Twelve South, one of Cult of Mac’s favorite accessory makers, has a new stand out called the HiRise. Announced today, the elegant, metallic device is designed for holding the iPhone 5 and iPad mini. Like most of Twelve South’s products, the HiRise looks right at home amongst your other Apple products.
iOS 7 beta 4 was just released last week, but that hasn’t kept Apple from pumping out another beta to developers faster than you can say “Oppenheimer.” Beta 5 was released today, and like always, there are some subtle and not-so-subtle changes worth noting.
Here are eight changes in iOS 7 beta 5:
Holy crap, right? Robert Suarez dropped this amazing video up on YouTube, showing him beating the entire tower in under three minutes (2:58, to be exact), a full 32 seconds faster than the game developer’s own Game Center achievement.
There are some slight spoilers in the video, as it shows the entirety of the tower, from the bottom to the top level, with some cool avatars, power ups and the final boss. If you don’t want to see these things, preferring to work your own way up to the top, don’t watch the video.
For the rest of us, who know we’ll never be as good as this guy, it offers an incentive to keep plugging away at the game, which we reviewed favorably here.
We’ve contacted Robert via Twitter to find out how he got to this feat of Knightmare Tower awesomeness, and will update as we hear more.
Via: TouchArcade
Along with the new beta for iOS 7, Apple has also seeded a new beta version of Apple TV 5.4 to developers.
Developers can download the new beta from the iOS Dev Center or via the direct links below:
It’s only been a week since the last iOS 7 beta came out, but Apple just seeded the fifth beta to developers this morning. The new update can be downloaded over the air, or directly through the iOS Dev Center.
Here are the direct download links:
Those still rocking an iPad 2 may have been disappointed to see that it wasn’t supported by Deus Ex: The Fall when the title made its debut on iOS last month, but a new update out today fixes that problem. It also brings major improvements to enemy artificial intelligence, and addresses some bugs.
Jobs, the upcoming Steve Jobs biopic starring Ashton Kutcher and Josh Gad, gets its second official teaser trailer today, ahead of the much-anticipated cinema debut August 16. It’s entitled “American Legend,” and you can check it out below.
We’ve already seen a whole bunch of iPhone 5S components over the past few months—they’ve even been shown off in hands-on videos—but these high quality images show the changes Apple has made to its Retina display when compared to the iPhone 5 model.
Apple’s earbud redesign year was a contentious thing. I thought the new EarPods sounded as crummy as the old ones, but unlike the old ones, at least they weren’t like shoving pieces of glass into your cochleas. On the other hand, our supreme commander, Leander, thought they sounded as good as $150 dollar Beats. Which, come to think of it, might mean that we were agreeing.
Either way, the EarPods are the earbuds most people stick with when listening to their iDevice. But if you jog or are active, the EarPods have one big flaw: they fall out of your ears at just the hint of perspiration. But a new, $10 accessory solves that deficiency for good.
When iOS 7 launches in the fall, iTunes Radio will give millions of users the ability to listen to a Pandora-like station of streaming music an algorithm thinks they’ll like, with each track available for purchase with just a tap. Yet despite the name, iTunes Radio isn’t really radio, because radio with its DJs imply human curation.
But that might change before launch. Word has it that Apple is now approaching real radio stations to be included in iTunes Radio.
We all hate iTunes—it’s the fashionable thing to do. The smarter amongst us have switched over to Rdio and Spotify or another streaming service, and use iTunes solely as a way to sync our iDevices.
But Vox is a new app (launching today) which will give you access to your iTunes library without all the cruft that makes it almost impossible to use for, you know, tunes. It’s pretty sweet.
Meet the eleMount, a poseable aluminum mount for your iPhone or—if you’re feeling adventurous—the iPad mini. It’s like a little angle poise elbow for your phone, letting you set it at almost any angle you like.
Tasket is a service that syncs your Google Tasks list with your iOS Reminders list. It performs this magical feat pretty much flawlessly, using a Microsoft Exchange server to do the syncing, and letting you add and remove tasks from pretty much anywhere.
Apple has uploaded a new iPhone 5 ad today to its YouTube channel that showcases FaceTime video calling. Entitled “FaceTime Every Day,” the one-minute clip continues the “Every Day” series which began earlier this year, promoting features that are more popular on the iPhone than on any other smartphone.
Nikon’s new SB–300 is an entry-level speed light that you probably shouldn’t buy. It’s a tilting, non-swivel model that runs off two AA batteries, costs $150 and has pretty much zero off-camera manual control.
You should be careful when using third-party chargers for Apple devices. Multiple reports have surfaced recently of iPhone owners being electrocuted by malfunctioning chargers in China.
Apple has announced a new USB Power Adapter Takeback Program for those who wish to swap out their third-party chargers for official ones. The program begins August 16.
