In the late 90s, Tamagotchi pets were all the rage. The plastic, egg-shaped pocket computers came in bright colors and housed a virtual pet you had to take care of. Fast forward to late 2013, and the only pocket computers people carry around are smartphones and tablets.
Yesterday, the makers of apps like Clear and Heads Up! launched Hatch, a modern-day take on Tamagotchi for the iPhone. It’s a beautifully crafted game that utilizes the iPhone’s internals to make the pet, or Fugu, come to life.
The Inner Balance system pairs a $99 dongle/earclip sensor with an accompanying app with the goal of training its users to de-stress themselves (probably an over-simplification, but that’s the gist of it) through gamified breathing exercises.
To further this goal, HeartMath, the company behind the Inner Balance kit, has just launched a cloud-based service called HeartCloud to further gamify the Inner Balance sessions with the introduction of social aspects. HeartMath has also announced that new Lightning dongles for the earclip sensor will be available at the end of this month.
Leander’s new book “Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products” has debuted on the New York Times Bestseller list. (Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And huzzah!)
If you want to get a feel for the book, check out this excerpt over at Medium, which is richly illustrated with sketches and photographs of some of the prototypes.
The Medium excerpt is how Leander wanted to originally write the book; illustrated with all the images leaked during the initial Samsung vs. Apple trial. We’ve seen the prototypes all over the web. What is missing, though, is the journalist’s most important tool: context. This treatment pairs the pictures with the details of Apple’s design process.
Apple’s re-trial with Samsung over patent infringement has just concluded with the federal jury ruling that Samsung owes Apple an extra $290 million for infringing on the iPhone maker’s patents.
The award is significantly more than the amount Samsung hoped to pay, though Apple’s lawyers didn’t get all the money they wanted either. Including damages awarded from the original trial, Samsung’s bill for Apple now totals $929.83 million worth damages – unless they successfully appeal of course.
This week’s editors choice app in the iOS App Store features the release of Clumsy Ninja, which is notable because for one, it took these guys a really long ass time to get their game into the App Store, and two, Apple’s promoting the app with a special new video trailer in the App Store.
Clumsy Ninja is the first app to get a video trailer in the App Store – a feature long requested by third party developers. Right now it looks like the trailer is only viewable on an iOS device, as the app’s page in iTunes only shows a couple of image previews.
SAN FRANCISCO — It may come as a surprise, but AT&T’s is one of the biggest retailers of Apple accessories. The company has more than 2,200 stores across the country, compared to Apple’s 253 US stores. and they sell a boatload of goodies.
On Thursday night, AT&T showcased some of the hottest iPhone and iPad accessories that will be available this Holiday at it’s retail locations.
Check them out:
Crescent Moon Games, the studio behind quite a few amazing mobile iOS games (Siegecraft, Pocket RPG, Paper Monsters), has just released its latest: Space Chicks.
Ignoring the obvious “damsel in distress” trope, this game plays like a spectacular mashup of games like Little Galaxy, Tiny Wings, and Jetpack Joyride, with gravity-affected planet hopping, coin collecting, and space-girl saving that will keep you playing long into the evening.
There’s something here for every one, and it’s all of $0.99.
Tim Cook caused quite a stir in the worlds of both tech and fashion earlier this year when he announced that Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts would be leaving the famous trench-coat maker to head up Apple’s retail divisions.
Ahrendts new position at Apple alone wields great power, but when you combine it with her incredible turn around of the Burberry brand, its no wonder many are starting to consider her one of the most powerful executives in the world, which is exactly why Fortune placed Ahrendts at #4 of its annual list of the top people in business.
She doesn’t take over at Apple until Spring 2014 but Ahrendts received the nod from the business mag for her work redefining Burberry’s brand and the subsequent 29% bump in the company’s stock price.
Here’s Fortune’s praise for Ahrendts:
Tim Cook admitted that the iPad mini with Retina display will be in short supply for the next few weeks, but while Wifi-only units seem to be in-stock at Apple Stores across the country, it looks like Apple is having a hard time keeping a steady supply of 3G/4G units rolling out to developers.
Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile are all reporting shortages of iPad mini with Retina display stock with most orders being backed up for weeks, according to a report from CNET.
The worldwide leader in sports announced today that it is rebranding its ScoreCenter app for iOS and Android into an all-new, totally supercharged SportsCenter app that comes with a sleek iOS 7 design scheme to go along with some speed enhancements and a host of other new features.
The new SportsCenter app makes it easier than ever to track your favorite teams with the “Clubhouses” feature that brings in content focused for your favorite teams in the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, NCAA and more. A new Favorites tab also lets you keep tabs on your teams’ scores along with the new Inbox feature that becomes your hub for alerts on personalized news and scores.
Here are the full release notes:
Writedown — Productivity — Free (Pro version: $2.99)
Sometimes, you have to write something really quickly on the go. Like, say, if you were supposed to find an app to write up for your daily post on a tech blog.
Actually, nevermind that example. It’s crazy and would never happen. But if it did, Writedown might be a good fit. It’s a quick and easy document creation tool that cuts out all the distractions (other than ads, in this Lite version). You just type your thing in a clean interface, and then you can export it to a text, e-mail, social media, or share it with AirDrop.
