News - page 1514

This time on The CultCast: great apps go free for Apple’s 5th Appaversary; an updated Retina Macbook Pro is close at hand; iPad Mini COULD go retina; our favorite new iOS 7 beta 3 features; researchers know where you’ll take your iPhone next; Alex E. Heath loves Daughters; mini Kahney gets a birthday surprise; and guests hosts GWAR stop by! That last part’s a lie.

Have a few laughs and get caught up on this week’s best Apple stories. Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin.

In what is perhaps the most bizarre lawsuit ever filed against Apple, Tennessee lawyer Chris Sevier is seeking damages for watching “women engaging in sexual acts with the intent to cause vicarious arousal” on his Apple devices. Contained within his 50-page complaint, Sevier’s proposal is that Apple ship its devices in a “safe mode” that customers would have to take steps to disable if they wanted to be naughty.

The Vanderbilt law school grad believes that it’s Apple’s responsibility to shift “the burden off of the buyers who do not want to see porn onto those who do want to see pornographic content to take the additional step.”

ReadKit is one of the best read-it-later/RSS apps out there for the Mac. It supports a nice lineup of services, and now it has been updated with Feedly integration. Although Feedly is the best Google Reader alternative for most people, it has been lacking a solid Mac app—until now.

Here’s the full list of changes and bug fixes in ReadKit 2.2:

So, if you haven’t played Anomaly 2, yet, now is the time to check it out, as it’s a brilliant and fun real-time tower defense and offense game with gorgeous graphics and delightful head-to-head multiplayer action.
You can grab the new update for free, or–if you haven’t gotten the game, yet–grab a copy for only $7.49 on Steam right now. Seriously, a game this good for under eight bucks? Why are you still here?

Yesterday, we told you about Eidos and Square Enix’s decision to not let jailbroken iOS devices–something that’s completely legal–play the game.

Today, however, after an apparent onslaught of media and customer complaint, Square Enix has reversed it’s choice.

AT&T plans to purchase Leap Wireless for $15 per share. Leap is the parent company of Cricket Wireless, a small U.S. carrier that sells the iPhone prepaid. In a press release issued today, both carriers confirmed the acquisition plans, explaining that “AT&T will acquire all of Leap’s stock and wireless properties, including licenses, network assets, retail stores and approximately 5 million subscribers.” Leap is currently over $2 billion in debt, so the AT&T deal will help rescue what has been a sinking ship.

“AT&T will retain the Cricket brand name, provide Cricket customers with access to AT&T’s award-winning 4G LTE mobile network, utilize Cricket’s distribution channels, and expand Cricket’s presence to additional U.S. cities,” notes the press release. The acquisition will also help bolster AT&T’s coverage in select areas around the country. More importantly, Cricket customers will have access to AT&T’s more robust 4G LTE network.

The iPad mini is, for my money, the perfect iPad as far as form factor is concerned. But man, that 1024 x 768 display just looks like garbage once you’ve gone Retina. So while I have (and love) my iPad mini as an e-reader, I won’t get rid of my Retina iPad until the iPad mini can match it, pixel for pixel.

I doubt I’m alone in this, which is why everyone’s eagerly waiting for the iPad mini 2. Apple obviously wants to put a Retina display in the next-generation tablet, but the question remains: is the technology (and the production yields) there yet to make it a reality? Not in 2013, according to a new report.

When the iPhone was unveiled back in 2007, its touch screen was a revelation to the industry. You don’t need a stylus; you just touch it with your finger and it responds almost instantaneously.

While the iPhone’s touch display may feel a bit magical, the glass is coated in a thin, transparent material called indium tin oxide (ITO) that can sense when you touch the display. It’s one of those little tiny feats of engineering that you never really notice, except according to a new report from the U.S. government, supplies of ITO are dwindling and researchers are hustling to find a replacement.

We all know how exciting getting your first iPhone can be. But you should always remember to take your old phone home with you when you upgrade at the store — particularly if you decided to steal your iPhone rather than pay for it.

One man was caught red-handed for a robbery at a DMW Wireless store in Springfield, Virginia, when he left his Samsung Galaxy behind after fleeing the scene.

In its first foray into the world of 3D printing, eBay has introduced a new app for iOS, called eBay Exact. The new app allows users to customize and purchase 3D-printed products from Sculpteo, MakerBot, and Hot Pop Factory, which are built to order and shipped from each 3D printer’s facilities.

Right now eBay Exact only has about 20 items to choose from and customize, but more are likely to be added in the future as the 3D printing wave continues to gain momentum. All of the customizations are handled within the app as users are able to personalize colors, engravings, and even design textures for a few items.

Here’s what it’s like to design a custom wood grain iPhone case with the app:

Apple needs a lot of tin to make its assortment of gadgets, but tin can be a very environmentally unfriendly business. It can destroy tropical forests and coral reefs, and it can bankrupt the people who depend on tropical forests and coral reefs for their livelihood. No tropical forests? No trees. No coral reefs? No fish.

