Having spent far too long browsing the shelves of the local hardware stores (plural) trying to cobble together my own iPad mini hand strap, I’m glad to see a proper case featuring one. I gave up on my DIY efforts, having decided that even as a weak-armed geek I’m strong enough to hold an iPad mini in one hand.
But if I was going to buy a case, a strap like the one on the Luxa2 MiniCinema sure would tempt me.
Company of Heroes: Campaign Edition is hands-down the best pure real-time tactics game available on the Mac to date; there’s nothing yet ported to the Mac that can even come close to matching the WWII squad-based game’s tactical action and realism.
While you won’t get many arguments about the above statement, gamers have had plenty to say about the fact that the Mac port has lacked a sorely needed skirmish mode since the day it arrived at the Mac App Store.
Not any more though — skirmish mode has just been added to the Mac App Store version. And Aspyr has sweetened the pot further by slashing the title’s price to $10.
iTunes has gone from a basic mp3 player based on SoundJam in 2000 to a full-fledged movie and music media player, digital media distribution center, and repository of all your iOS apps. That’s quite a lot of functionality for a music player.
iTunes is still a pretty decent media player, even if it feels rather bloated at times when your music and movie collection grows out of control. However, like anything else complex, it can be a little tricky to figure out how to use iTunes most effectively.
Here, then, are five simple yet helpful tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your iTunes experience.
With deep strategy titles Civ Rev and Sid Meier’s Pirates in back catalog, just-released Haunted Hollow and the hotly anticipated iOS version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown due out this summer, one could argue that 2K Mobile isn’t the hottest name in iOS strategy games right now — but it’d be a steep uphill battle.
Then add this bombshell to support the argument: Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol, due out next Thursday, may be the best 2K iOS strategy game yet.
Rebel forces about to be crushed under the hoof (?) of an Imperial AT-AT.
Today is Star Wars day (for the less nerdy, here’s the punchline: “May the Fourth be with you.” Now look at the date.)
In celebration, Aspyr has drastically cut prices on all five of their ported Star Wars titles — both at the Mac App Store and at Aspyr’s own GameAgent site (though they’re slightly more expensive at the former). Two of the titles can be had for as little as $3.30 each.
You may remember a post I wrote a while back about the Pentagon’s plan to get mobile devices working on military networks, and how we were able to ascertain that yes, they were working on testing iPhones and iPads and no, they were not planning on jettisoning support for Blackberry devices.
According to Spencer Ackerman at Wired today, iPads will finally have passed the rigorous security review set out by the US Military at the Pentagon in about two weeks, allowing the Apple-powered mobile devices onto the military networks. The Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs) for BlackBerry 10 devices and Playbook tablets, along with those for Samsung’s Knox Android phone, have already been released.
Path is a social network for our more private groups of friends and family, distinguishing itself from services like Facebook and Twitter in two ways. One, it’s not on any website, as it’s only accessible from your iPhone or iPad. Two, while it can be connected to those services, it does not have to, allowing you to keep things as private as you’d like, depending on the number of people you invite to the service as connections.
The new update, which went live just a few minutes ago, brings a new option to the app settings, allowing you to hide yourself in global search, which will keep even your friends from finding you or your activities if you don’t connect to them directly. This seems like a direct move to help Path feel more private, adding to a previous update, which brought private messaging (and stickers) to the app itself.
If you’re a fan of Lucas Arts and Sierra Games adventure games like Grim Fandango, The Dig, Monkey Island, or King’s Quest, you’ll dig this fun game from Replay Games, Inc. Fester Mudd: Curse of the Gold, Episode 1 is a spot-on tribute to the gaming days of yore, with hilarious writing, painterly-yet-pixelly artwork, and some quirky puzzles to solve with various items needing to be used with various other items.
It’s also by the guys who are working on the upcoming Leisure Suit Larry remake for iOS, so you know it’s gonna be good.
Slip on your Nikes and grab your Kool-Aid, dear brethren, it’s time for a new episode of The CultCast. This time around, iOS 7 takes over your car; 5S gets better at selfies; Jony Ive is under pressure; Tim Cook really doubles down on secrecy, ya’ll; and we pitch our favorite tech and apps on an all new Fave’s ‘N Raves.
All that and more on this week’s CultCast! Stream or download new and past episodes on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing now on iTunes, or hit play below and let the good times roll.
Break on through to the other side for the show notes.
Briefs is a new Mac app that allows designers to create interactive mockups of iOS apps. Developed by MartianCraft, Briefs can build iPhone and iPad app mockups without a single line of code. It looks like the ultimate tool for prototyping app ideas to clients and developers.
Different elements of an app can be assembled on the desktop and sent to the Briefscase iOS client via a shared WiFi network. From there, the mockup can be used like a real app on an iOS device.
There are 10 Apple stores in Germany, and another was opened today in the nation’s capital. After two years of construction, Berlin’s first Apple store was welcomed by thousands of eager customers and nearly 200 cheering employees. Lines started wrapping around the block 10 hours before the doors opened.
