What happens if you give ten strangers the same piece of paper to draw on at the same time? Let’s up the stakes. Let’s make that paper a blank iPad screen, and let’s give all the “artists” the anonymity of the internet. This app exists, and it’s called uDraw HD.
When Apple announced the original iPhone back in 2007, Google’s first Android handset wasn’t too far behind. The search giant got a compelling iOS alternative out of the gate before anyone else, and it’s been a head-to-head battle between the two platforms ever since. But how was Android able to follow the iPhone so quickly?
Well, that’s fairly obvious to most. You see, Google chairman Eric Schmidt was an Apple board member when the Cupertino company was developing the iPhone, and so he got an inside look at the device before anyone else. Little did Apple know that Schmidt would use what he saw inside Apple’s headquarters to create the iPhone’s biggest competitor.
With the iPad, however, it was a different story. That was years ahead of everything else, and not even Google had a slate ready to do battle when the iPad launched in 2010. Why? Because Steve Jobs made sure Schmidt knew nothing about the iPad before its debut.
A great new photography app, which allows you to add more than 100 stunning effects to your images, is kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup. It’s accompanied by Giftly, a clever app for sending all kinds of gifts; a new note-taking app called Scrapnote; and a great new update to Adobe Photoshop Touch for iPad.
Kicking off this week’s must-have games roundup is Wild Blood, Gameloft’s first game to be built upon the impressive Unreal Engine, which lets you live out the story of Sir Lancelot. There’s also a new title from Marvel, the awesome sequel to VS. Racing, and Square Enix’s latest Final Fantasy title.
This last weekend at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX), I spent time with the developers at Wizards of the Coast, the creators of Magic: The Gathering, to talk about their latest Magic: The Gathering expansion, due out on iOS, PC, and console, Return To Ravnica. They sat me down in the nice room behind the Magic and Dungeons and Dragons booth for some hands-on time with the expansion, which takes players to a new plane in the Magic: The Gathering Universe, Ravnica.
The expansion comes with new single player opponents, each with their own deck and playstyle. As in the original iOS version of Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013, once you beat one of the computer enemies, you unlock their card deck to play in your own battles with the online multiplayer.
Gadgets with handles are dorky as hell: just ask anyone who owned one of the original Toilet-Seat iBooks about the teasing they endured. But handles are also, well, dead handy – just ask those same iBook owners.
The folks at Native Union have tried to mitigate the inherent dorkiness of the Gripster iPad case by picturing it being held by hot, hot models in the product photos. The usefulness, though, needs no disguise or apologies.
There’s a fantastic episode of Pendleton Ward’s postapocalyptic candy land show Adventure Time in which Fin the last human and Jake, his magical dog companion, play a game called Card Wars which is like a futuristic version of Magic: The Gathering matched with the Holochess game in Star Wars.
I’ve always wished Magic was played like that — by placing real cards down on a sort of holographic desktop to see the creatures come alive and do battle right before my eyes — but it never occurred to me that my iPad could already do something like that. But here comes Nuko Cards to prove me wrong.
If you’re in the market for a tablet, and you don’t mind adopting Google’s Android platform, then the choice available to you right now is incredible. Amazon alone announced a pair of new Kindle Fire HD tablets on Thursday that feature an impressive selection of specifications, with 7- and 8.9-inch displays, that are priced at $199 and $299 respectively.
But despite those tiny price tags, it’s unlikely Amazon’s tablets will prove to be a more attractive choice than the iPad for most. Analysts are confident that Apple’s device will remain the market leader, particularly with a rumored iPad mini on its way in October.
You may have played any one of a half-dozen similar location-based games on the App Store, from PerBlue’s Parallel Mafia and Parallel Kingdom to Self Aware’s Fleck, but you’ve never seen a location-based game like Life Is Magic before.
At today’s Amazon event, Jeff Bezos dropped some whoppers on the industry: not only an upgraded Kindle Fire, but the Kindle Fire HD, a mother of a tablet that has a Retina-caliber display, serious horsepower, and a super low price starting at just $199 for the 7-inch model, $299 for the 8.9-inch model and $499 for a 32GB 8.9-inch model with LTE. Without a doubt, it’s clear Amazon is gunning for the iPad and the upcoming iPad mini, but how do the new Kindle Fires really stack up?
Below, you’ll find a chart comparing the third-gen iPad, rumored iPad mini, Kindle Fires and (just for comparison’s sake) the Galaxy Nexus 7, spec-by-spec. Please be aware that this chart is still in flux, and is based in the case of the iPad mini on rumors, and in the case of the new Kindle Fires on incomplete information which we have supplemented with reasonable speculation. We will be updating the chart as we get new information about the exact specs of Amazon’s new Kindle Fires, but for right now, we think this is a good resource in how all of these tablets compare against one another.
Amazon is the only other company in the world that has a great ecosystem that might be able to compete with Apple’s. The Kindle Fire was a cute little tablet, but it definitely wasn’t an iPad Killer or even an iPad Competitor, but Amazon is looking to change that with the Kindle Fire HD.
Amazon’s keynote has just gotten underway where CEO Jeff Bezos is unveiling some new Kindles. Before anything was revealed though, Bezos took a jab at other Android tablets and basically said they suck.
“Customers are smart. Last year, there were more than two dozen Android tablets launched into the marketplace, and nobody bought ’em. Why? Because they’re gadgets, and people don’t want gadgets anymore. They want services that improve over time. They want services that improve every day, every week, and every month.”
