What you’ve always dreaded is about to come true. Get ready for ads in your Instagram feed.
Facebook’s photo sharing giant confirmed today that photo and video ads are indeed on the near horizon. Expect them to “occasionally” start appearing within the next couple months.
Apple has bought a personal assistant iPhone app called Cue for between $40 and $60 million, according to a report from TechCrunch. Originally called Greplin in the App Store, Cue specialized in using data from multiple social networks and users accounts to create a daily agenda. Cue recently pulled its app saying “the Cue service is no longer available.”
Cue was doing Google Now-like contextual notifications before Now and Siri were introduced. The purchase of Cue probably has something to do with enhancing the contextual awareness of the iOS calendar and Siri itself.
Brianna and Frank Wu didn’t set out to make a statement.
They just ended up creating a full-on spy-meets-spice-girls mobile game with the most distinctive look you’ve ever seen, and all the roles that matter are filled with women.
“I love the idea of powerful girls who are blowing stuff up,” says Frank Wu, “flying spaceships, diffusing bombs, and doing all the stuff that you associate with space marines, but it’s kind of irrelevant to the story that they’re girls.”
Irrelevant to the storyline, maybe, but in an entertainment media that is short on strong, normative female lead characters, upcoming iPad game Revolution 60 is a breath of fresh air.
Grand Theft Auto V has been out for a while now, which means if you’re like me you’ve probably wasted enough time to re-watch the entire Breaking Bad series, again. Rockstar has managed to fill the world of Los Santos with plenty of references to tech giants like Apple, Facebook, Google and others, however if you play the game long enough you start to notice some funny stereotypes Rockstar pegs to the Almighty Apple and its flock of loyal fanboys.
The name of the iPhone was changed to iFruit but it’s just as much a status symbol of wealth in the violent world of Los Santos as its has come to be IRL, but one watchful redditor spotted some funny Android and Windows Phone stereotypes too. Check ’em out below:
I switched from Apple’s default Calendar app to Fantastical for iPhone over a year ago, and I haven’t found a viable third-party alternative until I started beta testing today’s release of Sunrise 2.0. Completely redesigned with iOS 7 in mind, Sunrise has added support for direct iCloud calendar integration on top of the existing Gmail support.
Besides its gorgeous, lightweight design, Sunrise 2.0 sets itself apart from the competition by incorporating Google Calendar, iCloud, and Facebook events with social data gathered from services like Twitter and LinkedIn. It’s a creative, refreshing calendar experience for the iPhone that looks great in iOS 7.
We’ve all had more than enough time to get used to iOS 7 now that it’s been out for a few weeks, but some people still hate Sir Jony’s parallax masterpiece. For those of you dreaming of a different interface on your iPhone, devoid of gradients and helvetica nue, there’s a new tool from UsvsTh3m that will let you create your own iOS 7 redesign masterpiece.
Visitors can tweak iOS 7’s icons, background, font, colors, and most importantly, those horrific shadows. Of course these changes aren’t really going to show up on your iPhone but you can have a bit of fun with friends and share your masterpiece with the world.
Think your version is better than Jony’s? Post your iOS 7 redesign in the comments below and we’ll add it to our gallery.
Source: USvsTh3m
Reports of inaccurate motion sensors in the iPhone 5s continue to grow. As reported last week on Cult of Mac, there appear to be widespread problems with the 5s’ compass, gyroscope and accelerometer.
The original forum thread at MacRumors is now at a whopping 19 pages of user reports, and Apple has yet to respond to Cult of Mac’s repeated requests for information.
This morning, Gizmodo conducted its own tests and found the iPhone 5s motion sensors to be “totally screwed up.”
Looks like the problem is far more widespread than the naysayers on our original post, and on the MacRumors thread, are willing to admit.
Oh, that Baldur, always leaving his Gate open for demons to walk through and attack the world. Silly Baldur.
Developer Beamdog, along with Atari and Overhaul Games, announced pre-purchasing for the upcoming Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, coming to Mac and PC November 15, 2013, and iOS and Android “soon.” The sequel to last year’s successful Baldur’s Gate will run you $24.95 for the full HD resolution and remastered art from the original game, which released in September of 2000, quickly becoming “the most celebrated Dungeon’s & Dragons … game of its time,” currently sitting at a Metacritic score of 95.
There’s a new gameplay trailer, as well, which you can see below.
Let’s not beat around the bush; the incognito mode built into Google Chrome for iOS is used for one thing, and that’s browsing websites that you wouldn’t want others to know you were browsing. But you should stop it — right now.
It appears that the latest release added a nasty bug that causes all of those sordid searches you make in incognito mode to be shared with the regular browser window — as well as Google Chrome on your Mac or PC if you have them all set up to sync with each other.
Apple’s new “Spaceship” campus has received approval from the Cupertino planning commission ahead of a city council meeting on October 15. The new building, which will become home to 14,000 Apple employees, is now another step closer to fruition, and providing there are no hiccups, Apple will be able to make a start on it next year.
This story first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine.
SAN FRANCISCO — Those purveyors of productivity Evernote recently held their third annual conference here.
