If a new patent spotted by the USPTO archeologists over at Patently Apple is believed, Lion might boasts a new way to navigate menus that would make Mac OS X more suitable to touch input than ever before.
Toy manufacturer Hasbro is set to unveil a pair of $30 goggles called ‘My3D’ that will attach to an iPhone or iPod Touch and allow users to enjoy 3D content, according to a report from the Associated Press on Monday.
It promises three-dimensional content that offers a 360-degree experience in gaming, virtual travel experiences and entertainment content. It’s aimed at both children and adults.
The device, which resembles a pair of binoculars with a slot in which users insert their iPod or iPhone, will be priced at $30. It will be available starting next spring at stores where Apple’s iPhones and iPod Touches are available.
Hasbro, which is the nation’s second-largest toy maker, has teamed up with Dreamworks Animations, Discovery, Sony, and IMAX to provide 3D content which will be delivered through specialized apps for the devices. The A.P. report also claims Hasbro worked closely with Apple to develop the My3D device.
I’ve been looking forward to 3D content on iOS for a long while now, and Hasbro’s My3D looks set to be incredibly popular. With a list of reputable companies helping to develop content to accompany the device, it should certainly be top-notch, and that price-tag isn’t too bad either.
[via Associated Press]
Last week, the Skyfire browser made headlines for two separate “firsts” on the iOS platform.
First up, Skyfire finally did what Adobe couldn’t and brought Flash to iOS, albeit non-natively. Instead, the Skyfire browser converts Flash videos to HTML5 on their own servers, then pumps the HTML5 to your iPhone or iPad instead.
Pretty neat, but I actually like Skyfire’s second accomplishment more: they managed to be the first iOS app to ever “sell out.”
Quite a trick with an infinitely copyable, digital good, but the Skyfire team had a good excuse: their app was selling like such gangbusters that the servers used to convert Flash to HTML5 on the fly couldn’t cope with demand. They’d sold out of bandwidth, not copies of the app itself.
Skyfire has spent the weekend beefing up its servers. The good news is that if you’re lucky, you should be able to buy Skyfire again soon. The bad? Skyfire’s selling the app in batches to make sure they servers don’t get overwhelmed: they’ll put the app back up on the App Store for a little while, pull it, then put it back up a few hours later.
An interesting approach to say the least. If you’re interested in giving Skyfire a spin, check out their Twitter feed for word when the next batch will go live.
This just in: RetromacCast reports on another variation of iPhone art, this time a large framed replica of an iPhone. Created from individual iPhone app coasters, RMC co-host James initially suspected a force of iEvolution at work but was pleased to learn this was a 40th birthday gift from his wife. Famed Banana Jr creator (and RMC co-host) John assisted with framing details like the home button and speaker.
Wisely, they didn’t attempt to create a white model. Full photoset on Flickr, coasters from Meninos.
Remember Epic’s stunning display of the Unreal Engine 3 running on the iPhone with Epic Citadel? That was more of a technology demonstration than anything else, but the first proper game running Unreal Engine 3 is coming to the App Store soon in Chair’s Project Sword, a swipe-controlled fighter with an RPG level-up and equipment mechanic…. and as you can see from the trailer above, it looks breathtaking.
As a gamer, I’ve slowly gotten used to the virtual D-pads and buttons in iOS games, but in all honesty, I still miss the tactility of real buttons underneath my thumb pads.
That said, I can’t imagine who would go in for this: the Tactile+Plus is a transparent overlay you put over your iPhone or iPod Touch’s screen to lend tactile feedback to a virtual D-pad.
Last month, it was widely reported that Apple had reached yet another milestone with its App Store by chalking up it’s 300,000th app. The only problem with that number? It wasn’t true: while there were 300,000 apps in the App Store, a lot of those apps were inactive, meaning Apple hadn’t quite crossed the threshold for their milestone.
Still, time heals all, and now, Apple has actually racked up its 300,000th real app thanks to the average of 5,452 iPad apps and 12,218 iPhone apps uploaded each month.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LriKSoDzZOI&feature=player_embedded
Well, what do you know: the guys over at Plex, who make one of my favorite media center apps for the Mac, have jailbroken their second-gen AppleTV and managed to get the Plex client up and running on the little $99 box.
The proof of concept’s a little rough around the edges, but once this is polished up, it could be a huge boon for AppleTV owners hoping to expand their box’s capabilities. Sure, you still need to stream your media from a paired Mac, but Plex supports a lot more codecs than AirPlay. I can’t wait to see this project progress.
