Much as I love Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series of tongue-in-cheek horror films, and much as I have tried to emulate my virtues after that of its protagonist Deadite slayer Ash Williams, I have never found any of the myriad efforts to translate Army of Darkness‘ appeal to the video game form to be worth anything besides a derisive snort.
So I feel a little foolish getting so excited by word coming from Backflip Studios that they will be releasing a game based on Army of Darkness to the App Store early in 2011.
There’s almost no details so far, except that it will be a tower defense game, which is a surprising but remarkably appropriate choice, and you can expect several hours of Bruce Campbell’s snarling, macho and downright hysterical catch phrases as you blow hole after hole through the medieval dead with your trusty boomstick. Don’t bone this up, Backflip!
There’s an interesting change in the way iOS 4.2 handles orientation lock on the iPad… one that indicates a curious design backpedal on the part of Cupertino.
Previously, orientation lock on the iPad was handled with a physical hardware switch on the side of the device, but in iOS 4.2, it has been repurposed as a physical “Mute” button, with the orientation lock achieved the same way it is on the iPhone 4 or iPod Touch under iOS 4: through the multitasking tray.
It’s a minor but significant change that, I suspect, portends the elimination of the mute/screen orientation button on the second-generation iPad. For famously minimal and streamlined Apple, a physical mute button doesn’t make a lot of sense on an iOS device that isn’t a phone.
Once Apple announced its own baked-in Game Center for iOS, OpenFeint — the previous go-to mobile social gaming network — seemed to lose a bit of its luster, but the guys Aurora Feint seem to have a plan and they’re falling through with it: starting today, OpenFeint is now available on the Android operating system.
But Aurora Feint’s strategy in dealing with Game Center isn’t to abandon iOS. Oh no: this news is very relevant to iOS gamers because now that OpenFeint is on Android, you can now take part in cross-platform multiplayer games, achievements, leaderboards and friending in Fruit Ninja, MiniSquadron, Super Slyder, The Moron Test and Tic-Tac Toe… with fifteen other titles to follow this month.
At the very least, the relevance here to iOS gamers is they now have twice as many people to play Tic Tac Toe against… I just can’t wait for iOS vs. Android OpenFeint deathmatch tournaments.
It turns out we didn’t need to wait for the Dev Team to jailbreak iOS 4.1 after all: if you’ve got a jailbroken iPhone 3G or 3GS running the iOS 4.1 beta, all you need to do is download the HDR Camera Enabler through Cydia from the ModMy repository to enable high dynamic range snaps on your last-gen iPhone.
Presumably, this same tweak will also work with the Dev Team’s official iOS 4.1 jailbreak, which has yet to be released. Unfortunately, for right now, it’s 4.1 beta only, though, making it available to only a very small subset of jailbreakers. If you want to give it a shot, though, Redmondpie has a series of good tutorials on how to jailbreak the iOS 4.1 beta on the iPhone 3GS or iPhone 3G.
Well that didn’t take long. Steve Jobs quipped that the new iPod nano would make a good wristwatch, and last week brought news of the first iPod nano watch band. Now several contenders are offering products for sale.
And the iWatch was born. And it was Good.
Provided you’re willing to look like a geek with a headphone cord dangling from your wrist when you listen to music.
iOS 4.1’s ability to take high-dynamic range photos has been a much buzzed about new feature particularly to amateur photogs looking to maximize the quality of their casual smartphone snaps, but Apple does not appear to have gone it alone: according to some excellent research done by MacRumors’ Eric Slivka, it appears that Apple acquired a small, Cambridge-based company called Imsense to bring the feature to an iPhone near you.
Before being bought by Apple, Imsense did business in a technology called “eye-fidelity” which used software algorithms to remap image tons in order to produce nearly instantaneous Dynamic Range Correction in both standard and HDR photos. While the iOS 4.1 implementation of HDR is done in the classical fashion of blending three separate exposures into a single image, Imsense’s Eye-Fidelity algorithms appear to be used in iOS 4.1 to further spruce the resulting image up and make the colors pop.
It seems surprising that Apple could make any move to buy a company and not immediately be found out, but it appears that the acquisition went down under everyone’s nose back in July, with three Cupertino officers named directors of Imsense on July 15th, 2010. Could Apple once again be getting a tight grip on the secrecy they’ve lost handle of over the past year?
Proving a thing or two about making the most of what you have – unlike Microsoft – Amazon has come out with a cute ad poking fun at using the iPad in bright sunlight, and its premium price to boot.