There was something in the keynote for everyone: swag, an avalanche of announcements — a partnership with Post-it! A new stylus! Backpacks! Scanners! — and a few groan-inducing jokes. (“Do you know what’s the biggest room in the world?” “Room for improvement!”)
Coming on the heels of the Apple event which introduced the world to the new iPhones, it felt like someone had given the time-weathered keynote a much-needed facelift. Or just peeled back a few crusty layers from what we’re all so used to sitting through to hear about the cool new stuff we’ll want.
Here are a few things the Cupertino company could learn from the upstarts.
Twitterrific, arguably the best third-party Twitter client for iOS right now, has been updated to take advantage of the new 64-bit A7 processor built into the iPhone 5s. It was one of the first Twitter clients to embrace iOS 7’s new design guidelines, and it appears to be the very first to support Apple’s new processor, too.
Back in December of last year, AgileBits released version 4 of 1Password for iOS. A completely redesigned, streamlined interface was introduced along with a built-in browser and iCloud syncing. The app has supported Dropbox and WiFi syncing for years, but iCloud was a welcomed addition when using version 4 on multiple iOS devices.
1Password 4.0 for iOS was a great release, but the Mac version was sadly left in the dust. The good news is that the developers at AgileBits have been working quietly on a totally new version of the Mac client for months, and it’s finally available.
The Netflix app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch has been updated to bring high-definition video streaming to devices running iOS 7. The release also adds support for AirPlay, and some improvements and optimizations that make the app more stable under Apple’s latest software.
Apple reported some system outages early Wednesday, with multiple services going down between 9:30 and 11:00 am. Game Center and FaceTime were also down for a shorter period of time around 9:30, an outage lasting till 9:45 or so. Here’s what that looks like:
Multiple Services – 9:28 AM – 10:57 AM – Some users were affected
Users may have been unable to make purchases from the App Store, iTunes Store, Mac App Store, or iBookstore. Users may also have been unable to access iTunes in the Cloud, iTunes Match, or restore purchases from an iCloud backup.
If you were trying to connect to the App, iTunes, or Mac App Stores during this time (or the iBookstore), you may have had trouble. You may have had trouble accessing iTunes in the Cloud, iTunes Match, or restoring purchases from an iCloud backup. It wasn’t you, luckily, but Apple.
Here’s how to find out in the future whether it’s you, or Apple, that’s not letting you use the services.
The iTunes Festival, Apple’s 30-day music extravaganza, ended on September 30th with a performance by Katy Perry. Apple broadcasted live streams of all the festival’s shows on iTunes during the month of September, and the concert videos are still available to stream for a limited time.
Apple’s Eddy Cue recently gave an interview to Entertainment Weekly and talked about why artists (and Apple) love the iTunes Festival. He also explained how Apple is leveraging its connections in the music industry for iTunes Radio.
Apple may or may not announce an iPad mini with Retina display in a couple weeks, but one thing that’s pretty much a given at this point is Touch ID coming to the iPad and iPad mini.
We haven’t seen any leaked fingerprint sensor components for the upcoming iPad 5 hit the Internet yet, but Unboxing Therapy has done some investigating of its own to see if a Touch ID would fit with some of the leaked components we’ve already seen. The results? You’ll have to see for yourself in the video below, but it looks promising:
Cable industry veteran and former CableLabs executive Jean-François Mulé became an engineering director at Apple last month, and he’s hard at work on “something big.” His appointment comes just weeks before Apple is expected to unveil its latest Apple TV, and at a time when the Cupertino company has been working hard to improve the $99 set-top box.
But is Mulé part of something a little more exciting?
Pincase is yet another great Pinboard client for iOS. It’s $2, it’s universal, and it is ready for iOS 7. Oh, and it looks lovely too. What more could you need for managing and reading your bookmarks. What? You want more? Okay…
Apple has today restored push email services on iOS devices in Germany almost two years after it had to be shut down following a legal battle with Motorola. The Cupertino company announced the change in a new support document, which explains how users can restore push services on their iOS devices.
I’d noticed that calendar events created from the iOS 7 Mail app now contain a clickable URL that links back to the original e-mail message, but what I didn’t know is just how rad this is. Federico “another espresso please” Viticci over at Mac Stories knows exactly how rad it is, though, because he dug in and found out that it’s not only system-wide for iOS 7, but hooks into something similar that the Mac has done for years.
Want to check out the new M7 MoCoPro in your iPhone 5, but don’t have an app to do it? Then check out David Smith’s Pedometer++, a free app which grabs data from the low-power motion-tracking chip and shows it to you.
Belkin’s new Express Dock for iPad lets you dial in the perfect fit for any Lightning iPad, whatever case it’s in. Literally: there’s actually a dial on the back to adjust the dock’s size.
The new GoPro Hero3+ makes jumping out of an airplane in a squirrel suit just a little bit more tempting. The new camera is smaller, faster and apparently much better.
Apple will be “unable” to launch a new iPad mini with Retina display this month due to supply constraints, according to sources in its supply chain, who have been speaking to Reuters. It’s thought the new device will only be available in “limited quantities” this year — if at all — and there’s a possibility it won’t be ready in time for the lucrative holiday shopping season.