Luke Dormehl - page 337

One of the cool things about the era of over-the-air updates is that developers can add tweaks and features specific to certain times of the year, without having to build them in from the start.

That’s what EA’s The Simpsons: Tapped Out iOS game has done for Easter, adding in features specific to this time of year as a way of giving a seasonal nod to Simpsons’ fans. In the same way that the game was overrun with snakes for Whacking Day, so too for Easter has Springfield been overtaken by bloodthirsty bunnies, which players must stun into submission.

Remember that old slang phrase from the 90s: “Talk to the hand, because the face ain’t listening?”

Apple seems to be taking a similar tack — except that you can substitute “talk to the hand” to “upgrade to iOS 7,” and “because the face ain’t listening” to “because FaceTime is no longer working on iOS 6.”

First spotted in a thread on the Apple Support Communities mini-site, a number of users running iOS 6-powered devices have reported an inability to either make or receive FaceTime calls. According to them, this problem dates back to April 16.

Gone are the days when simply taking a photo of a document was enough. Today, if you care enough to scan or photograph a piece of text, chances are you’re also going to want to edit it.

This is where a tool like Smile’s popular PDFpen Scan+ app comes in — which has just been updated for iOS 7.

PDDpen Scan+ differs from rival apps like Scanbot by performing optical character recognition (OCR) to create creating fully-searchable PDFs. The app’s latest update — Version 1.3 — adds an enhanced user interface, new paper sizes for scanned documents, the ability to preview OCR text as page overlays, and many more new features.

Want to ask Siri what song is playing and get a definitive answer? In iOS 8 you might be able to, according to a new report.

Apple will reportedly partner with Shazam for a song-recognition feature in the next version of its mobile operating system. For those who don’t know, Shazam has been operating its own song-identification app (a personal favorite of mine) for years.

The app pulls in data from an iPhone or iPad’s microphone, sends it to the cloud for processing, and then returns results to users — allowing you to track down those hard-to-find tracks, without having to spend ages googling lyric fragments.

Having seen its shares jump recently, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has another plan she hopes will continue her company’s turnaround: convincing Apple to adopt Yahoo as the default search engine for Safari on iOS.

Yahoo has reportedly been working on two secret projects designed to build “a viable mobile search engine and monetization platform to convince Apple to make Yahoo the default search engine on its Safari browser on the iPhone and iPad,” according to a new report from Re/code.

Codenamed “Fast Break” and “Curveball,” the projects will be the subject of an upcoming presentation Mayer will make to Apple at some point in the near future — with the aim of getting the company to ditch Google as its search partner.

With so much buzz about the possibility of Apple’s expansion into the wearables sector, it’s no surprise that we’re not exactly short of iWatch concept designs.

The folks behind the universal CircleTime app have added another one to the pile, though — and it’s certainly eye-catching.

“Available” in black and silver, and featuring a 2-inch display with curved anti-scratch glass, full version of iOS, and a Li-ion battery that last seven days before needing to be recharged, HedgeHog’s design is more robust and high quality than some of the other variations out there — even if it does somewhat resemble the heavy duty bracelets worn by He-Man in Masters of the Universe.

This story first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine.

In Apple’s drive toward simplicity, one of the things which fell into the category of “things we can do without” were physical paper manuals.

While the Cupertino company does offer a 140-page online User Guide — which provides a passable intro to using your iPad (and currently has the advantage of being one of the few iOS 7.1 guides around) — Apple’s refusal to create manuals has fostered a cottage industry with rival products.

Ever think that the majority of freemium iOS games are basically mindless tap-fests, with demands only for cold hard cash, and none for meaningful strategy?

Take Jurassic Park Builder, for instance: a game I reviewed back in January, and was forced to grudgingly admit was “effectively FarmVille with velociraptors” thanks to in-app purchases (IAPs).

The game looks nice enough but — unless you’re happy to cough up money to get goals done quicker — all it asks of players is to tap the screen every few minutes to check on their dinosaurs or earn in-game currency.

If that sounds the kind of job a dumb robot could do, you’re not wrong — that same idea occurred to senior art director and amateur robot builder, Uli Kilian, who built a Lego robot to carry out the task for him.

From complaints about the use of shuttle buses in San Francisco, to Apple’s own security guards protesting for better pay, the tech industry in San Francisco has come under increased fire in the last few years.

The latest protest took place on Tuesday, with a crowd gathered at Apple’s Union Square store in San Francisco, dressed as Apple Store workers, to call on the company to pay U.S. taxes on the $102 billion it alleges is held overseas.

“We’re trying to have a little fun on Tax Day and show how Apple’s unpaid tax revenues could help Bay Area infrastructure,” said spokesperson Alfredo Fletes. “We could have done this in Cupertino, but not as many customers would come by — this is partly an education campaign.”

Apple’s continued Chinese expansion saw App Store revenue in China increase by 70% last quarter. That’s according to figures from a new Q1 2014 report from app analytics firm App Annie.

Key to this increase is the China Mobile deal which was announced at the end of last year, opening up Apple’s potential customer base to the 763 million users currently on the country’s biggest mobile network.

Apple is one of several tech giants to enter a voluntary agreement to add a global anti-theft “kill-switch” to their handsets from July 2015.

