Use Google’s Chrome on your Mac but Safari on your iPad? Do you wish you could use iCloud tabs to open that browser tab that’s open on your iPhone? You need CloudyTabs, a Mac app that puts iCloud Tabs in your menubar, and opens them in your default browser.
Mines of Mars is a fantastic mining and crafting game with a mysterious story, developed by WickeyWare and published by Crescent Moon Games. It’s along the lines of Super Motherload or SteamWorld Dig, in that you must manage your fuel and cargo space while you dig deep into the crust of the Martian planet to find ores, gems, and other secrets.
You’ll come up to the surface to fuel up, exchange ores for ingots, play some fun mini-games based on arcade classics like Berzerk.
It’s a game full of mystery and atmosphere, mostly due to the creepy storyline and amazingly atmospheric soundtrack by composer Evan Gipson. Check out the trailer below to see what it looks like.
Apple is working on a smarter version of Siri that can interact more closely with third-party apps and services, according to The Information. Right now, Apple has struck deals with partners like Yelp and OpenTable for Siri, but the goal is for the person assistant to work with just about any app.
The report mentions how Siri can’t do things like call a cab or book a hotel room, both of which are common duties of real, personal assistants.
What Apple is allegedly working on would allow Siri to send a message through an app other than iMessage, or look up weather from a different source than Yahoo. The improvements Apple is making to Siri would also work well alongside the rumored iWatch:
Those devils at Oscar Mayer have found a way to wake you up in the morning and torment you at the same time. They have created an iPhone alarm clock that plays sounds of bacon sizzling and emits the associated smell of deliciousness.
You got hungry by just reading that didn’t you.
Popcorn Time is an open source app for Mac, Windows, and Linux that acts essentially like Netflix for streaming video torrents. The project is “the result of many developers and designers putting a bunch of APIs together to make the experience of watching torrent movies as simple as possible.”
Yes, it really works. Is it legal? That depends.
Apple is planning to bring fullscreen video iAds to iOS, according to a new report from AdAge. The ads will be interstitials, meaning that they will interrupt whatever you’re doing to briefly take over the screen.
In the past, iAds have only been displayed as small banners that can be tapped to bring up fullscreen adverts. Newsstand publications can already do this on the iPad, but in the future fullscreen interstitials could be in any kind of app, including games.
AdAge has previously reported that Apple is hiring executives left and right from the advertising industry to beef up its iAds division. The same site also recently reported that Apple is building its own ad exchange to sell iAds to the highest bidder. When you put the pieces together, it looks like Apple is gearing up for a heavy iAds push for developers.
Source: AdAge
I’ve had my eye on Celsius Game Studios since I first heard about their in-development space simulator game, Drifter, back in 2012. Since then, developer Colin Walsh has continued to pour on the awesomesauce to create a game that–while still in active beta–impresses on every level.
Drifter takes place in a procedurally-generated galaxy that contains 100,000 light years worth of star systems to explore (that’s a lot of star systems–tens of thousands). The soundtrack is by indie-darling composer Danny Baranowsky (Super Meat Boy, The Blinding of Isaac) and it will thrill you in all the right places. Take a look at the trailer below to get a sense of how it looks and sounds.
When going into the App Store it’s inevitable to find clone applications everywhere based off of the late “Flappy Bird”. While many clones can feel exactly like the original experience, the new app Jumpy Jack has taken a new twist on the gameplay genre. Are you up for the challenge in this fast paced game?
Take a look at Jumpy Jack and find out what you think.
This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the multi-platform application Jumpy Jack brought to you by Joshua Smith of “TechBytes W/Jsmith.”
Google released a new update for its Gmail iOS that makes it getting email faster than ever thanks to a new background refresh feature.
The Gmail 3.0 update will now retrieve your mail while the app is not open so you don’t have to keep refreshing to see if your boss finally replied to that important email in the last 5 minutes.
Also included in the update is a new simplified sign-in feature that automatically signs you into all of your Google apps once your login to just one. The free update requires iOS 7.0 or greater and is available now in the App Store.
Here are the release notes:
Apple will finally discontinue the non-Retina MacBook Pro later this year, according to sources in its supply chain. Production is expected to come to a halt during the second half of 2014, reducing Apple’s notebook lineup to just the MacBook Air and the newer, thinner MacBook Pro with Retina display.
We drooled over Dutch designer Joseph Farahi’s iPhone Air concept last month, and now Farahi is back with a beautiful concept for Apple’s next generation iPhone 6c.
According to Farahi’s concept, the next iteration of Apple’s “affordable” iPhone model would come with a 4.7 inch Retina Display, and be just 7.1mm thick, while weighing only 116g.
In addition, he notes that he would opt to include an 8 mega-pixel camera with “True Tone Flash” able to record 120fps video, and Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint sensor: both innovations currently reserved for Apple’s flagship 5s model.
We’ve seen a number of classic patents published recently, referring to iconic Apple inventions, and this week is no different.
The recently published “Multi-Button Mouse” patent refers to Apple’s first steps away from the single-button mouse that Steve Jobs had insisted on ever since the days of the Lisa computer in the early 1980s.
The patent describes what would eventually become the Apple Mighty Mouse, which shipped with iMacs from 2005, before being replaced in 2009 by the multi-touch Magic Mouse currently used.