Much of the tin-mining in the world is done on Bangka Island in Indonesia. Unfortunately, only some of the tin mining done there is regulated, meaning they watch out for the environmental impact. Recently, there’s been a lot of concern that Apple might actually be buying up tin from unregulated mines, taking part in the environmental destruction of the locale. That’s why Apple’s launching an investigation on the matter.

While Rovio has been pretty busy lately helping other developers launch new iOS games via its publishing company, Rovio Stars, but the Angry Birds hit marker isn’t done churning out its own titles.

This morning Rovio announced it will reveal a brand new game next Monday, July 15th. The teaser image pays homage to the very first teaser poster that was released for Star Wars Episode I: the Phantom Menace, so it looks like the new game will be an Angry Birds version of the prequel trilogy:

Attention, Angry Birds fans! Stay tuned on Monday, July 15th, for big news about a brand new game! We’re talking the biggest character line-up ever, awesome new powers, and maybe even a few surprises!

Intrigued? Stay tuned for more news on #July15!

Source: Rovio

From today, Time Inc. is allowing Newsstand users to try its digital magazines before they buy them. You’ll be able to read a handful of articles from its latest magazines in full — as well as teasers for others — before you hand over any cash.

Pebble has announced that its popular smartwatch has now surpassed 275,000 pre-orders, and more than 93,000 of them have been shipped since to over 150 countries since January.

The accompanying app for Android and iOS has been downloaded more than a million times, and the company has vowed to continue improving its development platform and give third-party app makers deeper access to the watch’s technology.

Best Buy is currently giving away gift cards worth a minimum of $200 to those who trade-in a second- or third-generation iPad for a new model. The offer will get you a brand new fourth-generation iPad with Retina display for as little as $299.99.

Any.Cal is the new iPhone calendar app from Any.Do, and it brings an ultra-clean UI to your iOS calendar, complete with some rather useful extras. Plus it uses the same account you already have for Any.do, which ties everything together.

Manfrotto’s new Pixi tripod is built to supports hefty compact cameras, but will be equally at home when shoved under your iPhone (via a case with a tripod screw mount, of course). In fact, it’s almost perfect for iPhoeography as it doubles as a handgrip letting you shoot much steadier video than you could with the iPhone only.

Tangent is a new iPhone app for dickering with your photos. It comes from Ben Guerrette, the brains behind Deco Sketch for the iPhone and iPad, and it is similar in intent. Tangent overlays geometrical patterns onto your photo, and then lets you adjust them.

If we’re guessing about improvments coming to the next iPhone, then a better camera is a pretty safe bet. Each iteration of the iPhone has bumped the megapixels and improved image quality, low-light performance and added featres like HDR and panoramas. Many other makers (cough Samsung cough) have attempted to match the iPhone’s camera, but only one has really come close – Nokia. And the new Lumia 1020 looks even more amazing yet.

Chair Entertainment has confirmed that Infinity Blade: Dungeons, the third installment in the Infinity Blade franchise for iOS, has officially been canned.

Fans have been looking forward to the title since it was announced last March during an Apple iPad event, but its future has looked uncertain since the studio that was developing the game, Impossible Games, was closed back in February.

Fray Fix is my favorite kind of gadget: cheap, simple, and completely single-minded. And it doesn’t even have any stupid CamelCasing or vowel movements in its name. What is it? A protector for the power cable on your MagSafe brick.

Olympus was always the company with the best gimmicks, the smallest cameras and the coolest TV ads (in the 1980s UK, at least). And that (apart from the ads) continues to this day. Almost a year ago, the company showed off the Body Cap Lens, and now it’s available to buy. As in, “buy from Amazon today.”

Classic video game series, Worms, is getting a new installment on iOS in Q3 of this year with Worms 3 set to blast its way to the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch in a couple of months.

Interestingly, Developer Team 17 has made this one as an iOS exclusive, skipping other platforms it’s been on since the first Worms came out in 1995, like the Mac, PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and various handheld gaming devices.

The new game follows up the 1997 Worms 2 game, making Worms 3 a hotly anticipated title for iOS, indeed, as there have only been a bunch of add-on and experimental 3D games in the series since then.

Apple just posted a couple of tiny updates to both OS X and iOS versions of Airport Utility, bringing the Apple-branded router setup and management utility to version 6.3.1. The patch apparently fixes a bug that would keep AirPort base stations from being detected in some cases. It’s a little under 22 M to download, and can be downloaded from Apple’s support site, Software Update, and the iTunes App Store, if the iOS version is the one you need.

If you’re rockin’ OS X Mavericks beta, you’ll also see a new update for the as-yet-unreleased beta software. This should fix some sort of problem with the Recovery Mode, though the details are light at this point as to what, specifically, is being fixed. It will show up in Software Update, too.

Source: Apple Support
Via: MacNN

As if Dataman Next isn’t already superpretty and superuseful, it’s now available in a Kryptonian font. Supermen and geeks everywhere, rejoice.