Other companies on board include  Google, HTC, Huawei, Motorola, Microsoft, Nokia, and Samsung — while carriers have reportedly agreed to help “facilitate these measures.”

Apple’s support of the need for a kill-switch doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. The company added an Activation Lock with iOS 7, designed to make it tougher for thieves to use stolen iOS devices. The feature allows users to remotely locate, lock and wipe their iPhones if they are stolen.

Apple has been releasing its weekly top games charts as of late, and they make interesting reading.

The latest list — published Tuesday afternoon — shows the cumulative iOS game downloads for the week running April 7 to April 13.

Apple has chosen LG as its sole supplier for flexible displays to be used in the iWatch, according to a new report coming out of Korea.

The report suggests that Apple is aiming to sell 9 million iWatch units by the end of 2014, that the device will be launched in September, and that the iWatch will come in two different sizes (1.3 inches and 1.5 inches).

A single image showing what appears to be a larger iPhone screen has shown up on Chinese microblogging website Weibo.

The photo — posted by user jiezhixc on Tuesday — depicts what looks like a current generation iPhone 5s being held up as comparison, showing how significantly larger the iPhone 6 could potentially be.

Ever have that situation at school where a teacher who doesn’t seem to like you gives you a bizarrely good end-of-year grade?

That seems to be the case with Apple’s court-appointed monitor Michael Bromwich, who describes the company as being off to a “promising start” with its antitrust compliance program, after being last year found liable for conspiring to raise e-book prices.

Apple’s relationship with Bromwich appeared strained from the very start — with Apple objecting to Bromwich’s “unprecedented” first legal bill ($138,432 for his first two weeks’ work), along with his requests to access top Apple executives.

MagBak made a name for itself last year as the maker of the world’s thinnest iPad mount. Consisting of a wall holder (called the MagStick) and a strong, yet thin magnetic grip which adheres to the back of the tablet, the project was a huge success on Kickstarter.

Now the team behind MagBak have returned with their latest product iteration: a MagBak designed for the iPad Air and iPad mini. With around three days to go, the Kickstarter campaign has already raised close to twice its $15,000 funding goal.

Everyone knows Apple is incredibly profitable, but did you know that the top-earning tech company brings in more money than Hewlett-Packard, Google, Intel and Cisco combined?

That’s according to the San Jose Mercury News’ newly published Silicon Valley 150 list, which ranks 75 tech companies using data from Bloomberg and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

New leaked images purportedly taken inside a Foxconn plant show the iPhone 6 chassis and a handful of manufacturing molds for Apple’s upcoming smartphone.

The photos, posted on Chinese microblogging website Weibo over the weekend, appear to confirm that Apple will increase the size of the iPhone.

There’s a familiar look you see on the faces of parents at theme parks. It’s a look their children are rarely able to understand — caught as they are in the clutches of school vacations and roller coasters with names like Afterburn and the Dahlonega Mine Train. It’s a look that says, ‘No matter how much fun this is, the credit card bill at the end of the holiday is going to be hell.’

Have you played Monument Valley yet? Our previous choice for ‘Game of the Week,’ this surreal, M.C. Escher-inspired puzzle game has proved an absolute phenomenon since its launch in the App Store.

But what if you’ve already finished ustwo’s masterpiece, and are now on the lookout for more of the same?

Never fear, gentle reader — we can help. Although there are precious few games which be described as similar to Monument Valley (some people aren’t even convinced it’s a game to begin with), Cult of Mac spoke with lead designer Ken Wong for his picks of the top games currently available on iOS.

Here’s what he came up with:

It seems that Nintendo has no plans to bring its extensive back catalog of games to the App Store, but fans looking to play Nintendo DS titles on their iOS devices can now pick up a new, jailbreak-free emulator.

Venus — the 256-foot super-yacht, commissioned by Steve Jobs — has been sighted in Ensenada, Baja California.

A coastal city in Mexico, on the Baja California Peninsula, Ensenada is a popular cruise ship destination. Photos of the vessel in dock were sent in by Cult of Mac reader Felipe Cornejo. Cornejo notes that he did not see any of Jobs’ family at the site, and that dock workers he spoke with weren’t aware this was Jobs’ boat.

From the highs of the Steve Jobs portrait made out of 20lbs of electronic waste, to the lows of the hideous statue that looked like a totem from Hellraiser, there have certainly been some “uneven” tributes to Apple’s late co-founder.

So which camp does this creation fall into, then?

Called “Baked Apple,” the fountain-sculpture depicts a deformed Apple II sitting on top of a column (previously the base lamp), adorned with images of Jobs and the Apple logo. It was created by artist Robbie Schoen, who once attended Jobs’ alma mater. Schoen, and made his creation with the aid of a real-life Apple II, formerly belonging to the school’s science department.

Remember when Tim Cook said he wanted Apple to be a “force for good” in the world, in terms of sustainability?

In keeping with Apple’s plans to use 100% renewable energy to power all of its facilities, it has recently taken over a small hydroelectric project at a Central Oregon site, near to the company’s data center in Prineville.

Since these data centers consume massive amounts of electricity (read: the equivalent of a small city), Apple has been keen to explore alternative sources of energy to keep them in clean, renewable energy.