While the world has gone crazy over iOS games like Flappy Bird and 2048, it’s inevitable for a newcomer to steal the spotlight. The new app 100 Balls is a simplistic yet challenging new arcade game that has stormed the app charts. Tap to release balls into rotating cups making sure not to leave a cup amiss. How long do you think you can last?
Take a look at the video to see what you think.
Nintendo won’t bring its popular game franchises to iOS, and Apple won’t allow emulators in the App Store. In order to play titles like Super Mario and Zelda on your iPhone, then, you have to look at unofficial alternatives. GBA4iOS was one of the most popular — but after its creators received a DMCA notice from Nintendo this week, it is no more.
The iPhone has hit a new all-time high when it comes to market share in Japan: representing a massive 36.6% of all Japanese smartphones in the first quarter of 2014.
This increase, which is up from last year’s 25.5%, was driven by Apple’s deal with NTT DoCoMo, a.k.a. Japan’s largest carrier. Apple launched the iPhone 5s and 5c with NTT DoCoMo back in September, and sales have been rocketing upwards ever since. Sales have proven so good, in fact, that Apple recently moved Doug Beck, chief of sales for Japan and Korea, over to handle the North American beat — where it is hoped he can apply some of the same sales mojo to increasing U.S. market share.
A new survey, reportedly taken from a sample of 50,000 smartphone users around the world, reveals the reasons consumers made the phone purchasing decisions they did.
According to IDC’s findings, battery life is the number one most important factor when it comes to choosing a smartphone — coming above ease of use, screen size, camera resolution, and touch screen. When asked, almost half of all iPhone owners quizzed named battery life as the main reason for their selecting the device.
The iWatch may be set to mark Apple’s debut into health and fitness tracking, but one company is taking the concept of wearables a step further.
The forthcoming $199 OMsignal shirt promises to be the gym wear of the future — featuring a ton of health sensors sewn into its fabric, which constantly monitor the condition of the wearer. Sensors are capable of tracking heart rate, breathing rate, breathing volume, movement (including steps and cadence), movement intensity, heart rate variability, and calories burned.
“The data is sent via Bluetooth to a specially developed iPhone app, which lets you see all of it in real time,” says Dr. Jesse Slade Shantz, the firm’s Chief Medical Officer. “Your iPhone beams the data up to the cloud, and algorithms we’ve developed then push back various metrics — showing you information about your breathing during workouts, and information like that.”
It’s easy to quickly fill up your camera roll on your iOS device with tons of different photos. While you have photos of different types and categories, creating albums is good to maintain a sort of organization and sanity on your device. In today’s episode of Cult of Mac’s how-to learn how to add new photos to your existing albums and more.
Take a look at the video to see what to do.
This time on The CultCast: No, those rumored new EarPods won’t measure your pulse. Last week’s biggest Apple rumor was a fake made up by a guy on a toilet! Plus, why you shouldn’t expect new hardware at June’s WWDC; iPhone warns you when the NSA wants you for drug trafficking; Apple’s newest executive gets a HUGE payday; Katie Cotton, Apple’s long time PR lead and Steve Jobs confidant, calls it quits; Cupertino will take on Samsung with more Guerrilla-style marketing; and since you asked, we reveal the jobs we’ve always wanted on an all-new Get To Know Your Cultist.
Have a few LOLs while we catch you up on each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin!
Our thanks to Smile Software for supporting this episode! If you haven’t tried TextExpander from Smile software, you’re missing out on one of the most useful apps available for the Mac. With TextExpander, you’ll save time and effort by expanding short abbreviations into frequently-used text and pictures. Try it out yourself for free at smilesoftware.com/cultcast.
Click on for the show notes.
It’s time to turn your living room into a fun-filled recreation room with this iPhone-controlled, missile-firing helicopter.
We’ve seen our share of flying machines, but this iHelicopter is – in terms of ease-of-use and fun factors – one of the best we’ve seen. And we’ve got it for only $9.95 for a limited time!
The best type of charging cable is the one you have on you. So stay prepared and leave that tangled mess behind with ChargeCard.
ChargeCard is your iPhone lightning cable, shaped like a credit card. It’s designed to fit into your wallet so you’ll always have a charging/sync cable on hand. And Cult of Mac Deals has it available for just $24.99 for a limited time.
Nokia’s incredible PureView camera technology is one of the reasons why so many Android users were desperate to see the Finnish firm ditch Windows Phone and bring Google’s platform to its flagship smartphones instead — and you could soon see the same technology in future iPhones.
Apple has used Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Nokia’s handset business as an opportunity to poach executives who are seeking new challenges, and the Cupertino company has just hired Lumia engineer and PureView camera expert Ari Partinen.
The CAZLET from KYNEZ is an iPhone wallet case like no other. It’s the only one I know of that provides military-grade protection for your beloved smartphone, and it’s one of the few that allows you to use your device — and almost all of its features and functions — without having to open the wallet up.
