News - page 1331

From telling Tim Cook not to be dumb, to proclaiming himself the next Steve Jobs, Kanye West can always be trusted to chime in with a nuanced take on Apple business. Now the newly-married creative genius has offered his two cents on the reason behind Apple’s still-unexplained $3 billion acquisition of Beats Music.

Speaking at the Cannes Lions festival, West says that last year’s collaboration between Jay Z and Samsung — in which 1 million Galaxy owners were able to pick up free copies of the rapper’s Magna Carta Holy Grail album — pushed Apple to acqui-hire Beats cofounders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. Claiming that Apple has lost touch with its culture since Jobs’ death in 2011, West thinks that the Beats deal allowed Apple to buy back some of the cultural relevance it has lost.

And lo did news of the yonder Age of Empires game for iOS continue to flow!

Known as Age of Empires: World Domination, this is the forthcoming expansion of the award-winning (and much loved) Age of Empires series, which allows players to create an empire by pitting civilizations against one another. Developed by KLabGames, we’re promised a game that maintains the focus on strategy and tactics but is designed specifically for the touch gestures of an iOS device.

Facebook’s new Slingshot app takes aim at Snapchat by putting a new spin on photo-messaging. Instead of simply relying on disappearing pictures and videos, Slingshot promotes back-and-forth conversations.

How does it work? You must unlock “slings” you receive before you can look at them. You do this by sending your own sling to the sender. See how the just-released Slingshot app works in today’s quick-look video.

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While Amazon’s locked in an ongoing dispute with publishing house Hachette — which has resulted in the publisher’s books being pulled from Amazon’s shelves — Apple’s more than happy to take advantage of the situation.

Apple’s iTunes store is currently promoting a sale on digital versions of popular Hachette titles, which includes upcoming books from the likes of James Patterson and J.K. Rowling.

Halfbrick Studios, the folks behind massively popular endless-runner Jetpack Joyride have decided that the best way to get you to play their games is to give them away for a grand total of nothing.

The Brisbane-based game development studio was founded in 2001, and has gone on to make a ton of popular games across iOS and other platforms, including fruit-slashing hit Fruit Ninja and tongue-in-cheek giant robot game Colossatron.

There’s also Fruit Ninja Puss in Boots, the endless-runner Monster Dash, the song-creation game Band Stars, dual-stick shooter favorite Age of Zombies, and the wacky Fish Out of Water, where you get to flick various marine creatures across the top of the ocean for distance and style-based high scores.

All of these games will work on your iPhone or iPad, and — since you’re buying them at the free price now — you will own them into perpetuity.

You can grab any one of Halfbrick’s premium games for nothing right now, so head on over.

Source: iTunes

Apple’s new beta for iOS 8 is stuffed full of bug fixes after most of the new features were unveiled at WWDC two weeks ago, but Cupertino still managed to surprise us today with a number of neat tweaks to iOS 8 beta 2 that make some of apps better than what was revealed at the Moscone Center.

We’re still combing through the beta for new features, but additions like QuickType for iPad, iBooks displayed as series and improvements to Photos are welcome additions before iOS 8 lands this fall.

Take a look at all the tweaks Apple added to the iOS 8 beta today:

Jose Torres, CEO of Boogio, wants you to track your fitness with the most obvious part of your body: your feet.

“We’ve got 60,000 layers of sensitivity in the Boogio,” he told Cult of Mac at last week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, “so we can track gravitational force, inner balance, and three different acceleration forces of your feet.”

The new trailer for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, starring Chris Pratt and Zoe Saldana, has us chomping at the galactic bit for the full movie, due out in theaters August 1. There’s plenty of action in this new preview, along with some fantastic moments between our protagonists.

With Bradley Cooper as wisecracking badass raccoon Rocket and Vin Diesel as giant, flower-giving tree-thug Groot, the upcoming flick from the makers of Thor, Iron Man and The Avengers is promising a lot to moviegoers; let’s hope it’s worth the wait.