This is a pretty neat spin on the freemium model: Capcom Arcade is a free title that bundles many of Capcom’s classic arcade games — including Street Fighter II, Commando and 1942 — together in a virtual arcade. Just like in a real arcade, to play the games, you need tokens, which you can buy in-app. Otherwise, Capcom Arcade is happy to dole out free tokens every day, which you can then use for a limited number of plays.
It’s a clever little approach. Usually, freemium games use in-game virtual goods to make money, but Capcom’s turned that idea on its head by making a play of their games themselves into a virtual good to be consumed. I wonder if other classic arcade publishers with a presence in the App Store will catch on: Sega, I’m looking at you.
[via Touch Arcade]
Been holding out for redsn0w before jailbreaking your iOS 4.1 device. Good news: the Dev Ream has just released the latest version which will allow you to jailbreak your iPhone 4, 3GS, 3G, 3rd or 4th generation iPod Touch and second generation AppleTV on either Mac or Windows machines. It uses geohot’s limera1n exploit, and also adds “custom bootlogos for iPhone3G/iPhone3GS/iPod2G users (with qualifying bootroms)” and an option that implements the ‘DFU’ button in PwnageTool” in Windows.
Interested? Grab it here, and let the hacking commence.
Right now, if you want live television on your iPad, you are basically limited to using the EyeTV to stream it from your computer. What if you don’t want to be umbilicaled to your desktop, though>
Meet the Tizi, a small peripheral box being sold in Europe that pairs with your iOS device over WiFi and watch the terrestrial boob tube wherever you are.
At 9 AM ET on Thursday, November 4, the Skyfire Browser will be coming to iOS and will allow users to watch Flash video on their iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch by converting it to HTML5.
Priced at $2.99, Skyfire Browser has been available on Android devices since May 2010, and has been incredibly popular with 1.5 million downloads. Now, after a “rather rigorous review,” Apple has finally approved the app for iOS devices, and it will soon be available in the App Store.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T073m83CQk&feature=player_embedded
Evil Dead — Sam Raimi’s story of five horny college kids who go to an abandoned cabin in the woods to do their rutting and accidentally unleash an ancient, murderous evil — isn’t as well known as its sequels, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. It’s a more serious and frightening film, and Bruce Campbell’s Ash (known in the first movie as “Ashley”) has yet to become the chainsaw-handed, catchphrase-spitting zombie killer we’d all come to know and love later in the franchise.
It also seems like a bad fit for an App Store game, but I’ve got to tell you, this trailer for the upcoming Evil Dead game has won me over. You’d think using Mii-like bobblehead avatars to tell the story that prominently features melting zombies, ankle-stabbing and tree rape would just fall apart, but instead, the trailer’s just incredibly funny and well done… not to mention loyal to the spirit of the (NSFW) original trailer, which I’ve embedded below.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhkxDIr0y2U&feature=player_embedded
The Sesame Street Workshop’s charming take on Apple’s “There’s An App For That Campaign” and featuring the so-called “iPogo” is plenty cute, but after watching the whole thing, does anyone else think that the idea of a pogo stick with knives built into the handle might not entirely be child-friendly?
The first interesting tidbit to surface from the iOS 4.2 GM firmware release today is the fact that there is a new multitasking bar on the iPad.
The new version sports both brightness and volume controls for quick access to these settings. In addition to the regular audio controls and screen orientation lock Apple has added a new AirPlay button just to the left of the volume control.
[via deanostetto at Macrumors forums]
Earlier today, Apple released the Gold Master version of iOS 4.2 and the corresponding SDK to developers, bringing the current version of both to 4.2 GM (builds 8C134 and 10M2423 respectively). The update follows the release of the previous beta by about three weeks.
In addition to those updates Apple also has a beta 2 version of iTunes 10.1. However, iTunes hasn’t gone to Gold Master status and there is no indication that this will happen soon.
If you haven’t already downloaded VLC Media Player for your iPhone and iPad, now’s the time to grab it if you want it, as it may soon be pulled from the App Store.
One of the contributors to the VLC project, Rémi Denis-Courmont, has filed a formal copyright complaint against the app, which could see it pulled by Apple very soon.
Apple’s just seen fit to tighten up the Terms and Conditions applying to iTunes rentals… and in doing so have finally closed a loophole that allowed rented television shows to be transferred between the iPad and other iOS devices.
