Rob LeFebvre is an Anchorage, Alaska-based writer and editor who has contributed to various tech, gaming and iOS sites, including 148Apps, Creative Screenwriting, Shelf-Awareness, VentureBeat, and Paste Magazine. Feel free to find Rob on Twitter @roblef, and send him a cookie once in a while; he'll really appreciate it.
It used to be that in order to call a number overseas from the U.S., you’d dial a number like this one: 011 44 55 5555 5555. These days, however, it’s more common to see a number like this: + 44 55 5555 5555. But where do you find that plus symbol?
Yesterday, we spent some time with Terminal commands that tweak the Finder in different ways. Today, we’ll look at some commands you can issue in the Terminal to mess around with the user interface. Let’s get started.
Little Red Riding Hood. You sure are lookin' good.
We told you about Akaneiro: Demon Hunters, the new hack-n-loot game from American McGee’s Spicy Horse Studios that got greenlit on Steam just a while back. The game has now hit its Kickstarter goal of 200,000, so the team has posted some news about its plans for the game in the coming months.
Sometimes when you’re shooting a video with your iPhone, you might want to snap a quick still photo of whatever you’re recording, right? You might think you’d need to stop recording the video, tap on the toggle button to switch the iPhone back to still photo mode, and then snap, but you’d be wrong (I was, when I thought that.)
Turns out you don’t need to do anything so convoluted. Here’s how.
The Terminal app is like a window into the inner workings of your Mac. It accesses the Unix core of your Apple computer directly and without any muss or fuss. It can feel pretty daunting at times, but it’s really the way to dig in and make your Mac work the way you want it to. The Finder can be hacked a bit using the Terminal, of course, so we figured we could show you a few tricks, too.
Here’s how to hack up the Finder a bit to make it work better for you.
The Option key is a powerful ally in the transition from new, beginner user of OS X to the power user that you want to be. There are a ton of hidden features in the Finder alone that are hidden behind the underrated and unassuming Option key. There are Option key tricks for the OS X Menu Bar, for apps in the iWork suite, in Safari, and a few more random ones to boot.
So, sit back, relax, and get ready to hit that Option key a whole bunch of times in a row.
From the makers of World of Goo and Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure comes a brand new iPad game, Little Inferno. The game released just two days ago, and is already the number four top paid iPad app on the US iTunes Store. That’s no small achievement, but neither is this iPad-only game.
Spend a few minutes with Little Inferno and, while recognizing a similar vibe to World of Goo, you’ll start to understand that there’s something dark, twisted, and incredibly hilarious happening here.
If you’ve ever played with a wooden puzzle in your local educational toys store, you’ll instantly understand Interlocked, a new iOS game from developer Armor Games (Kingdom Rush). It’s a fun little universal puzzle app for the low price of $0.99, and it should keep you gently entertained for some time to come.
The concept here is to rotate each group of interlocked wooden pieces, sliding each piece out in the right order to fully disassemble the puzzle. Once you’ve moved all the pieces off and away from each other, you get a new puzzle to rotate and solve. It’s very zen, and the whole thing reminds me a bit of Zen Bound, another rotating puzzle game with wooden sculptures and a gentle vibe.
The iHook is back, folks, and it’s even better than it was the last time we told you about it. Unfortunately, it won’t open a beer for you, so that’s, um, out.
Recently re-upped at Kickstarter, the iHook Dual Edition will not only connect to your iPod Nano, making it an ideal way to mount the little square of joy, but it now allows you to connect an iPod Shuffle, too.
I’ve got to be honest, I’ve never really gotten into racing games. I do enjoy a bit of Burnout Paradise action now and then, but for the most part, I tend to avoid games that are all about racing. Unless they have karts and cute little mascots, of course. And iOS racing games? They’re ok, but not really my go-to genre.
Today, though, the adrenaline-fueled, high octane trailer for Table Top Racing has me wondering if maybe I should give this one a try.
Playrise Digital announced the release today of it’s first iOS title right on the iTunes App Store, and it just might make you a fan of racing games again, too.
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected a bid from Apple today to review and reconsider the sales ban, originally granted and then reversed, on Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus phones. While this type of reconsideration, called an en banc review, is rare, it makes sense that Apple (as well as Samsung) would ask for everything it possibly could in this still-hot case.
The three judge panel today rejected Apple’s request to reinstate a sales ban on Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone until the later trial, set for March of 2014.
What fun the Option key is in OS X, right? Adding it to clicks and keystrokes makes many features accessible that would otherwise be hidden. We’ve spent the last few days talking about how to maximize the Option key in your power-user Mac workflow, in the Finder, the Menu Bar, and in iWork apps.