CAZLET’s design leaves your iPhone’s display exposed yet protected, so as soon as you pull it out of your pocket, your device is ready to be used. It’s made from gorgeous leather sourced from boutique tanneries in France and Southern Germany, and it boasts some nifty features you don’t normally get with smartphone wallet cases — including dedicated pockets for a spare nanoSIM and SIM eject tool.
KYNEZ also offers a number of add-ons that you can buy separately, including a coin pocket, a card band, a hand strap, and an ID sleeve. The wallet itself comes with a $65 price tag, which I think is very reasonable. Let me tell you why.
The smartphone wars are two company race and it’s not even close.
Apple and Samsung are dominating the competition so badly that a new report from Canaccord Genuity claims the two tech giants account for 106% of global smartphone profits.
Take a look at this chart:
Your usual prepackaged USB charging cable gets the job done for a short time. But after a month or so of life on the go, you find it damaged, knotted and unreliable. Cult of Mac Deals has a cable that will help you make that inconvenience a thing of the past.
The 10Ft Bungee Charging Cable features resistant nylon material is strong enough to keep damage away and the cord from tangling, so you won’t get the mess or the headache from for all your wild times. And Cult of Mac Deals has this cable available for only $11.99 for a limited time.
For many users, the quality and accessibility of the iPhone camera means that it is the only camera we need on a regular basis. It may be about to get a whole lot better, too, according to a patent application published by Apple on Thursday — describing a new “super-resolution” mode.
What makes the patent interesting (apart from that it promises higher quality images) is that it suggests that picture resolution could be ramped up without needing more megapixels.
As more and more smartphones are released with all new features, it’s not difficult for the average iPhone user to become slightly envious. In today’s how-to, learn how to use one of the iPhone’s coolest features that isn’t so commonly known. Click the home button, turn your volume up and down, and so much more by simply following these steps and moving your head.
Take a look at the video to see what you need to do.
The passionate affair burned for decades before Samsung came snapping celebrity selfies with Ellen at the Oscars and dishing out enough paid endorsements to finance the next Star Wars trilogy.
Apple plans to fight back with its own buzz marketer in New York to keep its products in the hands of the elite and glamorous. But Cupertino has never had a problem getting its products on the big screen and into the coolest TV shows — even though Apple swears it doesn’t pay a dime for product placements. Here are 18 of the most iconic Apple cameos to hit the screen.
Apple came out on top of its legal battle against Samsung in U.S. federal court last week, and even though the iPhone-maker was ordered to pay a small fee to Samsung, the jury came back to the courthouse in San Jose CA this morning to award more damages to Apple.
The federal jury awarded Apple $4 million in additional damages this morning, after it was discovered last week that one Samsung product violated one patent, but the jury failed to award damages.
Despite Apple’s claims that email attachments are safely locked away with data encryption in iOS 7, a new report has found that all your email attachments have been vulnerable and unencrypted for months.
This week we check out the best iPhone cases for using underwater. And seeing as the only reason to take an iPhone underwater is to snap pictures, we’re looking specifically at the camera capabilities.
Want a wacky stat to start your Monday? According to a new poll by YouGov, iPhone owners are the most likely smartphone users to send “sexts.”
Apparently, more than 30% of iPhone users have sent explicit messages at some point, compared to 21% of Blackberry users, and 17% of people with a Samsung device.
Have you ever dreamed of swiping up instead of across on your smartphone to unlock it — a whole new way of doing things that is totally unlike the iPhone standard?
No, this isn’t a leaked memo from Samsung’s R&D department, but rather a new tweak available to jailbreakers free of charge in the Cydia Store, optimized for iOS 7 and ARM64-devices.
Called SlideUP2Unlock, the tweak more or less does what it says on the tin: getting rid of the Lock screen camera shortcut in favor of allowing you to use upwards swipe gestures to unlock your iPhone.
Celebrities like Samsung phones, but they love marketing paychecks even more.
The wave of Samsung-sponsored selfies that started with massive retweets at the Oscars, has become one of the most popular viral campaigns in the history of the Internet as everyone from Ellen to Big Papi have been spotted snapping Samsung-selfies in exchange for a fat paycheck.
And Apple is totally jealous.
The weekend is nearly upon us, so why not grab some great savings before it arrives from Cult of Mac Deals?
We’ve got the GripGo Universal Car Mount available for just $13.99 and the BACtrack Breathalyzer for iOS for only $99.99 in two very limited time offers!
Great games don’t always need amazing graphics and sound, but they do need a strong premise and a lot of heart. A Dark Room, an outstanding text-based adventure game with minimal graphics, starts off as a simple survival story and eventually blossoms into a full-on Fallout-style role-playing game (RPG).
Much of the joy of playing A Dark Room is watching it unfold in surprising new ways. The game starts simply — you’re alone in the dark with a single button to press to start a fire. Eventually, new buttons appear so you can perform actions like collecting wood, and a character called the Builder shows up to help you form a shelter.
There are some fantastic photos hidden in the videos you’ve shot on your iPhone over the years. You just need to know where to look.
That idea’s the starting point for new iOS app Vhoto, which uses computer vision technology to intelligently scan through your videos to find and extract the best photographic moments.