I showed the picture of this Victorinox knife block to The Lady and she asked the obvious question: “What could possibly go wrong?” Indeed, what mishaps could possibly befall the user of an iPad stand which also houses a clutch of heavy, sharp metal knives? Nothing, clearly.
Goal Zero’s new Lighthouse 250 Lantern and USB Power Hub is a camper’s best friend. By day, it’s a USB charger with a backup battery, ready for juicing your waning iPhone. By night, it’s a lamp which will run for up to 48 hours.
PhotoSync is one of the most used apps on my iDevices. It lets you share photos between iOS devices, as well as from iOS-to-Mac (and PC), and it’ll do so over your Wi-Fi network, or automatically over Bluetooth (with no configuration).
v2 has jsut been released as a free update to existing users. I’ve been using the beta for a month or so, and it is awesome.
Apple spotlights a new iOS app each week as a special pick: the App of the Week. Last week, it was a gorgeously designed alarm clock, Rise, that caught Apple’s editorial fancy.
This week, it’s Namco Bandai’s Doodle Fit 2: Around the World, a delightfully drawn puzzle game that’s sure to keep you frustrated yet coming back for more with its maddeningly simple concept.
We weren’t expecting Apple to drop a new iOS 7 beta so soon, but Apple just dropped iOS 7 beta 6 in our laps this late Thursday afternoon. Developers can download the new beta build from the Dev Center or as an OTA update.
Once we dive into the beta we’ll let you know if there are any big changes, but it looks like it’s mostly just a fix for an issue with iTunes in the Cloud.
Here are the direct download links:
Apple doesn’t buy other companies very often, so when it does, there’s usually a very strategic reason. When it was reported that Apple had acquired Matcha a couple days ago, the reason seemed obvious.
Matcha was a small startup that specialized in aggregating programming guides from sources like Netflix and Hulu into a nice interface. Apple has been getting more serious about maturing the Apple TV, so the two seemed to fit like a glove.
But according to a recent report, Apple wanted Matcha for something else.
Automatic is a really cool product that has been in private testing for quite some time. A little dongle attaches to your car’s onboard computer and communicates with a beautifully designed iPhone app. The app tells you things like when you’re braking or accelerating too hard, a report of your gas mileage and more.
Today Automatic announced that it is delaying shipment of its Link hardware again. Instead of shipping to non-beta testers by late August or early September, the release has been pushed back a few weeks.
When Ryan Orbuch and Michael Hansen set out to make a task manager for the iPhone, they were both 16 years old. Now they’ve won a 2013 Apple Design Award for Finish, their app that specializes in combating procrastination.
Today, version 2.0 of Finish landed in the App Store, and among a design refresh, the update packs a ton of new features.
This highly anticipated game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe is now available on Mac and PC via Steam. The digital game is based on the popular two-player board game of the same name from Games Workshop, originally published in 1989.
The current digital iteration will feature a single player campaign of 15 missions, each set on the giant derelict spaceship (the “hulk” of the title), “Sin of Damnation.” There will also be multiplayer head-to-head action, oh yes.
Before college football season gets underway, ESPN is pushing out an update for its WatchESPN app that lets users stay plugged in to more games than ever before. The update adds a new split-screen view so you can watch two games at once, while keeping tabs on game day with the new live tool bar that displays scores and video highlights.
ESPN is also beefing up the content on WatchESPN by adding “ESPN on ABC” events to the app, but you’ll be pulled over to the WatchABC app when you choose them. To top it all off, WatchESPN users who connect through a military or college network now get access to ESPN3 events automatically.
Here are the full release notes:
China Mobile may be the world’s biggest carrier with over 740 million subscribers, but it is yet to tie up a deal with Apple for the iPhone. That could change this fall when the Cupertino company unveils the iPhone 5S and a low-cost “iPhone 5C” for emerging markets, which are expected to include support for China Mobile’s 4G LTE network.
According to China Mobile chairman Xi Guohua, the company is already in talks with Apple, and “both sides are keen” to reach a deal.
Phobic Studios are best known for the collaborative development with Backflip Studios on runaway hit, Dragonvale, but the Boulder, Colorado-based company has been in the game for quite some time, spawning several entertaining mobile titles in the process. The company has just announced its next game, an action platformer game set in, well, a solar system.
In Glare, you’ll play as The Shiner, a being of light who must travel around a beautifully rendered solar system and save the sun itself from an evil threat. Glare will release in fall of this year on Steam for Mac, Linux, and PC systems.
Baldurs Gate fans, rejoice, as the classic role playing game, recently ported to iPad in Enhanced Edition, is back on the App Store after a couple of months.
The developers at Beamdog pulled the game in June after some sort of contractual dispute. That was a sad day, as Beamdog are true believers, and were planning to port Baldur’s Gate II to the iPad, while maybe even developing a Baldur’s Gate III if the second game were a success.
