Gameloft has today release Gangstar Vegas for iOS, the latest title in its open-world, Grand Theft Auto-inspired series of action games. The title takes you on a dangerous adventure through the “City of Sin” as you play as a mixed martial arts fighter through 80 action-packed missions.
EA’s latest SimCity game was scheduled to arrive on Mac next week, but the company has announced that it will be delayed because it is “not ready for primetime yet.” Mac gamers won’t see the title until August now, with EA working to provide “a great experience” for those on OS X.
You’ve all used those personal guided museum tours, right? The ones that use a button-covered box and a pair of filthy headphones to tell you all about the painting/sculpture/diorama in front of you?
Well, imagine that instead of a stupid box and worn out headphones you got to use your own iPhone. And instead of having to tap in a number to hear the guide, you just relied on GPS to know what you’re looking at. And finally, imagine that instead of being a guide to a dusty old museum, the “museum” was instead the whole of New York.
That’s Urban Wonderer.
Tall Chess might as well have been called “LetterChess:” it’s like a cross between the amazingly addictive Letterpress and actual, you know, chess. It’s an iPhone 5 game (hence the “tall” part – it uses the whole of the iPhone’s screen to show the board), and it lets you play the great game against folks you’ll find on Game Center.
Booq’s new Fibre Snapcase is yet another shell-style iPhone 5 case, but this one at least has the distinction of using the neat linen-y material also found in Booq’s excellent Mamba device bags. I kind of like the look of it, but I wish that it had gone little further.
Today the story broke about PRISM, a supposedly top-secret program at the US National Security Agency (NSA) that has been in operation since 2007.
According to The Washington Post, current intelligence reporting increasingly relies on PRISM as its main source of raw data and is used in almost 1 out of every 7 intelligence reports these days.
Here’s the basic breakdown of what’s happening so far in the story, who’s involved, what’s being looked at, and more.
Today, the fourth day of the Apple e-book anti-trust trial taking place in New York, Google’s director of strategic partnerships testified as a government witness. Thomas Turvey, under cross examination from Apple lawyer Orin Snyder, told the court that while the publishers named in the original suit had told him that they had moved to an agency model due to deals with Apple, he also acknowledged that his lawyer had helped him draft his own statement for the court, and that he was unsure of the details within the statement.
In other words, the exact opposite of what a credible witness says.
The Washington Post has reported that the NSA has created a $20 million spy program called PRISM, that has been allowed to directly access citizens’ private data on Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple servers – the company joined the program in that order as well..
Both Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple have all denied any involvement in the PRISM program, however, the Washington Post’s story alleges that the companies “participate knowingly in PRISM operations.”
PRISM was started in 2007 when Microsoft became the first corporate partner. Apple demonstrated the most resistance to the program and held out for five years before joining in 2012.
Here’s what data PRISM collects, according to the Post:
Yesterday we reported that Joseph Brown, the young developer behind the recent carrier hacks, had found evidence that carriers are throttling iPhone and iPad data speeds without cause.
After investigating into Brown’s report (which has been deleted), AnandTech published its own investigation into the matter that proves Brown’s throttling claims are not true.
In his article, Brian Klug gives on general reason of why the iPhone throttling conspiracy is false:
There are hundreds of apps on the App Store that claim they’ll help you boost your productivity, keep your thoughts organized, and help you finish all of those great side project ideas you have floating around. Some of those apps are genuinely helpful, but famed Apple-blogger John Gruber just released a new note-taking app that challenges them all.
Vesper is a sublime note-taking app for iPhone that just hit the App Store. Its price tag is a bit steeper than most apps, but even at $4.99 it’s a pretty good deal. Designed by John Gruber’s new company, Q Branch, Vesper is a hybrid of notes and list-making features that helps you keep your thoughts organized.
“What’s the difference between a thought, an idea, and something you want to do? I don’t know exactly. That’s why we made Vesper.” – John Gruber
In an effort to boost iPhone unit sales, Apple is planning to roll out a new trade-in iPhone program later this month, according to a new report from Peter Burrows at Bloomberg.
Details on the new iPhone trade-in program are scant right now, but according to the report Apple is teaming up with Brightstar Corp. to run the exchange program. The new trade-in program will only be available at Apple retail stores, and should serve as a big incentive to get customers to upgrade their iPhone 4 and 4s units to an iPhone 5.
VSCO Cam has already become one of our favorite camera apps on the iPhone thanks to its film emulation effects and clean interface, but a big update for the app is making us fall in love all over again.
Visual Supply Company just released VSCO Cam 2.0 on the App Store and it comes with a huge batch of new features, including new presets, more efficient editing, and separate Focus and Exposure rings that give you more control when shooting pictures.
Best of all, Visual Supply Co. dropped the price on VSCO from $0.99 to free so there’s no reason for you not to give it a whirl. You can pick it up from the App Store now, or dig into the full list of new features after the jump:
Jason Citron is a veteran of both the console and gaming space, involved with developing Double Fine’s Brutal Legend in 2006, and then releasing one of the first hit iOS games in the early, heady days of the iOS App store, a match-three puzzle game with a twist, Aurora Feint. Soon after, he created OpenFeint, which was the de facto leaderboard and multiplayer matching system for Apple mobile devices long before Game Center.
After OpenFeint was sold to Japanese social-gaming company, GREE, in April of 2011, Jason headed out to engage his passion for video game development once again with a new company, Hammer & Chisel, and a new game, announced today, called Fates Forever, an iPad-only massively online battle arena (MOBA) game.
Citron took some time out of a busy schedule to talk to Cult of Mac about the new game, it’s mechanics and business strategy, and his own take on what iPad games should be.
