Apple will begin delivering its new iPhones to retailers in the United Kingdom ahead of the handset’s launch on Friday, September 20, according to sources close to courier companies who have been speaking to The Telegraph. The Cupertino company has reportedly scheduled two “bookings” in anticipation of the early demand — but how many iPhones will be included in the shipments?
Last year, the classic PC Dungeons & Dragons RPG Baldur’s Gate finally made its way to the Mac in an enhanced port put together by Beamdog Entertainment, and from there, the iPad. We were excited about it at the time, but only because it paved the way for Baldur’s Gate II, which to this day might be the finest PC RPG game ever made. Baldur’s Gate is pretty good, but it hasn’t aged well. Baldur’s Gate II and its expansion, Throne of Bhaal, still hold up.
Time to get psyched, then. Beamdog is bringing Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition to the Mac on November 15. And if history is anything to judge by, an iPad version should follow a few months later.
Investment tycoon Carl Icahn has been bullish on Apple lately. In mid-August, Icahn unexpectedly tweeted that Icahn Enterprises, his diversified holding company, believed Apple to be “extremely undervalued.” Immediately, share prices jumped 5.6%. The next week, Icahn announced on Twitter that he and Tim Cook would be meeting in September to discuss a larger buyback program of AAPL shares.
That’s all nice, but Icahn is a business magnate, not an Apple fanboy. So what the heck is he up to here? A new theory being put forward by some investors is that Icahn has ulterior motives for his sudden Apple love affair: he wants Apple to buy Nuance, a company Icahn has a large stake in.
If you asked any Apple fan what they thought of Windows 8, they’d probably laugh and say it was a total dud, the perfect example on why Microsoft is just too hopeless to survive in the post-PC age. And you know what, there’d be something to that argument. After all, when Windows 8 shipped, it was fragmented between ARM and x86 versions from the start, and Windows 8 has been much lambasted from a usability perspective by both pros and casual users alike.
However, to call Windows 8 a total flop is probably going a little overboard. The latest operating system market share numbers suggest that Windows 8 is now installed on more computers than all versions of Mac OS X combined.
Case makers don’t always know more than the rest of us when it comes to when the next iPhone will come out, or even what it will look like. In a highly competitive market, case makers will routinely bet tens of thousands of dollars readying cases for iPhones that may not even exist, just in the hopes of being on the shelves at launch. Sometimes, though, case makers sometimes do have Far East assembly line sources who can give them leaked schematics of Apple’s upcoming devices.
So how to qualify this leaked render from Case-Mate, showing off a couple of iPhone 5C cases along with a very specific launch window.
Unless you’re young enough to think that the seemingly never-ending 80s fashion revival is actually cool, then it’s likely that you have a stack of real, printed photos in a box somewhere. And as we all know, printed photos are photos that you can’t post to Instagram, or backup on Dropbox.
What you need is to dig out that shoebox of pictures and send it off to somebody to scan.
If you’ve ever yearned for an iPhone case modelled on the skin of Edward James Olmos in his Miami Vice period (and frankly, who hasn’t?) then I have excellent news: monCarbone will now sell you the Crater, a carbon-fiber case as full of holes as a cartoon cheese.
With such a comprehensive leak now revealing the entire “lens camera” lineup in detail, it seems foolish to actually wait for an official launch to get all excited over the news of Sony’s totally left-field cellphone accessories. They’re actually standalone cameras, only the camera part is housed inside the lens, and they clip onto your smartphone, using it as the viewfinder and brain over a wireless connection.
Phooter looks pretty neat – apart from the name which, if the logo is anything to go by, is supposed to be pronounced to rhyme with “footer” and not “fooooter.”
Anyhow, the app is a learning tool/game for the iPhone and iPad which uses Flickr photos to teach geography.
SEATTLE, PAX 2013 – We spoke a bit with indie studio, Gaijin Games, at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) this weekend in Seattle, about the upcoming release of Runner 2 to iOS (and Sony’s PS Vita). Runner2, aka Bit.Trip Presents Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien, is a side-scrolling platform game with heavy rhythm elements that’s already out on console and Steam for Mac.
The team wanted to publish Runner2 on iOS on its own, in contrast to the console versions, which were published by Aksys Games. The Bit.Trip series has been a critical and consumer success, selling well on a variety of platforms since it began with Bit.Trip Beat in 2009.
SEATTLE, PAX 2013 – Picture this: you pull out that old Dance Dance Revolution pad, connect it to your Mac, and then dance your way through procedurally generated dungeons, tapping your feet and bouncing to the beat as you kill monsters, loot chests, and equip yourself with ever more powerful weapons.
Wait, what?
Vancouver-based Brace Yourself Games (aka Ryan Clark) has perhaps stumped even the most open minded among us with this new combination, found in upcoming game, Crypt of the NecroDancer.
Apple has today launched a Back to School iTunes music sale with selected albums reduced to as little as $6.99. The deals aim to give students “a smart deal on cool albums” from the likes of Justin Timberlake, Robin Thicke, Pink, and Lana Del Rey.
