Got a tough, possibly life-changing ethical decision to make? Why not make your iPhone part of the decision-making process?
A recently released app called Ethical Decision Making lets you work through your options by prompting you to identify the people who have a stake in your decision, consider your options through five different ethical perspectives, weigh different approaches, and score and rank potential decisions.
When last summer solstice we heard tell of the legend that Microsoft was planning to bring ye olde strategy franchise Age of Empires to iOS, we did rejoice greatly.
Today scouts from the Pacific Northwest (read: Redmond, WA) have traveled to bring tidings, and moving pictures, of the game known as Age of Empires: World Domination.
Running out of space on your phone? Worried about losing those irreplaceable photos and videos? Pogoplug has your back…and your backup.
Through this Cult of Mac Deals offer you’ll get Pogoplug, which gives you unlimited storage on your phone, tablet and computer for one year. That means you’ll have access to your files anytime and anywhere – and all for just $39.
The success of The Simpsons: Tapped Out meant it was only a matter of time before Family Guy got similar mobile game treatment.
First announced back in December, today marks the arrival of Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff in the App Store.
A joint venture between Fox and TinyCo studios, the game lets you help Peter Griffin and the rest of the Quahog residents to rebuild their city after it’s destroyed.
Expect lots of fan service, in the form of regular Family Guy characters and reprised gags from previous episodes (Mermaid Peter, Rambo Lois, and the Petercopter, for instance.)
If you’re a Klout user, you’ve probably noticed the service’s huge switch in February: Instead of simply measuring your social-media popularity and throwing you free goodies when you’re ranked up, Klout now actively guides you on your way to Internet stardom by providing more insight and nudging you in the right direction through suggested shares.
Today the Klout iOS app followed suit, bringing all the service’s new features to the iPhone in a major update.
Back in the early 1990s there was a series of handheld games consoles made by Japan’s Epoch company. Called Barcode Battlers, they let you enter the numbers from real world barcodes to generate characters, monsters, and power-ups, which could be used as part of in-game battles. Novelty aside, they were never much good, but they were certainly popular — and the idea was intriguing enough that the Barcode Battlers are still remembered today.
Jump forward thirteen-or-so years, and the rear-facing camera used by iOS devices have proven adept at scanning barcodes and using this to access information.
Perfect timing, then, for a game like Barcode Kingdom to come along. The basic premise is pretty much identical to the Barcode Battler: you scan in barcodes to create warriors, weapons, and other items that you can then use in RPG-style battles like the one depicted above. But is it any good?
Popular video-sharing website Vimeo has added another update to its official iOS app.
Up front, the single most prominent update relates to the in-app search feature — something that was initially absent when Vimeo made the jump to iOS 7, then restored but hidden, and now made constantly visible within the app. Since search is of vital importance on video sharing sites, this improvement means that Vimeo users can breathe a sigh of relief.
Looking for a more explosion-filled egg hunt this Easter?
If so, you may want to check out the latest version of popular third-person shooter Respawnables which adds a new Easter Egg Hunt mode, where players must gather as many Easter eggs as they can and collect prizes in doing so.
Facebook has updated its Facebook Pages Manager app, adding several notable improvements.
Pages Manager — for those unfamiliar with it — helps admins connect with their audience and keep up with activity on multiple Pages, all in one place. Users can monitor Page activity using Insights, reply to private messages, and post media.
In addition to the usual bug fixes and performance improvements, the app’s latest update adds new pinning and editing features.
Apple has today announced that this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference will kick off on June 2 at Moscone West in San Francisco. The five-day conference will give us a glimpse at “the future of iOS and OS X,” and the star of the show will almost certainly be iOS 8.
The year might only be three months old but there’s already a contender for ‘most visually striking iOS game of 2014.’
Launched today, Monument Valley looks to combine the gameplay of hit indie game Fez with the brain-twisting art of M.C. Escher.
As can be seen from the above trailer it looks stunningly beautiful, and with developers Ustwo (the team responsible for Whale Trail and Blip Blup) behind it, hopefully the gameplay will be every bit as great. The trailer depicts Princess Ida climbing through landscapes of shifting geometric shapes, optical illusions, and hidden paths — all the while avoiding and outsmarting the enigmatic Crow People.
When Pebble’s last iOS update essentially bricked the smart watch, leaving it capable of only (shock horror) telling the time, we knew that something needed to be done in a hurry.
Fortunately Pebble realized that too, since the company has rushed out a new update for its official iOS app — fixing the bug users had complained about which stopped the Pebble from connecting to an iPhone via Bluetooth.
UpTo’s original take on the iPhone calendar was fairly unusual. the app allowed you to follow the calendars of friends or organizations, whose events then appeared on your calendar; you could the interact withe the events more or less the same way you would a Facebook post: There were likes, comments and a handy “I’m in” to signify attendance.
