Gameloft has blown us away with its N.O.V.A. 3 teaser trailers over the past few weeks, and today one of the most anticipated iOS games so far this year makes its App Store debut. The series has always been up there with the best first-person shooters for iPhone and iPad, but this release promises to deliver a new benchmark for graphics and gameplay on iOS.
N.O.V.A. 3 could be the best $7 you’ve spent on mobile gaming to date.
Apple could be preparing to kill off OS X Lion early in favor of its predecessor, Mountain Lion, according to the company’s AppleCare training schedule. One source claims that the Cupertino company is already recruiting and training staff for the new release, which could get its debut in June, weeks earlier than expected.
Facebook just announced the App Center, a place for discovering and installing social apps/games that tie into Facebook’s developer platform. Apps offered in the App Center will be available on the web and mobile, including Android and iOS devices.
If you think Facebook is trying to take on Apple and Google’s storefronts directly, fret not. The App Center will be part of the official Facebook application and send mobile users to their respective storefronts, whether it be Apple’s App Store or Google Play.
Yes, it’s true — well, at least the part about iOS getting a beautiful Google+ app update before Android. The only logical explanation I could come up with for this travesty is that Vic lost a bet during a friendly game of golf with Tim. At least that’s the story I’m telling myself as I weep in a dark corner.
Kidding aside, the new Google+ app looks beautiful, and although iOS users get to use it now, it will be coming to Android soon enough — and is supposed to include a few extra surprises for us Android folks (that won’t win me back Vic! — Okay, maybe it will).
May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac,
Although Good does provide device and app management, its primary focus is securing business data. To that end, the company effectively segregates all business information and documents on a device from a user’s personal content. To accomplish this Good’s iOS app delivers the same features as Apple’s Mail, Calendar, and Contacts apps – a move that ensures business messages event data are always secure. Good also includes a secure web browser and secure on-device document and data storage. The secure data store is sandboxed and can restrict users from copying data to unapproved apps as well as prevent such apps from accessing business documents or files.Good also provides a government agency solution that has been certified to meet various government and military standards for secure access including two-factor authentication.
Good leverages these technologies through a new solution called Good Dynamics that allows other companies, including mobile management vendor Boxtone who we profiled earlier in this series, to take advantage of Good’s secure data store. See our Good Dynamics coverage for more details.
Rovio has experienced unparalleled success with their Angry Birds franchise and has just recently announced it has surpassed 1 billion downloads! That’s pretty insane, and what makes it even more impressive is the fact that since its release, the game hasn’t really changed much. To think Rovio was able to pull this off by simply switching up themes and adding more levels is mind boggling.
Slide is a free reflex-testing game for iOS that takes the unlock screen slider from your iPhone and puts it to work elsewhere – mainly, as physical exercise for your thumb.
There are plenty of iOS apps that deliver the core functions of Microsoft Office – Apple’s iWork, Quickoffice, Documents 2 Go, and Office2 being the most common selections. There are, however, gaps in what all these products deliver.
From a business and collaboration standpoint, the biggest missing features are integration with Microsoft’s Track Changes feature and the ability to access Sharepoint. While there hasn’t been any progress on the Track Changes front (OnLive Desktop and CloudOn are still the only real options), there are options for Sharepoint – the most recent being harmon.ie Mobile.
We have some great news for those of you who aren’t ashamed of purchasing digital comics. Marvel has signed a multi-year deal with comiXology, the largest digital comics platform, to exclusively distribute single issue English-language digital comics worldwide. Marvel fans will have a plethora of sources to obtain these digital comics, including the Marvel apps available for Android and iOS .
Before we read any further into these claims, let me just reveal where they came from: DigiTimes. While the site has published a few accurate reports on upcoming Apple products in the past, most of its rumors are worryingly farfetched.
The latest claims sources in Apple’s supply chain have detailed the Cupertino company’s launch plans for 2012, promising three new iOS devices between now and the end of the year. One of those will, as you’d expect, be the sixth-generation iPhone, but before that, we will see a new, 7-inch iPad.
What’s more, that new iPad you just bought will apparently be replaced by an even newer one during the fourth quarter.
If you’ve updated your iOS devices past iOS 5.0.1, then you would have lost your untethered jailbreak. Hackers are working on a solution for Apple’s latest firmware, but it’s expected to be at least several months before it makes its public debut.
Fortunately, there is hope. The upcoming Redsnow release will allow you to downgrade your A5-powered devices — the iPhone 4S, iPad 2, and the new iPad — so that you can reinstate your untethered jailbreak.
Just hours after announcing its acquisition of Penultimate, Evernote has released an update to its iOS app that promises to deliver some major improvements to note taking on the iPhone. It has improved the way in which the app handles attachments and checkboxes, added support for Photo Stream, redesigned the audio recorder, and more.
I’m expecting some really cool iOS/Android stuff to pop out of indy dev First Post. The year-and-a-half-old startup is run by Jacob Robinson, the former art director at Sony Online Entertainment (who had a hand in forming legendary titles like the EverQuest series, DC Universe, Star Wars Galaxies and Unreal Tournament). It’s also completely self-funded, “which is not an easy thing to do at all,” says Robinson.
