This week’s must-have games roundup begins with a wonderful new building game called Middle Manager of Justice, in which you take charge of Justice Corp., a team of superheroes that are on a mission to save the city’s inhabitants. We also have Monsters, Inc. Run, a new running platform game from Disney; Sport Interactive’s latest Football Manager Handheld title, and more.
When the iPad mini first became available in Apple retail stores, it was hard to gauge just how popular it was among fans — and how well it was selling. It seemed that the tablet wasn’t moving as quickly as other iOS devices on their first day, and for many customers it was easy to walk into store once the queues had died down and find one still in stock. Some assumed people didn’t want a device that started at $329, didn’t have a Retina display, and featured older hardware.
Despite that, the iPad mini’s on track to become a hugely successful product during its first year. NPD DisplaySearch expects it to reach 100 million shipments during 2013, eclipsing sales of the larger fourth-generation iPad.
Rovio, one of the most successful iOS developers around, has slashed all of its iPad games to just 99¢ for a limited time. That includes all titles in the Angry Birds series, the new Bad Piggies game, and Amazing Alex. Has Christmas come early?
Almost three months after making its debut in the United States, Apple’s iPhone 5 goes on sale in China and 32 addition countries today. As is often the case when Apple launches a new gadget, fans lined up in droves in an effort to get their hands on the Cupertino company’s latest smartphone before it’s all sold out. Some stores, however, were unusually quiet.
When Apple rolled out a new App Store redesign with iOS 6, the Cupertino company removed the ability for customers to gift apps and games to their friends via email. Just in time for Christmas, that’s now back, making gift-giving for those getting new iOS devices a whole lot easier.
Yeah, this is one of the least surprising rumors you’ll hear all day. But it’s sure to delight those who are holding out for an iPad mini with a Retina display. According to industry sources in Taiwan, Apple will indeed be “enhancing” the display resolution of its second-generation iPad mini, introducing a 2058×1536 panel with 326 pixels-per-inch.
Have you ever used Google Chrome on your iOS devices to listen to music on YouTube, only to find it stops playing when you close the app? Sometimes that’s a good thing — you don’t always need videos to continue to playing in the background when they’ve been closed. But sometimes it’s annoying, like when you’re listening to music.
Thanks to the app’s latest update, you can prevent that from happening.
Readdle has today updated its popular PDF Expert app for iPad to introduce a number of new features that include Google Drive syncing, integration with the PDF Converter app, faster PDF rendering, and more. It also promises “dozens” of other improvements, and it’s available to download from the App Store now.
A U.S. court has today ruled that Apple’s iPhone infringes three patents owned by MobileMedia Ideas, a so-called “patent troll” jointly owned by Nokia, Sony, and Denver-based MPEG LA.
Xiaojie Li, a 44-year-old woman living in Newton, Massachusetts, was pinned to the ground and tasered by police on Tuesday when she attempted to buy a few too many iPhones from her local Apple store. Li says she was buying the devices on behalf of relatives in China, and she was carrying $16,000 in cash when police arrested her.
Amazon has updated its Instant Video app for iOS today, introducing support for the iPhone and iPod touch. The service has been available on iPad since August, but this is the first time it has come to smaller iOS devices, giving Amazon Prime subscribers more than 30,000 free videos in their pockets.
Apple could be looking to switch its graphics cards supplier from NVIDIA back to AMD for the iMac. The Cupertino company began using NVIDIA solutions for its latest all-in-one, which started shipping late last month, but a job listing on its website suggests it could already be preparing to switch back. Apple is looking for a Hardware Systems Electrical Engineer with experience in AMD graphics processing units (GPU).
Google released an official Google Maps app for the iPhone on Wednesday evening — I’m sure you’ve already downloaded it to your device — and as you might expect, it’s already incredibly popular. Users have since been rushing to reclaim the mapping service that Apple booted out of iOS with its latest iOS 6 update, helping Google Maps rocket to the top of the App Store’s free chart in just seven hours. It has knocked Apple’s own 12 Days of Christmas app down to second place.
The WINGStand, from the guys at BiteMyApple, is another accessory that was born on Kickstarter. It allows you to combine your iPad, iPad mini, and iPhone with your Apple Wireless Keyboard in the simplest way possible — without carrying additional an additional stand, dock, or case.
Simply attach the WINGStand clips to the back of your keyboard — they cling onto its battery compartment — and they form a stand in which you can sit your iOS devices. As you can see from the photograph above, the two almost merge into one to create a pretty little computer that’s perfect for getting things done on the go.
