr]

Do you love typing on your iPad, the feel of your digits drumming atop virtualized letters glowing out of slippery glass? No, we thought not: for serious typing, few do, which is why the iPad keyboard case market is doing so well. So I have some haptic problems with this Kickstarter project to bring a wireless multi-touch glass keyboard and mouse to market. Aesthetically, though? Gorgeous.

According to redditor cheeseboyhalpert (doubtlessly a nom de plume), this portrait of Steve Jobs was created out of nothing but words, beautiful words.

Here’s a quick and awesome spot by Mark Gurman: the just-released iOS 5.1 beta makes mention of a new version of the iPad 2 internally dubbed iPad 2,4, and it seems probable that it is a model that works on Sprint’s CDMA network (and can suck thus up Sprint’s unlimited 3G data, albeit at definitively limited download speeds). Were any of you die-hard Sprint subscribers waiting for a compatible iPad 2 before taking the jump?

Apple has just seeded the first iOS 5.1 beta to developers, along with XCode 4.3 beta. What’s new, only time and playing around with iOS 5.1 will tell, but according to past reports, iOS 5.1 should not only get to the bottom of the iPhone 4S’s battery drain issues, it should also introduce some cool new Siri functionality. We’ll have to wait and see though.

After the jump, the release notes. Are you a developer who has noticed something new in iOS 5.1, or seen the update fix your iPhone 4S battery drain problem? Please tip us!

There’s not much more to say about this one, but if you’re looking to have some fun by putting words into Siri’s mouth, try iFakeSiri, where you can generate screenshot “evidence” of any Siri conversation you can imagine, no matter how profane!

Okay, let’s see your senses of humor at work. Readers, best Fake Siri linked in the comments gets a smiley and a gold star! We’ll post the finest entries in a gallery.

Your average Apple Store is stuffed with a pulsing biomass of customers clamoring for attention, so how do Apple employees know that you’re the guy they are tasked to help?

Well, how does Apple solve any problem? They leverage cutting-edge technology at the problem, and their system is totally ingenious, if a little frightening to the privacy obsessed.

We’re hearing loads of reports from both readers and Twitter that iCloud Mail & Notes is down. According to Apple’s iCloud System Status page, they are aware the issue is affecting “some” users and are working hard to get service restored, but between the various Siri service outages and now this, it’s clear Apple’s been having issues lately keeping their servers up against strong demand.

Is iCloud down for you? Let us know if you’re having issues in the comments. We’ll keep you updated as we know more.

Thanks, Jørn!

If you are a gamer like me, chances are you’ve spent the last couple of weeks pretending to be a slight-of-build, slightly effeminate elf or oil-slathered beefcake of a Nord in Bethesda’s new epic RPG, Skyrim.

The game (which sadly isn’t available on OS X) is detailed to the point of absurdity, but here’s one of the details that most emphasizes exactly how epic in scope and minutely detailed Skyrim is: in Skyrim, there are hundreds of in-game books to be found, equalling thousands of pages of text total. And most players never read a single page of them, because who wants to sit around in a game and read when there are orcs to hit with a flaming hammer?

If you’ve got an iPad (or Kindle, or iPhone, or Mac), though, there’s no reason these beautifully written in-game texts need to languish in obscurity. Just download this ePub file and read all of Skyrim’s text on your device of choice, not in some grubby dungeon somewhere.

Look, we hate crappy iPad knock-offs as much as any red-blooded Apple fan, but we’re going to make an exception in this case. Why? Sure, the knock-off tablet looks gaudy, but the Chinese student who built it didn’t make it to cash in on Apple’s brand: he made it for his girlfriend out of love.

It’s been less than a week since Siri was hacked to work with potentially every Internet-controlled gadget out there, even your car. But if that’s too far out for you, the latest plug-in for Siri Proxy allows you to control your Mac desktop using your iPhone.

Cyber Monday is here, and along with it, MuscleNerd — only one of the very jammingest of console cowboys in cyberspace — has given iPhone 4S owners a nice little gift of hope: word that an iPhone 4S unlock is on the way.

In the spirit of the holiday, most of here at Cult of Mac have decided to spend the day with our friends and families, but like last year, we thought we’d observe the holiday by writing about why we’re thankful for Apple and its products this year. We hope you’ll join in in the comments

I’ve always had a little crush on Susan Kare, the graphical interface pioneer who designed most of the original Mac OS icons and also designed the first proportionally spaced digital font, but this incredible piece on her over at PLOS had me wooed all over again, especially when I saw her incredible original sketches of the Mac OS icons we all know and love, which Susan laboriously designed on graph paper.

Check out some of her work on icons both familiar and foreign below, it’s the best thing I’ve seen all day.

Aaron Sorkin’s one of the most respected names in screenwriting these days. Not only did he write The Social Network and Moneyball, but he’s also behind the fantastic series Sports Night and The West Wing.

Needless to say, then, Sorkin’s high on the list of people that Sony wants to write their upcoming bio pic of Steve Jobs, based on Walter Isaacson’s best-selling bio. And apparently he’s really considering it.

Interesting, but I personally hope this is more Moneyball and less Social Network, which was a pretty flawed film.

Mark Zuckerberg’s faithful hund Beast has apparently gotten himself a job as an engineer at Facebook, and like all the best dogs, he’s an Apple fan, through and through.

[via Obama Pacman]

The iPhone 4S has an amazing camera for a smartphone. Heck, it’s already the second most popular smartphone camera on Flickr. But how does it hold up for the professional photographer?

As this beautiful testimony by pro photographer and gallery owner Ryan Bolger makes clear, it doesn’t just hold up well… it reinvents photography.

This is a cute little stocking stuffer for the narcissistic Mac fangirl in your life: the MirrorBook Air, a $12 hand mirror that looks just like a tiny, palm-sized MacBook Air. Get it now before Apple C&Ds it, which they will, but hopefully not before Christmas.