More money than a lot of countries, really. If you look at a list of the Gross Domestic Product of countries around the world, you see that Apple’s first quarter revenue, reported today in an earnings call, places it quite high, if it were a country, of course.
Once again, Apple has announced a blockbuster quarter — the biggest ever in Apple’s history. And the pundits say the company is in trouble? The numbers are huge though, and difficult to process.
Here’s what it all means, as a series of easy-to-understand charts.
If you’re one of the millions of people who went out and got themselves an iPhone 5s recently, you might notice that sometimes Touch ID doesn’t work on the first try. While most people haven’t had an issue with the new biometric fingerprint scanner, some have.
Luckily, there’s a pretty straightforward way to make it much more reliable.
Last week, a speech recognition developer found a potential exploit in the Chrome web browser that could possibly let malicious web sites activate your Mac’s microphone and listen in on any sounds your mic might pick up around you. Even if you’re not actively using your computer, the mic could be active and conversations, meetings, and phone calls could potentially be recorded or listened in on.
Luckily, there’s a way to keep this from happening, because–however remote the possibility–it’s always a good idea to keep your private information, including real-world conversations, private.
Of course, if you don’t use the Chrome browser at all, this won’t apply to you.
There are a bunch of apps out on iOS for kids, from educational apps to sports apps and more. Sure, you can get reviews of these games by adults, sometimes even from parents of kids who use them.
We thought it’d be fun, though, to ask the kids themselves.
Welcome to Kid APProved, a series of videos in which we ask our own children what they think of apps on the App Store that they’re using.
This week, it’s a game about bringing rainbows of happiness to sad, grey creatures, TCHOW Rainbow from TCHOW. Here’s what our Kid APProved reporter “Battle” thinks.
I know it’s probably a tiny thing, but man, do I hate having to click on the web form fields to fill in stuff in a drop down menu, like those State choosers, or Date choosers.
There I am, tabbing along from form field to form field, blithely filling in the data being requested (Name, Address, Phone Number, etc.), when it’s time to hit the State form. The input skips it, every time! I have to take my hands from the keyboard, drop them to the trackpad, or (even worse) the mouse, and click on the dang thing.
There’s got to be a better way.
Microsoft announced $24.52 billion in revenue the second quarter this year, showing gains across all segments of its consumer technology business, including Surface, Xbox, and Bing search.
As a previous heavy competitor and sometime collaborator with Apple, Microsoft hasn’t been doing as well in the post-PC era. It’s interesting that the company is defying expectations on the eve of CEO Steve Ballmer’s run at the company, with growth across the board, except in PC sales, of course.
Searching for stuff is a big part of what we do on our computers, right? I know that I use Google daily for searching, both for topical information as well as just plain old “where is that website” search. Both Safari and Chrome search right from the address bar, and Spotlight has been in the upper right corner of Mac OS X for several iterations now.
There’s a faster way to access your preferred search engine and Spotlight, however, using only your keyboard.
Hot Rod Hustle wants to bring bitcoin wagering to the Mac and PC, with real money betting available on iOS and Android. This is the first time we’ve heard of a racing game with available real-world money rewards on any platform.
All versions of Hot Rod Hustle will use the same servers, letting those on iOS play with those on Mac, for example. The Mac and PC version of Hot Rod Hustle will allow for Bitcoin wagering, while the mobile versions will use Skillz.com, an online wagering system, which is limited to 37 states as well as the UK and Scandanavia. The cross-platform compatibility means that you can build up your hot rod on your iPhone, then log in on your Mac and race for Bitcoins. Exciting!
Update: A SteelSeries representative sent us the following in an email asking why the price had been reduced so soon after the initial release.
“The response of this product coming out of CES was incredibly positive, [but] the largest concern was with the price set at $99.99 MSRP. Our goal with the Stratus goes beyond just selling a controller; it’s really about helping to define a new platform. We want to see that succeed and took initiative immediately after CES to find ways where we could improve the odds of that success by lower[ing] the price. The outcome is that our team was able to work with our partners to bring the cost for the consumer down to $79.99.”