When you’ve finished working, simply pull the WINGStand clips off your keyboard, clip them together, and throw them in your bag.
The WINGStand is available in white and “eco friendly” black and it costs just $15. Is it worth it?
One of the better Yuletide traditions is the venerable holiday Advent Calendar, in which each day of December leading up to Christmas is marked off on a special calendar by opening its corresponding door to find a small gift, toy or chocolate squirreled away inside.
This year, we here at Cult of Mac decided we wanted to give our readers their very own Apple-themed advent calendar, filled with the year’s best apps, gadgets, stories and other curios. So each day in December, we’re going to lovingly peel back the door on the Cult of Mac 2012 Advent Calendar to reveal another delicious morsel, something really special that came out this year that we think every one of you should enjoy.
It’s Day 12! That means KitCam, one of the best camera apps for the iPhone.
When Apple decided to give Google Maps the boot and deliver its own Maps app for iOS 6, it teamed up with TomTom to provide users with turn-by-turn navigation on their iOS devices for the first time. Now it seems the Cupertino company may be looking to acquire its new navigation partner in an effort to fix Maps.
Hans Slob, an Utrecht, Netherlands-based analyst at Rabobank, believes there’s a 30% chance Apple will acquire TomTom. It is reportedly interested in the Dutch company’s capacity to make prompt changes to correct mapping errors.
Logitech produces some of the best portable keyboards there are for the iPad, and it’s just announced another that will also work with your Mac, too. But not only is it compatible with both Mac and iOS devices, its awesome ‘Easy-Switch’ feature allows you to connect to up to three via Bluetooth at the same time and then quickly switch between them at the touch of a button.
A working Apple I, the first computer built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976, has been sold at auction for a record $640,000. That’s considerably more than the machine’s original asking price of $666.66, and almost $270,000 more than the previous Apple I record set by Sotheby’s back in June.
December looks set to be a good month for Apple fans in Russia. Just over a week after the Cupertino company rolled out the iTunes Store there, a local Apple Premium Reseller, re:Store, has announced that the iPad mini will be launching on December 14, the same day Russia will get the iPhone 5. That’s a week earlier than local media have been reporting, but an official date is yet to be confirmed by Apple.
After rolling out a redesigned Yahoo! Mail on Tuesday, Yahoo! has launched a brand new Flickr app for iPhone this morning that appears to be going head to head with Instagram. It’s a completely redesign of the previous version, and it promises to be easier to use and more beautiful. It also offers new features, including 16 filters for your photographs.
I hope it looks like this. Apple has begun testing high-resolution television set designs with manufacturing partners in Asia, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal that cites unnamed sources within Foxconn. Both Foxconn and display manufacturer Sharp are said to be involved in the process, which is still in its early stages.
Update: Shortly after this article was published “Dream JB” turned out to be a complete fake. The person behind the website literally rick rolled everyone and shut the site down. It was all apparently a “social experiment” from the beginning, and there was never an actual jailbreak for any kind. If a jailbreak release isn’t coming from known and respected hackers, don’t trust it. The source link to the site has been removed from the bottom of this post.
A mysterious hacker has begun teasing the first untethered jailbreak for the latest devices running iOS 6, including the iPhone 5, the iPad mini, and the fourth-generation iPad. The hack will not come from the usual suspects — the iPhone-Dev Team — but rather from an individual calling himself “Dream JB.” He promises it will arrive on December 22, but are we getting our hopes up over nothing?
https://youtu.be/Ha_4nrGyGPk
AgileBits has overhauled its 1Password app for iOS for version 4.0, and its begun teasing the release with a new trailer ahead of its December 13 launch. The video doesn’t give away any of 1Password’s new features, but it does show off its new look. Although you will have to keep your eyes peeled if you want to see it; blink and you’ll miss it.
Google rolled out a major update to its Gmail app for iOS last week, and it seems Yahoo! is keen to keep up. The company just introduced a brand new look to its Yahoo! Mail app for iPhone, which introduces a brand new look that I’m a big fan of. It’s not too dissimilar to Gmail’s, in fact. And in some ways it’s better.
The future of Microsoft’s SkyDrive service on iOS looks bleak today as the company appears to have entered into a fight with Apple over its 30% cut of App Store revenues. Microsoft recently gave iOS users the ability to upgrade their SkyDrive subscriptions from their iPhones and iPads, but until the company agrees to give Apple a 30% cut of the in-app purchases, it won’t get any future updates approved.
A critical bug fix that prevents the app from crashing has now had to be placed on hold. Should Apple’s rules be a little more flexible in certain cases?