Luke Dormehl - page 305

With a cutesy, one-eyed protagonist named Zak and colorful graphics aplenty, upcoming game Flyhunter Origins looks like it could be a big-screen animated movie.

That’s not too shocking, since the game was developed by Steel Wool Games, a San Francisco Bay Area-based startup composed of Pixar employees past and present. But while the story of a space janitor who becomes wrapped up in an intergalactic insect-catching adventure sounds like it could come from the next Brad Bird movie, what the team has crafted is a compelling 2-D platformer that owes as much to Super Mario Bros. as it does to Toy Story.

“What we admired about those early games is what they did with very limited technology,” says Andrew Dayton, a 20-year veteran of computer visual effects, whose day job sees him working as senior technical director at Pixar. “Back then you couldn’t hide bad gameplay with pretty pictures. Playability was everything for us.”

Aaron Sorkin parodies have been doing the rounds since The West Wing started, but this one from Late Night with Seth Meyers is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Somewhat bizarrely it also does the best job of anything I’ve watched so far convincing me exactly why Sorkin is the perfect (and possibly the only) person who should be bringing a Steve Jobs movie to the big screen.

From the fast-speaking walk and talks, to the angry rants, to the sentimental, rousing speeches, not only are all of Sorkin’s tropes perfectly lampooned here — but they also fit perfectly with what most of us are hoping for from a Jobs movie.

Sorkin had said that his Jobs movie will take place as three 30-minute scenes, each depicting the backstage goings-on at an Apple product announcement at different stages in Jobs’ career. I can’t wait to see it!

Let’s just hope they get a new actor locked in place soon.

The iPhone 6 is outselling the iPhone 6 Plus by a margin of 3-to-1 in the U.S., but that’s no knock on Apple’s giant-sized handset, according to a new report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

The research firm’s sales breakdown looked at the first 30 days the iPhone 6 family of handsets were available to buy. It concluded that the iPhone 6 represented 68% of iPhone sales, with the iPhone 6 Plus making up 23-24%.

Combined, this means that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus represented a massive 91-92% of iPhones sold in the United States. The remaining iPhones were previous generation iPhone 5s and 5c units. This figure is even more impressive when you consider that last year the then-new iPhones represented a smaller 84% of iPhone sales after the first month.

Anyone who travels a lot internationally has likely been stung by roaming Internet charges at some point in other. While it is possible to buy or rent a local SIM card when you’re abroad, this requires that your iPhone be either unlocked or jailbroken — and also limits users to just one mobile carrier in each country.

Trying to solve this problem is a nifty Kickstarter project which aims to build a its multi-carrier, virtual SIM-equipped iPhone case that means travelers get affordable data roaming in 100+ countries for just $2 a day.

Following the discovery of the serious iOS vulnerability known as Masque Attack, Apple has issued a statement to iMore, claiming that it is not aware of users experiencing this problem, but that users should be aware of online malware that circumvents Apple’s existing security measures.

“We designed OS X and iOS with built-in security safeguards to help protect customers and warn them before installing potentially malicious software,” said an Apple spokesperson. “We’re not aware of any customers that have actually been affected by this attack. We encourage customers to only download from trusted sources like the App Store and to pay attention to any warnings as they download apps. Enterprise users installing custom apps should install apps from their company’s secure website.”

Tony Fadell might model himself after Steve Jobs, but from the sound of things he may have taken disproportionately from the bad side of Jobs’ personality rather than the good side.

A new article appearing on StrictlyVC reports on the experience of the recently Nest-acquired Dropcam — makers of an iOS-friendly Wi-Fi security camera — whose employees are apparently struggling quite a bit with dealing with a the prickly, micromanaging Fadell.

If you’re looking to get a new iPad for as little cash as possible, here’s an intriguing offer: Starting tomorrow, Sprint is letting customers lease an iPad Air 2 or iPad mini 3 for as little as $17 per month.

It’s an unusual offer, and one that Sprint describes as an “industry first.” The lease itself lasts 24 months and, enticingly, doesn’t require any upfront costs.

So what are the prices for an iPad lease from Sprint?

Apple chipmakers are gearing up to start production of the Apple Watch, according to a new report. Orders for the chips suggest that the initial production run is likely to be between 30-40 million units.

If accurate, these figures fall in the middle of previous guesstimates regarding how many Apple Watches Cupertino plans to sell in 2015.

One recent report claimed that Apple has placed orders for shipments of up to five million AMOLED panels per month, which would suggest sales of 50+ million units next year. More conservatively, Gene Munster has predicted that Apple’s first year sales for the new device will come in at around the 10 million unit mark.

No pun intended, but coffee is hot stuff in Silicon Valley, where overworked engineers rely on cup after cup of the black stuff to keep them focused on building amazing products.

If you too are a bit of a tech-loving caffeine fiend, you may be interested in the new Mr. Coffee Smart Coffeemaker, a gorgeous new smart coffee-making device programmed and controlled remotely from your iPhone.

Using the dedicated iOS app, users can schedule up to a week’s worth of coffee brew times — meaning that your morning pot of joe can start being brewed while you’re still asleep, so that it’s all ready for sipping the moment you arrive in your kitchen.

Apple could find itself facing a class action lawsuit over the loss of “countless” text messages, courtesy of its iMessage service.

California resident Adrienne Moore filed a case against Apple back in May this year, saying that she missed out on receiving text messages after giving up her iPhone 4 and moving to a Samsung Galaxy S5.

Moore’s victory in court means that she now has the ability to pursue a class action lawsuit against Apple. She is also seeking unspecified damages.

Having not worn a watch regularly since my high school days, I recently took the plunge and bought my first “adult” watch, a self-winding automatic Swiss timepiece.

