News - page 1388

Control Center was one of the top touted features added to iOS 7, but while the new swipe up gesture to toggle it is great, you might find yourself using multitask function more, so Bill Labus created a gorgeous iOS 8 concept that merges multitasking with control center to give you quicker access to your most used controls.

“Flicking up from the bottom of the edge allows the multitasking app views to be tied directly to the gesture, which allows for direct manipulation and avoids having to wait for a passive animation to complete before interacting with them.”

Developers can grab the Xcode project and take it for a spin or you can get your fill from the video teaser below:

The story of WhatsApp — the messaging app just purchased by Facebook for an insane $19 billion — is pretty fascinating.

Seems that the app’s founders did everything right by doing everything wrong. They flouted Silicon Valley rules like getting press and adding features, and instead focused on making the app do one thing well: send messages. It all sounds very Apple-like, and it’s been well covered in fascinating features from Forbes and Wired that are currently doing the rounds.

One detail in the Forbes piece flew out at me in particular — detailing how Apple accidentally created the core element of WhatsApp by adding a new iOS feature.

https://youtu.be/kCQUbkt68T0

Fleksy, the alternative keyboard for iOS and Android, has just been updated to allow any developer of iOS apps to easily implement its streamlined features for free. The software development kit (SDK) will allow any app that needs a keyboard effortlessly include Fleksy’s system without making any changes to the app itself.

“We’re very excited to finally make our SDK available to hundreds of thousands of developers around the world. We learned a lot from the private beta and today’s release brings the most beautiful, streamlined 3rd-party keyboard experience yet for iOS” said Ioannis Verdelis, COO of Fleksy.

When T-Mobile sent out an email to BlackBerry-using customers suggesting that they switch to an iPhone 5s, the response from the BB faithful was loud and angry.

Even BlackBerry CEO John Chen said that he was “outraged” by T-Mobile’s behavior.

As a make-good, the network operator has now said that it will offer any customer who wants to upgrade to a new device $250 for a BlackBerry phone — or $200 for any other smartphone, including the iPhone.

Everyone loves mini golf, but how do you make mini golf even better? By adding robots, of course. And by having it take place in outer space.

Helping Orbit the Robot and his ladyfriend Tess find their way home, Astro Golf players must participate in a variety of space-themed mini golf challenges — involving dodging black holes and avoiding a plethora of spaceship-related impediments.

During an Ubuntu Town Hall Hangout on Wednesday, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth made some interesting comments regarding Apple’s sapphire displays.

“Apple just snapped up three year’s worth of the supply of sapphire screens from the company that we had engaged to make the screens for the [Ubuntu] Edge [smartphone],” he said.

For those unfamiliar with it, the Ubuntu Edge was a proposed “high concept” smartphone announced by Canonical on 22 July 2013. Canonical was seeking to crowdfund a production run of 40,000 units through Indiegogo, but the project was scrapped when fundraising was able to only raise $12,809,906 out of the $32 million goal needed to kickstart the project.

Interactive map app WunderMap has received a new update, adding universal support (the app was previously designed for iPad only), as well as other neat touches.

These include a full-screen map view, accessible by swiping upwards on the top bar; a completely redesigned display for current conditions, forecasts, and alerts; a simplified interface which combines layer groups and layers to better control what you want to see on your WunderMap; and the ability to “share your weather with your mom” via webcam.

In addition, WunderMap has received a new app icon, and vastly improved performance and memory usage.

Here’s a slightly obscure tip that’s worth sharing becasue it could literally save you from a lost photo library. If you use Lightroom, Adobe has a “secret” script you can download that extracts the JPG images from your previews. Why would you want to do this? Say you lose the hard drive with all your original RAW photos on it, or you just get drunk one night and wake up in the morning to find you deleted your Lightroom folder.

This script will rescue you.

The TopoCharger is an odd little device, but it could be useful for some. It’s an iPhone GPS case. What? Yes. A GPS-less GPS that comes with on-board storage for maps, and a big fat battery pack so you can use your iPhone in GPS mode without killing its own battery dead. If you’re wondering why you’d bother with this instead of just using a regular battery case, then keep wondering, because I have no idea. Yet. Let’s check it out.

We might be no closer to getting classic Nintendo games on iOS, but independent developer Riley Testut yesterday released the long-awaited 2.0 update to his slick Game Boy emulator, GBA4iOS.

Supporting Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Color, and original Game Boy games, GBA4iOS is the most straightforward and best-looking way to bring nostalgic Nintendo action to iOS 7 — and you don’t even need to jailbreak your iOS device to use it.

All that is required is to open up Testut’s dedicated GBA4iOS website — which greets users with the Apple-esque message, “Game Boy Advance, meet iOS. Again.” From there, simply tap “download” and you’ll be tracking wild Pokemon, or leaping on mushrooms with Mario, in no time.

Mural.ly is a mood-board app, or white-board app, or cork-board app, or whatever you want to call it, and it works in the browser and as an iOS app. I’ve been testing it out (briefly) and so far it’s pretty great. It even lets you access your Evernote notes and drop them into a “mural.”

Flickr’s 1TB storage “limit” is great and all, but getting even 1/100th of that up to Flickr in the form of photos is still tricky. The iOS Flickr app takes care of new pictures on your iPhone, and now a new app called Uppr, from friend of Cult of Mac Robert Miles (not, not that Robert Miles). And boy is it slick.