Snapchat’s pivot from a sleazy app for naughty pics to an actual messaging platform to rival WhatsApp is happening faster than its scandalous photos can disappear and its newest feature is going to make the party even bigger.

Today Snapchat announced its adding a new “Our Story” feature that will allow users who are at the same location to share snaps with each other, or view an event from afar so you can feel like you were totally there with your friends, 10 seconds at a time.

Along with this morning’s release of iOS 8 beta 2, Apple is throwing some love to Mac users as well by releasing the second preview of the OS X Yosemite beta.

Apple has promised to open the OS X Yosemite beta to the public but it looks like you still need to be a developer to grab Cupertino’s newest update which can be can be downloaded directly from the Mac Dev Center or via a software update in your Apple menu.

Apple also released a new beta for Xcode 6 this morning as well as a new developer preview for OS X Server 4.0.

Yosemite brings a revamped UI to OS X along with a host of new features aimed at making your iPhone and Mac work smarter together. No official word from Apple on what’s inside the new preview but we’ll let you know what we find as soon as its installed.

We’re still crawling through the myriad of new features Apple added to the first beta of iOS 8, but now we’re about to dive back in. Apple just released iOS 8 beta 2 to developers this morning a mere 15 days after dropping the new OS on devs at WWDC.

According to the iOS 8 beta 2 release notes Apple’s mostly filled it with a ton of bug fixes, but we’ll update you on all the new features, big and small, once we’ve got it on our test devices.

Developers can pick up the new beta as an OTA update, from the iOS Dev Center or from the direct download links below:

A simple glance at the stunning games perched atop the App Store game lists reveals we are experiencing a golden age for mobile gaming.

From the surreal, mind-bending Monument Valley to the Pixar movie brought to life that is Leo’s Fortune, 2014 has seen some of the most startlingly original gaming experiences in years arrive on iOS.

“I do feel like we are in a boom period,” says John Comes, design director at Uber Entertainment, the company behind games like the newly released Toy Rush.

Although Apple has been a hub of gaming going back to the glory days of the Apple II, today’s crop of hot titles are reshaping the landscape like never before. The present explosion of innovative iOS games results from several fortuitous factors coming together. Here’s why there’s never been a better time to be a gamer.

Apple is looking to hire a thought leader. While the actual job listing — blah blah blah “execution of critical sale reporting projects” blah blah blah — sounds about as exciting as a new ink cartridge, the idea of a thought leader role at a company like Apple is worth pondering.

Ever since the death of co-founder Steve Jobs, there’s been much speculation and hand-wringing over who could assume his role as Apple’s foremost visionary. Although no one can ever fill his New Balances, we’ve rounded up a short list of leaders who might kick the Cupertino company in a new direction.

Who do you think should drive Apple’s big ideas? Check out our picks in the gallery above, then nominate yours in the comments below.

Apple has multiple new stores planned to open over the second half of 2014 and first quarter of 2015. Among these is one planned for Marlborough, Mass, as revealed through job postings listed by Apple over the past 10 days.

Up until now, however, the store’s future location hasn’t been known. Fortunately a tipster has pointed out the exact location where the retail outlet — Apple’s 11th in the state — will be set to open.

If you’re anything like me it can be difficult to stay on top of all of your different social media accounts, which is why Buffer is so useful as a tool — since it allows you to share to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and App.net all from inside one place. In addition it lets you control the scheduling of these posts, while getting analytics for each social update you share, whether this means clicks, retweets, likes, shares, mentions, and so on.

Buffer received its last refresh just one month ago — adding support for two-factor authentication and improved accessibility — but its latest update is well worth a look, adding “feeds” and “groups” features, along with improved navigation.

Apple has settled out of court in the latest eBooks price fixing suit brought against the company. It was set to go before a jury next month, with potential damages being as much as $840 million.