I’m an iPad fan, but I will admit the little Never-Say-Die eReader does win on these fronts…
With few exceptions, the best way to predict what Apple is going to do is to look at what they’ve already done, which is why it’s best to take this rumor reported by Apple Insider with a grain of salt: they claim a FaceTime-equipped iPad will be coming in time for the holidays.
Apple Insider, on their part, realize that that their source — “a person with proven knowledge of Apple’s future product plans” — is giving them insider intel that defies Apple’s history of yearly generational cycles in their iPod and iOS line-up, but claim nonetheless that “there [is] an ambitious push inside Apple to verify the refresh for a possible launch ahead of this year’s holiday shopping season,” and that the testing of the FaceTime-equipped iPad has already reached the advanced testing stage.
That the next iPad will boast at least a forward facing camera for FaceTime calling is a given… but releasing it less than a year after the first iPad seems like an invitation for customer backlash.
Perhaps recognizing this, Apple Insider’s report ends up contradicting itself later, on, saying that the FaceTime-equipped iPad will arrive “no later” than the first quarter of 2011. Given that the first quarter ends in March, that’s close enough to a year after the iPad’s debut that it seems unlikely that Apple will meaningfully break their historic product cycle for a second-gen iPad, no matter how much they want FaceTime to be the de facto standard for video calling.
This week’s must-have iOS games features one of the best 2D platformers yet for the iPhone, GTA goodness in high-definition and golfing that claims to be as real as it gets. There’s also some pooping pigeons thrown in for good measure!
Check out a few of our favorite games from the past week after the break.
This weeks must-have iOS apps include Nike’s latest to help you track your run stats, professional HTML emails on your iPhone with MarkdownMail, quick and easy invoice creation for your business, and AppShopper’s new app that helps you keep track of the App Store.
Check out a few of our favorite apps from the past week after the break!
Celebrating the release to manufacture of Windows Phone 7, Microsoft employees held a mock funeral Friday for the iPhone and Blackberry on their Redmond campus:
Employees dressed up in fancy dress and also modified cars to include Windows Phone branding. Aside from the crazy outfits the workers made fake hearses for giant BlackBerry and iPhone devices. Employees cheekily claimed they had buried the competition with Windows Phone 7. [Neowin]
Mourners and pallbearers were seen holding signs such as “Windows Phone 7 OS Platform buries the competition” and performed a funereal dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller as part of the remembrances.
The latest iPhone Killer launches on October 11. Is it too early to call this another premature obituary?
At long last Apple has released iOS 4.1, which includes bug fixes for iOS 4 performance issues on the iPhone 3G. Having suffered for months with 4.0 on my 3G, I rushed home yesterday to upgrade when hearing that 4.1 had gone live. After a day of use my impressions are definitely more positive than with the change from v3 to v4, but I wouldn’t describe the improvements as overwhelming.
The worst delays appear to be gone. Under iOS 4.0 my 3G was experiencing delays of up to 10 seconds when opening apps like Messages and Settings, these now launch in a few seconds. Email messages load quicker, the on-screen keyboard is responsive with a shorter initial delay, and searching my contact list is relatively efficient again. I was also able to start a song playing in iPod mode then jump around to several other apps without any skipping in playback.
I’m still experiencing notable delays when loading the Calendar app. The iPhone appears to update my calendar via MobileMe each time I load the app, blanking out the screen before returning a few seconds later with my data. I thought this was a bug in 4.0 but perhaps this is a change in the app’s behavior?
My overall (subjective) impression is that iOS 4.1 on the iPhone 3G is a tune-up of iOS 4.0, but isn’t a performance improvement over iOS 3. The most egregious problems do appear to be fixed and the device is useable again. That’s most important.
iPhone 3G owners, what’s your experience been so far? Let us know in the comments.
iOS 4.1 is now live, and along with the much anticipated software update comes Game Center, Apple’s new Xbox-Live-like gaming service that brings officially sanctioned achievements and multiplayer matchmaking to supported iPhones and iPod Touches.
Game Center seems promising, but unfortunately, it’s been hard to figure out exactly what games have Game Center support and which ones don’t… making early testing of the service frustrating. To make things easier, Apple has just updated the App Store with a dedicated Game Center section, highlighting all of the apps that have baked in Game Center support so far.
Unfortunately, most of the games currently on display are a little lackluster, with Flight Control, Fieldrunners and Zen Bound 2 being the real standouts… but hopefully that will change sooner rather than later.
