Steve Wozniak has made his feelings about Ashton Kutcher’s Jobs movie pretty clear, but how does he really feel about the film? Kutcher believes Woz’s views could be swayed by the fact he’s being paid by another studio to support a different Steve Jobs movie, and because Jobs doesn’t place enough focus on Woz’s contribution to Apple.
German retail chain Media Markt has added a 128GB iPhone 5 model to its inventory, sparking speculation that Apple could be planning to double the handset’s maximum internal storage at its iPhone event on September 10. The iPhone 5 is currently available in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB variants, but a 128GB model is sure to appeal to plenty of customers.
Some of the folks behind Project Gotham Racing and Blur are bringing their racing game chops to iOS this fall with upcoming premium iOS game, 2K Drive. Developed by Lucid Games (Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery, Pixel Smash) and published by 2K Games (XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Borderlands Legends), 2K Drive aims to be everything a car-loving racing game fan could want, all on iPhone or iPad.
Shadowgun: DeadZone, the award-winning multiplayer shooter that has attracted millions of players on Android and iOS, is now available to download on your Mac.
Like its mobile counterparts, the desktop version is completely free, and you can even sign into the same account you’ve already been playing with — so all the characters and weapons you’ve upgraded will be available to you right away.
It’s not easy making a posthumous movie about the world’s most well-known and beloved control freak. Just ask Joshua Michael Stern, director of new Steve Jobs biopic Jobs. The film delves into the early days of Apple Computer as Stern paints a picture of a man he calls a “brutally honest character.”
Don’t go into the PG-13 Jobs expecting any bombshells about Apple’s late, great maximum leader — you won’t find any. Instead, what you’ll get is a straightforward cinematic take on Jobs’ early partnership with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (played mostly for comic relief by Josh Gad), a healthy dose of Hollywood-style boardroom intrigue and a few glimpses into Jobs’ personal life. Many of the scenes, whether factually accurate or not, have been woven into the tapestry of tech history. And Jobs, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2011, obviously isn’t around to fact-check the past or exert his famous control over the final product.
“Part of the shackles for me as a director was, we really had to do everything that was sort of public domain, you know, we couldn’t stray too far off of what we basically knew about Steve,” Stern told Cult of Mac during a recent interview at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in San Francisco. “But the interesting thing about Steve, being such an enigma, there really isn’t that much more to know at all. I mean, everyone knows what they know.”
Look, I’ll be straight with you, I’m not a movie critic. Nope, just an average moviegoer. But I am an Apple fan, and probably, like you, one who greatly admired Steven P. Jobs.
So ever since last Tuesday, when I got to sit through an early screening of Ashton Kutcher’s much-hyped new movie, Jobs, people have been asking me what I think of it. Is this a film that lives up to the buzz? Did Kutcher deliver? Or more often, “Just how bad was it?”
Well…
If ever proof were needed that pixel art’s deceptive simplicity requires a huge amount of work and skill, it’s here in the form of Belowrez, an iPhone camera app that measures its pixels not in the millions but in the tens.
Following reports that it was looking to open a new research and development center in Taiwan, Apple is now going on a massive hiring binge in China for talented engineers, having recently put up openings for over 300 new employees in Taiwan on the professional social networking site LinkedIn.
You might think it’s too soon for a movie about Steve Jobs. After all, the Apple co-founder walked off the world stage just 676 days before Friday’s premiere of Jobs, the movie about him that stars Ashton Kutcher.
I had that same uneasy feeling sitting through the interminable 122-minute Jobs, a PG-13 movie that frequently stalls like a spinning beach ball.
Editorial might just make you ditch your computer altogether as a writing machine. It’s a new iPad text editor from Ole Zorn, the man behind the incredible Pythonista app (Editorial actually features a built-in Python editor). Editorial could just be used as a really polished, really well-designed text editor, but it also has customizable, Automator-style workflows that let you do pretty much anything with the text you have in the app.
If I told you that Apple had a monopoly over all of the apps sold through the iTunes App Store, what would you say? Would you stammer for a little bit, eyes boggling, trying to understand how an injustice like this could happen in our tightly regulated markets? Or would you say, “No kidding, Sherlock. The App Store is their exclusive proprietary platform. It’s a walled garden,” and then, perhaps to emphasize what an idiot you think I am, slowly twirling one finger around your ear while using another to rapidly flick your lower lip up and down while googling your eyes?
I can’t blame you; I’d probably do the latter myself. Yet would you believe that an antitrust complaint was filed against Apple because there aren’t third-party app stores allowed on the iOS platform? Of course someone did. The case has been dismissed by a U.S. District judge, but not because it was a stupid complaint, but because the plaintiffs made a procedural mistake.
I should probably start a Tumblr for weird and amazing Kickstarter videos, but I’m sure someone has made it already. If I was starting one, then my first video would be this one, from Dave Garcia and GearLeash. The product is called the iPhone Bumper Case and Holster, which will probably conjure up images of polo-shirt-and-chinos-clad office drones practicing their Travis-Bickle-style quick-draws in the bathroom mirror.
And that would be pretty rad. But Dave has managed to go one better: His Kickstarter promo features muggers, gymnastics and girls leaping down stairs. And that’s just for starters.
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities is one of the few analysts who routinely predicts Apple’s moves correctly. Yesterday, Kuo sent out a research note to investors that was filled with details about the iPhone 5S, including Kuo’s belief that we will see a gold-colored iPhone 5S available with 128GB of storage.
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.