iOS - page 15

Fans have been clamouring for an iOS port of the later Final Fantasy games for years, but it looks as though publisher Square Enix is set to go one step further — announcing that not only will some of these titles soon be making their way to mobile, but also that the company behind them is experimenting with a new cloud-based mobile streaming service called Dive In.

Dive In is set to debut October 9 with an initial offering of three games, including Final Fantasy 7, Final Fantasy 13 and The Cherry Blossom Murders.

The only problem? You guessed it: currently the service is only available in Japan.

Apple’s iPhone event is now just a matter of hours away, and if you’re hoping for some surprises, you should look away now. We already have a pretty solid idea what the iPhone 6 is going to look like, and thanks to some new Geekbench benchmarks, we now know what it’s going to have inside it, too.

Text shortcuts are one of the most useful settings in iOS. Having the potential to just hit a couple of keys to input an entire string of text is a wonderful time saver… as long as you have the foresight to set them up first.

Alas, most of us never delve into text shortcuts on iOS 8. But here’s a shortcut anyone can take advantage of: a text shortcut that allows you to cycle rapidly through your email addresses with just a single keypress.

I’m a massive fan of nostalgic 2-D platformers, so the sight of Goblin Sword has me buzzing. An entirely new iOS action platforming game, the title nonetheless borrows its inspiration from classic 8-bit platformers of the NES era of gaming, with cartoony sprites and highly detailed pixel-rendered backdrops.

Frankly it looks gorgeous, and the promise of a whopping 48 levels, 6 bosses, multiple weapons and suits of armor, and (arguably best of all) utter lack of in-app purchases just makes it sound all the more promising.

I can’t tell you how much I love Adobe’s Lightroom Mobile. But like an insatiable lover, I want more. Specifically, I want to add my own presets. LR Mobile ships with a selection of the desktop app’s image presets built in, but unlike the desktop version, you can’t save your own settings as a preset, nor can you add any made by third parties. Or can you?

In this tutorial, we’ll see how to add any preset to Lightroom Mobile, using any and all of the image-editing tools available in the Mac version and making them available on iOS.

Apple is constantly looking to improve the App Store experience, and ahead of the long-awaited release of the iPhone 6 and public version of iOS 8, it is doubling its efforts.

With these two landmark events coming up rapidly, the company has updated its App Store review guidelines to add all-new sections dealing with features such as HealthKit, HomeKit and TestFlight, extensions and more.

There have been numerous companies, from Samsung downwards, willing to leap onto the smart watch bandwagon to try and beat it to market. Wellograph’s new smart watch, however, perhaps comes the closest to what many users are expecting to see from Apple — with the world’s first wellness-focused smart watch sporting a sapphire crystal display.

The 1.26-inch LCD display watch is available to ship now, and comes with various smart functions, including a Tri­-LED heart­ rate sensor, which replicates the action of a doctor using their fingers to feel for a pulse and provides real-time readings of heart signals.

If you make something private, obviously you want it to stay that way. But with hackers trying to get at your data, you need to be prepared. Following the recent iCloud hacking that leaked tons of private celebrity photos, there’s a renewed focus on security.

In today’s video, we show you how to enable two-step verification on all your Apple devices so you’ll have a better chance of keeping everything that’s near and dear to you private and secure.

Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to catch all our latest videos.

Reddit AMAs (Ask Me Anythings) are everywhere, attracting even the likes of President Obama (who answered his questions on a MacBook) to respond to questions fielded by users from around the globe.

Up until now there have been some pretty great apps for viewing Reddit AMAs, such as Interviewly, which takes AMA threads and polishes them to look more like a Sunday newspaper feature than an online forum. However, to date there has been no official AMA app available on iOS.

If you’re the type of person who enjoys/has a work-related need to track airplanes using their iPhone or iPad, you may want to download plane-tracking app Plane Finder, which has just received a brand new update — letting you watch previous flights, dating all the way back to April 2011.

The app lets you replay holiday flights, diversions, and major incidents, as well as easily seeing the effect of storms, ATC strikes, volcanic ash clouds, and more.

Last weekend, we reported that the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 seemed likely to boast a 1334 x 750 Retina Display, while the 5.5-inch iPhone 6L could have a 461 PPI Super- Retina Display. Now it looks like that working iPhone 6 cobbled together may have confirmed the iPhone 6’s resolution.

As more and more of our lives are lived on social media, the importance of being able to efficiently search through content is greater than ever.

