News - page 1393

Mac game publisher Aspyr Media announced Thursday the release of the latest update of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the iOS port of the classic role-playing game set in the Star Wars universe.

The update is free and includes much-asked for support for Made-For-iPhone (MFi) controllers like the Steel Series Stratus, Moga Ace Power Controller, or the Logitech PowerShell. In addition, the team has added iCloud saves and new supported languages including English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.

After four years of strong growth thanks to the introduction of the iPad, tablet sales are already expected to start leveling off over the next year, according to the latest estimates from IDC.

Slowing consumer purchases is mostly to blame, says IDC, as tablet owners aren’t keen to purchase new devices as frequently anymore, but are opting for higher quality devices to be used longer term.

Unu’s new Enerpak Extreme is an update to my favorite battery backup brick. In fact, I have one here on my desk ready to review, but I thought I’d tell you about it first.

The Enerpak Extreme is a 14,000mAh battery pack that can charge an iPhone or an iPad, or both at the same time. It has two full-sized USB ports, one 1-Amp and one 2.1-Amp, plus a microUSB port for charging the device itself.

A new patent, published Thursday, describes a method for carrying out wireless pairing and communication between Apple devices using biometric data.

The patent was filed August 31, 2012, and features several possible implementations of the technology, designed to increase security on Apple products.

Amid a slew of weird design and censorship choices, Pictorl for iOS, Android and PC (!) has one standout feature that sits above the sea of confusion: a fantastic non-destructive editor that uses your online images as its source.

It’s also a rather beautiful app, presenting photos with almost no chrome or clutter.

AtmoBar is Mac app that works with the NetAtmo weather station you have in your back yard (or on your balcony, for city dwellers). It sits in your menubar and gives readouts and graphs with just a click.

It sure beats just looking out the window.

It’s only been available for a couple of weeks, but iOS 7.0.6 already represents just over half of all iOS traffic.

The data was provided by Onswipe, a mobile publishing and monetization platform, and reveals that as of March 3, iOS 7.0.6 makes up 50.06% of traffic on all iOS platforms.

I won’t lie. The main reason I checked out Upword Notes is that it sounds like Upstream Color, Shane Carruth’s amazing movie about pigs (some are calling it Babe 3).

But underneath this strange coincidence (surely just another of Carruth’s crazy web of mystery) lies a solid note-taking app, one with some genuinely clever features.

Former Apple CEO John Sculley is one of the principal investors behind a new smartphone brand set to launch in India.

The as-yet-unnamed brand is being funded by the investment and acquisition company, Inflexionpoint, for which Sculley serves as a founding partner.

The brand is set to be led by Ajay Sharma, who was previously head of HTC’s India operation. The company will launch a series of smartphones, which will debut in April this year.

Apple has been accused of shifting close to $8.1 billion in untaxed profits from its Australian operations to Ireland over the past ten years.

An investigation by the Australian Financial Review got hold of a decade’s worth of financial accounts for the Irish-based “Apple Sales International” — which supposedly show how Apple shifted untaxed profits from Australia to Ireland, where the company pays just 0.7% tax on its turnover.

If non-clicky keyboards are what you’re after, and you don’t like the free one that came with your Mac, then Logitech offers some of the best options around. I own two, that I’ve bought with my own cash money, and if I had an Apple TV or Media Center setup, I’d be seriously considering the new Harmony keyboard and hub, which doesn’t work quite how you think.

Any technology maker — let alone one the size of Apple — is going to have various moral predicaments to deal with.

Recently Apple was accused of showing an “utter lack of understanding and discretion” after refusing to unlock a dead woman’s iPad for her two grieving sons.

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.