At the end of last night’s iPhone 5s teardown, the iFixit team still wasn’t sure who made the chips inside the latest iOS device, or where the brand-new M7 was, even. There was a lot of speculation as to who made the A7, Apple’s new, faster powerhouse of a main processing unit, as well.
That’s ancient history, now, as reverse-engineering and security firm, Chipworks, de-capped the various chips on the iPhone 5s logic board to find out precisely what’s what.
iOS 7 provides two new features under the hood that will blow the lid off mobile gaming: game controllers and a sprite animation and particle physics engine. While these may not sound super sexy, they have the potential to revolutionize the way we play games on our mobile devices. The first is a recognition that many games really need physical buttons to provide high-end gaming experiences, while the second is a step toward supporting game developers in the way that development engines like Unreal and Unity already do, but built right in to the operating system. Together, these two developments are nothing less than—forgive the pun—complete game changers. Mobile gaming is already a big business for game developers, publishers, and Apple. And while Apple has never put gaming front and center before, that’s going to change with iOS 7. Gaming is already huge; now it’s going to get even bigger.
Update:
After ripping it apart and posting in real time, iFixit finished the teardown of the gold iPhone 5s last night. The team there pulled it to pieces (carefully, gently) to find out just what makes it tick. They were able to see inside the A7 chip, can’t find the M7 chip, and were able to identify the maker of the iSight camera (Sony). All in all, some great stuff from the folks down under.
What they found isn’t too surprising, but it’s a ton of fun to read through the details, below.
Original Post:
The team over at venerable rip-into-gadgets site, iFixit, have gotten their hot little hands on a brand new iPhone 5s, and they’re tearing it down to let us all know what’s inside. If you’re into seeing the guts of Apple’s latest iPhone 5s, check out all the gory goodness below.
Update: It looks like Jimmy is the one who got the first two iPhone 5s, one for himself and one for his mother in Indonesia. What a nice guy! The Herald Sun has a nice article on Jimmy and his bit of fame.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that the iPhone 5s goes on sale tomorrow around the globe. We’ve been watching the lines start to form via the magic of the internet, keeping an eye on Twitter and Instagram, for starters.
As you get in line tonight, and tomorrow morning, feel free to send us your photos of the queues you’re sitting and standing in to us via email or Twitter.
Here’s several form-ups we’ve seen:
As we noted earlier this week, iOS 7 includes some code that will allow third party manufacturers create universal controllers for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch using Apple’s latest mobile operating system. It’s groundbreaking stuff, especially for a traditionally game-averse tech company, but we’re starting to see the first wave of controllers to come out.
Sometimes, mindless dungeon crawling, at least within a video game, is good. I’ve never actually crawled a real dungeon, to be honest.
While I love deep, story-based games, sometimes I just want to roll around pixel-based catacombs, corridors, and rooms, bashing or blasting hordes of baddies as they converge upon my location.
Developer OrangePixel (Gunslugs, Meganoid) has figured out how to perfectly encapsulate the dungeon crawling experience within a pixel-perfect arcade eye-candy shell.
We met with Morgan Belford, Game It Forward’s co-founder, when we hit PAX last month, and he told us about his company’s new game, Quingo, a free-to-play mix of trivia and bingo for iOS. The game lets players of all skill levels, including kids, play the trivia game to earn money for some great charitable causes, including the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Kiva, PAWS, Seattle Children’s, Splash, and The Martinez Foundation.
“We want to make sure our players can see the concrete results of their contributions, so we worked hard with our charity partners to define specific projects that will receive the funds,” said Belford in a statment. “To that end, players can see how much they’ve contributed and how well each project is doing.”
If you like trivia, it’s a great way to give something back while playing a game. Not too shabby, for sure.
I’m really not a fan of trivia games. Any time someone drags out Trivial Pursuit at a party, I’m the first to come up with an excuse not to play. But You Don’t Know Jack was always different. It’s a trivia game with attitude, a sense of humor, and a weird bald mascot. What’s not to like?
The original game launched in 1995, and now it’s on iOS with a new title: You Don’t Know Jack Party. This is a new, live multiplayer version of the trivia game that lets you connect up to four different iOS devices to one Apple TV and play together in the same room on the big screen, via a secondary, free JackPad controller app.
Sure, there’s also a single player experience, but it won’t be as much fun.
Puzzle Knights is a match-three game with tactical strategy, light RPG elements, and online arena battles created by Mojaro, a developer made up of some pretty experienced game development folks, like founder Laurent Ancessi, who has worked in the gaming industry for over 25 years, with a bunch of top gaming companies, like Electronic Arts, Sony, Radical Entertainment, and Naughty Dog.
The game has just launched into the app store, and is looking pretty good. Check out the launch trailer below.
Calling it the “first Speed MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena),” Zynga released Solstice Arena to the iOS App Store this past June. The game garnered many awards and some fairly good reviews from around the web.
Tuesday, Zynga announced that Solstice Arena was available in the Mac App Store, bringing the streamlined real-time action battle arena game to OS X.
Redditor corvettevan has been collecting parallax wallpapers for use with iOS 7’s new visual feature for a little while now, and he decided to put up a Tumblr blog to archive them all and make them available to you for download.
While we showed you how to make your own parallax-flavored wallpapers for your iPhone or iPad, this is a much faster way to get some cool stuff on your iPhone that didn’t already come with the iOS 7 download.
