Not only has Apple updated Siri’s default (in the US, at least) female voice to something a bit more natural, a little less arrogant sounding, but it’s also included a new male voice, as well. While a male-gendered voice has been available for a while in other regions, this is the first time Siri’s voice gender has been a choice we can enable on iOS.
Here’s how to switch Siri from a female to a male voice (and back again).
Picture this scenario: you’ve got a flash drive and there are files on it. There are also files on it that are in its Trash folder. You also have a Mac with files on it, and files in the Trash. When the USB flash drive is plugged into your Mac, OSX treats those files in the different Trashes as one big Trash folder.
What if you want to delete the files from one Trash, but not the other?
That’s where Trash Without comes in.
Out today, TurtleStrike brings iOS and Android gamers a new, turn-based strategy game with over 80,000 combinations of weaponized, armored turtle warfare. You’ll get Tesla coils and kamikaze turtles, a missile named Big Bertha, and the chance to compete in tournaments that have real monetary rewards.
Sound like fun? You bet your shell it does.
Market research firm Harris Interactive conducts a fairly extensive poll each year in the area of consumer electronic brands. This year, Apple again took the top spot in three major categories, named the best brand of tablet, computer, and mobile phone. The iPad, Mac, and iPhone scored the best across an array of specific brand markers, like brand recognition, emotional response to the brand, and purchasing consideration.
Screenshots are the life blood of this tips column, and I’m willing to bet a lot of you use the feature, built right in to your Mac, to capture images of stuff on your screen to share with friends, family, co-workers, and so on. It’s super simple to use; just hit Command-Shift-3 to take a picture of the whole screen, or Command-Shift-4 to just select a portion of it.
Any challenger to this ease of use is going to have to have something a little extra. Share Bucket may just be that app. Not only can it take screenshots of portions of your screen, but it can annotate those screenshots with circles, arrows, and blurs (for confidential info). Better yet, it connects to not one, but three different cloud services: Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft’s SkyDrive.
You may know that Starbucks, perhaps the most ubiquitous coffee shop in the US and beyond, gives out free iTunes stuff each week. Sometimes it’s songs, sometimes TV show episodes, and sometimes Apps.
This week, Starbucks is giving away Cyto’s Puzzle Adventure, a cute little regularly $0.99 game that sees you flinging a little cell-like organism around a beautiful, organic-looking playing field to recover his memories.
Room 8, the game’s developer, sent us an email to let us know.
Apple just sent out an email announcing that it has a new System Status page for developers who want to track what’s going on with the still-down Dev Center after it was apparently hacked a couple of days ago.
The email apologizes for the “significant inconvenience” caused by the downtime, and assures developers that it’s been working non-stop to overhaul the systems behind the Dev Center, update server software, and rebuild the entire database now that it’s been compromised.
In addition, they’ve created a one-stop web page with the status of each specific service, noting whether the services in question are yet online or still off.
If you backup your iOS devices to your Mac, you will overwrite the latest backup each time you do so, creating a new, fully up-to-date copy of your iOS device, including settings, apps, and data.
But what if you want to save a certain backup as a snapshot, like before you upgrade to a new operating system, or add a troublesome app to your iPhone or iPad?
The trick here is Archiving your backup, which tells iTunes to stop using the backup as the latest one, and instead backup to a new file. It’s easy to do, and here’s how.
I use Apple’s built-in Screen Sharing app all the time to connect from my Macbook Air to my Mac Mini. It’s a great way to just quickly log in from the Air and restart a Minecraft server, for example, or get a screenshot of the latest OS X Mavericks beta feature.
I also use Command-Tab a lot on my Macbook Air to switch between running apps. However, I was never able to Command-Tab my way out of Screen Share, as the keyboard combination gets sent to the remote Mac Mini, keeping me fully in Screen Share Mode.
Until now.
ShareThis, the popular content sharing button on many websites, reported a study in which user patterns suggest that the iPhone is the “Most Social Device,” accounting for three times as much sharing as from the desktop, and up to one and a half times as much sharing as any other mobile platform.
In addition, the study found that Facebook is the social network shared to the most, with 60 percent of the mobile sharing going to the big blue website. Twitter and Pinterest, interestingly, are the next two most shared to networks.
KING Art and Nordic Games just released a brand new, gorgeous point and click adventure game, The Raven – Legacy of a Master Thief to Mac, PC, and Linux via the Steam or Nordic Games shop in both Standard and Deluxe editions. The game will also come to PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade later this summer.
The first of three chapters, The Eye of the Sphinx, is now ready for download on either distribution platform, and is even 10 percent off as a launch special through the 30th of July.
Now here’s a slick little trick fresh off the boat from those wacky folks at Macworld that will have you wondering, “why didn’t I think of that?”
You know how you get tons of calls each week or month that are from solicitors, political pollsters, and that weird uncle who will just not leave you alone? Well, if you get those calls on your iPhone, here’s a neat way to avoid having to answer the phone to figure out who’s calling.
My ten year old son has gotten significantly into Civilization V lately, and we bought him his own copy on sale at Steam yesterday. So, he was at his mom’s house, and I was at my house, and he wanted me to invite him to a private match.
