Heading up this week’s must-have iOS games roundup is a brand new Ghostbusters game that promises to be the best augmented reality game in the App Store. We also have a great online strategy game in the form of Tiny War XD, Activision’s legendary Pitfall!, and more.
Even with the iPad eating away at the time we spend in front of the bigger screens — in my case, the iPad is my screen of choice when watching Netflixed TV shows — cable subscriptions still have a ton of appeal. Want to watch the Olympics live on your iPad via the official NBC app? You’ll need a cable subscription; and then there are all the recent great cable shows: Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, etc.
But you’ll need a guide to sort through the mire, and that’s where the i.TV app and your trusty iPad or iPhone comes in.
Don’t you hate it when you start to download a song file, or a podcast, or an app and it just sits there, mocking you? When the little progress bar just refuses to move, no matter how you scream at the front of your magical iOS device? Yeah, me, too.
One way to fix this problem with apps is to tap the icon to stop the download, and then tap it again to resume the download. If that doesn’t work (and it won’t with a media download), then you’re not out of luck. There is another way.
There are many premium content services that use DRM to limit where and how you can watch videos. iOS apps like HBOGO, DirecTV, and Amazon Instant Video will all let you watch content on your device, but you’re blocked from streaming via AirPlay or through an HDMI cable. We know, it’s silly. It’s all because of the contacts and licensing deals Hollywood makes with digital distributors.
What if there was a world in which no DRM could keep your content shackled to an iOS device? A new jailbreak tweak makes it possible to stream what you’re watching—no matter what the source—to your TV through the magic of AirPlay.
Panasonic’s new ruggedized SD cards are neat and all, protecting your precious photos from water, weather, impacts and even super-strong magnets (like the one used by Wil E. Coyote to try to catch the Road Runner) and X-rays. But, like Steve Rogers throwing himself upon a grenade in the Captain America movie, it will also sacrifice itself in order to save your data.
Remember that Chinesee teen last year who sold his kidney for an iPad 2? He wasn’t the only one: earlier this year, another Chinese teen named Wang swapped his kidney for an iPhone and iPad. Now the butchers who operated on him are in court, awaiting their verdicts.
We’ve always been curious about just how Samsung managed to sell 2million Galaxy Tabs. I mean, do you actually know anyone that bought one? Have you seen one in the wild? Because we haven’t. Yet in 2010 Samsung reported that they had shipped over 2 million units.
Turns out that there’s a huge discrepancy over the way Samsung reports “units shipped” and the amount of units that were actually sold. In some new court documents for the Apple vs Samsung trial, both companies had to reveal their sales figures for each device in the case. Turns out that Samsung really only sold 262,000 Galaxy Tabs in 2010, and their other sales figures were hugely disappointing as well compared to the iPad.
Downcast, my favorite podcatching app, has added a rather handy new feature with its latest update. Now it can automatically check for new podcasts when you arrive in a certain location. This clever use of iOS’ geofencing tech was first used by Instagram to grab unread articles, but now works for podcasts, too.
The summer break is winding up and many teachers are getting ready to head back to work for another school year (and many IT staffers in those schools are trying to make sure everything’s ready when those teachers return). Over the past several months, many schools and their IT departments have been struggling to keep spending down while also delivering a 21st century learning environment. That discussion has largely focused on how to most cost effectively deploy iPads, new MacBooks, and other technology systems.
One approach to that dilemma is moving away from traditional software purchasing and towards enterprise cloud solutions. That approach may give schools more control over expenditures and offer other advantages, but it also has downsides including the potential to raise costs and degrade the education experience.
My experience of recording music is limited to bouncing down bedroom guitar recordings to free up tracks on a cassette-based Tascam Portastudio, way back in the 1980s. So anything that records 24 tracks simultaneously onto a tiny iPad seems astounding to me. That is costs just $40 makes it even crazier. We’re talking about the new musicians’ iFriend, Auria.
Turborilla, the developers behind Mad Skills Motocross — of the best side-scrolling racing games on iOS — has released its first teaser trailer for Mad Skills BMX, which is coming to iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on August 16. The clip shows off the upcoming title’s gameplay, and offers a hilarious little cartoon alongside it.
I featured UX Write in one of my must-have apps roundups when it first hit the App Store, because it’s one of the best word processors available on iOS. It has now received its first update, and it’s a fairly major one, introducing support for external keyboards, autosave, dictation on supported devices, and more.
