News - page 1389

The folks behind the brilliant and sticky Tiny Death Star and Pocket Trains are back at it again, this time with another free-to-play title, Disco Zoo. This time, however, NimbleBit has the added talent of rock-star developer Owen Goss, a Canadian dude with a pedigree in gaming that reaches back to pre-iOS days (gasp).

Disco Zoo has the same Nimblebit retro bitizen look and feel, and the fun mechanics from Pocket Trains and Tiny Tower are out in force. You’ll take over running of the titular Zoo, adding animals and building habitats while earning in-game soft currency on a timed basis, as well as randomly on the zoo map screen.

The main part of the game involves rescuing animals from a variety of habitats–each requires the purchase of more and more expensive aircraft–and adding them to your zoo. The zoo animals will sleep after a time, which encourages you to keep checking back into the app to wake them up.

Clear, the popular to-do list management tool for iOS from Realmac Software, is now free for the next 24 hours.

The promotion is designed to give those who purchased the now defunct Clear+ the opportunity to migrate to the original app without having to pay again — but those who have never purchased Clear can take advantage of the offer, too.

Legal practice management software company Clio has just released the latest results of a survey it calls “Apple In Law Offices,” detailing the use of Apple devices in law firms across North America.

The 2013 survey marked a considerable increase in Apple adoption — with a 10% leap in both office Mac OS usage (from 56% in 2012 to 66% last year), and iPad usage (from 57% to 67%), while iPhone usage spiked 12% to 74% (while Android and Blackberry both saw decreases in law firm usage compared to global adoption rates).

The new light-based physics puzzle game from developers Playmous sure looks interesting!

Called God of Light, the game features 3 different game worlds, and 75 dozens of mind-expanding, puzzle-filled levels. Your mission is to join game mascot, Shiny, to save the universe from impending darkness — which means seeking out game objects that reflect, split, combine, paint, bend and teleport rays of light energy to activate the mythical “Sources of Life.”

If that sounds all a bit confusing, the above video may help shed some light (pun intended!) on what we’re talking about.

Nearly one third of all games released in the App Store in a 24-hour period are Flappy Bird clones.

That’s according to the Guardian newspaper’s Stuart Dredge, who used an RSS feed of the Appshopper site to get his hands on a list of every game released in the 24-hour period, ending 5am on February 27.

Of the 293 new iOS games, he discovered that 95 (just over 32%) were clones of the recently deceased Flappy Bird.

At this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, the themes were – as we expected – waterproof phones, smart-watches and NFC (again). Samsung’s new Galaxy S5 was a high-profile example of the waterproof trend, and the company also showed its new Galaxy Gear watch, which looks pretty neat for a giant wrist-screen. And NFC is in every Android handset these days.

But how do these themes relate to the iPhone and iPad? Let’s think about that.

Apple may have only released iOS 7.0.6 one week ago, but it’s already showing impressive adoption rates.

According to a study by Chitika Insights, just 48 hours after the update went live, 13.3% of all iOS traffic was driven by the latest update.

You can now double the storage space of your MacBook Air by jamming Sandisk’s new 128GB microSD card into an adapter in the SD card slot. Or you can slide it into any number of devices that use the pink-nail-sized storage standard. And if you are using it in a phone or a camera, it’s fast enough to capture HD video recorded straight to the card.

Fujifilm has announced the Instax SP–1 mobile printer at Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona, Spain. It’s a wireless, battery powered number that spits out 3×2 prints, and is controlled by an app on your iPhone (or Android device).

And while it looks pretty neat, if you can do without the battery power then I have a much better recommendation.

One of several themes at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona has been cellphone cameras (the others were waterproof phones, crappy smartwatches, and NFC). Samsung’s new flagship Galaxy S5 ups the pixel count from 13MP 16MP, and adds 4K video capture. Nokia’s handsets can now shoot RAW pictures (or rather, record RAW pictures, as all photos are RAW to begin with) and Sony was showing off new camera modules (the iPhone uses a Sony camera).

As I was walking around the show and shooting everything with my iPhone 5, I started to wonder: who cares?

The NBA Game Time app for iPhone and NBA Game Time for iPad have just been updated, adding support for classic games.

As its name suggests, Endless Surf is pretty much an endless runner with a whole lot more water involved. If you’re looking for a true to life surfing sim, complete with realistic board dynamics and the like, you’re going to be disappointed. But if you can look past that, Endless Surf is a giant wave of fun.

Although Google bought social mapping service Waze in June of last year, the iOS app is still getting impressive new updates.

The latest? Waze for iOS has just gained Calendar integration. It might not seem useful at first glance, but it’s actually a great addition.

When will the iPhone 6 be released? Ever since the iPhone 4s, Apple has unveiled the next iPhone in September, but at least one analyst is now claiming that Apple might go back to a WWDC launch in 2014.

If you have a brand spanking new Mac Pro, Apple has released a new firmware update that will help it stay quiet and not sound like the jet engine that it may physically resemble.

Recommended for all late 2013 Mac Pros, the Mac Pro SMC Firmware Update 2.0 allows the Mac Pro to enter Power Nap without running the Mac Pro’s fan for most Power Nap activities.