Four school districts in California have teamed up with publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in a pilot project to test the use of iPads in math education. 400 iPads will be distributed among six schools in the program for use in algebra classes:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt today announced a year-long pilot of the first-ever full-curriculum Algebra app for the Apple iPad. The pilot also represents the launch of HMH Fuse™, a new mode of curriculum delivery where interactive platforms and mobile devices bring learning to life for students by moving beyond the one-way experience of a print or digital textbook.
Through the revolutionary iPad environment, students can receive feedback on practice questions, write and save notes, receive guided instruction, access video lessons and more with the touch of a finger. The app’s multi-dimensional functionality combines instruction, ongoing support and intervention, allowing teachers and students to customize learning and meet individual needs.
The schools involved include Washington Middle School and Hudson K–8 in Long Beach Unified, Kings Canyon Middle School and Sequoia Middle School in Fresno Unified, Amelia Earhart Middle School in Riverside Unified, and Presidio Middle School in San Francisco Unified School District.
The iPad is a natural platform for use in education, it’s a magic sheet of paper which can display text, graphics and video, test students, provide internet access and facilitate student-teacher interaction. Many colleges and universities have already begun exploring its possibilities. I don’t doubt it will find a strong niche in grade school as well.
Supposed mind-reading peripherals are nothing new. The Atari Mindlink, for example, introduced the concept to gaming way back in 1983. It didn’t work exactly as described, though, unless the way you usually thought was to accompany your ponderings with an alarming staccato of violent facial tics: then, just then, you might get Pac-Man to drunkenly wobble across the screen for a couple seconds before Pinky, Blinky, Inky and Clyde get their inevitable gang bang in.
Things haven’t changed much since then: consumer mind-reading gadgets still usually don’t do any mind-reading at all. They haven’t sold very well, but companies keep trying. The latest plucky upstart in the supposed-mind-control-but-probably-forehead-reading accessory market is PLX, whose XWave headset plugs into any iOS device’s audio jack and supposedly lets you drive your iPhone with your throbbing frontal lobe.
PLX claims that “with [the] XWave, you will be able to detect attention and meditation levels, as well as train your mind to control things. Objects in a game can be controlled, lights in your living room can change color depending on your mood; the possibilities are limited to only the power of your imagination.”
Or, at least, the power of PLX’s imagination, since their demonstration video (embedded above) shows concept apps that give results that seem about as reproducible in a laboratory as those of your local dive bar’s coin-operated Love Tester machine. I’m somehow guessing those “Meditation” and “Attention” meters might be randomized.
It’s $100 bucks if you’re feeling overly credulous. PLX warns that the device is “for entertainment purposes and is not intended for medical use,” so don’t use it for psychic surgery or anything.
Along with the arrival of sexy new iPod Touches replete with pixel-packed Retina Displays, touch-capable iPod Nanos and rollback Shuffles, today should see the debut of iOS 4.1 as well as Apple’s new iOS gaming social network, Game Center.
As such, TUAW is reporting that Game Center has just gone live for iPhone developers, meaning that instead of being limited to a sandbox-only development environment, Game Center is now allowing global registry and asking for new login details… older accounts having been purged from the system yesterday.
Game Center’s reportedly having a few birthing paints, including some crashing issues and connectivity problems, but it seems to mostly be due to server problems, and everything’s working once you manage to get connected.
Since Game Center is the showcase new functionality in iOS 4.1, the server switch being flipped on is a good indication that we’re all about to see an update get slurped down through iTunes sometime soon.
Apple has updated its Game Centre overview page today to provide details on which devices will be supported when the social gaming network goes live on Wednesday with the release of the new iOS 4.1 update.
The list of supported devices includes the second-, third- and forth-generation iPod Touch models, along with the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 3GS. Unfortunately for those still clinging on to their trusty iPhone 3G, Game Centre is another feature you’ll miss out on in iOS 4.1.
Linux fiends have a new operating system to hate in the OS wars, according to web traffic firm Net Application: iOS overtook Linux as the third biggest browsing browsing platform in uly of this year.
According to Net Applications’ data, iOS represented 1.06 percent of all web traffic in July, compared to the 0.93 percent share of Linux. Google’s Android operating system, which technically bests iOS’ numbers when it comes to installs, is only 0.18 oercent.
