Apple has had a basic screensaver in OS X from way back, but it’s now possible to add a custom message to it, to leave valuable information for someone who might see it. It used to be called Computer Name, as it defaults to the name of your computer that’s set in your Sharing preferences. These days in Mountain Lion, it’s called Message.
Apple submitted its annual 10-K report with the SEC today, which summarizes the company’s growth over the last year. Reading the report shows an amazing amount of growth for the Cupertino-based company across all areas of its business: retail, research and development, and square footage it owns.
There are so many great iOS games out there, for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, that it’s hard to choose which to play.
For Halloween, however, the playing field is narrowed a bit. Lots of games are going on sale, and quite a few have Halloween-flavored updates for this most scary of nights.
Organ Trail: The Director’s Cut, though, has both.
In keeping with the “connect other controllers to play Mac games” theme this week, I thought it’d be fun to look at a Mac game that can use an iPhone as an external controller.
Chopper 2 is available as a Mac game for $4.99 in the Mac App Store. It has 36 missions across 12 unique location maps and uses a gorgeous 3D game engine to recreate the classic side scrolling joy of the original Chopper game.
Here’s the app store description:
Escort a convoy of vehicles across the desert, or defend a train from enemies emerging from underground mines. Use your laser sight to line up enemies emerging from stairwells in the city. Chase down lines of enemy tanks and choppers while avoiding heat seeking missiles, gunfire and bird strike. Help your allies defend against advancing armies, and rescue stranded civilians, all while trying to complete your mission as fast as possible for the highest score.
Now, if you have an iPhone or iPod touch, you can use it to control the Mac version of Chopper 2 via WiFi.
The first iPad Mini and iPad 4 new iPad pre-orders are set to arrive in customers’ homes on November 2, but Apple has posted the official firmware for both the iPad Mini and its larger brethren early.
You’ve got a bit under six days left to get your grubby little Temple Run mitts on the first issue of the new Temple Run comic book, published by Ape Entertainment and Imangi Studios. This limited collector’s edition is only available for a limited time and is print to order only, which means that come November 5th, you’ll no longer be able to order it again.
Unless you buy it from someone who ordered it now, of course.
Today, there’s word that Apple is now accepting high-resolution music files for iTunes, perhaps in advance of selling music in such a format. Apple is asking sound engineers for 96 kHz, 24-bit WAV files, possibly to process it’s own “mastered for iTunes” versions, but also to perhaps start selling music in “better than CD quality” resolution and format.
Halloween, or All Hallows’ Eve, has a tradition stretching back to the 15th century and earlier, though it is currently a more secular holiday, with children and the young at heart dressing up as everything from scary ghouls and monsters to the more tame video game characters or that bane of every feminist out there, the “sexy” nurse/librarian/pikachu/what have you.
Regardless of how you celebrate, though, we thought you’d enjoy this list of the scariest Mac games we could think of, each available to play on current (and some older) Macs just in time for the next couple of creepy weeks.
Yesterday, we showed you how to use an XBox 360 controller on your Mac, using a wired controller. We’re pretty sure it will work with the wireless controller and a Microsoft wireless adapter, as well, but we weren’t able to test it.
Today, however, we’ll take you into new territory and show you how to use your PS3 controller via Bluetooth for some wireless gaming joy with your Mac. Don’t try to use the PS3 controller with Steam’s Big Picure, just yet, though, as it only officially supports the XBox 360 controller. Other Mac games, like all of the ones ported by Feral, are reported to work well with a PS3 controller, though.
Here’s how to set it up.
Scott Forstall, the head of iOS for the past several years, was asked to leave Apple today, a move The Wall Street Journal is reporting as due to his refusal to sign his name to the letter of apology for the incomplete feature set and poor performance of iOS 6’s new Maps app.
The journal cites “people familiar with the matter,” who report that both Forstall and recent retail executive, John Browett, were both asked to leave. This is one of the bigger upsets in the balance of executive power at the Cupertino tech company in quite some time, and may in fact signal a move by Tim Cook, new CEO, to more firmly establish his own mark on Apple.
Pandora, that grandaddy of internet radio, just got a huge update on iOS, and is coming soon to Android. The new version includes the ability to share your music listening with friends on the Pandora service, Facebook, and Twitter, a feature I was surprised wasn’t already there. In addition, you can follow other folks on the new Music Feed, much like Spotify and Rdio allow. There’s a new Profile page accessed right in-app, more information about music and the artists themselves as well, a la Last FM, and full lyrics for every song that can be played on the service.
Using the real web on an iPhone is a wonderful thing. Apple has made their iOS browser, Safari, into a solid powerhouse of web-browsing goodness, ready to use out of the box, accessible in many ways to many kinds of people. It’s a great app.
And yet, the size of the iPhone screen, iPhone 5 included, can be a bit cramped. Add in the top address bar and the bottom button bar, and you have even less screen real estate to use for actual browsing. That’s why Apple included a new feature in iOS: full screen browsing.
After we reported on Steam’s new Big Picture beta coming to the Mac, we got a reader question that I figured it’d be good to write a tip on.
Playing games on your Mac is great fun of course, and all of them use the keyboard and/or mouse to control the games being played. However, with AirPlay mirroring, HDMI cable support, and a bunch of new games showing up for the Mac platform along their Windows brethren, there are times when a console style controller is a better alternative. Being able to sit on the couch and play our favorite Mac games has a lot to recommend it, and using an Xbox controller is fairly easy to set up.
Here’s how.