Original Post: Well, it looks like the price wars have begun in earnest. SteelSeries’ Stratus is now $79.99, instead of the $99.99 it launched for at CES. If you pre-ordered this at the older price, you’re in luck: SteelSeries will honor the new, lower cost for all pre-orders.
Sure, you use the Messages app to send along SMS and iMessages all day long. You know how to use Emoji’s, too, with a tap on the international keyboard button on your iPhone.
I bet you even use regular text emoticons, like semi-colon and parenthesis to create a wink, or colon and parenthesis to create a smile.
But have you ever tried to have your iPhone turn your text-based emoticon into an Emoji? I bet you haven’t.
So, I finally broke down and bought a Pebble Smart Watch the other day. Just rolled into Best Buy and looked at both the FitBit Force fitness tracker and the Pebble. At just $20 more than the Force, I figured I’d get a fun geeky gadget that would do more than tell the time and count my steps.
What I got for my $150 was a geeky gadget that tells me the time and passes notifications–usually–from my iPhone. And that’s about it, really.
I’ve grown up with this last name, so I’m fairly used to people butchering it. I’m surprised at the amazing number of pronunciations given to my last name over the past several decades, with people adding all sorts of weird consonants that just aren’t there.
Siri isn’t much different, though she does manage to say my name phonetically, but my family doesn’t say “Luh-Feb- Vree.” We say, “Luh-Fay” with an accent on the second syllable.
Turns out, it’s easier than you’d think to teach Siri how to say names correctly.
Have you ever been browsing the internet, opening new tabs, and blithely going about your business when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, an ad begins blaring at you from one of your various tabbed windows?
This can happen in Safari or Chrome (or any other browser, really), but Chrome has a new feature that will let you find the guilty, noisy culprit and shut it down.
Spending by Mac and PC gamers will grow to more than $27 billion worldwide in the next three years, according to a new report from market research firm International Data Corporation.
Published Tuesday, the study also predicts that global PC and Mac digital game revenue will rise about 4 percent per year between 2012 and 2017, while North American revenue will slip due to the prevalence of more casual, browser-based games, as well as those on smartphones and tablets. IDC’s Worldwide Digital PC and Mac Gaming 2013–2017 Forecast also predicts a steady drop in subscription revenue from games like World of Warcraft.
Outside of North America, however, things look a bit rosier. IDC says that the digital PC and Mac digital gaming revenue should expand by more than five percent per year in countries with a currently rising standard of living, like Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC).
A key feature in iOS 7 dangles the prospect of console-style action in front of hard-core gamers hooked on action-platformers and first-person shooters. But while developers can now add controller support to games, hardware makers face a new challenge: getting gamers to shell out $100 to morph their iPhones or iPads into console killers.
Hardware maker Signal is unapologetic about the hefty price tag for its new RP One controller, one of several new gaming devices certified under Apple’s Made for iPhone (MFi) program.
“Quality is not free,” Signal’s director Mark Prince told Cult of Mac, “and it makes no sense to compare an MFi controller to a ‘bag and tag’ generic [Bluetooth] controller.”
Core gamers want to sit down with a precision controller when they immerse themselves in a console game. iOS developers compete with the big boys of console gaming like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, for their audience’s gaming dollars.
It’s a clear trend, and even Apple, which has long played the “we don’t care much about gaming” card with iOS, has finally introduced built-in code to support game controllers.
Peripheral makers Logitech, SteelSeries, and Moga have all put their efforts into iOS 7-compatible controllers, each a little different. They all run $100, though, leaving gamers wondering if Apple has set the pricing.
“$100 is probably the lowest viable price point for most if not all of us to cover development, material and manufacturing costs, plus packaging, distribution and retail margins,” said Prince. “We’d like to go on record as saying that Apple does not set these prices.”