Mail Pilot, the email client that was born on Kickstarter and first hit iOS back in April, is coming to the Mac. We don’t have a release for it yet, but if you’re itching to get your hands on it, you can sign up for the public beta today.
Casemakers are known to gamble on upcoming iOS product launches. Every day they can have their product on the shelves closer to launch is a day they have a leg up over their competitors in the hyper-competitive case market.
Case in point, here’s a story about Hard Candy Cases gambled (and lost) $50,000 on iPhone 4S moldings from China to get their cases first-to-market. When the iPhone 4S actually debuted, though, it looked identical to the 4, instead of the radical redesign the case makers expected. Oops.
Now the same case maker is doing the same thing, gambling on the iPad 5 launch. This time, though, Tim Hickman has less to lose.
Logitech has today announced that it is acquiring TT Design Labs, a two-person startup responsible for the TidyTilt cover for iPhone. The deal will make Logitech the owner of TT’s assets, and the accessory giant has already made the TidyTilt available to pre-order.
https://youtu.be/2Azoteu5nzs
I am a snorer. This should not be taken to mean that I make soft, puppy-like growling sounds in the back of my throat as I sleep. In fact, if you happened to hold that puppy up within six inches of my face while I sawed logs, it is likely that all of the flesh, fur and musculature of that baby dog would be vortexed off its skeleton only to become lodged in the yawning chasms of my throat and nostrils. My snore is the sound of the Seventh Seal being opened, or the universe tearing itself asunder. In all probability? You have never heard anything like me.
So imagine my poor girlfriend, who sleeps next to me every night as the bed vibrates, the house shakes and the ceiling buckles with my snoring. As you might well imagine, she’s eager for me to do something about my snoring.
And what do you know? There’s a new app for just that. It’s called Snorelab.
The current Internet scuttlebutt has it that when Tim Cook takes the stage on Monday for the WWDC keynote, he will not only unveil iOS 7, but a new, flatter ‘look’ for the entire mobile operating system spearheaded by Jony Ive. This would bring the look of iOS closer to modern design principles employed by the likes of Google and Microsoft, and finally flush Scott Forstall’s skeuomorphism turd.
Developer Steve King wanted to give people an idea what a redesigned iOS 7 with flatter, less skeuomorphic design elements would really look like, so he mocked up a flatter iOS 7. But what makes King’s mock-up even more existing is it’s all done in HTML, CSS and Javascript (no images!), meaning it’s fully interactive in any browser.
I use a lot of different devices — I’m always switching smartphones — so I store all my photos in Dropbox so that I can get at them no matter which platform I happen to be using. But it’s not always easy to get all the photos I’ve imported into iPhoto into the cloud. At least not yet.
But that’s about to change. In the latest Dropbox for Mac beta, you can finally import your iPhoto library.
Instead of just selling you a new phone, Apple is now doing in-store screen repairs on broken iPhones… and this is the monster machine doing the repairs.
Kindgom Rush has been one of our favorite tower defense games for the past two years, so we’re really excited to hear that Ironhide Game Studio just released the sequel, titled ‘Kingdom Rush Frontiers.’
The new game features all new levels as you defend your lands in the deserts, jungles, and even the underworld. You get some new customizable abilities along with a host of new bad guys and nine legendary heres.
We got the full release notes after the break, but if you’re already eager, you can pick up Kingdom Rush Frontiers in the App Store for $4.99.
Game Features:
The popular photo messaging application, Snapchat, just got a big update. Version 5.0 of the app was released on the App Store today and it comes with a bunch of nice improvements that will help users send messages faster than ever.
The overall design of the app has been cleaned up and streamlined. There’s a new swipe navigation feature that makes it a lot quicker to navigate around the app. Snapchat has also made it easier to find friends on the service, and there’s also new in-app profiles of all your contacts.
Here are the official release notes:
Crafting great looking, professional documents in iWork or Office can be really tricky, even if you spend a ton of time on the computer. To make things easier, the guys Made for Use created some incredible professional templates for both Office and iWork that make it easier for users to look like a Pages-guru.
We’ve grabbed about Made for Use’s iOS Templates app in the past, but now the team is bringing all the greatness to the Mac with Templates for iWork Pro, and Templates for Office Pro. Both packs offer over hundred of templates for their respective suite of apps. And if you specialize in only one app, you can pick up the Templates Pro Pack for PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Keynote, Numbers and Pages individually.
Templates for iWork and Office Pro are two of the easiest ways to make high quality, professional looking documents, without having to take some college course on Office apps.
To celebrate the launch of Templates for iWork Pro and Templates for Office Pro, Made for Use is giving away 40 FREE CODES to some lucky Cult of Mac readers. Entering the contest only takes a second, but you gotta play to win.
According to Russel Grandinetti, vice president for Kindle content at Amazon, publishers involved with the e-book anti-trust federal case told the Seattle-based retailer that unless Amazon agreed to their terms, it would have been barred from releasing e-books on the same day as print on Kindle, the wildly popular e-reader device that Amazon sells.
Grandinetti testified today that this ultimatum to switch to an agency model of publishing, in which the publishers set book pricing, came after the publishing houses made deals with Apple for their then new iBooks e-book service on the iPad.
China is largely known for cheap iPhone knockoffs and fake Apple Stores, and now a Chinese businessman is impersonating Steve Jobs himself. And he isn’t using the late Apple co-founder’s likeness to peddle plastic phone shells on the corner market.
Lei Jun owns Xiaomi, a multi-billion dollar tech company that is commonly referred to as “the Apple of the East” in China. As you can see in the photo above, Lei rocks a black turtleneck and jeans behind an Apple-like presentation at Xiaomi product unveilings. The fact that he’s selling iPhone look-a-likes certainly helps his falsified persona.