News - page 1361

Look, Legos are for everyone, ok? With the huge success of the latest Lego Movie, it’s clear that playing with the building bricks isn’t just for kids anymore, if it ever was.

If you’ve been in a comic, toy, or hobby shop lately, chances are you’ve seen the little random minifigure bags that you can buy, not knowing exactly which minifigure is contained within, like a mini treasure hunt.

Funcom is banking on this craze with its upcoming release of Lego Minifigures Online for iPad, Android tablets, and PC, hoping to trade on the fact that one of the coolest features of the modern Lego experience is the little people that seem to come with every construction model set sold.

Sadly, there’s no Mac version planned as yet, but the iPad game will play the same as the PC and Android versions, on the same servers.

Cult of Mac saw a preview of Pirate World for Lego Minifigures Online last week at GDC, and we’re finally allowed to post it below.

The day has finally come. During a keynote today in San Francisco, Microsoft unveiled the Office suite for iPad. Rumors have said that Word would be unveiled for Apple’s tablet this month, but that’s not all; Microsoft has also released versions of PowerPoint and Excel.

When he set out to create the iPhone, Steve Jobs deliberately picked engineers with no mobile phone industry experience because he didn’t want Apple’s smartphone to be “tainted” by old ideas about what could and could not be achieved, says a former software engineer who worked on the project.

“We had the opportunity to hire people from Palm, from Nokia, to help us build this thing. [But] Steve said, ‘No, no, we don’t need to do that,'” Andy Grignon told me during a recent onstage interview at the DENT conference on innovation in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Apple’s possible plans for an iPad smart cover reminiscent of Microsoft’s Surface were revealed in a patent application published Thursday. The design differs from Microsoft’s iPad competitor in that Apple’s keyboard would double as a Multi-Touch gesture keyboard, eliminating the need for a touchpad.

Drawings filed with the patent show how it would be possible to use the iPad cover in various configurations. Several hinges allow the iPad smart cover to fold away with the tablet and keyboard, while the cover would feature magnets to lock its various components in place. In one embodiment of the patent, Apple suggests that electromagnets could be used.

Would you pay an extra $100 for an iPhone “phablet” with a larger display?

At least 33% of you would, according to new survey data published by Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt. The study suggests a third of U.S. iPhone users would be willing to pay an extra hundred bucks for an iPhone with a larger display than its predecessors.

When Facebook acquired Oculus VR for $2 billion, Mark Zuckerberg said virtual reality was the natural follow-up to mobile as a platform. And while Apple might have missed the boat on Oculus, has Cupertino really missed out on virtual reality?

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Apple has been investigating this area for the better part of a decade — well before the Oculus Rift gaming headset appeared on Kickstarter.

Can we all agree that iTunes’ App Store search is truly, truly awful? That you can not only never find what you’re looking for, but you have to wait forever for the results to load?

Good. Then you’re going to love Fnd, a web-based search tool for the whole iTunes Store. It’s accurate, fast and not at all annoying.

Fotobit is a 4.25 x 4.25-inch frame designed for wall-mounting your Instagrams. It’s modular, so you can slot the frames together to cover the wall with an Insta-mural, and the frames themselves are a handsome matte black or white. But there’s more.

Sharebox adds a feature to Dropbox that should probably already have been there: it lets you drag and drop files onto the Dropbox icon in your Mac’s menubar, and have them upload to Dropbox. The neatest part is that it works using the existing icon, keeping your menubar clear.

Twitter will now let you attach up to four images to a Tweet, and tag the people in those photos, all without counting towards your 140-character limit. This is a pretty obvious attempt to beat Instagram and make Twitter your go-to sharing service.

When Facebook snapped up virtual-reality company Oculus VR this week, it got us wondering what other interesting startups Apple might want to buy before Mark Zuckerberg can get his hands on them.

While Oculus is most well known for its Rift gaming headset, Zuckerberg sees a far more wide-ranging application for the company’s VR tech, envisioning it as a futuristic communications platform. “One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people,” he said in his post about the acquisition.

That’s the kind of big thinking Steve Jobs brought to the table when he talked about the way the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad would change the way people interact with technology. While Apple rarely dips into its $150 billion cash hoard to buy other hardware firms, here are seven awesome companies whose technology could help Cupertino enhance and improve its existing devices — as well as build entirely new ones.

We all have busy days, and going to sleep at night is the perfect remedy for having to do it all over the next day. While regular alarm clocks can serve their purpose in waking you up, they can’t ensure they’ll do it at the most convenient time in your sleep. The app Sleep Cycle strives to wake you up while you’re in your lightest sleep, resulting in a better awakening. Simply place your phone on your bed and let the app do the rest. Will Sleep Cycle become your go-to alarm clock?