The images are pretty cool: there’s nature, space, music, science fiction, and–of course–the obligatory girls in bikinis. Here are a few we liked.
iOS 7 has been out for less than one day, and already has an adoption rate of over 13 percent, according to analytics firm, Mixpanel. Compare that with Google’s latest version of Jellybean for Android devices, which hovers around an 8.5 percent adoption rate after a month.
Evernote has updated its essential mobile app for iOS 7, adding a completely redesigned home screen that puts everything in front of you, right away, including all your notes, notebooks, tags, shortcuts and announcements. Of course, that’s not all, as the developer says on its blog:
The new iOS 7 is exactly the sort of thing that makes being an app developer so thrilling. We’ve spent months getting to know every minute detail, design and interaction of the new operating system. The experience has been eye-opening, inspiring and freeing. IOS 7 is so new that it allowed us to let go, restart and build in a way that we haven’t been able to do in years. The result: a completely, unbelievably, unexpectedly new Evernote.
Vimeo announced Wednesday that its video sharing app for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad has now been updated for iOS 7. The new update lets you upload video directly from your iOS device camera, as well as offline instant playback of saved videos.
The app has been re-vamped to better match and work with iOS 7, as well, including a new video thumbnail feature, which shows live previews of video content in the smaller navigation thumbnails.
Better yet, you can now share any Vimeo videos on your device with other iOS 7 devices using AirDrop.
Oh, hey! You got the new iOS 7 for your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad–congrats! Wondering what to do with it? Looking for the best tips and tricks to get the most out of Apple’s pastel-and-parallax-flavored operating system for that amazing mobile device?
Well look no further than Cult of Mac for your iOS 7 needs. We’ve been working through the iOS 7 features and options since the first beta came out, and we’re here to give you the best of them.
Tap tap tap, the developer of Camera+, announced Tuesday that it too is updating its popular iOS prosumer camera application to match the new iOS 7 look and feel, along with several other sharing and shooting improvements.
Co-founder Lisa Bettany emailed to tell us about the overhaul to the redesign, which gives Camera+ a better match to Apple’s new mobile operating system for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
While we’ve noted that you can use panoramic photos as wallpaper on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch in in iOS 7, we haven’t spent a lot of time talking about the other major visual wallpaper and lock screen facelift: parallax.
In iOS 7, the background behind your Home screen apps is just a little bit 3D-ish, moving slightly as you twist and turn your iOS device around. Personally, I figured it was some fancy special effect that only Apple could create, but I was wrong.
Here’s how to make your own parallax wallpapers.
TouchArcade found this little addition in the latest update to Fox Digital Entertainment’s AVP: Evolution, a note in the update features list that claims iOS 7 Controller support.
Yesterday, we showed you how to record your iPhone or iPad’s screen using Reflector, an app that runs on your Mac and records the iOS device’s screen via a little AirPlay magic.
Today, let’s talk about recording your Mac’s screen. I was surprised to find out that QuickTime Player (which is already on your Mac) will do this for free. Here’s how to make the magic happen.
Now that the pre-order season is done, and purchase time is just around the corner on September 20, Sprint is one of the first carriers out of the gate with a new enticement for potential new customers.
Staring the same day the iPhone 5c will be available, Sprint will give you $100 off any new phone when you switch your current cell phone number over to Sprint. That includes the iPhone 5c and–when available–the iPhone 5s.
Considering that the basic 16 Gb iPhone 5c is set to retail for $99 with a qualifying two-year carrier plan, it looks like you’re going to be able to get one for what amounts to free, if you switch over to Sprint.
Robot Loves Kitty is the husband and wife team that lived in a treehouse to save money while they ran a Kickstarter project for the game that became Legend of Dungeon.
It’s out now on Mac, PC, and Linux, and it’s a brilliant combination of high tech, retro-graphics, and a strong sense of irony, not to mention whimsy. When I chatted with Alix Stolzer (Kitty) at PAX this year, she mentioned that she and Caleb Goble (Robot) liked vastly different types of games, so they decided to make one they could play together.
From those humble beginnings, they’ve succeeded, at least, in making a game that allows up to four players to explore procedurally generated dungeons together, to fight various monsters, explore environments, and try to stay alive. The game works with keyboard and mouse or console-style controllers, with a real-time battle system. Also, there are funny hats! If you take some time to give this one a play; you won’t be disappointed.
iOS 7 is coming this Wednesday, September 18, and it’s going to be a fairly simple upgrade. You’ll be able to just update your iOS device without any trouble, most likely over the air or by connecting to iTunes. No fuss, no muss.
However, you do most likely want to make a backup in case things go awry during the update process. Chances are you already have a backup if you use iCloud or iTunes, but here’s how to make a manual backup, just in case.
I wasn’t sure if this would be a good iOS Tip or OS X Tip, but I figure that since most of the heavy lifting occurs on your Mac, we’d post this as an OS X Tip.
Ever want to record your iPhone screen? Maybe take a video of something you’re doing on your iPad? Well, you can record any portion of your screen with Quicktime Player, which we’ll cover later this week, but the easy way to get a video of what’s going on on your iPad or iPhone is to use an OS X App: Reflector.
What the app does is trick your iOS device into thinking that your Mac is an AirPlay device, like an Apple TV. Once your iPhone or iPad is sending it’s video display to your Mac, Reflector has a built-in recording option.
Here’s how to make it all happen.
Evan loved it, which made us want to try it. And try The Room we did, finding it to be a gorgeous, brain-engaging, Myst-like exploration of the puzzle genre, with some amazing 3D mind-benders to solve.
Here’s our video showing us solving the third chapter; we’ve condensed it a bit so that you’ll still have to do your own puzzle solving, though.