The update also addresses a rare issue where a low-speed USB device may not be detected at boot.

If you’ve already dropped a few grand on a Mac Pro, the good news is the update’s free. You can grab it from the link below.

Source: Apple

Here’s a hard to believe story: one of Apple’s executives behind the original iPhone has gone so far as to apologize to anyone who bought one during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.

Why? According to ex-Apple senior director of product marketing for the original iPhone Bob Borchers: “If you had the original iPhone, I apologize; it was not a great phone, it was an OK phone.”

Unbelievably, he may have a point.

Automatic is one of our favorite iOS car accessories and while we’ve been blown away how easily it can future-proof your dumb car, the smart dongle just got a lot more intelligent thanks to an update that brings IFTTT integration into the car for the first time.

Automatic can already track your trips and tell you where you parked, but with IFTTT recipes you can now let your car Tweet, post to Facebook, or send an email to your mechanic based on a set of triggers Automatic has created.

The new Automatic Channel on IFTTT exposes some powerful triggers, including the following:

While movie streaming applications like Netflix and Hulu Plus remain popular for what they have to offer, Disney has just released their own take on the genre. Disney Movies Anywhere is Disney’s latest application, giving users the ability to access an extensive library of Disney movies on the go. With plenty of great options and features available will Disney Movies Anywhere find its way on your devices.

Take a look at Disney Movies Anywhere and find out what you think.

This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the application “Disney Movies Anywhere” brought to you by Joshua Smith of “TechBytes W/Jsmith.”

The OS X app Most Likely to Induce the Beach Ball of Death, aka iTunes, was updated this afternoon to be slightly more crash-friendly.

iTunes version 11.1.5 was released by Apple as a minor update aimed at putting an end to iTunes quitting unexpectedly. The tiny update also comes with compatibility improvements for iBooks for Mac on OS X Mavericks.

Here are the skimpy release notes:

Those hoping for a little more rock and roll at SXSW will be amped to hear Apple just added Soundgarden to the lineup of bands schedule to perform at iTunes Festival during SXSW this year.

You know how it is; as a brimming young tech-savvy hipster, you need to carry a lot of gear with you as you cycle from the coffee house to the park bench, writing your magnum opus and staying in touch with your iPad, Macbook Air, and iPhone.

The thing is, that gear usually comes with a ton of support gear, with all sorts of plugs, wires, battery packs, extra mice, point-and-shoot camera and the like. You’ll be awash with the detritus of your modern monadic life in no time without some sort of organizational system that you can strap to your back while on the go.

Kastel thinks it has the answer with a Kickstarter project to fund a new line of functional, good looking bags for your gear, soon to be available in three savvy material choices, including leather and blue and grey linen.

Oscar-nominated director David Fincher is in talks to direct Sony’s upcoming biopic about Steve Jobs, according to Variety. If Fincher did direct, it would team him up yet again with writer Aaron Sorkin. The last time the two worked together was on The Social Network.

Fincher is currently finishing up post-production on his latest movie, Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck. He directed the first two episodes of House of Cards and is an executive producer for the show. The last project he directed for Sony was 2011’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Aaron Sorkin finished his script for the Jobs biopic earlier this year. He has said in the past that the story will be divided into three distinct acts, and each act will take place backstage at an Apple keynote. No rumors on casting yet.

Source: Variety

The tale of Flappy Bird is almost unbelievable. A frustratingly simple iPhone game from an indie game dev in Vietnam with no prior notoriety becomes an overnight success. It dominates the App Store charts and starts making $50,000 per day in ad revenue. Then, out of the blue, the dev decides to pull it from the App Store at the height of its popularity.

It was a story too good to be true. Except that it was true.

In the wake of Flappy Birds’s removal, countless knockoffs have tried to fill the gap. “Flappy Bird being taken off the App Store has created this vacuum,” says Jeremy Olson, founder of the award-winning app studio Tapity. In an effort to make a worthy successor to Flappy Bird, Olson and his small team have created Buffalo Wings.

Instead of a bird, you guide a flying buffalo over and under walls by tapping the iPhone’s screen. Hit a wall at any point and you have to start over. The gameplay mechanics may be the same, but Tapity is hoping that Buffalo Wings has what it takes to capture lightning in a bottle twice.

In the ephemeral world of Internet memes, gamers have already moved on from Flappy Bird and on to the next thing. But that doesn’t mean that developer Dong Nguyen was wrong when he claimed that the game was proving “addictive” to players.

In a new YouTube Sci Show episode, host Hank Green explains why a game that even its staunchest defenders would admit is pretty stupid proved so crazily addictive.

Popular numerical puzzle game Threes! has received its first ever update, adding several player-requested features.

For those who haven’t played Threes!, it’s a game which challengers players to come up with multiples of 3 by sliding and matching pairs of cards. The object is to gain the highest score possible by combining numbers to first make 3s, then 6s, then putting those together to get 12s, and so on.

It’s surprisingly fun and addictive, and has been met with a number of positive reviews since its release earlier this month.