Storehouse is today’s big app story. It’s an iOS app that lets you take text, pictures and video and combine them into great-looking stories. It’s kind of like a cross between iPhoto’s Journals and a printed magazine, only better than both.
Smartphone crime has become an epidemic. Especially in places like New York City where the crime rate went up for first time in twenty years thanks to thieves mugging people for their iPhones.
As a response to the iPhone crimewave, Apple added some significant improvements to iOS 7, including a new Activation Lock feature, but according to the New York Police Department’s new commissioner, Bill Bratton, that’s not enough. Not only that, Bratton is pretty sure Apple and other U.S. smartphone makers are in cahoots with insurance companies to make a fortune by not installing a kill switch.
Today Skype updated its iPhone and iPad apps with two-way HD video calling. The enhanced resolution is only available on the iPhone 5s, iPad Air, and Retina iPad mini.
Chatting over text has gotten much better with today’s release. Skype has integrated with Apple’s Notification Center to show incoming messages even when the app is closed. In the past, Skype had to still be running in the background for push notifications to work. Group chats will be receiving the same upgrade in a future update.
Source: Skype
Apple released the second beta build OS X 10.9.2 to developers today, nearly a month after the first beta was released. Developers can grab Build 13C39 from the Mac Dev Center, or by running a software update if you’re already running the first beta.
The seed notes don’t list any new features, but ask devs to focus on Mail, Messages, graphics drives, VoiceOver, VPN and SMB2. The last beta added FaceTime over audio to the Messages and FaceTime apps. Apple also seeded the first beta of Safari 6.1.2 to developers that looks like it’s mostly filled with bug fixes.
Source: Apple
iBeacons are pushing to become the big new retail trend of 2014. The tech debuted last year with a demo by the MLB, before launching in Apple Stores nationwide as well as some Macys stores. You can add American Outfitters to the list too as ShopKick announced this morning that its partnered with the clothing company to bring iBeacons to 100 locations.
Let’s admit it. You’re the best goddamn drummer your bus stop has ever seen. When “Hot For Teacher” rounds the corner on your iPhone, you transform into a radiant drumming beast. Sadly, all of your gut-busting drum sessions take place right there in your lap. Nobody can hear the majesty of your air drum solo, but thanks to the latest advances in drumming technology, now they can!
That’s pretty much the pitch for DrumPants, a set of Bluetooth LE-enabled sensors that capture triumphant thigh thumping to play more than 100 different sounds controlled by your iPhone or iPad. They’re kind of like those ridiculous Keyboard Jeans, except the sensors aren’t a part of your clothing, allowing you to attach DrumPants to anything you’re wearing. They come as both drum pads and foot pedals, so you can take your customized instrument wherever you go.
Check out the promo video below:
We got a sneak peek at Codename Cygnus, a Kickstarter-funded interactive radio drama game for iOS, at PAX this last fall. Developer Reactive studios has just updated the app with more than 20 Game Center achievements, improved voice recognition, VoiceOver features, and a redesigned iOS 7 friendly interface.
Oh, and it’s cheaper, too.
Autism is an epidemic that can’t be overstated. The disorder is really a spectrum of behaviors and needs, and it affects about one in every 50 children in the US alone.
The Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD) has developed an app that puts its research-based interventions into an educational iPad app with mini games for reinforcement. The app, titled Autism Learning Games: Camp Discovery, provides children ages two to eight with direct instruction on topics that kids with Autism have trouble sorting out.
“The idea here is that there are so many things a kid needs to learn, to ‘catch up’ with their peers,” CARD’s chief strategy officer, Dennis Dixon told Cult of Mac during a phone call. “Autism has a number of skill deficits. ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) targets those skills one at a time.”
Camp Discovery, then, is like having a behavior intervention teacher on the iPad, presenting lesson after lesson with 100 percent accuracy. But will kids play with it?
While Microsoft and BlackBerry are still trying to piece together a decent mobile user base in the U.S., Apple and Samsung managed to widen their lead against the competition in terms of smartphone marketshare in the U.S. Both companies experienced a significant bump in 2013, but Apple claimed the largest increase despite murmurs that the company is getting out innovated by Google.
An iOS version has been available since last year, but today sees the official launch of popular email client (and former Kickstarter project) Mail Pilot for Mac.