Back in September, we reported that Valve had created a special interface to let Steam gamers play on the big screen with a controller. At that time the PC version of Steam was enabled for what it calls Big Picture, but today, one of our readers noticed that the Mac beta is finally available.
It’s also fairly easy to enable it on your Mac right now–no software update required, if you’re already running the latest version of Steam.
Evernote has become an important go-to app on my Mac, my various iOS devices, and on the web when I’m away from all of them (which, I do admit, is rare). The ability to take a note on my Mac and then open it up on my iPhone when at the store or meeting has become an invaluable part of keeping my life organized.
The Evernote team announced today, then, a whole new version of Evernote, the beta for which will show up next week. It’s going to have over 100 new features to make using Evernote on the Mac that much faster, easier, and useful.
The iMpulse Game controller, now with eight days left in its Kickstarter campaign, was already planned to be a sleek little keychain-sized physical game controller. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and various Android devices, the iMpulse is getting an update to make it 20% thinner, as well as adding shoulder buttons on the bottom of the device.
For a pledge of $25 plus shipping, you can get one of these cute, sleek gaming controllers with a serious d-pad and shoulder buttons sent to your address. There are other levels of reward, as well, including a T-Shirt, dual controllers, fancy metal plating, and the like.
MacHeist today announced that it was adding two more apps, TuneUp and MoneyBag to its fantastically priced bundle, and is extending the sale of the bundle for three more days. That’s right, you now have the opportunity to purchase $754 worth of great Mac apps for $29, along with giving your choice from the list of MacHeist charities a 25% cut. The sale will end, they say, on Monday.
So far, the MacHeist 4 Bundle has raised close to $234,000 for the charities it benefits, including Action Against Hunger, The Nature Conservancy, American Foundation for AIDS, Save the Children, Friends of the Earth, Global Fund for Women, Direct Relief International, Cancer Research Institute, Humane Society International, and the World Wildlife Fund.
No time to type out a status update on Facebook or send a genius Tweet? Sometimes, inspiration for an amazing update to one of the ubiquitous social networks supported in the latest iOS 6 on Apple’s portable devices happens on the fly. Even while driving! What’s a safe-driving-no-texting individual to do?
Why, have Siri post to Twitter or Facebook, of course!
Safari 6 comes bundled with OS X Mountain Lion and is available for download for Mac OS X Lion. It comes with a host of new features, several of which we detailed in this past weekend’s Safari tips roundup.
Today, however, we note a little addition to the interface that involves renaming bookmarks. In earlier versions of Safari, you’d need to rename your bookmarks by right clicking (or control-clicking) on the name of a bookmark and then choosing the “Rename bookmark” pop-up menu item. This is no longer your only choice.
The US Copyright Office reviews the Digital Millennium Copyright Act every three years, looking at requests to create temporary changes that act as ersatz loopholes int he law, typically to address continually changing technology standards. This year, the Copyright Office allows jailbreaking of devices like the iPhone, but not for devices like the iPad.
The Office also ruled that consumers can unlock phones purchased before January 2013, but not thereafter. You’ll also be albe to bypass encryption on a DVD to use an excerpt in a non-commercial way, like in a documentary, but it will still be illegal to rip a DVD for your iPad.
The rules seem pretty arbitrary, right?
Iceberg Interactive and Kukouri Entertainment announced today an update to adorable little war game, Tiny Troopers, in the guise of a zombie apocalypse. The update comes via Steam to the Mac and PC version, bringing endless waves of brain munching zombies and undead chickens. There will be special air-drops of new special zombie-killing weaponry dropped to lay waste to the zombie hordes, and special forces troopers to take the undead down. There’ll even be special zombies, in case the normal ones just aren’t scary enough.
The MacHeist Bundle (affiliate link) gets you amazing software for an amazing price, and benefits charity as well. Also? It’s over at midnight tonight.
That means you have enough time to purchase the bundle and still pre-order your iPad mini.
So, Apple likes to change things; this much is a given. The software developers behind the operating system, OS X, are no different. They’re constantly changing the way things work from iteration to iteration of Apple’s computer software.
In Snow Leopard, when you made changes to a document and tried to close that document, you’d be asked by your Mac, in essence, “are you sure you want to do that?” and you could tell it to save the changes you made, or discard them. It was a way to let us know that there had, in fact, been changes to the document, whether we meant them or not.
In Lion, that little “feature” went away. Documents in Lion were always saved, regardless. This is a neat feature, in some ways, but it keeps you from knowing if you’ve made any unintended changes.
Luckily, Mountain Lion lets you choose the way you want it to work. If you want to have that failsafe “are you sure” save changes dialog, you can enable it. If you don’t want it, you can disable it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfiJOP2uGk4
Apple revealed its sweet new 13-inch Macbook Pro onstage yesterday, and today placed a new advertisement for it on its official YouTube channel. It’s probably going to be all over your TV screens soon, if you watch commercial TV, that is, and haven’t cut the cord with an Apple TV or something.
Here’s the gently-voiced, calming soothe of the new Macbook Pro ad from Apple. On YouTube. “For the pro…in all of us.” So nice, right?
Source: Apple YouTube
Earlier today, Cult of Mac reported a Dutch ruling that found Samsung didn’t infringe on an Apple patent for multi-touch tech.
Later today, then, a judge with the US International Trade Commission, or ITC, filed an initial determination that said that Samsung is actually in violation of one of Apple’s iPhone design patents, as well as three other software patents. Two other claims were found not to be infringement.