Shazam, Shazam Encore, and Shazam RED for iOS have today been updated with a number of new features and improvements. In addition to faster recognition on older iOS devices, and improved recognition in “difficult” environments, the release also brings Twitter previews and new TV experiences for those in the United States.
The iPhone 5C is quite possibly Apple’s worst-kept secret so far. We been enjoying photos and videos featuring its colorful plastic back and other internal components for a number of months, and now a new video has surfaced that shows a seemingly complete handset powered on and being played with.
Cult of Mac reader James Broccoli asks:
@mistercharlie Can you write something about how you use IFTTT, gmail and Mailbox as a todo manager, as mentioned in that Nitro article?
— James Broccoli (@broccoliboy21) August 28, 2013
My answer was “Sure!”
. And if you don’t like this post, make sure to address all your complaints to Mr. Broccoli.
There’s probably one single fact that’ll get you interested in the fancy Juicies Lightning cable:
That’s right – for just a dollar more you can have aluminum plugs and a corded fabric cable instead of plastic and… More plastic.
Until the Olloclip came along and changed iPhoneography forever, I got along with stick-on magnetic lenses for my iPad and iPhone. They work fine, as long as you don’t mind having to glue a metal washer around your iPhone’s lens, or Lining the lenses up to the iPhone camera’s own lens by eye, every time you either installed it or just knocked it.
The PhoGo case fixes this while adding a bunch of other neat iPhoneography features to your iPhone.
One of the main reasons I don’t use a case with my iPhone (except when testing for reviews) is that the iPhone 5 is so sleek and hot-looking that a case usually just fuglies everything up. Not so with Spigen’s Neo Hybrid, a case as handsome and slimline as the iPhone it protects.
SEATTLE, PAX 2013 – Wizards of the Coast is at the Penny Arcade Epo (PAX) this year to show off the most recent digital version of its digital card battler, Magic the Gathering 2014: Duels of the Planeswalkers, available for iPad, PC, select Android devices, and gaming consoles. This is the first expansion set for the game, which was originally released this past June.
We sat down with Mark Purvis, a brand manager for the Washington-based gaming company, to talk about the new expansion and some cool connections between the digital game and the paper one the company also produces.
SEATTLE, PAX 2013 – As we walked around the show floor at Penny Arcade this year, our attention was drawn to a beautifully hand-drawn platform game playing on a Wii U in one corner of the more independent gaming section of the expo. Called Teslagrad, this is a 2D puzzle platformer with action elements that uses magnetism and electricity as its main mechanic.
This is the second game from developer Rain AS, itself based in Bergen, Norway, and it’s just gotten picked up for Steam’s Greenlight program, a way for Valve to support independent game developers on its own digital distribution platform.
SEATTLE, PAX 2013 – We spent some time talking to Geoff Pitsch with Proletariat games at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) this weekend, looking at the company’s upcoming iPad game, World Zombination. The game is a faction-based, real time tactical, massively multiplayer game with real-world activity recorded across all players. All battles take place in areas based on real-world cities.
Currently, the zombies are winning.
SEATTLE, PAX 2013 – We sat down with Majesco’s Vince Vanasin today to take a look at the upcoming iOS game, Romans from Mars, a castle defense game with a sense of whimsy. The idea here is that the Martians are coming to storm your castle, and you’ve only got a crossbow to deter them.
Luckily, you’ll be able to upgrade that crossbow along the way in this free-to-play game coming to iOS this October. Here’s a quick Vine video of Romans from Mars, straight from the PAX floor.
SEATTLE, PAX 2013 – Robot Loves Kitty is a husband and wife game development team who used to live in a treehouse to save money. They started a Kickstarter hoping to raise just enough money to buy a decent laptop and a copy of Unity to develop the game. They ultimately raised 650 percent of their initial request, making things easier, yet much more complex, than they’d ever planned.
“I can’t believe it’s so popular,” said Alix Stolzer, the wife half of the Robot Loves Kitty development team. She also does some of the artwork, the story, and does PR for the game. The extra funding enabled the team to rent a tiny apartment and pay for internet, but it also requires them to create more features than they initially planned.
SEATTLE, PAX 2013 – We stopped by the booth for interactive radio drama with voices that most gamers here at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Seattle this weekend will know, including Rob Wiethoff (Red Dead Redemption), Logan Cunningham (Bastion), Sarah Elmaleh (Skills of the Shogun), and Chris Ciulla (Fallout: New Vegas).
We got to sample the prologue and first episode of the game today at the PAX booth on the show floor in the convention center, where we spoke with Jonathan Myers about the innovative game. As you can hear in the launch trailer above, the voice work and the music bring you right into the action.
SEATTLE, PAX 2013 – We spoke with Josh Glazer, CTO of Naked Sky Entertainment, about the company’s upcoming turn-based tactical game, Backyard Battles. The game, coming to iOS, Android, and the web later this year, pits two teams of children against each other, wielding cardboard tubes, spell books, and their imaginations.
“It’s what kids raised on video games do when they play outside,” said Glazer.