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

This is a Cult of Mac video review of the iOS application Sleep Cycle, brought to you by Joshua Smith of TechBytes W/ Jsmith.

It’s not that often that the Mac gamers out there get to download new content for a big title game like BioShock Infinite on the same day as their Windows-using brethren, but here it is.

Well-known Mac gaming company Aspyr has done just that, announcing on Wednesday that the latest and final episode of BioShock Infinite’s story-driven “Burial At Sea” module has just dropped on the Mac.

Disruptor Beam and HBO revealed on Wednesday the debut of Game of Thrones Ascent on the iPad. It was originally released in 2013 as a Facebook game, making last year’s Facebook Games of the Year list to boot.

Now you can play Game of Thrones Ascent on your iPad, leading the life of a noble in Westeros, collaborating and conniving with other players in a persistent online world.

For the company behind Candy Crush, developer King Digital don’t exactly seem to be crushing it in their public market debut on the New York Stock Exchange.

Shares in the popular developer — which grossed $1.88 billion last year — were valued at $22.50 on Tuesday. They then debuted at $20.50 on Wednesday, before quickly dipping to $19.06.

Realmac Software today confirmed that the much-anticipated update that will bring reminders to Clear for iOS will arrive in April. It was originally due to arrive this month, but the company has been working hard to ensure everything’s just right before it goes live.

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s that time of year when the biggest Apple fans in the world congregate on Moscone North for a three day celebration of all things Apple. This year’s Macworld/iWorld show offers a little something for everyone from hands-on tutorials for taking better iPhone photos or live-recording with an iPad, to parties, tons of exhibitors, games, and more.

Cult of Mac will be covering all the Macworld festivities starting today on our live-blog, but if you’re wondering what all the fuss is about for Macworld, an event that even Apple doesn’t attend anymore, here six things that you won’t want to miss this year:

Guitar Hero will vanish from the App Store at the end of this month.

Not the best rhythm game available, but still a lot of fun, we praised Guitar Hero back when it first arrived on iOS in 2010. With its price now reduced to 99¢ as a parting gift, it’s absolutely worth picking up if you’re interested in the genre.

It’s been almost two years since Apple announced the Retina MacBook Pro, and it’s still the only Mac with a Retina display. But according to sources in Apple’s supply chain, that’ll change this summer when the Cupertino company finally unveils the Retina MacBook Air.

Ultra-addictive iOS game Dots has just received a major update, adding a significant new feature.

Called “Challenge Mode,” the addition circumvents the hassle of taking screenshots of individual dots counts — or else comparing scores via social media — by letting players face off in real-time, head-to-head competition.

Following news of Facebook’s surprise acquisition of Oculus VR for $2 billion, Mark Zuckerberg shared some impressive numbers regarding the social network’s sustained mobile growth. Facebook has an “active” mobile user base of 1 billion, Zuckerberg announced, while the Facebook-owned Instagram has 200 million active users of its own.

This means that Instagram has added 100 million users since Facebook acquired it back in April 2012. Under Facebook’s control the Instagram iOS app has been regularly updated, much like Facebook’s own iOS app.

In the fourth quarter of 2013, Facebook had 945 million active mobile users, out of a total of 1.23 billion users.

iPods are being used in a nursing home pilot program designed to help rekindle the memories of residents with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

The program uses iPods, equipped with personalized playlists, to help improve the mood and interactions of residents. It is also replacing the need for medication in some cases.

Paper? In the age of the iPad? Unthinkable! Ink from a pen? Inconceivable! And yet that’s what the new Booqpad for iPad Air promises us, a case that both protects the iPad and gives you a pad and paper to write on. Not only that, but it does it all with magnets.

Ahead of the next round of the Apple vs. Samsung legal battle, one of the original iPhone engineers, Greg Christie, spoke to the WSJ about the development of Apple’s breakthrough smartphone.

Much of what he discusses in the Apple-approved interview is already well known, but a few neat details emerge.

At one point, Christie says that Jobs gave the team a two week ultimatum, after which he would move the project to another team if they were unable to create what he was after.

“Steve had pretty much had it,” said Mr. Christie, who still heads Apple’s user-interface team. “He wanted bigger ideas and bigger concepts.”

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I use flash thumb drives for precisely one purpose these days – taking a PDF boarding pass to the local print shop. That doesn’t stop me being impressed with Edge’s new DiskGo Sonic USB 3.0 Flash Drive, though, which is a super-fast SSD drive in the form of a USB stick.