If you’re particularly concerned about the security of your passwords, you might want to stay away from Starbucks’ official iOS app: the Seattle-based coffee maker has just confirmed that passwords, credentials and location in the company’s app are stored in plain text, and are not hashed or encrypted at all.
For those of us who live the lives of professional bloggers, here’s a common occurence. You wake up in the morning and load up a bunch of tabs of stories you want to read that day. Soon, you have two or three dozen tabs open, one of which has an auto-playing video. And no matter how hard you try, you can’t bloody find the thing!
Yeah. Chrome just fixed that.
With the next Worldwide Developer Conference a few months away (good luck getting tickets), it seems a little strange that Apple would go through the trouble of updating last year’s WWDC 2013 app with some fixes, but delve a little deeper and it makes sense.
It’s here, it’s here, it’s finally here! Long months after it hit the Mac, Beamdog Entertainment’s update of Bioware’s classic RPG set in the Dungeons and Dragons universe, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, is finally available on the iPad.
Another day, another new iOS game is launched toward the back of the App Store net!
Given a soft launch last week in the Australian App Store last week, Football Kicks: Title Race is now available to download internationally.
If I was trying to sell you this backup battery, I probably wouldn’t need to do much more than tell your its name: The Darth Vader Lightsaber Portable Battery Charger. Because really, who wouldn’t want to juice their iPhone with Vader’s laser sword?
Soon after Tim Cook took over running Apple, we reported that he was following the example of predecessor Steve Jobs in terms of responding to customer emails.
Two-and-a-half years on, it seems nothing has changed.
The trouble with Kickstarter and Indiegogo projects is that they take so damn long to arrive. They need to get funded, they need to get made, and only then will they be shipped. In the meantime, you’ve forgotten about them, or – worse – you bought something and now, six months later, you no longer want or need it.
What if there were a way to browse and buy only successful, shipping products, and buy them as God intended – with immediate shipping? Well, now there is. It’s a web store called Tiny Lightbulbs, and you’ll recognize a lot of what you see there.
Box has updated its iOS apps for iOS 7, and seems to have gotten a little drunk at the celebration party: Box is giving a free 50GB storage to anyone who downloads the new app in the next 30 days. Or 29 days, I guess, as the announcement came yesterday.
It may not be close to what it was in its heyday, but the news that The Simpsons is set to finally be available for legal streaming in the U.S via iOS devices is enough to have most people saying “Mmm… Apple” — followed by a gargling sound.
Bem’s upcoming Wireless Speaker Duo is great in all kinds of ways. First, it looks like an old-timey radio, complete with rounded edges and simple bent-metal handle. Second, it has proper playback control buttons on the top. And third, it contains two speakers which can be popped out and separated to make a stereo pair, before being returned to the base for charging.
Probably the last thing you want to admit in your app’s release notes is that you’ve integrated Appirator, the annoying “please rate me, please please please” popup that makes your paying customers hate your app. But we’ll give NexTiga’s Smart Photo Album a pass, becasue it also adds some great new real features.
Google has finally released its official iOS app for the Movies & TV section of its Play Store. The universal app is available for free in the App Store, but it comes with several severe limitations.
First off, you can’t buy content through the app due to Google not wanting to give Apple a 30 percent cut of all in-app purchases. Another con is the lack of offline playback, meaning you can’t cache a video to watch later when Wi-Fi isn’t available. And for some odd reason, video only plays back in standard def on the iPhone.
The app is pretty barebones, but it is nice for the Chromecast, Google’s little streaming dongle that plugs into the TV. Chromecast users with iOS hardware have previously been limited to Netflix and Hulu Plus, but Google Play offers more recent movie and TV selections.
Source: App Store
More than 30 years old as a concept, and one of the very first iOS games to be released in the App Store back in the day, Pac-Man is a genuine O.G. of the gaming world.
With Apple currently giving it away for a limited time as part of its “App of the Week” promotion, we at Cult of Mac thought the time was right to pay homage by revisiting one of the all-time-greats.
So how does it measure up here in 2014?
The City College of New York is investigating its use of former Apple exec Scott Forstall’s photo in advertisements for the school’s student ID card.
Cult of Mac contacted the college Wednesday afternoon about Forstall’s strange appearance on the promotional materials. “I’m not commenting,” said Ellis Simon, City College’s public relations director, who added that he was aware of the situation but needed time to “get all the facts straight” before talking about the apparent mixup.