With that in mind, Facebook is currently user-testing a new feature letting mobile users sift through old posts by friends using keywords — allowing them to more easily find content that would otherwise be lost.

The feature, which only counts for posts you’re allowed to see (meaning that private posts won’t show up) has currently only been rolled out to a select few, but will likely be officially added into an update of the Facebook iOS app in the near future.

Are we seeing the collapse of freemium game makers as the monster money spinners they were a year or so back?

Following the recent news that the recently-public Candy Crush Saga maker King had posted a disappointing quarter in terms of revenue, now the CEO of Angry Birds dev Rovio has announced that he is stepping down for similar reasons.

CEO Mikael Hed says he is “passing the hoodie” to new CEO Pekka Rantala, who recently joined Rovio after serving as head of Finnish drinks maker Hartwall.

“It has been an amazing ride and in the coming months I will be very happy to pass the hoodie to Pekka Rantala, who will take Rovio to the next level,” Hed noted in a statement. “Pekka is known to be a great leader with experience building successful global consumer brands. I will continue to play an active role and will support Pekka in any way I can to ensure Rovio’s continued success.”

While it certainly has its fair share of clones and discoverability issues, Apple’s mega profitable App Store is still the toast of the App Store world.

With that in mind, Microsoft is using it as its (unofficial) model for rethinking its own Windows app store which, to put it bluntly, is downright broken.

Are you itching to play the original BioShock on your iPhone or iPad? Then get ready, because it’s coming to the App Store tonight.

Ports of popular console and arcade game series can be hit-and-miss on iOS, but Namco Bandai’s Ridge Racer Slipstream definitely falls into the “hit” category.

An iOS game which pulls together a lot of the best vehicles and tracks from previous Ridge Racer games, Ridge Racer Slipstream has just been updated for the first time since March adding two brand new race tracks, four new Class 1 vehicles (including the Kamata Synci, Kamata RC410, and Lucky Wild Evolver), Masters’ Class career content, and support for MFi game controllers.

The creator of minimalist text game A Dark Room has just released an intriguing new title entitled Gridland. Although the game has yet to arrive in the App Store, it is playable on iOS devices using Safari.

Gridland is a match-3 game, which requires players to make matches in order to gather resources and build buildings during the day — and then to fight off creatures at night. In other words, it’s every bit as “out there” as A Dark Room — and quite possibly as immersive as well.

Now that Samsung is pretty much the only Android handset manufacturer making any money, you’d think that Android’s fragmentation problem would start to get better, but the latest Android fragmentation report from OpenSignal reveals the madness of developing for multiple screen sizes, hardware specs, and various versions of Android, has only gotten worse over the last year.

Google has launched an official Photo Sphere app for iPhone that allows users to snap 360° panoramas and then publish them on Google Maps. It’s perfect for capturing all of the amazing places you visit, and it lets your friends share your experiences in a way that regular photos just can’t.

The upcoming release of iOS 8 brings many new features that will dramatically improve everyday use of iPhones and iPads. While currently contacting your friends can be an annoyingly long process because you must open apps and search through contact after contact, a new feature in iOS 8 eliminates this common hassle.

In today’s video we show how iOS 8’s new quick contacts feature will make contacting your most recent friends much easier. After you update to iOS 8, simply double-click the home button to enjoy this new functionality.

Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to catch all our latest videos.

Steve Jobs was known for speaking out loud, dreaming big and acting upon his thoughts. While it’s been just a few short years since his passing, fans have been able to see his characteristics shine through other personalities. The late comedian and actor Robin Williams lived a life similar to Jobs’ life: With every movie and every off-camera activity, Williams showed a passion for anything he did.

Watch today’s Cult of Mac news roundup to see how Apple pays tribute to Williams, as well as some crazy stories regarding the iPhone 6 and even how one new app is truly showing that life really is a box of chocolates.

Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to catch all our latest videos.

In the smartphone race there are only two players: iOS and Android. That fact is clear in IDC’s new report for worldwide smartphone shipments for the second quarter.

Combined, iOS and Android account for a whopping 96.4% of global smartphone sales. IDC notes that there’s “little space for competitors,” which is a mild way of saying that every other platform has little to no hope.

Do you hate the fact that Facebook is forcing you to install the Facebook Messenger app if you want to send or access messages on your iPhone or iPad?

We do too. But luckily, it turns out that right now, there’s an easy way to get around the restrictions and access your Facebook Messages through the vanilla Facebook app again. But better move on it: Facebook’s not likely to let this loophole stay open for long.