I had several criteria I wanted to meet. Firstly I wanted a self-winding automatic, because I liked the idea of owning a Swiss watch and I wanted one that, at least in theory, has a longer lifespan than a battery-powered quartz timepiece. Secondly, I wanted to keep my purchase sub-$2,000. Thirdly, as a watch novice, I was looking for something that would be as multipurpose as possible.

After some research, I settled on a watch from the Longines Master Collection — buying it in a dedicated brick-and-mortar store rather than online, so that I could try it out in person before buying.

iOS 8 adoption rates have been a bit of a disappointment for Apple up until now. Things may be starting to turn around, however, with the company’s latest figures showing that its latest mobile operating system is now running on 56% of active iOS devices.

True, that’s still less than the adoption rate of last year’s iOS 7, but the gap is narrowing.

iOS 7, meanwhile, is running on a reported 40% of devices, while earlier iOS versions account for just 5%.

Apple is talking to Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba about bringing Apple Pay to China, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.

“Right now, I think what we can say is that this is focused on the China market for Apple,” senior Alibaba executive Joseph Tsai is quoted as saying. “We are positive about the potential cooperation, but it depends on the details being worked out.”

Having written about the Apple Watch for months before it was announced, I’ll admit it was difficult to stop referring to the device as the “iWatch.” Even Tim Cook has slipped up and used that name in interviews, suggesting that this is the name Apple’s wearable debut had inside the company.

With that in mind, CollegeHumor has created a hilarious public service announcement video entitled, tactfully enough, “Apple: Call It the iWatch and We’ll Kill You.”

It was once thought that Japan disliked the iPhone so much that the Apple device couldn’t be given away for free. To paraphrase Dinah Washington, what a difference five years makes!

In October, the iPhone 6 held seven of the top eight smartphone positions (and nine out of the top 14). While sales figures are lacking, the data indicates the strength of the iPhone in Japan, according to a new report from Forbes.

Tim Cook recently gave a rare public interview at the Wall Street Journal’s WSJD Live global technology conference. Discussing everything from the iPhone’s status as Apple’s cash cow and the battle over Apple Pay, to the reason the iPod classic was discontinued, it was another winning performance from Apple’s CEO.

While Cult of Mac ran down the main takeaways from the conference at the time, the Wall Street Journal has now uploaded the video of Cook’s lengthy interview, so readers can see for themselves.

Check it out after the jump:

Apple manufacturer Pegatron is having to expand its production capacity to deal with the epic demand being heaped on it due to the success of the iPhone 6, according to a new report.

Earlier today, Pegatron CEO Jason Cheng told investors that his company has spent upwards of $200 million in 2014 in capital expenditure to help ramp up production, and that this figure is going to increase to a massive $300 million next year.

Although a slowdown in notebook demand meant that Pegatron’s overall revenue is down 6.8% versus the same quarter in 2013, revenue from the company’s communications products (which includes the iPhone 6) grew 10% year on year. Net profit meanwhile leaped an astonishing 92% in the July-to-September period.

For those keeping track at home, this is the same time Pegatron began shipping the iPhone 6.

Apple is set to open its first office in the UK’s innovation capital Cambridge in the next couple of weeks, according to a new report.

The address of the office — which will serve as an R&D lab — is the centrally-located 90 Hills Road, not far from the offices of streaming music rival Spotify. In addition to a healthy startup scene, other major tech companies with offices in Cambridge include leading microprocessor manufacturer ARM, Microsoft, and others.

Apple is being sued by China’s second biggest insurance company over claims that it allowed a “counterfeit app” to be sold in the iTunes App Store.

The app in question misleads users into thinking it is the official app of Lufax, the leading provider of wealth and financial assets management in China, and a subsidiary of the Ping insurance group.

Ping is arguing that users in China might download the counterfeit Lufax app instead of the legitimate one, and that the ensuing risk of fraud and potential loss for Lufax’s customers is significant.

Clearing the way for its own fitness-tracking wearables, Apple has stopped selling Fitbit activity trackers in the Apple Online Store, and has begun removing them from its brick-and-mortar retail outlets also.

Fitbit’s devices have been sold in Apple Stores for the past few years; quickly racking up close to 70% of the fitness-tracking device marketshare, courtesy of a head start over competitors such as Nike’s FuelBand and Jawbone Up.

Monument Valley is my pick for iOS game of the year; a twisting, gorgeous, MC Escher-style puzzler that’s spellbinding from start to finish. And given that it has received upwards of 1 million downloads, I’m far from alone in thinking that way.

Which is why it’s great to hear that the game is set to receive its first expansion on November 13. Titled “Forgotten Shores,” the expansion will plunge players back into the world of Princess Ida, as she travels through eight entirely new levels, with a slew of fresh puzzles to solve on her journey.

In a much-requested feature, paying Spotify users can now use their iPhone or iPad to control the songs playing on their desktop computer.

Thanks to the update, you can now easily switch between desktop and mobile — perhaps using your iPad to skip and change tracks at a party, or shutting down your laptop, and then picking up listening on your iPhone from exactly where you left off on your phone.

According a rumor in BusinessKorea, Apple is set to switch from using the problematic TLC (triple-level cell) NAND flash to MLC (multi-level cell) NAND flash in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. MLC NAND was used in the 16GB version of the new iPhone 6 devices, as well as some of the 64GB models, while the 64GB and 128GB models use TLC NAND.

A few days ago we detailed reports that a small percentage of users were having issues with their new iPhones crashing and becoming stuck in a boot loop, supposedly due to the controller IC of the TLC NAND.

Although the suggestion that Apple was looking at a full-on product recall were largely debunked, the company is supposedly looking to fix the problem going forward.