An investigative magistrate in Belgium reportedly considered forcing Internet service providers to block Apple’s website, after claims that the company is misleading customers over warranty options.
Apple has been involved with a long-running dispute with the European legal system over its one-year limited warranty, which it offers as standard to consumers around the world — but which is in conflict with European regulations that allows buyers a minimum of two years’ free protection.
Topeka Capital Markets’ report that, by now, we’d all be using finger rings to control our Apple televisions may have added up to precisely nothing (even being mocked by Tim Cook) — but one company is trying to make the so-called iRing a reality.
The company is called Logbar, and it’s launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund an “Ring: shortcut to everything.” When paired with your mobile device, this ring will let you use gestures to send texts, control your home appliances, and carry out a variety of other tasks.
In news that will come as a shock to absolutely no one, it seems that Corning Glass (makers of Gorilla Glass) aren’t big fans of Sapphire glass.
Asked by Morgan Stanley analyst James Fawcett his thoughts about “one large handset and device maker” planning to use Sapphire in its products, Tony Tripeny, a senior vice president at Corning Glass, responded that:
The Tylt Vu wireless charger looks like it would make a great iDevice stand, even if it didn’t have an induction charger hidden inside. The idea is that it not only charges your iPhone, but the shape of it means that the iPhone is always positioned in just the right spot to let the magnets do their thing, even if you just toss it into the cradle.
Watching so much True Detective — among other shows — that you need an iOS app to track what it is that you’ve already seen?
To help with this very quandary, and generally to help you sift through the television trash pile for the hidden gems, TV-tracking app Trak TV Show has just received a major update — adding universal support for optimizing the app for iPad and iPad mini, in addition to iPhone and iPod touch.
They say cellphones have ruined dramatic fiction. Next time you watch a TV police procedural or read a modern novel, check how many times the characters stray out of cellphone range, or lose their handsets altogether. The truth is that – in fiction just as in real life – the cellphone is just too useful, too good as a means of rescue.
Would Stargate have worked so well if James Spader could have just snapped a photo of those runes and used Google Translate? No. Would Marty McFly have gone back to 1955 if he could have just FaceTimed Doc Brown when he woke up late? Of course not.
And yet it gets worse. Now there’s a case which will let TV characters –and you – get rescued every damn time.
Nikon might be content to lose out to its competitors in every field except SLR bodies and lenses, but it beginning a big comeback, starting at the very top – literally. Two new camera straps – the Quick-Draw and the Quick-Draw S – are made in partnership with Black Rapid, and promise to let you never buy a third-party camera strap ever again.
The Baron Fig Confidant notebook started out on Kickstarter, and is today available to buy for just $16 – $4 less than the original price. I have one here on the desk, laying open at a fresh two-page spread without anything to weigh the pages down and stop the book from closing (that’s a Baron Fig feature by the way).
This isn’t a review – that’ll come later when I’ve filled the book with words and doodles. I just thought you’d like to know you can buy one, becasue it’s a pretty amazing notebook. In short, Moleskine can go suck it.
Neglected iOS and Mac app The Hit List has been snapped up by Karelia software, promising to breath life into a pretty great to-do app. One look at the iOS version of The Hit List tells you all you need to know: it still sports an aged iOS 6-style interface, and there is still no iPad version. That’s pretty bad for an app that costs $50 on the desktop, and requires a $2-per-month subscription to sync with the $10 iPhone app.
Hopefully that’ll be fixed soon now the app is in better hands.
Aether’s Cone speaker is simple, in both its physical design and its interface. Inside, though, it has a brain that learns what you like.
The Cone is a cone-shaped AirPlay-ready speaker which also streams music straight from the internet. It learns your tastes, and even lets you cue up tracks by asking for them, just like Siri.
The fine folks at Twelve South have brought the popular SurfacePad case to the iPad mini. The cover is made from Napa leather, and it bends to form a viewing stand or typing wedge.
One of the coolest design aspects of the new SurfacePad is how the iPad mini is held in place when upright. Instead of resting the iPad in little leather notches like most bendable cases, the edges of the iPad are secured by invisible magnets.
Twenty years ago, if someone had told us we’d be streaming our favorite shows from the internet legally, we would have scoffed at them and disregarded it, never mind how the speed of broadband internet has changed the way we live our everyday lives. Roll on to the last couple of years, where media streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu Plus have taken over and the days when we sat in front of the television flicking through 57 channels with nothing on are no more. Now there’s a whole host of entertainment right at the tap of a button, and we literally have to make no effort to leave our seats as these services take over our smartphones, tablets and electronic devices in a huge way.
But which service to pick? We’ve researched every possible choice out there, engaged in some elaborate hands-on testing, and narrowed down the extensive list to one reigning champion. If you look at the table below, it becomes fairly obvious that each media streaming service provider excels in some aspects but lags behind in others. By comparing each feature, it became much easier to narrow down the overall ultimate media service app.
Apple designed CarPlay “from the ground up” to be the future of car dashboard systems. And while technology is still based on iOS, how it communicates with the car is another matter. CarPlay utilizes QNX, the leading platform in the growing “infotainment system industry” that is owned by none other than Blackberry.
Apple is listed as a partner on the QNX website. QNX runs the embedded systems in many vehicles, including luxury brands Apple has associated CarPlay with, like Mercedes.