It gets worse. In July, iOS encompassed 1.13% of all web traffic, while Linux shrank even more to 0.85% and Google’s Android shot up to 0.20%.
iOS is now the third most popular web browsing platform in the world, behind only Windows and OS X. And it doesn’t have far to go before it knocks out Snow Leopard, which accounts for just 2.59 percent of all web traffic. Wow.
If you’re an iPhone 3G owner wondering if iOS 4.1 is going to save your device from the slow mercury hell of a sluggish post-3.1.3 device, good news. The fine lads and lasses over at Lifehacker find the last point iteration a marked improvement upon its predecessor, and to prove it, posted this chipper, chiptune-backed side-by-side comparison.
All I can say is, “Wow.” iOS 4.0 was that slow for 3G owners? How did Apple even let that update get out the door?
This week’s must-have iOS games include the graphically stunning Epic Citadel that was recently introduced at Apple’s music event, adrenaline-fuelled sprinting across rooftops in Mirror’s Edge for iPhone, using your powers as Spider-Man to save the city of New York, and a whole lot more to keep you entertained this weekend.
Check out a few of our favorite games from the past week after the break!
This week’s must-have iOS apps include the universal release of the official Twitter client, a fun and unique way to make music, and an app that turns your device in to a USB memory stick.
Check out a few of our favorite apps from the past week after the break!
When Steve Jobs announced the new palm-sized AppleTV on Wednesday, replete with AirPlay-streaming functionality from your computer’s iTunes library, 720p high-def video and Netflix capability, many of us wondered if Cupertino would (or even be able) to extend the new functionality back down the line to the older, drive-based model.
Nope, says Ars Technica. An Apple spokesperson confirmed to them that there will be no software updates to bring the new AppleTV functionality to the last generation model.
To be honest, I wasn’t suspecting anything different. According to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, even though the AppleTV doesn’t look like it is running iOS, it is… an assertion supported by the new AppleTV’s A4 CPU. The new software probably doesn’t even work on old AppleTVs, and rolling out a major software update for the obsolete model would essentially require coding the functionality from scratch.
Still, it’s disappointing. I, like many AppleTV owners, gave Apple my money for their “hobbyist” device, supporting and defending it for years even while Apple ignored it. Now that they are taking the device seriously and finally bringing the AppleTV brand up to spec, though, Apple’s quick to abandon us.
To their credit, Aurora Feint has always been remarkably blase about iOS 4.1’s built-in Game Center, even though they currently run the business of the App Store’s biggest gaming social network and match-making service, OpenFeint. In fact, they went as far as to say they were “thrilled” about Game Center, boasting about big future plans for the service… despite Game Center’s seemingly direct competition.
OpenFeint’s plans in an iOS ecosystem with Game Center preinstalled on every device are now becoming clearer, and it seems like Aurora Feint have figured out a killer feature that only their service can provide to gamers: the ability to play cross-form multiplayer matches in games that are available on both iOS and Google Android.
The OpenFeint PlayTime network will not only let you play your buddy even if he is shackled to his Android phone, but the software supports real-time video chat, as well as bot support. That latter addition is particularly interesting, as it means that if a player drops in a multiplayer match, an AI-controlled opponent will seamlessly take his place.
This is a smooth move on the part of Aurora Feint giving developers who have titles on more than one mobile platform a strong incentive to bake both Game Center and OpenFeint support into their titles. I just wish, as a player, I could keep my achievement points in both networks synced.
The findings of a recent survey by Coupons.com has all the trappings of some sort of offensive, stereotypical joke… but without the punchline.
Analyzing the findings of how both users on both the Android and iOS operating systems use their website, Coupons.com came to some interesting findings as to what separates the two.
iPhone users? According to Coupons.com, they can best be described as “feminine-smelling, chicken-eating, entertainment-reading fish owners.”
Android users, though, are “manly-scented, pork-eating, news-reading bird lovers.”
These results certainly don’t seem to apply to me. On one hand, I fall into the Android category as far as my pheremonal stink and budgerigar ownership are concerned, but I certainly prefer chicken to pork, and I use iOS exclusively… which according to Coupons’ research, makes me some sort of weird, fish-stroking girl. And what about pork-abstaining Android users, Hassidic and halal alike? There is more research to be done here methinks, Coupons.com.
Too busy to read our liveblog coverage of Apple’s September iPod Event? Everything you need to know about Apple’s new products is below the fold, including details about the new iPod Shuffle, Nano, iPod Touch, AppleTV, iTunes and iOS update.