Now, we’re going to head over to Apple’s built-in browser, Safari, and show you how the Option key can make your Safari life just that bit better.
What’s not listed in the App description is that version 3.2.4 of the Tumblr app is now rated for people 17+, and users will need to click through a dialog that says they are old enough to use the app. Because that totally works.
RIM’s European managing director, Stephen Barnes, was interviewed on BBC Radio 5 this morning about the new BlackBerry 10 system and phones coming down the line.
The host of the interview repeatedly asks direct, clear questions about what RIM has learned from Apple’s iPhone.
Barnes hilariously refuses to even acknowledge the word iPhone, let alone that RIM has obviously taken several pages from Apple’s smartphone book. Even, worse, he sounds scared.
Ahem. So, by one-handed reading, I’m really talking about being able to hold your iPad mini or iPhone in your left or right hand, much like you can with a dedicated eReader device, like a Nook Simple Touch or a Kindle. The ones with buttons on them allow you to hold the reader in one hand, like you would with a paperback while lying in a sun chair by the pool, or in bed at night.
Here’s how to make your iPad or iPhone work more like that.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows the U.S. government open access to electronic information stored by non-US citizens on US-based servers, like a host of cloud services available today. iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, and other popular services are all subject to this law, passed in 2008 by the Bush administration and recently re-authorized by the Obama administration for another 5 years.
What this means is that any data stored by non-American citizens on cloud servers here in the US is able to be looked at in entirety by various agencies in the US federal government, including the NSA, FBI, and CIA.
The Option key is a fantastic part of Mac OS X, making many features accessible that would otherwise be hidden. We’ve spent a couple of days talking about how to maximize the Option key in your power-user Mac workflow, in the Finder and in the Menu Bar.
Today, we’re going to spend some time with Apple’s office productivity suite, iWork, and show you some cool tips on using the Option key in Pages, Keynote, and Numbers.
Now, when we say Old School, we’re talking about the 2003 movie starring Luke Wilson, Vince Vaughn, and Will Ferrell as three old dudes trying to recapture the joy of their frat-bound youth, to hilarious (and naked) effect. Hard to believe it’s been ten years since the movie came out, really. We’re also talking about a new tower defense game, also called Old School.
As the tenth anniversary of the film’s release is next month, it’s fitting that Canadian developer, Big Blue Bubble, should bring Old School to the iOS platform in collaboration with the film’s distributor, Paramount Pictures.
Sorting your photos into albums is a great way to only show off the photos you want to to the people you want to show them off to (follow that?). It’s also the way some third party apps, like Instagram or Camera +, will sort the photos you edit within them. Renaming those albums, however, isn’t entirely intuitive. Here’s how to do it, simply and quickly, right from the comfort of your own iOS device.
The Option key is a powerful ally in your transition from new, beginner user of OS X to the power user that you want to be. There are a ton of features in the Menu Bar that are hidden behind this underrated and unassuming Option key.
Sweden-based DICE game studio, owned by EA and known for high-end console and PC games like Mirror’s Edge and BattleField, recently posted a job advertisement for a Mac OS X Engineer to work on the company’s Frostbite gaming engine.
Here’s hoping that as many EA games as use the Frostbite engine will come to Mac OS X in the coming years.
Did you sign the Change.org petition to get a Mac port of super-popular multiplayer online battle arena game (MOBA), League of Legends? Have you waited with bated breath since it was first announced, and then wept with frustration when it was cancelled? Have you downloaded the unofficial iLoL port and suffered through any beta glitches just to get you some League of Legends on your favorite computing platform?
Well, the wait is (almost) over, as developer Riot Games has finally admitted that it is indeed working on a Mac client, and it will be available within a month.
Are you the kind of person who jumps up at the end of a movie, skipping the credits to get to the parking lot (or restroom – thanks, giant soda tub) before everyone else? If so, you’ve probably missed some pretty neat after credit experiences, called stingers. These are extra little bits of movie, teasers, or even bloopers, that are shown after the credits roll to reward the die-hard movie goers for their patience. The recent run of Marvel movies, for example, all teased the eventual Avengers movie at the end of Captain America, The Hulk, and Iron Man. If you left early, you’d have missed it.
Luckily, now, there’s an app to make sure you never do, and, conversely, you don’t sit around for an entire credit roll for no reason.
The Option key is a powerful ally in the transition from new, beginner user of OS X to the power user that you want to be. There are a ton of hidden features in the Finder alone that are hidden behind the underrated and unassuming Option key.