Until Apple’s Developer Center was taken down due to a security breach, the Cupertino company was steadily rolling out new iOS 7 betas every other Monday — and it appears that trend is set to continue now that everything’s back to normal.
Sources familiar with Apple’s plans say that we can expect iOS 7 beta 6 to arrive next week, ahead of a Gold Master release on Friday, September 5.
The first major movie about Steve Jobs hits U.S. theaters in less than 24 hours. Reviews have been mixed, but if you’re not interested in plopping down your hard-earned cash to see Ashton doing his best El Jobso impersonation, Open Road Films CEO, Tom Ortenberg, says you’ll be able to watch it all from your couch soon enough.
Nearly three decades after Apple Computer introduced the Macintosh, a pair of incredibly rare Mac prototypes have been discovered and restored to working order.
The computers, known as Twiggy Macs because they used the same 5.25-inch Twiggy floppy disk drive found in Apple’s doomed Lisa, were tracked down and painstakingly brought back to life by Adam Goolevitch, a vintage Mac collector, and Gabreal Franklin, a former Apple software engineer.
“Throughout the past 15 years, I have heard stories of and researched the fabled ‘Twiggy Macintosh’ computer,” Goolevitch told Cult of Mac in an email. “It was a thing of myth and legend — like a unicorn.”
Locating these Macs was the first step, but getting them to work was the real challenge. Goolevitch and Franklin embarked on an all-out effort to resurrect these long-lost pieces of Macintosh history.
Now two Twiggy Macs have been returned to life in full working glory. They are — without a doubt — the oldest Macs in the world. With auction prices for Apple-1 computers nudging upward toward the half-million-dollar mark, these incredibly rare prototypes — which look a lot like something you might find at a garage sale — could prove priceless. Here is the story of their amazing resurrection.
Do you love animated GIFs? Hey, who doesn’t? We certainly do, and as it turns out, Flipboard does too. The personally curated magazine for iOS has just introduced a new update that allows you to check out animated GIFs, right within the app.
Will the iPad mini have a Retina display this year or won’t it? The rumor cycle back and forth concerning the smaller iPad’s high-res aspirations have become frustrating to follow for anyone who has been hoping Apple will correct the sole point of criticism about its 7.9-inch offering in time for Christmas.
If you’ve had your fingers crossed (or parts beyond), good news. IHS iSuppli, one of the companies that really knows what is going on in Apple’s supply chain, says displays suitable for the Retina iPad mini are “on track” for a fall launch.
A couple months ago, a series of benchmarks for the new Mac Pro popped up on Geekbench, showing off what Apple’s new machine could do. And just what could it do? Not much more than the current top-of-the-line 2012 Mac Pro, disappointing many who thought even the old Mac Pro was a dog at launch.
However, there’s a caveat. The hardware was prototype. The machine was running OS X Mavericks, which had just released its first beta. And the version of Geekbench being run against the new Mac Pro was 32-bit, and therefore not designed to fully exploit the Mac Pro’s 64-bit architecture. Is the real Mac Pro really going to be so disappointing?
No. It’s going to be blazing fast.
Raise a glass, oenophiles — today there’s a new app that’ll let your fuzzy head easily remember that fantastic last glass of wine you had was actually from a bottle of “Emrich-Schönleber Monzinger Frühlingsplätzchen Riesling trocken.”
You’ve been waiting for months and months, and it’s finally time. Plants vs. Zombies 2 is finally available in the U.S. App Store after a soft launch last month in Australia and New Zealand.
The download is free, but there are in-app purchases for certain upgrades and power-ups. But it’s not the annoying kind of freemium like Real Racing; you can play through the whole game just fine without having to buy anything. We’ll have a full review up soon.
So what are you waiting for? The sequel to one of the best iOS games in history just came out. Get downloading!
Source: App Store
Apple TV manages to grab most of the spotlight for streaming set-top boxes, but when it comes time to actually view content, Americans are using Roku far more frequently than Apple’s little hobby.
A new study from Parks Associates found that while the Apple TV is used by 24% of U.S. consumers with a streaming video device, Roku has managed to best that with a 37% usage rate among households with such devices.
Orbotix’s robotic ball, Sphero, has gotten so popular over the past two years, even Obama has been spotted driving one around, but it’s finally getting an upgrade, as Orbotix has just announced Sphero 2.0 will launch later this month.
Since the original iPhone in 2007, the iPhone Photography Awards have been showcasing incredible work from professional and amateur photographers. This year’s IPAA’s are no different, and the winners are on display. Selections were made for over 15 different categories from thousands of photos submitted from 38 countries.
WordPress has released an update to its iOS app that introduces several improvements. Most notably, the app has a new Reader experience for reading posts from followed blogs, liked posts, favorite topics, etc. Automatiic, the company behind WordPress, has also streamlined how the app handles multiple accounts.