I recently wrote about an upcoming game that re-imagines SNK Playmore’s The King of Fighters as an, um, music-based beat-em-up, called The Rhythm of Fighters. As a huge fan of the franchise (and the proud owner of a 4 CD compilation of the series’ various soundtracks) I was intrigued by the idea — even if it is a major departure from what we’re used to.
Jump forward a week and the game has now landed in the App Store, priced $0.99.
Apple’s constantly evolving set of Apple Store policies cracked down on apps earlier this month that incentivize users to watch crappy video ads for certain rewards. Two weeks later and Apple has already reversed course.
Developers who monetize their apps by offering rewards for sharing to social sites or viewing videos ads were sent packing by Apple’s Review Team, but according to a report from TechCrunch, Apple had a change of heart and is allowing those apps back in the App Store, but there’s a catch.
Tim Cook and Craig Federighi took a few swipes at Android during WWDC’s keynote, but now that Google is readying its hype machine for Google I/O tomorrow, Sundar Pichai, the head of Android, tossed a few jabs Apple’s way in an interview with Bloomberg this morning.
Pichai noted that all the data points to people adopting Android faster than any other operating system, but the dude’s so gosh darn nice, he couldn’t insult Apple without flattering them in the same breath.
Addressing Tim Cook’s comments that Android is a “toxic hell stew of vulnerabilities,” Pichai said it’s difficult to compare the two, because iOS is like the $100,000 Mercedes Benz of mobile platforms, and Android is like your cheap ass Honda Civic, taking over the world one delicious dessert fueled update at a time.
Are you running short of inspiration when it comes to new music to listen to? Whyd may be able to help.
The popular music bookmarking tool has just made the leap from desktop to mobile, with the launch of its official iOS app. Giving you the key to a community of music curators interested in sharing and discovering the best music around, Whyd lets users collect the songs they like from virtually any music service (YouTube, Soundcloud, Vimeo, and Deezer, to name a few), organize it into playlists, and then connect with thousands of other music lovers with similar (and complementary) tastes.
Amazon Instant Video — the official iOS app of the e-commerce giant’s Prime video streaming service — has just added a great new update.
The app will now attempt to lure you in by letting users stream the first episode of selected TV shows for free, with added ad breaks before and during playback.
In addition to this, the app features new video playback controls, including one-touch play/pause and 10-second skip forward/backward buttons, alongside a handy “Next Episode” button to make your binge watching sessions even easier and more tempting. It also promises faster playback start time after hitting play.
I’m a sucker for old school platformers in the vein of Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia, and upcoming iOS game Escape from the Pyramid certainly fulfills those criteria.
Set across 45 levels — representing three worlds in all — the game borrows from ancient Egyptian art to create something that definitely looks like it could stand out in a year already full of interesting-looking iOS titles.
If you’re a New York-based coder or wannabe coder looking to learn Apple’s new programming language Swift, you may want to check out an upcoming evening tech workshop organized by software development firm TurnToTech.
With the next session taking place Monday at their 5th Avenue offices, the number of spaces available has just been upped to allow more people to attend.
Yesterday we wrote about Yo, the messaging app which has become inexplicably popular over the past month, and has netted $1.2 million in venture funding.
Less than 24 hours later it seems that Yo has hacked by a Georgia Tech student, together with two of his room mates. The hack allows for them to access any Yo user’s phone number, spoof Yo messages from any user, spam users with multiple messages, and even send push notifications featuring any text they want. Another hack appears to let hackers Rickroll users with the infamous Rick Astley song.
I’m a massive fan of SNK’s King of Fighters franchise, to the point that I own a 4 CD compilation of the series’ soundtracks over the course of its lifetime. Which is why I’m incredibly happy to hear that SNK Playmore is working on a rhythm game based on the King of Fighters fighting game franchise “packed with legendary SNK tracks!”
We’ve written a lot about how there’s no shortage of great games in the App Store, and just to gobble up even more of your time this summer, Electronic Arts has just staged a massive sale on some of its most popular titles — discounting them by as much as 90 percent in some cases.
Some of the company’s hottest games are included, so this is a great opportunity if you’re looking to pick up some worthwhile bargains.
Here’s the complete list of titles on sale for just $0.99!
You know those ideas that are so simple you feel like you really could have come up with them yourself? Yo is one of those apps.
Launched on April Fools’ Day, it has recently become inexplicably popular — with 2 million messages sent over just the past month. If you haven’t used it, the idea behind it is simple: like Snapchat, you establish a username inside the app and can then send push notifications to friends reading “Yo” and featuring audio of a voice saying the same thing. Oh, and did I mention that it’s creator has just raised $1.2 million in funding?
Cult animated faves the Powerpuff Girls are back in a new iOS game, published by Cartoon Network in association with JoyJoy and Fluid SE developers RadianGames.
Called Powerpuff Girls: Defenders of Townsville, the game sees the Powerpuff Girls blasted with evil simian nemesis Mojo Jojo’s Disremember Gun, which leads to them forgetting how to use their superpowers. In a Metroidvania/Castleroid-style adventure shooter, you start out playing as Buttercup, before rescuing Blossom and Bubbles. Once the heroic trio is united, you get to use each of their superpowers to battle Mojo Jojo’s evil robots, and unlock and discover new areas.
eBay has expanded its Sell For Me service — in which valets will sell your stuff on eBay in exchange for a 30% commission — with the launch of a great new app called eBay Valet.