Originally planned as a June 11 release, Sim City is now going to release on August 29, 2013, according to a tweet today from EA’s official SimCity Twitter account.
Joining another hotly-anticipated game release for the Mac, Bioshock Infinite, SimCity will hopefully be ready for prime time and not delayed again.
My kids and I have been watching episodes of Adventure Time, Cartoon Network’s disturbingly funny cartoon show. The adventures of Finn, Jake and a cast of crazy characters is compelling television, and hilarious on many different levels.
Legends of Ooo – Adventure Time originally launched for iOS last year in June, and while it provided some of the same fun and voiceover work as the cartoon show in a goofy little iOS package, it only came with one episode, “The Big Hollow Princess.”
This oversight has been corrected this past weekend with the release of the second episode, “The Library of Doom,” an all-new story and adventure game with new voice overs for the characters within. Even better, Episode 2 is absolutely free for a limited time as an in-app purchase. Shmow-zow!
If you haven’t gotten to check out The World Ends With You: Solo Remix yet, it’s completely understandable. Publisher Square Enix has a reputation for charging much more than the typical iOS game when it releases its popular games onto Apple’s touchscreen platform. It totally makes sense you might not want to pick it up for $17.99 for your iPhone, let alone $19.99 for your iPad.
If I said that the game, originally released to the dual-screen Nintendo DS, is completely worth every penny of the asking price, would you pick it up? Probably not.
But what if I said that both versions are now much less expensive, with the iPhone version in the App Store at $9.99 and the iPad version at $10.99? If you love innovative, brilliant gaming on the go, you’ll go grab a copy right now. Who knows how long the sale will last?
The number one rule when it comes to stealing an iPhone is to turn off Find My iPhone and restore iOS to factory settings. Every good thief knows this, but there are so many clueless ones who don’t; the latest of whom is a charming douchebag from Dubai named Hafid.
Hafid likes to cruise around various locales of the UAE and pose the shit out of them. What he doesn’t know is all his profound selfies and other photos on his stolen iPhone are being uploaded to the original owner’s Dropbox account. And she’s posting them all on Tumblr:
UPDATE: As Cult of Mac reader lepht points out below, there are contrasting opinions on whether push actually saves battery life. Check out his post here to see a different point of view. Also note tordofm’s comment below, and the original article I linked below, both of which support the push as battery saver idea.
You have a couple of options when setting up your email accounts on an iPhone or iPad: Fetch and Push. While Push is only available to more modern email accounts like Gmail, most of us have at least one account that can utilize this email service.
But what’s the difference, really? And how do you set it up on your iOS device? That’s why we’re here.
Mobile payment startup Square has updated its Register app with several new features. Both the iPhone and iPad versions of the app can now record and track payments, including checks and gift cards. On the iPad, merchants can reconcile their cash drawers using the app’s clean interface. The portable SM-S220i printer can now be used to wirelessly print receipts from the app via Bluetooth.
The Apple Store and Best Buy recently started carrying Square’s iPad stand that helps turn the device into a point-of-sale machine.
Square Register is available for free in the App Store.
Source: App Store
Things haven’t been going all that well for HP on the PC shipment front, but it’s hoping to make up for that with its new high-tech Project Moonshot servers. In fact, HP CEO Meg Whitman is so jazzed about her company’s new servers that she’s even going around bragging that Apple might be considering HP for its iTunes services.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqfEE_X5cpQ
Joining its buddy Microsoft, Nokia has decided to start attacking Apple’s products head-on with a new ad campaign for the Nokia 925 that bashes the iPhone 5’s camera.
The new ad starts by noting that more pictures are taken on the iPhone every day than on any other camera. But Nokia’s all about quality instead of quantity, goes the ad, so you should totally buy the the Nokia 925 if the only thing that matters in the world to you is your smartphone’s camera sensor.
To Nokia’s credit, their PureView cameras are pretty nice—if you don’t mind lugging around a big bulky Windows Phone that still doesn’t even have Instagram.
Thanks: Dave
Adventure games are fantastic fun, but they tend to be a bit outdated. Even the newer ones seem to think that hunting for tiny little pixels in confusing images and combining bizarre objects together is the way to go.
Brazillian developer Pigasus Games thinks it’s high time we play adventure games that don’t force us to bend our minds to the will of some wacky game developer’s specific puzzles, but rather play something that combines emergent gameplay with a whole sandbox of tools to create our own adventure games. So they created Adventurezator, an emergent point-and-click adventure game with its own set of design and creation tools, made in Unity for Mac, PC, and Linux. Here’s what the devs have to say:
In Adventurezator, you not only play an ever-renewed pile of brilliantly designed point-and-click adventures: you actually get to design your own, and publish them too! The best part? You can do that without all that boring programming, or math. It’s all very technical, but (if we had to put it in layman’s terms) it works like a very fancy cable connected directly to your brilliance.