Halloween, with its legions of black-clad kids running around and darting out into the street, introduces its own variety of driving perils. So in addition to warning other users of speed traps and red-light cameras, Trapster users can now mark two new location types on its map this Halloween: haunted houses and trick-or-treat zones.
The free app works through crowdsourcing, which means any registered user can add markers which then become viewable to other Trapster users; and if users find a marker that’s inaccurate (say, if some user tagged their in-laws place as a haunted house), it can be removed with enough votes against it. Now if only the had a marker for houses with the best candy…
[Think Halloween graphic by ~Zefhar]
This Sunday, October 31st is Halloween and if you aren’t thinking about Halloween yet you should be. Since it is almost here.
Do you know what your costume will be this year? Need to add a little zip to your scary get up? Here is a collection of iOS apps that are bound to add some fun to the scariest holiday of the year.
If you download them and get scared don’t blame me about things you hear that go bump in the night afterwards.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP1FxPtUMeM&feature=player_embedded
If you’ve been keeping around that old, dusty Sega Dreamcast just to occasionally send your ChuChus into battle against the nefarious KapuKapus, great news: Sega has just released their classic Dreamcast multiplayer puzzle game Chu Chu Rocket for iOS in both a $4.99 iPhone/iPod Touch version and a $6.99 HD version suitable for iPad.
I’ve been playing it all morning, and it’s a fantastic port of one of Sega’s best games, with the only real blemish on an otherwise superb title being the omission of online multiplayer. If you have any fond memories of Chu Chu Rocket at all, picking this up for the weekend is a no-brainer.
Below the jump: Chu Chu Rocket’s absolutely unforgettable original television advertisement.
For a brief, wonderful four hour period yesterday evening, iOS gamers were able to download iDOS, a working DOS emulator for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch that not only allowed you to run vintage DOS games and applications in full Retina Display resolution and replete with sound, but could even handle Windows 3.0.
By all accounts, iDOS — which was based on the popular DosBox emulator — was amazing, and Touch Arcade reports that it happily ran everything from vintage Sierra adventure titles to Blizzard’s Warcraft II to disc-images of the multimedia horror game 7th Guest.
Don’t bother trying to download iDOS now, though: Apple quickly yanked it. No one’s really sure why, although Apple has traditionally frowned on emulators before… but 9to5Mac has a really good theory: it seems iDOS allowed users to access the entire iOS filesystem, no jailbreak required, albeit without write access.
Part of me hopes that was the problem: it seems like an easy fix to close that hole up. I’d like the opportunity to play around with iDOS. My instinct, though, is that Apple took a stronger disliking to it that will prevent it from re-entering the App Store no matter what changes the developers make.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7ByK2OAvx0
If you’ve somehow managed to do the impossible and deny the temptation to download PopCap’s incredible horticultural zombie defense game, Plants vs. Zombies, jeez… cave already. PopCap’s just put it up for sale on the App Store for only $0.99. Prefer the fuller featured iPad-specific version? PopCap’s put that on sale too: it’s now 50% off at just $4.99.
Seriously, just go download it already. As far as I’m concerned, this is the best game on the App Store.
If you want to do some serious typing on your iPad, you’ll pretty much need to pair it with the official Apple Bluetooth Keyboard. The only problem is that once you pair your iPad to the keyboard, it can sometimes be annoying actually reaching up from the chiclet keys to actually navigate your tablet through directly interacting with the display through multitouch.
Or maybe it isn’t at all and I’m just lazy. Either way, the Flashpoint iBoard seems to be a product that is aimed squarely at lazy iPad keyboard monkeys like me. Essentially, it’s a standard Apple Bluetooth Keyboard that comes with a bunch of stickers that can be stuck to the keys for assigning app shortcuts, which the keyboard manages to launch thanks to an included app. A full-keyboard silicone cover rounds out the whole package.
Price? Even though the Flashpoint iBoard is essentially just a repackaged Apple Bluetooth Keyboard with some stickers and a raincoat thrown in for free, it actually costs $5 less than buying the same keyboard through Apple.com. Even if you think the Flashpoint iBoard is stupid, then — and we’re willing to admit it kind of is — it’s still an excellent deal if you’re in the market for an iPad-pairable keyboard.
Couch potatoes take note: Peel, a free app that’s a sort of mix between Netflix’s movie suggestions and TV Guide, made its debut last week.
And it’s got a star-studded development team backing it up. Core members of the original iTunes team helped create Peel’s interface, and a team that beat Netfilx’s movie-suggestion algorithm in a competition worked on Peels innards.