The process of using the app is very straightforward. Simply snap a picture of the item you want to sell, then enter (or speak) a description of it. Within 30 minutes, your “valet” will then respond with a valuation range. If you have a box to hand, eBay will then send you a shipping label. If not, the company will mail you out a free, prepaid box instead.
You’re then able to log onto eBay.com to watch the sale take place under your valet’s account. Once this process is finished, you get to keep 70% of the profits — which are deposited to your PayPal account.
And lo did news of the yonder Age of Empires game for iOS continue to flow!
Known as Age of Empires: World Domination, this is the forthcoming expansion of the award-winning (and much loved) Age of Empires series, which allows players to create an empire by pitting civilizations against one another. Developed by KLabGames, we’re promised a game that maintains the focus on strategy and tactics but is designed specifically for the touch gestures of an iOS device.
Facebook’s new Slingshot app takes aim at Snapchat by putting a new spin on photo-messaging. Instead of simply relying on disappearing pictures and videos, Slingshot promotes back-and-forth conversations.
How does it work? You must unlock “slings” you receive before you can look at them. You do this by sending your own sling to the sender. See how the just-released Slingshot app works in today’s quick-look video.
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Your smartphone is an increasingly important battlefield in the ongoing war of the gaming consoles. Companion iOS apps for Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One aim to enhance the way you interact with your gaming system. These apps let you access your gaming achievements on the go, communicate with friends and even use your iOS device as a remote for your console.
In today’s video, we’ll give you a look at how the PlayStation and Xbox One SmartGlass apps compare.
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If you’re anything like me it can be difficult to stay on top of all of your different social media accounts, which is why Buffer is so useful as a tool — since it allows you to share to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and App.net all from inside one place. In addition it lets you control the scheduling of these posts, while getting analytics for each social update you share, whether this means clicks, retweets, likes, shares, mentions, and so on.
Buffer received its last refresh just one month ago — adding support for two-factor authentication and improved accessibility — but its latest update is well worth a look, adding “feeds” and “groups” features, along with improved navigation.
Emojing has already replaced texting as the go-to zero-effort communication tool of youngsters everywhere, and all those emoji version of popular songs and TV shows are about a lot more elaborate thanks to huge unicode update.
250 new emoji have been added to unicode standard 7.0 that is used to standardize the presentation of text across different platforms like iOS, Android, and Windows, and while it’s still up to software makers to actually implement the new standards, you can expect them to land on iOS pretty soon.
With the announcement of its Health app (and associated API) for iOS 8, Apple is making no secret of its plans to enter the health and fitness-tracking market. Capitalizing on this hype, WebMD has just updated its flagship iOS app to target health and fitness enthusiasts in a new program called Healthy Target.
A brand new section of the popular healthcare app, Healthy Target helps you to keep in top form, and on top of your various health-related goals, by setting specific targets and then tracking your progress as you work toward them. To do this, the app lets users connect their favorite activity tracker, wireless scale, or glucometer to automatically track sleep, weight, and blood sugar levels.
Having recently clarified its position on virtual currencies in the App Store (hint: Apple doesn’t hate them as much as you thought it did!), we’re starting to see certain iOS apps which deal in Bitcoin being approved for availability in the App Store again.
One of the first is CoinPocket, an app which allows users to send and receive Bitcoin, as well as collect private keys into a single spot and encrypt them. It’s very similar to Blockchain and Coinbase: two Bitcoin wallet apps which were previously given the boot by Apple.
If you use Twitter a lot on your iPhone, you’ve probably heard of the Tweetbot app, a popular iOS Twitter client that was recently redesigned from the ground up for iOS 7.
Now in its third incarnation, Tweetbot 3 has just received a big update, adding a fistful of handy new features — including support for posting and viewing multiple images (although Tweetbot’s creators point out that these won’t show up on streaming timelines until Twitter adds support).
The app update also means that image detail views show the corresponding tweet when relevant, while Instagram videos are marked with a new “play” icon to make the user interface clearer.
Pikichat could be the next Snapchat. The idea behind the new photo app is ingeniously straightforward: Simply take a picture and then share it among a group of family members or friends. Like Snapchat, the picture will only stay up for a limited amount of time, but unlike Snapchat it will remain there until it is replaced by a new image.
Every time a person sends a new photo, it replaces the existing one. Group conversations take the form of the most recent photo added, with everyone possessing the ability to draw on the photo or add comments.
You can now share your crazy World Cup goal celebrations with your friends via Facebook Messenger for iPhone. A new update rolling out today introduces the ability to record and send 15-second video clips without ever having to leave the app.
“Meanwhile, back in the dungeons beneath Cult of Mac headquarters, an Apple-loving blogger tested out a new app…”
If you’re a fan of comic books (and, let’s face it, who isn’t?) the idea of transforming your personal photo gallery into a comic strip, complete with captions and onomatopoeic sound effects, is pretty tantalizing.
That’s the concept behind Juicy Bits’ comic-style photo-editing app Halftone 2, which has just received an exciting update, adding support for video that lets you turn your comic into a full-motion slideshow, complete with customized camera movement, sound effects, and music score.
iOS 8 packs in a bunch of great new photo features, in both the Camera app and the Photos app. You now get a lot more control over your photography at the front end, with manual exposure and even a time-lapse mode, and you can edit and find your photos with a little more precision than before.
iOS 8 is still a few months out, but you don’t have to wait: Use these currently available apps to add all these new functions to your iPhone (or iPad) today.