The previously lackluster WordPress iOS app has been updated with a host of new features and improvements that make it more appealing to power users. The new version also features a design overhaul and the sidebar menu interface seen in other popular apps like Facebook and Path.
It seems that making your latest product look exactly like the market leader isn’t always the fastest route to success. As Samsung found when it aired its first commercial for the Galaxy Tab 10.1, the device is so similar to the iPad that half of TV viewers thought it was an Apple product. Only 16% realized it was made by Samsung.
Remember the 1982 Activision classic Pitfall! from the Atari 2600? It’s probably been a while since you played it, but that’s about to change. The jungle-crawler has been revamped and relaunched on iOS — 30 years after its first debut — promising thrilling new environments and twists on the classic gameplay that will “appeal to fans of all generations.”
Apple could be making a mistake if it releases a smaller “iPad mini” alongside the new iPhone this fall, because according to a recent survey conducted by a leading coupon code site, nearly 80% of Americans will shun the tiny tablet in favor of the smartphone.
There are lots of apps out there that let you manage your data usage, but My Data Manager amazes. It works on both the iPhone and iPad, and has a feature set that’d make it a great deal even at $5 — let alone at the $0 it actually costs.
Apple and Google haven’t exactly been been on the best of terms in recent years. The stock YouTube iOS app disappearing is a more recent example of the bad blood between the two companies. Google tried its best to sherlock Apple’s 3D technology in the iOS 6 Maps app, and many moves Apple and Google make can be seen as direct outcomes of the bad blood Steve Jobs spoke of when he vowed to wage thermonuclear war on Android.
Apple and Google may hate each other, but that doesn’t mean they still don’t compete in the same markets. Today Google lifted the curtain on a major update that’s coming to its iOS Search app. The new version of the app will feature smart, contextual voice recognition that clearly mimics Apple’s own digital assistant, Siri.
Since the beginning of the 2012 London Olympics last month, Apple has been giving away a rotating set of 4 Great Britain-themed lapel pins each day. This isn’t a new thing for Apple, as the company gave out similar Canadian-themed pins during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
For the Olympics this year, the pins are tiny black and white iPhones and iPads. Cult of Mac reader Andrew Wingert sent in some shots of Apple’s full pin set.
You need to read more. It’s just a fact. Everyone could stand to read a few more books a year and watch a few less GIFs on the internet. Isn’t that why you bought your iPad? Because you said you’d read more if you had an “eReader”? No? Well you should anyway.
To inject your life with more literature you’ll need to buy a lot of books. They’re not cheap, and they kind of suck to buy because, depending on which digital store you buy them from, they’re laden with DRM. Don’t let that get you down though because there’s some really great news today on the eBook front. Storybundle.com just launched their cool new website, and it’s pretty much the neatest thing to happen to eBooks this year.
Yesterday, if I had suffered a grievous accident involving some kind of heavy farm machinery, and my fingers were mangled to leave only a single, stubby nubbin where previously I had sported ten beautifully slender digits, I’d still have been able to count the entirety of half-decent iPad blogging apps on one hand.
Today, though, I’d have to start counting on my toes, as Black Pixel software, the company behind Apple award-winning app Versions, had launched Posts, and you might like to call it the Reeder of blog publishing.
The WanderFolio is a new iPad case from Speck that combines a form-fitting cradle with a sleek, faux leather cover. Its special feature is that its front cover opens up to reveal a series of six “hideaway” pockets, designed to house your documents, cash, and credit cards while you’re on the go.
The number of personally-owned iPads, iPhones, and other mobile devices that professionals bring into office is expected to more than double between now and 2014. That means the businesses that have so far been lax about considering or planning an official bring your own device (BYOD) program and/or establishing security policies around BYOD are going to need to play catch up – and they’ll need to get started as soon as possible.
Football season is just around the corner and the iPad is set to become a fixture for both college and pro teams. As we noted earlier in the year, a handful of NFL teams made the switch to iPad-based playbooks at the start of last season and more are making the switch this year. In addition to NFL teams, several colleges have announced that they are transitioning to the iPad playbook model as well.
If you’re been waiting to get the new iPad from the refurbished section of Apple’s Online Store in an effort to save some cash, then today is your lucky day. The latest device, which is the first and only iPad to get a high-resolution Retina display, is now available with $50 off.