The terms of the settlement haven’t yet been revealed, and the opposing side now has one month to request formal acceptable of their agreement by the court.

Emojing has already replaced texting as the go-to zero-effort communication tool of youngsters everywhere, and all those emoji version of popular songs and TV shows are about a lot more elaborate thanks to huge unicode update.

250 new emoji have been added to unicode standard 7.0 that is used to standardize the presentation of text across different platforms like iOS, Android, and Windows, and while it’s still up to software makers to actually implement the new standards, you can expect them to land on iOS pretty soon.

Apple’s approach to design is just as healthy as it was under Steve Jobs, according to Jony Ive. Looking ahead, Apple is building upcoming products with “materials we haven’t worked in before.” Let your imagination run wild.

The New York Times has published a follow-up Q&A with Jony Ive following its big weekend profile of Tim Cook.

Ive was quoted in the Cook story, but in this second installment we get more insight into how he sees the current state of Apple. Points of discussion include how Ive approaches product design, working with Cook, the values Steve Jobs instilled in the company, and how Ive doesn’t think “anything’s changed” since Cook became CEO.

If you haven’t gotten enough of disgruntled avians from Rovio’s hit series Angry Birds, what with last week’s Angry Birds Epic or the well-received Angry Birds Star Wars mobile games, then this news is for you.

Rovio has teamed up with Hasbro to mashup its own quirky mobile gaming franchise with yet another pop-culture phenomenon, the Transformers. And not the Michael Bay hyper-CGI movies, either. This looks to be a full-on 1980s cartoon take on the “robots in disguise” theme, complete with birds disguised as robots that can turn into cars and airplanes.

Sigh.

Apple’s Siri feature has been a crown jewel of iOS ever since it launched in 2011, but the company and the tech behind it might fall into the hands of Apple’s number one enemy – Samsung.

Nuance Communications is in discussions with a number of potential suitors looking to buy the company, and Samsung Electronics is at the top of the list, according to Wall Street Journal report that also names a few private-equity firms among the list of possible buyers, but Apple is nowhere to be found.

Most people use Facebook’s official iOS app to obsessively check their news feeds. But there’s another option that has a much better design and no ads. It’s called Paper, and it has been available for the iPhone since January.

Made by a special group within Facebook called Creative Labs, Paper is an experiment in how to use Facebook within a more media-rich, gesture-driven, elegant interface. If you haven’t heard of it yet, then you definitely need to check it out after the huge update it received today in the App Store.

Facebook is trying to transform its News Feed into more than just a hotbed of baby pictures and Buzzfeed quizes and its first move is a new side panel to help users discover more timely content.

To make the app more relevant for the way people use tablets, Facebook for iPad is adding a new channel on the right-hand side of your news feed featuring trending topics, videos and tons of game suggestions to try to get users to read more news, watch more videos and play games in the app. And you can bet there will be plenty of ads to compensate.

Cult of Mac Magazine June 16 Edition, Free on iTunes

All Cult of Mac’s news to peruse on your iPad or iPhone. This week we’ve got a tune up to keep your Mac running in top shape, plus news of the Macs that will be in stores soon and a love letter to Apple’s first commercial hit, the Apple II.

Cult of Mac Magazine June 16 Edition, Free on iTunes

Beats already released one epic World Cup commercial this month, but last night Dre’s music behemoth tossed out another fantastic ad wrapped in an exclusive Jay Z track you’ll only find on Beats Music.

For the next week a new remix of “Jungle” featuring Jay Z alongside fellow Brooklyn-based friends, X Ambassadors & Jamie N Commons will be exclusively available on Beats Music streaming service.

Checkout the full Beats ad with J Hova’s ungodly soccer fueled verse:

Handoff was one of the most exciting iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite features announced at WWDC, giving you the ability to begin a task (say, an email) on one platform and seamlessly transfer it to another.

It’s a great illustration of Apple’s ecosystem at work — but will it work on your Mac?