News - page 1357

Quick, think of two classic game franchises that make perfect sense as a mash-up! Give up? How about Street Fighter II and Flappy Bird? Not convinced of the brilliance of this idea? Well too bad — someone’s done it anyway.

Joining the plethora of Flappy Bird clones to arrive in the App Store since Dong Nguyen’s hit original, Street Flapper lets you take your favorite Street Fighter characters and guide them through an “endurance training” setup composed of the stretchy arms and legs of character Dhalsim.

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.

Logitech’s cool-looking X100 “donut” speaker has a few things going for it. First, it’s small. Second, it’s cheap, and third, it has a hole in it that looks totally satisfying to stick your finger in and wiggle it around.

Photojojo’s new iPhone Lens Wallet is a safe place to store the entire Photojojo lens lineup, and it’s small enough that it can live in your daily murse/purse. It even holds a tripod, and can be bought either empty or fully loaded.

Spotify seems to have solved one major problem with its apps. Until now, the music streaming service has been focussed on playlists, forcing you to organize your music in order to “save” it for later.

Compare this to Rdio, which concentrates on albums and songs, letting your save them to an iTunes-like collection.

Spotify now offers “Your Music,” which is pretty much a copy of Rdio’s collections, and is a very welcome addition.

Lensbaby’s new iPhone lens looks awesome. Or it would, if it didn’t attach with magnets. Yes, it’s a super-strong magnet and might therefore avoid the problem suffered by all other magnetically-attached iPhone lenses: they are hell to keep aligned.

But you still have to glue a metal ring onto the back of your iPhone.

Apple is awarded a lot of patents, many of which it never does much more than sit on top of. After all, in the high stakes (and highly litigious) world of mobile, it’s better to patent a potential innovation than let a potential enemy do so.

Even so, today was a banner day for Apple. In just a single day, Apple was granted a whopping fifty-one different patents, ranging from older products like the unibody MacBook Pro to some much wilder stuff, like a possible 3D Apple TV remote control system.

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?

Historically, Greenpeace hasn’t been very happy with Apple. In the past, they have scored Apple last in reports on green-friendly data centers, called the iCloud one of the dirtiest things on the planet, and called Apple less green friendly than Dell, HP and Nokia.

But things have seemingly changed. In a new report on renewable energy used by major Internet companies, Apple came out at 100%, thanks to the wind farms and solar arrays that now allow Apple’s data centers to run on 100% renewable energy. What’s the dirtiest thing on the planet now?

When Apple starts sniffing around, looking to buy a company, it’s time to pay attention. That goes double if they make chips. Back in 2008, Apple purchased P.A. Semi, a low-powered chipmaker, whose acquisition soon paved the way for an entire series of revolutionary ARM based chips. And recently, Apple purchased a low-energy chip maker who could help power the iWatch.

Now Apple’s out to do it again, this time with Renesas SP, if reports can be believed. But what for?

The jailbreak tweak called Auxo did card-based app switching in iOS 6, and then Apple came along and fully implemented the idea in iOS 7. Auxo, which started as a concept that went viral online, was suddenly obsolete.

A successor to Auxo has been in the works for quite some time, and now it’s available for jailbreakers to install in Cydia. Auxo 2 doesn’t reinvent iOS 7 multitasking, but the tweak builds upon it by adding more controls and customization.

After a disastrous Windows 8 launch that saw Microsoft embrace a new tiled user interface, the company announced today that it’s backpedaling and resurrecting popular Windows 7 features like the Start Menu.

Twitter was abuzz with the news of Start Menus with the majority of tweets cheering the return, but after closer inspection of the Franken-hyrbid interface we think they should have left it to rot in a tomb.

From lakes to oceans, people everywhere can be found fishing. With busy workdays and full weekends, it can be hard to find the time to go out and cast your reel. The new app Ace Fishing: Wild Catch brings the thrill of fishing to all iPhones and iPads for free. Explore the world and catch over hundreds of different types of fish right away. Do you think you can catch even the most rare fish?

Take a look at the video and find out what you think.

This is a Cult of Mac video review of the multi-platform application Ace Fishing: Wild Catch – Com2uS USA, Inc., brought to you by Joshua Smith of TechBytes W/ Jsmith.

Everybody is making emoji video interpretations of pop culture nowadays, but with Game of Thrones season 4 premiering in just four more days we’re particularly fond of this video, Game of Phones.

The clever video brings you up to speed on the basic drama of seasons one through three, culminating in a fantastic rendition of the Red Wedding.

Via: Deadspin

This story first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine.

Games make up more than 65 percent of downloads in the App Store and Google Play, and a whopping 90 percent of mobile gaming revenue is generated by a freemium business model, according to Bertrand Schmitt, CEO of App Annie.

These are just two of the insights that came from a trends panel at the Game Developers Conference last month in San Francisco. The panel also included folks from gaming engine Unity and publisher/developer Pocket Gems.

Some photos have leaked showing Apple’s first Turkish physical retail store days before it opens.

The images were posted to Instagram by user orbaygumus, and depict a large cuboid glass structure, similar to the glass installations at Apple Stores in New York and Shanghai. All that is currently missing is a giant Apple logo.

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.

Evolution, just released on the App Store, is looking like a badass free-to-play science fiction role-playing game with real style.

Build your base to collect resources, battle with your character in real time, solve environmental puzzles, and upgrade everything–weapons, armor, special abilities–as you go.

All of this and free to boot, Evolution promises to meet your sci-fi combat gaming needs on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.

I may not be able to say that Fantastical is the best calendar app for everyone, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s the best option for most people. What started on the Mac and made its way to the iPhone is now on the iPad. Fantastical 2 for iPad is here, and it’s great.

Today marks the launch of an intriguing new Kickstarter project.

Created by former Apple employee Michael Grothaus, SITU is a simple, attractive Bluetooth food scale which talks to your iPad. By showing you the exact nutrition content of any food you place on it, SITU lets people see the exact calories, sugar, salt, protein, vitamins and minerals of any food they’re about to eat, based on that food’s weight.

BlackBerry has announced that it will not renew the T-Mobile (U.S.) license to sell its products when it expires on April 25 — ending a decade-plus relationship between the two companies.

“BlackBerry has had a positive relationship with T-Mobile for many years. Regretfully, at this time, our strategies are not complementary and we must act in the best interest of our BlackBerry customers,” said BlackBerry CEO John Chen in a statement.

The Google-owned Nest thermostat arrives in the U.K. today.

Created by “Podfather” Tony Fadell and former Apple colleague Matt Rogers, the Nest thermostat is an iOS-connected device which allows users to control and automate their indoor heating.

It can be purchased from Nest’s online store, alongside Amazon, Apple, and B&Q — priced at £179, or £249 with the recommended professional installation included.

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:

Phil Schiller took to the stand yesterday for the second day of Apple’s latest patent trial with Samsung.

Schiller mostly rehashed the same defense he used when the two companies met in court last November, also over a patent dispute — namely that Apple was the company which took the risk developing the iPhone, and that Samsung’s copying has hurt the company.

“I believe it has caused damage for Apple in the marketplace,” Schiller said. “It has caused people to question some of the innovations we’ve created and Apple’s role as the innovator. That challenge is made harder in the copying.”