Whether you love her delicious looking meat dresses or not, there’s no denying that Lady Gaga is one of the biggest names in music right now with a bevy of singles that have launched her into superstardom.
Not one to rest on her laurels, Lady Gaga wants to do something new with her next album that she’s working on. Earlier today Lady Gaga revealed that her next Album, Artpop, won’t just be a couple of tracks burnt onto a cd, but it will be a “completely interactive” experience because she will be releasing it as an iPhone and iPad app.
It seems so simple: Press harder, get a thicker, darker line. But drawing on the iPad has been – in pressure sensitivity terms at least – little better than using an Etch-a-Sketch. Now, at last, we’re seeing the first pressure-sensitive styluses for the iPad. Very, very soon you’ll be able to buy the new Bluetooth 4 Pogo Connect for your iPad 3.
First, AntiSec leaked a ton of iPhone and iPad UDIDs to the public, claiming they hacked them off an FBI laptop. The FBI responded and said there was no way the UDIDs came from them. Then Apple jumped in and said that they totally didn’t give anyone 12million UDIDs. But 12million UDIDs were still leaked and people are still wondering how the heck AntiSec got them.
A few theories have been bouncing around the web this morning, but the most plausible theory of how AntiSec got all the UDIDs is that a network of free apps were keeping track of UDIDs and AntiSec hacked them off the publisher’s laptop.
I have been looking for a decent scrapbook app for the iPad for quite some time. So I was pretty happy yesterday when I saw the brand-new Scrapnote, a snippet-organizing app which pulls in photos, videos, text, scribbles, handwriting and even Evernote notes, all into slick, handsome and easy-to-edit notebooks.
If you have been looking for a research tool, or a way to put together travel journals, diaries or – really – anything involving words, pictures and snippets of information, you should probably go and download Scapnote right now.
Apple seeded another new OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2 build to registered developers through the Apple Dev Center. This one, with build number 12C35, comes just one week after the last build, suggesting Apple is moving quickly to bring this update to the public. Of course, this is the update that will bring Facebook integration to the Mac.
The NFL season kicks off tonight with a game that pits the New York Giants – last season’s champions – against the Dallas Cowboys. For many teams, this season also marks the first use of iPads instead of the traditional paper playbooks. A handful of teams pioneered the iPad as a complete replacement for playbooks last year. Although the iPad was only used as a playbook replacement by a few teams last year, it was more broadly used as a training tool and a companion to traditional playbooks. This year many more teams are investing in the iPad as a digital playbook and a player training solution as well as a way for coaching staff to communicate more directly and effectively with players.
There’s certainly a cool factor that any technology and football fan will appreciate. There’s also a lot that many businesses can learn from the NFL teams about how the iPad can be secured, managed, and used in almost any professional context.
The Phiaton PS 210 BTNC ($129) earphones—yes, they named them all that—have all the same functionality as your white Apple earbuds; you can chat with ’em, listen to tunes with ’em, even control your iPhone with ’em. But unlike your white-wired buds, they do all that wirelessly via Bluetooth, and include some sparkly noise-canceling technology that deliver audio to your ears sans a world of ambient sounds.
Replacing your PC with an iPad for school makes sense for a lot of reasons, and it will save you money on textbooks over the longrun.
Even though PC manufacturers like Dell refuse to believe the Post-PC Revolution is already here, and that people want tablets more than desktops, evidence is already showing that students and schools are buying iPads instead of PCs.
President Obama is an Apple user through and through. He answers Reddit questions from a MacBook, got an early iPad from Steve Jobs himself, and Rush Limbaugh even thinks Obama hacked Siri just to mess with him.
But just because you’re the leader of the Free World doesn’t mean you’re not susceptible to AntiSec hacks too. The UDID for President Obama’s iPad may or may not have been among the more than 1 million UDIDs the AntiSec leaked this morning from the FBI’s databases.
Facebook integration for iOS 6 will be launching in a few weeks along side the iPhone 5, which is pretty cool because now you’ll be able to share photos, update your status, or even like songs without having to open up the crappy Facebook app.
The only drawback for iOS 6’s Facebook integration is that Facebook is using it to push their “@facebook.com” email addresses to everyone. What it means is that even though no one uses their @facebook.com address or know they exist, your address book is going to be infested with them.
It’s Labor Day in the U.S.A. which means you’re probably all hanging out by the pool, barbecuing, drinking, and doing stupid stuff as a way to celebrate the economic and social contributions of workers in the past. It doesn’t really make sense, but who cares.
When you get back to work tomorrow though, break time is over. To help you get back into the swing off things, we’ve rounded up the 10 best productivity apps for iOS.
Kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup is a new music app called MUSaIC, that promises to help you rediscover your all those albums you forgot you had. We’ve also got a great new photography app called Etchings, which turns your photos into etched illustrations; a big update to Dolphin, one of my favorite third-party browsers on iOS; and more.
Trip Chowdhry, the Managing Director of Equity Research at Global Equities Research, told a financial writer a few months ago that Apple’s biggest challenge without founder Steve Jobs is that Apple lacks a “unified force.” In order to become unified again, Apple would need a “supernatural person” overseeing things.
But according to Thai Buddhists, they may have exactly that — the reincarnated spirit of Steve Jobs himself, who they say is living in a “mystical glass palace hovering above his old office at Apple’s Cupertino, California headquarters,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
I’ll tell you in this post more about Jobs’ so-called reincarnation, and also about several ghosts caught haunting various Apple products. (And I’m not talking about problems with the MacBook Pro Retina screens.)
Here’s all the spooky stuff that’s going on.