And here you thought Terminal was just for Unix geeks.
Ok, well, maybe it really is, but there’s a fun easter egg or two hidden in the old UNIX code that underlies Apple’s OS X software.
Turns out that you can play Tetris and Snake, two classic games from the dawn of digital gaming, in a Terminal window. Intrigued? It’s super easy.
iOS 7 came with a new look and feel, including the font used across the system. It’s a little thinner than earlier versions of iOS, so it might be a bit tricky to read, especially on the small iPhone screen.
You can always increase the size of text dynamically, but if you just need a little boost to the readability, try enabling Bold Text.
Java is kind of a pain in the butt, if you ask me, but there are many sites that use it.
A friend of mine contacted me this weekend looking for help in getting her Java up and running so she could upload photos to her photography business website. See, she’d upgraded to Java 7 and when she went to use the upload function on her website, she got the security warnings above.
After a bunch of googling and messing about on the internets, we figured it out.
Crescent Moon Games and Dead Mage have created a great action platformer here with Shadow Blade, available now in the App Store for an affordable $1.99.
It comes with Game Center Achievements and iOS 7 controller support, and a touch screen capable control scheme that works fairly well. You can read our review of the game after you watch the video below.
You can hit Command-F to find anything on your Mac, or you can hit Command-Space to invoke Spotlight, which took over for Sherlock as the built-in searching system many moons ago. In Windows 8, you can use the Search “charm.”
On the iPhone and iPad, however, some might be a little confused. There’s no keyboard commands in iOS, and Apple has even moved the Search functionality in iOS 7 from the furthermost left icon page.
What’s an iPhone owner to do when she wants to search for that specific app that she’s buried in a folder somewhere on her device, or needs the phone number of her best friend, because she’s always just used Siri to call her and has no idea what her number actually is?
I use TextEdit all the time to jot down notes, phone numbers, and any time I need to just get some info down super quick.
I forget, sometimes, that it’s a fairly robust text editor (hence the name, I suppose), and there are a lot of great features to be had.
If you need to make a quick outline, TextEdit can be pretty helpful. Though it’s not as extensive as an outlining feature in something, say, like Word or Pages, it can be useful. It’s also extremely easy to use.
I hate voicemail, I truly do. It’s like a fax machine: outdated and unnecessarily complicated. The introduction of visual voicemail in iOS was a good step toward updating the technology, but I’d still much rather get an email or text message than sit through someone’s verbal ramblings just to hear them say, “call me back.”
Unfortunately, there are still plenty of people who insist on leaving auditory messages for me on my iPhone. Apple has also given us quite a few ways to delete them, and then to clear out the deleted messages (yes, even deleted voicemails stick around). They must hate voicemail as much as I do.
We got a sneak peek at Codename Cygnus, a Kickstarter-funded interactive radio drama game for iOS, at PAX this last fall. Developer Reactive studios has just updated the app with more than 20 Game Center achievements, improved voice recognition, VoiceOver features, and a redesigned iOS 7 friendly interface.
Oh, and it’s cheaper, too.
Autism is an epidemic that can’t be overstated. The disorder is really a spectrum of behaviors and needs, and it affects about one in every 50 children in the US alone.
The Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD) has developed an app that puts its research-based interventions into an educational iPad app with mini games for reinforcement. The app, titled Autism Learning Games: Camp Discovery, provides children ages two to eight with direct instruction on topics that kids with Autism have trouble sorting out.
“The idea here is that there are so many things a kid needs to learn, to ‘catch up’ with their peers,” CARD’s chief strategy officer, Dennis Dixon told Cult of Mac during a phone call. “Autism has a number of skill deficits. ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) targets those skills one at a time.”
Camp Discovery, then, is like having a behavior intervention teacher on the iPad, presenting lesson after lesson with 100 percent accuracy. But will kids play with it?