In order to do so, I had to enable Assistive Devices, just like Steam has always asked players to do to help enable the overlays and multiplayer invite system. So I headed to the System Preferences, to the Accessibility preference pane, like always. Alas, there is no place there to click the familiar “Enable access for assistive devices” button. I looked high, I looked low. No dice. No enabling access for assistive devices, either.
So then I turned to Google.
While some radio stations started sending out recordings of broadcasts in 2001, podcasts came onto the scene in 2004, got onto iTunes in 2005, and have since “transformed the media landscape,” according to Apple’s new iTunes splash page celebrating a milestone one billion podcast subscriptions.
Those billion subscriptions are held up by 250,000 unique podcasts across over 100 languages. More than eight million episodes have been published on the iTunes Store, according to Apple.
Auroch Digital just announced the development of a digital version of a classic Games Workshop board game from 1987, Chainsaw Warrior, coming to iPad and Android soon.
The original board game is one of the only single-player board games I know of, putting you in the role of the only hope for humanity as scary creatures come flooding through a dimensional rift in the heart of Manhattan, circa 2032. Of course, you’re the guy that must come out of retirement to battle the evil monsters, which have already destroyed the world’s bravest and brightest. It’s up to you to chainsaw your way through wave after wave the evil hordes. Wait, that sounds like a video game, doesn’t it?
Got a Wi-Fi-only iPad, but want to access a location on Google Maps when you’re out and about in the car? How about looking at your map when the signal on your iPhone isn’t strong enough, or even when it’s non-existent?
Well, the latest iOS version of Google Maps has been updated, and one of the less publicized features is the ability to save locations for access offline. The Android version has had this feature for a while, but this is the first time the iOS one has gotten the ability.
The way you activate this feature is also kind of cute, so check it out.
When I received the Truffol “Signature” case in the mail, I was prepared to be underwhelmed. After all, how much can a case maker bring to the table that hasn’t already been brought (broughten?) several times over?
It turns out the answer to that question is, “quite a bit.”
This precision-designed metal and leather case is a striking combination of frame and backing piece, and it genuinely makes my iPhone 5 feel like a whole new luxurious device, waiting to be touched.
Sometimes, when using the Recent Items feature of the Apple menu, you might like to find a specific file or app without opening it. Maybe you just want to find it, and then copy it or move it to a different drive, or email it to a friend.
It’s super simple, and it works in both Mountain Lion and the new OS X Mavericks beta, as well.
We’re still finding some great new features and tricks in OS X Mavericks beta, and while it’s not a huge overhaul like the more populare iOS 7 update, Mavericks has plenty of great things going on under the hood. And some of it even on top of the hood.
Here are five more interesting tips and tricks about the latest iteration of Apple’s Mac operating system, OS X Mavericks beta.
Back in 1989, I was a young punk in college who read science fiction voraciously and had a history of playing Dungeons and Dragons. I know, slow down ladies, what a catch.
Anyway, it was with unreserved glee that I started playing Shadowrun in those days, a table top role-playing game in the vein of D&D that included computers, hacking, and all sorts of megacorps, like a William Gibson novel gone magical.
Flash forward to now, and–after a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign–Shadowrun Returns is headed to iOS, Mac, Android and PC. There’s a sweet launch trailer that just came out today, and a release date of just one week from now, on July 25th. Holy smoking dragon hackers!
Dyslexia is a disability that likely affects 70 – 80 percent of people with poor reading skills, with one in five students having a language-based disability that could include dyslexia.
Many folks with dyslexia have trouble differentiating between different letters of the alphabet, many of which–especially in digital text form–look very similar. Many of the letters in our alphabet, like ‘i’ and ‘j’, or ‘n’ and ‘u’ can be mistaken for each other, especially if someone has a visual processing difference and reverses or rotates the letters when reading.
There’s a new font that aims to help, and a great eBook reader, vBookz PDF Voice Reader, has recently inclded that as a font choice in its iOS app.
In the OS X 10.8 version of Messages on the Mac, you can set the background color of your own messages, and you can set the background color, font, and font color of anyone who sends you messages.
Now, though, in OS X Mavericks, you can do all those things, plus send messages in your own choice of font, as well as let your friends send you messages with their own font choices.
Here’s how to make that happen.
If you like flight simulators, especially those of the more arcade variety, the Sky Gamblers series is a great place to start.
Originally published by Namco Bandai Games, the last couple of installments have come directly from California-based developer Atypical Games. Sky Gamblers: Cold War is, appropriately enough, set in the 1980s with all the weaponry and aircraft that implies. Your task will be to learn how to fly a Cold War-era fighter plane, head out on covert and not-so-covert ops, and blow stuff up. Sounds fun, right?
New Zealand-based games developer Ninja Kiwi just released Bloons TD Battles to the iOS App Store. It’s a faster, more multiplayer take on popular Bloons TD, a single-player fixed path tower defense game with loads of depth, with wacky monkeys that stand in for towers as well.
The new, free Bloons TD Battles lets you go head to head against other random or known opponents on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, while using ninja monkeys, sniper monkeys, and helicopters (among other equally bizarre characters and items) to keep your enemy’s “bloons” from making their way to your base.
The fine folks at Lucky Frame are at it again, this time with an iPad-only multiplayer dueling game, Gentlemen!. It’s a bit of a departure for the team that brought us music-based games like Pugs Love Beatz, Bad Hotel, and Wave Trip, but it’s intriguing nonetheless.