Text selection on iOS is still a pain in the ass. Some apps fix it up with extra buttons above the virtual keyboard, but Thoughts 2, an iPhone notes app, adds extra buttons to the text selection itself. This makes it easy to expand and contract the selection one character at a time which – given the fickle nature of text fields in iOS – should help a lot.

Most endless running games are the definition of pick-and-up-play affairs: sometimes with more depth than you’d expect, but also games that will immediately graspable by the most casual of audiences.

Satechi’s new F1 Smart Monitor Stand really is smart, apart from the name which almost had me tossing it into the email trash because I thought it was a car-themed novelty accessory.

In reality, it’s a little stand for your iMac or your Cinema Display, only it comes with a built-in USB hub with headphone and microphone ports. WHY HAS NOBODY THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE?

What’s that, you say? You’ve been longing for a retro, old school, three dimensional dungeon crawler to take with you on your iPhone and iPad?

Look no further than Coldfire Keep, a brand new first person dungeon crawler from Steve Jarman and Crescent Moon Games. You’ll have to make your way through this beautifully rendered 3D dungeon, full of monsters, puzzles, hidden secrets and–natch–tons of loot.

It should be in the App Store tonight (February 19) by 11 pm Eastern time here in the US, if all goes according to plan, and it’s looking pretty sweet, if the video below is to be trusted.

Tesla’s stock soared earlier this week when rumors surfaced that Apple and Tesla executives had talks about the iPhone giant acquiring the electric car maker.

Apple considered making an iCar before inventing the iPhone, and they’ve lost prized engineers to the automaker, but it’s unclear how a merger would  benefit the two companies, especially Tesla.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Elon Musk, CEO and co-founder of Telsa, confirmed the two companies have been talking about something, but fanboys shouldn’t get their hopes up on a merger happening:

If you can’t beat ’em, buy em.

That’s been Facebook’s strategy lately when it comes to third-party challengers and this afternoon the company announced its making its biggest acquisition yet, scooping up popular messaging app WhatsApp for a cool $12 billion in stock.

Facebook is also tossing in $4 billion in cash as well as $3 billion in restricted stock units bringing the total price tag to an incredible $19 billion.

Apple has been a long time supporter of Project RED by selling special edition products that help the charity, but now you can help fight AIDS just by swiping credit cards on your iPhone.

Project RED announced today that it teamed up with Square to launch the new SQUA(RED) Reader. The red credit card reader costs $10, 97.25% of which goes straight to the Global Fund to fight AIDS.

For all but the absolute purists, our iPhones have taken over as the camera of choice. We’ve dedicated an upcoming issue of our weekly mag to taking even better photographs with our iPhones.

Here’s where you come in:  Send us your best pics on the theme of “Silver.” Yeah, that can be anything from a close-up on your Space Gray iPad (kind of recursive, but why not?) to glittering ice on the sidewalk. Make sure you take the picture with an iPhone – any model will do.

Update: We’re actually offering a whole ton of stuff for winners of our contest, with Olloclip willing to send along the following prizes for our first, second and third place winners:

• 1st place – You’ll get Olloclip telephoto , 4-in-1, macro 3-in-1 lenses and a quick-flip case.
• 2nd place – 2 lenses of choice plus case
• 3rd – lens of choice plus case

You’ll also get to see the top photo and the runner ups showcased in an upcoming Cult of Mac Magazine Newsstand issue.

To enter, just take the most creative iPhone photo that matches the topic “Silver” that you can think of — and you can also submit pics you’ve snapped that fit the theme. Then upload your photo to Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag – #CoMSilver.

The contest ends on Thursday, February 20 at 8 a.m. PT, but there’s no limit to how many times you can enter, so get snapping, you amazing creative types.

Image: Derek Gavey

Tales from the Borderlands developers Telltale Games and Gearbox Software will reveal the first details about their forthcoming game during a panel at the SXSW Gaming Expo, Telltale revealed today.

The award-winning studios will describe how they first came to work together on the eagerly-anticipated project, how the game might unfold, and (hopefully) plenty of other juicy details.

The death of Flappy Bird has brought out more ridiculous knock-offs than should be permissible by the standards of the Geneva Convention. It’s gotten so bad Apple and Google decided to ban them, but the one Flappy Bird knock-off we’d love to play isn’t on the App Store either, it’s in a box.

Fawn Qiu decided to make an IRL version of Flappy Bird using nothing more than a box, an Arduino sensor, two servo motors, a reed switch, magnets and of course, some Flappy Bird artwork.

Players control the bird with the reed switch on the left and if you fail to make it past a set of pipes the box closes.

Check out the video of the project below:

Sapphire glass was in the news again today, thanks to a jump in the share price of GT Advanced Technologies Inc. — the company which will reportedly manufacture the iPhone 6’s sapphire display.

With contrasting reports about sapphire’s advantages over Gorilla Glass, along with counter-reports from Gorilla Glass maker Corning, we figured the time was right to break down some of the questions about Apple’s latest wonder-material.

Apple’s first iTunes Festival for the U.S. will take place at next month’s SXSW event in Austin, Texas. It will be held in Moody Theater, home of Austin City Limits, and will feature a whole host of chart-topping artists — including Coldplay, Imagine Dragons, Pitbull, Keith Urban, ZEDD, and more.

According to numbers from analyst firm IDC, Apple is now the fifth-largest cellphone maker in China, with 7% of the overall market share.

Apple jumped an entire 1 percent in the last quarter of 2013, based on the success of the iPhone 5s and 5c. This doesn’t take into account the impact of Apple’s deal with China Mobile, which began selling handsets to customers this January.