First Post’s debut game, Snacksss, may not exactly be the stellar breakthrough title one might have hoped for; the cartoony, Sonoran Desert-themed iPhone game has lots of pretty artwork but needs help in the gameplay department, which has the player listlessly flicking a hungry snake at rabbits ad nauseam.
May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac,
Fiberlink’s Maas360 offers a range of management capabilities with an emphasis on app and information management. A document management app can be deployed to devices to provide secure on-device storage for business data with optional sandboxing to prevent corporate files from being opened by unapproved apps. App management includes an enterprise app store with granular policy options for determining app access as well as app blacklist capabilities. In addition to traditional mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, MaaS360 can also apply some management policies for MacBooks and Windows notebooks. This combination of available features making one of the more robust mobile management systems on the market. The company also has a strategic partnership with Verizon Wireless.
AirPlay and AirPlay Mirroring add a lot of value to the second and third generation Apple TVs. Paired with a recent iPad or the iPhone 4S, an Apple TV can instantly become a gaming solution and a theater for home movies – and will be amazing when combined with Mountain Lion when it ships this summer.
AirPlay also turns that Apple TV into powerful and extremely portable presentation system that’s a great fit for the classroom or the board room. The only challenge is that the Apple TV’s only output option is an HDMI port, which can be a big problem for connecting to older display technologies including many projectors and computer displays – a problem solved by cable and adapter maker Kanex.
It looks like Square has yet another competitor in the mobile payments arena. Global payment leader VeriFone has announced SAIL, a credit card reader much like Square’s, that will attach to a number of mobile devices. While VeriFone may have a little catching up to do, they have the advantage of an extensive network with a commanding percentage of retail transactions passing through their service.
Hands up if you like counting things. Keep still while I count you all. Wait – arg. This isn’t working. How can I keep count? Maybe Tallywag will help me.
comScore’s new mobile behavioral measurement service, Mobile Metrix 2.0, has revealed that the lion’s share of media engagement comes from apps. I don’t find this to be surprising, as apps are usually much easier to use versus most mobile site counterparts. However, I was a bit surprised to learn that as much as 82 percent of time spent with mobile media happens via apps. That’s a pretty high percentage and makes having a mobile app for your media almost a necessity.
NFC isn’t a new technology. Android and BlackBerry phones with NFC capabilities have been available for a while now and various companies have started looking at implementing NFC as a mobile payment or digital wallet solution. Google Wallet being the most well-known while MasterCard’s new PayPass Wallet Services, which the company announced on Monday is the newest and potentially broadest in scope
Apple, however, hasn’t shown much interest in adding NFC to the iPhone. The lack of NFC hasn’t kept mobile payment options off the iPhone – as we’ve recently reported T.G.I. Fridays and Tabbedout, Boston’s light rail commuter service, and AmTrak have all moved to offer mobile payments using the Starbucks app/virtual card model.
A new deal between Apple and location-based deals startup Pirq, to offer daily food and drink deals to the company’s employees in silicon valley could be a sign of Apple testing the waters with both a deals network and whether such ecommerce options make sense for iPhone users.
PlayForge, the developers behind the popular undead farming sim Zombie Farm, have confirmed that a sequel will make its App Store debut within the coming weeks, bringing plenty of “changes and upgrades.” It’ll also let you transfer all of the progress you’ve already made in Zombie Farm — including your stock of brains — so that you can pick up right where you left off.
We’d usually advise jailbreakers to avoid Apple’s iOS updates just after their release, until hackers have confirmed that the latest software can be jailbroken. But one report claims that it’s perfectly safe to update your A4-powered devices to iOS 5.1.1 without losing your Redsn0w jailbreak.
One of the features iPad users have been consistently calling for since the device made its debut back in 2010 is multi-user support, which would allow families and small businesses to share one device between a group of people who all have their own account, with their own wallpaper, their own apps, and their own settings.
According to one iOS developer who recently contacted Apple about this feature, the Cupertino company is aware of the issue, and it is currently being “investigated by engineering.”
Apple released iOS 5.1.1 for iOS device owners today over-the-air and in iTunes. The update brings several bug fixes and improvements, including a fix for certain iPads that loose connectivity when switching between 2G and 3G networks.
An important security update has also been included in iOS 5.1.1 for a URL spoofing technique in Safari that made the news a couple weeks ago.
Not many surprises here. According to the latest research from the NPD Group, Android and iOS continue to dominate the OS arms race. Combined, these two powerhouse operating systems account for 90% of smartphone sales. Report after report, we continue to see the same thing: Android an iOS on top.
May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac,
Excitor produces the DME line of mobile management tools. The lineup currently offers a device management component that includes basic app management functionality and a secure messaging component. The secure messaging component offers companies a fully secured on-device message, contacts, and calendar data store that is separate from Apple’s Mail, Contacts, and Calendar apps – this helps ensure business data is not readable on a lost or stolen device even if that device is unlocked. Excitor has announced two additional DME components that, according to the company’s website, are not yet available. The first, is focused on creating an on-device secure data store while the second is a secure mobile browser.