The problem is, in order for anything with a social twist to work, lots of people need to use it — and based solely off my observations while using the app, that didn’t seem to be the case. Also, some users may have found the app overly complicated.
So now, UpTo has been radically redesigned with a focus on layers instead of social connection. But is it better?
If you’ve ever dreamed of designing that killer mobile or desktop game, Cult of Mac Deals has exactly what you’re looking for.
The Game Developer Bundle features 7 courses and over 30 hours of training that will give you everything you need to create the games you’ve always wanted to make. No matter the platform, no matter the genre of game you want to build, this bundle has you covered. And right now Cult of Mac Deals has The Game Developer Bundle available for 95% off the regular price…only $49!
Pebble Notes, a new iPhone app written by a student for students, puts important information on your wrist by sending your notes to your Pebble.
So many of us rely on the notes we’ve created and stored on our smartphones to get us through the day. We use them to make shopping lists for the supermarket, jot down passwords and codes we’ll need later on, and to help us remember other important information — such as answers for exams.
But if we leave our iPhone at home, they’re no good to us — unless you have Pebble Notes.
Apple has released its latest weekly list of the most downloaded games in the App Store.
Unlike a near-realtime list like the iTunes chart, this list reflects cumulative total downloads over a 7-day period — in this case March 24 to March 30.
Perhaps the most notable inclusions are the success of Papa’s Freezeria To Go and Backflip Madness in the paid charts, and the Threes!-inspired 2048 and Boom Beach in the free charts. Here’s the whole list:
Think sport should be less about good sportsmanship and complex rules, and more about violence?
Clearly developer HooAh agrees on some level, because its upcoming iOS game Bench Clearing re-imagines baseball (a.k.a. “America’s favorite pastime”) as a massive free-for-all battle.
If you’re a big fan of Rdio — after Spotify, the other major streaming music subscription service, which just happens to have much better iOS apps — and you also have a Google Chromecast, good news: Rdio for iOS now supports Google’s streaming HDTV dongle.
Note: This article was originally published in Cult of Mac Magazine, available on the App Store.
Flappy Bird came onto the scene with a bang, ruffling feathers from Hanoi to Hannover. Dong Nguyen, the developer of this seemingly overnight sensation, was as taken aback as the rest of us, evident from his shocking decision to stop offering the game for download as well as his recent decision to bring it back.
Game developers and publishers can only hope to reproduce this kind of crazy success. And each and every one of the people we talked to at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco was eager to share opinions on how Flappy Bird happened, how it might happen again, and why it was such a runaway hit to begin with.
Barrel-inspired jailbreak tweak Cylinder has been updated and listed on Cydia’s BigBoss repo.
The tweak allows users to add animations to their iPhone Home screen. These animations can be created via special Lua scripts — a lightweight, but powerful scripting language — and then layered on top of one another to create customized effects.
Long-time gamers know that nine times out of ten getting excited about a movie tie-in will in end in disappointment. At the same time, the last few years have been pretty good when it comes to comic book titles making their way onto consoles, computers, and mobile devices.
As Cult of Mac’s unabashed comic book and movie fan, I was intrigued to find out which camp Captain America: The Winter Soldier – The Official Game fell into…
It can be hard to hold on to some of your smaller everyday items. With Hone you can breathe easy because you’re just a click away from finding your lost possessions.
You can attach Hone to your keys, wallet, remote control – anything. Then, the small Bluetooth dongle automatically pairs to your iPhone or iPad with Hone’s free iOS app. If you can’t find the object, simply tap the “Find” button and Hone starts to vibrate, alerting you to the location of your cherished object. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for 50% off during this limited time offer – just $29.95.
It’s become a begrudgingly accepted part of the App Store that the moment a popular game appears, the clones roll in with miniscule differences.
While most of us laughed at some of the ridiculous variations that emerged for a popular game like Flappy Bird (Flappy Beard Hipster Quest anyone?), it’s not quite so funny if you’re the developer of the original game in question.
With that in mind, the creators of hit puzzle game Threes recently took to their blog to complain about the growing number of ripoffs that have emerged in the App Store as of late:
Fancy yourself an MC in the making?
AutoRap by Smule, a popular app which transforms regular speech into legit rap, has just been updated to version 2.0 with several significant improvements.
Ahead of its April 4 U.S. theatrical release, Gameloft’s movie tie-in Captain America: The Winter Soldier – The Official Game has arrived in the App Store.
An original adventure co-scripted by Marvel, the game lets you play as Captain America as you lead a S.H.I.E.L.D. Strike Team to take down enemies. The game promises intense combat with plenty of tactical elements, RPG features which let you learn new fighting techniques and upgrade weapons, and an asynchronous multiplayer mode.