iOS - page 20

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.

Yahoo’s iOS Flickr client got a revamp this morning, adding several handy features — including new options related to sharing, tagging, and describing your photo albums.

Users now have the ability to share their albums via Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter, in addition to Mail and SMS. The update also provides users with the chance to add and edit both tags and descriptions of their photos from inside the app.

Rovio has officially launched its latest Angry Birds game, Angry Birds Epic, for iOS devices worldwide.

Unlike previous Angry Birds sequels which have flapped their wings since the original game flew into the App Store back in 2009, Angry Birds Epic takes the form of a fantasy RPG starring both the Angry Birds and the Bad Piggies. The game soft-launched in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand back in March, but today marks the first time gamers from across the globe can get their hands on it, too.

Unless you’re a retired British gangster gone to seed in the Costa del Sol, chances are that as a man you don’t wear chunky rings on a frequent basis. Nor, as a member of the less-fair sex, have I had the experience of missing a phone call or text message because my iPhone was buried somewhere at the bottom of my handbag.

I do, however, appreciate that neither of these are necessarily true for female readers of Cult of Mac — and that Ringly is therefore not necessarily a product aimed at me.

Ringly is a startup that creates smart rings offering customizable Bluetooth notifications, with different-colored LED lights and vibration patterns for different types of alerts. It’s designed to be a functional but also stylish notification system that connects to your iPhone via Bluetooth LE. Notifications can be tweaked on a user-by-user basis, so that it might be possible to have a red light signal an urgent email or phone call, while a blue light could notify you of, say, a retweet or a FarmVille notification.

Last month, a number of Apple users in Australia woke up to find that their iOS devices had been locked by an “Oleg Pliss,” and that they needed to pay a ransom if they wanted to continue using them. While a few people thought iCloud could have been hacked, Apple denied those rumors.

Now it seems that the hackers involved with the ransom demands have been detailed by authorities in Russia, according to a new report from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Aged 17 and 23, the alleged hackers are both residents of the Southern Administrative District of Moscow, and one has been previously tried for a similar case.

The App Store is constantly evolving as both Apple and individual developers struggle to get the most out of the experience as possible. The latest change in this vein appears to involve App Store moderators cracking down on apps which incentivize or reward users for enaging in a range of activities — many related to advertising.

For an example of what we mean, consider a game which gives users more lives when they die in exchange for sharing to Facebook. Several mobile apps have recently been rejected for using these techniques, alongside offering virtual currency or additional game play for asking viewers to watch video “app trailers.”

Stealth survival game République can be pretty intense at times. For players who just want to experience the story and spend time exploring the game’s beautifully rendered environments, however, there’s a new update available which adds an easier “Story Mode” for just that purpose.

Launched in the App Store back in December last year, République features an episodic type of gameplay which sees protagonist Hope fight back against an “an oppressive totalitarian state” (making it pretty appropriate imagery for Apple.) Unlike games such as the tremendous GTA: San Andreas port, République is a console-worthy game especially designed specifically for the touchscreen environment of the iOS platform.

Certainly, it’s an immersive experience, and that doesn’t change with the game’s Story Mode, which simply makes the title more accessible to less experienced players.

Last week’s WWDC demonstrated how Apple devices can communicate with one another to make life easier for users. Well, the same holds true for games which can take advantage of the interactivity between, say, the built-in motion sensors of an iPhone and the viewing experience offered of Apple TV to replicate the experience of a full-on games consoles like the Nintendo Wii.

That’s the idea behind Rolocule Games’ innovative new game Dance Party, which is powered by something called “rolomotion” — the winner of the Silver Edison Award for best innovation in the Entertainment category at the recent 2014 Edison Awards in San Francisco. Rolomotion is a technology which precisely tracks the various movements made by an iPhone and allows users to play games using natural motion gestures on television using a combination of Apple’s smartphone and the Apple TV.

Gameloft’s previous Spider-Man games have been pretty fun, even if they’ve also been plagued by enough in-app purchases to well and truly set off our spider-sense (or, at least, overdraft fee alerts). With E3 coming up next week, Gameloft and Marvel have announced a brand new Spider-Man game called Spider-Man Unlimited, based on the Marvel comic of the same name.

This game is set to take the character of Spider-Man and place him into an endless runner scenario, with the developers promising that:

Brothers Denis and Davor Mikan make it look easy. They created a memorable and graphically beautiful puzzler called Blek that rocketed to the top of the paid game chart in the iOS App Store, making them millions in the process. Deceptively simple — with a nod to 60s pop art — the game caught the attention of Apple, too, which recently handed them a Design Award in recognition.

“It may sound simple, but it’s the Apple kind of simplicity that actually takes a lot of work,” Denis Mikan says of the game he co-created.

“It may sound simple, but it’s the Apple kind of simplicity that actually takes a lot of work.”

The idea behind Blek is ingeniously straightforward. At its simplest you draw a line on screen, and then this line repeats itself over and over until it encounters a black dot, or goes outside of the screen borders and resets. Draw the line slowly and it moves slowly, draw it fast and it moves fast. Your aim is to clear the screen of colored dots without accidentally touching a black one. But from small acorns grow mighty oaks, and since Blek arrived in the App Store a few months ago it has received close to a million downloads at $2.99 each.

Still reeling from their breakout success, Mikan told us about Blek‘s unlikely odyssey from the brothers’ hometown of Vienna, Austria, into the hearts of iOS gamers around the world. Befitting the game they brought into the world, their journey was hardly a straight line.