It’s bare-bones, quick, and easy to use. Not that I’m using it right now.
Crazy.
Given that it’s one of the biggest and most successful third-party messaging platforms available on mobile, you might be wondering why WhatsApp still hasn’t been updated for iOS 7 — more than two months after the software’s public release, and over five months after it was first made available to developers. (I certainly am.)
But the update — complete with a fancy redesign — is on its way, and you can get an early glimpse at it in the hands-on video below.
Smartphone crime is a huge problem. In fact, New York City’s crime rate went up for the first time in twenty years because people are mugged violently so often for their iPhones.
In response to iPhone crime, Apple has made some important improvements to iOS, including requiring users to enter their iCloud password to turn ‘Find my iPhone’ off, and the new ‘Activation Lock’ feature in iOS 7which allows users to disable stolen or lost iPhones remotely.
Apple’s got the right solution, but you know who hates it? The carriers. In fact, as other manufacturers have tried to insert similar cellphone kill switches in their smartphones to Apple’s, the carriers are standing defiant against them. Why? Because they are afraid that it will affect their bottom lines.
Trent Reznor might have a head like a hole, but not a heart like one. During a recent show in Las Vegas, the Nine Inch Nails frontman pulled out his iPhone 5s mid-concert to FaceTime a dying fan and friend on stage.
With the new Mac Pro, Apple has once against shifted manufacturing of one of its products to the United States. Could other products follow? Even, say, the iPhone?
Foxconn chairman and president Terry Gou has hinted yes, saying that the company is actively looking into the possibility of setting up factories for high-end smartphone and tablet production in America. But how likely is it?
Due to a combination of laziness and… actually just laziness, I often use my iPhone to take product shots for the reviews you see here on Cult of Mac. And while my Snapseed usually lets me turn my snaps into usable photos, I could sometimes do with a little help trying to find a spot on my desk that isn’t covered in junk to use as a backdrop.
Yes, I could clean up, but as I mentioned above, I’m terminally lazy. So I might instead adopt Andrew Park’s Foldio, a tiny light tent for iPhone product shots and the like.
A few weeks ago it was iPads banned from the UK’s No. 10 Downing Street due to spying fears, and now Apple products will start disappearing from the German parliament too.
It almost doesn’t matter what the Urbanears Humlan headphones sound like, because however bad they are, they’ll still sound better than the pair of headphones you put through the wash cycle and killed. Why? Because the Humlans are washing-machine friendly, just like my old iPod Nano.
Finally, the perfect gift for the myopic or sight-impaired person in your life! It’s called the U See Tablet Magnifier, and it’s a stand that turns your iPad into a giant, zoomable, battery-powered magnifying glass for short-sighted folks like me.
I like Fetchnotes 3, a new and deceptively simple update to the iOS/web app which lets you take, organize and share notes. At first, it looks a lot like Simplenote, with a very plain and simple UI, plus tags and easy sharing. But it’s actually a lot more powerful than that.
Remember back when a button was a button, and not a skeuomorphic touch-screen fake complete with drop shadows and gradients? Me too. Back in the 1980s and beyond, kids had tougher fingers thanks to all the button-pushing that went on, not like the kids of today with their weak twiglets which threaten to snap if they squeeze their in–0line remote’s play/pause “button” too hard.
Which is my way of saying that you can keep your pathetic modern-day children from playing any music by simply loading your iPhone into this retro-tastic iRecorder.
Flickr takes another step towards “being awesome again” with a new book printing service, built right in to Flickr itself. And it’s so simple that you can have even a pretty long book put together in minutes.
Tumblr has redesigned its iOS app with a fresh look for iOS 7. The Dashboard, post compose screen, and post chooser have all been redone, and the finished product is an app with plenty of character that feels very at home in Apple’s latest mobile OS.
The official Tumblr app has never felt aesthetically clunky or old, but this most recent update is a huge step forward in terms of modernizing the interface and animations. On the feature side, tags can now be autocompleted, and faster reblogging for users with multiple accounts. There are plenty of other changes in the app to discover, like an improved photo uploader and trending tags design in the Explore tab.
Tumblr is a free universal download in the App Store.
Source: App Store
Just over a year after Drift Innovations dropped its impressively specced Ghost HD action cam, the company has upped the ante in the action-cam tech race by launching the improved Ghost-S, with big boosts in performance — notably low-light performance and a doubled frame rate — and a slew of trick new features.
Now that winter has hit the country, cycling has moved indoors for much of the U.S. That means straddling a stationary bike or throwing your trusty road or mountain bike up on a stand (or if you’re really brave, rollers).
That’s where the Xspin comes in. it’s a small box filled with sensors and a low-energy Bluetooth 4.0 radio that attaches to a crank arm and sends speed, distance and cadence data to an accompanying app — either one of two developed by its parent company, Pafers, or a handful of popular third-party cycling apps, like Strava or MapMyRide. It’ll also work with ellipticals (though it obviously attaches differently, since ellipticals don’t have cranks).