Although we’re living through something of a golden age for original iOS games (think Monument Valley and Leo’s Fortune), it’s also a great time for iPhone gamers because we’re seeing ports of so many classic games making their way into the App Store. The latest is Capcom’s tremendous 2008 video game Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, which has just been announced as being set to arrive on iOS in the near future.

Promising a near-exact replica of the PSP title, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite will nonetheless optimize the monster-slaying experience for touch controls, as well as offering support for MFi (Made for iPhone) gamepads and improved graphics. In addition there’s set to be an online multiplayer mode, which is a big part of the game’s appeal.

Less than two months after reinventing the Hitman franchise with the superb puzzler Hitman GO, developers Square Enix Montreal have announced that they’re set to take another crack at a mobile version of Hitman with the upcoming Hitman: Sniper.

This game will take a more classic approach to the stealth-based murder-heavy series by being a game about sniping, similar to the 2012 console game Hitman: Sniper Challenge, which was tied into the release of Hitman: Absolution. Levels in Hitman: Sniper will reportedly feature multiple solutions, with leaderboards that will make the whole thing “massively competitive.”

If you’ve already heard enough about Swift, and are looking for another language to sink your learning-teeth into, how about taking up Dothraki?

The fictitious Game of Thrones language — as spoken by the late badass Khal Drogo and Daenerys Targaryen — is the basis of a forthcoming iOS app, and accompanying book, CD, and online learning course, set to arrive later this year. Costing $3.99, the app is described as “your Dothraki learning experience to go” and features 15 thematic flashcard decks with more than 200 Dothraki vocabulary words, a conversational dialogue, a pronunciation guide, a simplified grammar summary, and interactive games testing your vocabulary knowledge.

Microsoft has issued a system update to Xbox One which includes support for external storage, the ability for players to use real names on Xbox Live, and superior SmartGlass integration. To coincide with this, the company has also dropped a major update to Xbox One SmartGlass, its official iOS companion app of the latest generation of its video game console.

The update redesigns the Home section to make it more engaging for players. It additionally lets you see all your TV and app channels in the OneGuide, as well as giving you the ability to control your cable or satellite box and TV with a brand new universal remote control feature.

One of Steve Jobs’ biggest complaints about smartphones in the days before Apple created the iPhone was that they all had keyboards which were there whether or not you wanted them. Much the same has previously been true of previous iOS gamepads — which have either been clip-on phone cases in style, or else wireless controllers you need to carry around with you if you want to use them.

It’s this problem that Razer is attempting to solve with its new Junglecat accessory. Snapping onto your iPhone, the Razer Junglecat adds a slide-out gamepad that connects to your mobile device by way of the lighting port. While it adds a bit of heft to your ultra-thin iPhone (and obviously means that your lightning port remains occupied), it does mean that the gamepad itself can remain safely tucked away until you feel like using it.

Hours before WWDC kicks off, a series of blurry leaked photos appear to show Apple’s next generation operating system, OS X 10.10 Yosemite, in action.

Two different sources of photos have been posted online: the first on the Reddit Mac community by a poster using a throwaway account, who claimed to have taken the photos himself at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino. These images have since been deleted.

Shortly after Twitter user UI designer Doney den Ouden posted another image, citing a “reliable anonymous source.”

Assuming that the photos are genuine, they reveal several interesting changes in the look and feel of the OS — making it far closer resemble iOS. For instance, there is now a Control Center, along with a slightly rejigged Safari, with larger buttons for bookmarks and frequently visited sites, similar to the version of Safari found on the iPad.

For any Apple coder, attending the annual Worldwide Developers Conference is a coveted opportunity. But for the young recipients of WWDC 2014 Student Scholarships, a free ticket to the event means more than an adventure in geekery; it’s the crowning achievement of their blossoming careers.

Take Shaan Singh, a 14-year-old developer and designer whose iPhone finance app Budgetize helped him bag a scholarship to WWDC, a prize that’s something like winning a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

“It’s a big honor for me to be selected because I made an app that I feel was creative and smart, and Apple thinks so too,” he told Cult of Mac. “I’ve always admired Apple’s design, and I’m excited that they like mine too.”

If you’re a fan of Disney’s Oscar-winning animated smash hit Frozen, you may experience excited chills at the news that you can now sing along to all your favorite songs from the movie on your iPad using the new Disney Karaoke: Frozen app.

As apps go, it’s pretty darn (n)ice, with nine songs and music videos from the film on which you can either listen to the original vocal performances, or mute the voices to sing by yourself.

One of the biggest knocks people tend to make at the iPhone is its battery life. While we all have busy lives, it’s imperative for our devices to last the long haul with us. In today’s how-to find out how to save more of your iPhone battery with just five quick and easy tips.

Take a look at the video to see what to do.

Readdle today rolled out its biggest update yet for PDF Expert 5, one of the finest PDF editing apps for iOS. It adds support for continuous scrolling and calculations, improves performance, and makes PDF Expert a universal app — so you only have to buy it once to use it on both iPhone and iPad.

Write, the distraction-free note-taking tool that’s been a great success on iOS, is ready to make writing easier on your Mac.

Whether you’re a student, a blogger, a novelist, or simply too forgetful to remember what you need to pack your holiday, Write’s incredibly simple design and clutter-free user interface can make writing a more enjoyable experience. But don’t let its minimal beauty fool you — Write is packed with handy features.