It seems like a week can’t pass by without a new video streaming app coming out of the wood work. If you need more video streaming options on your iPhone, T-Mobile’s got a new app to hook you up.
T-Mobile TV was just released for iPhone yesterday. The app has been on Android devices since 2010, but this is the first time the magenta carrier is bringing it to iPhone. The “free” app includes a number of channels, such as Disney, Nickelodeon, E!, TLC, ESPN, NBC, MTV, Comedy Central and more.
It’s no secret that AT&T is the least affordable carrier for the iPhone in the U.S. While T-Mobile has quickly rebranded itself as “The UnCarrier” and other prepaid carriers have attracted customers with their flexible plans and cheaper service, AT&T has clung to its expensive data and phone plans. All that might be ending soon though.
AT&T is planning to launch a pre-paid brand called ‘All In One” on June 15th to compete with other pre-paid carriers like Cricket, U.S. Cellular, Boost and now T-Mobile. The new AT&T pre-paid brand will offer customers monthly services starting at $35 per month for feature phones and $50 per month on smartphones.
Now days, if you’re a carrier and you’re not selling the iPhone, you’re kind of screwed. As T-Mobile became the last of the four major U.S. carriers to start selling the iPhone earlier this year, smaller carriers like Cricket and U.S. Cellular have been trying to attract customers with cheaper phone and data rates.
Along with expanding its LTE offerings to over 86% of it’s customer in 2013, U.S. Cellular just announced that they will probably start selling the iPhone by the end of 2013.
While Google Glass is already compatible with iPhone, some of its killer features — including turn-by-turn navigation and text messaging — require a companion app that’s currently only available on Android. But according to one Google employee, Glass will soon be able to offer these features no matter what device it’s connected to.
What better way than try to woo customers into buying a Prius Plug-In hybrid car than by drawing a parallel between charging your iPhone and screwing your iPhone?
That was Toyota’s, uh, “genius” idea. It’s a free game called Plug-In Championship, and it’s one of the most hysterically dumb iPhone games in recent memory, in which your goal is to plug your iPhone in to charge according to the position of a “fast-moving bar rising up the screen.”
It’s what happens when you do plug your iPhone in that is so hysterically, bizarrely sexualized, though. If you’ve ever seen the end of Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, it’s a lot like that.
With the countdown to 50 billion App Store downloads now underway, Apple has begun highlighting the “top 25 all-time” free and paid apps on iOS. The Cupertino company did a similar thing in the run up to 25 billion downloads last year, and for 10 billion downloads in January 2011.
Some of the apps included in the list are no surprise, with the likes of Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Skype topping the free chart, and Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, and Doodle Jump topping the paid chart.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is the best thing that ever happened to the “Games” folder on my iPad. It’s one of my favorite games of all time, and I love that I can play it whenever, wherever now that it’s on iOS. If you haven’t already snapped it up, now’s a great time, because it’s on sale for the first time since it hit the App Store.
We’ve been talking a lot about the budget iPhone in recent months, mostly in relation to the emerging market (where the vast majority of the remaining smartphone growth is expected to happen in the next five years), but here’s a question: even if Apple, as they are rumored to do, release their first plastic iPhone since the iPhone 3GS, how are they going to price it low enough to actually penetrate third-world countries where the cost of the phone might be equal to someone’s salary for the month? Especially while maintaining Apple’s customary profit margins?
The truth is, it’s almost impossible to imagine Apple being able — or interested! — in doing any such thing. Current rumor pegs the “budget” iPhone as basically an iPhone 5 with a colorful plastic shell. If those rumors are true, that’s not really a budget phone: it’s a mid-range. It has to be if Apple wants to make money off of it.
Slowly but surely, that’s the realization dawning on some people on Wall Street. The “budget” iPhone isn’t going to be budget at all. And Apple’s going to make buttloads off of it.
Apple just sidestepped a $9.2 billion tax bill by financing part of a $55 billion stock buyback with debt rather than using its offshore cash. The sneaky trick means the U.S. government is unable to bill the Cupertino company for tax on the deal, which is said to be the “the biggest corporate offering on record,” according to Bloomberg.
In a characteristically terse reports, the ever-spotty DigiTimes is backing up recent reports that Apple is readying a plastic 4-inch iPhone with a colorful casing… but also claiming, bizarrely, that Apple doesn’t have much faith that such an iPhone would sell.
Romanian Apple fan Andrei was a straight-A student and promising C++ programmer whose 21-year life was tragically cut short before he could fulfill his dream of working for Cupertino, and possibly, if he was good enough, becoming Steve Jobs.
His passion for Apple was so much that when he died, his parents erected a tombstone with his honor, featuring the Apple logo on it. The message on the stone from his parents reads: “Our son, our hope, you are with us in every moment, and we are with you every moment. You are the champion!”
Apparently, there is a magnet somewhere inside the back panel of the iPhone 5. How do I know? Because these cool new lenses from Carson use it to stick themselves to the back of the phone. The result is something like a small, less-bulbous Olloclip, only for close-up photography.
You already have a connected scale for tweeting your weight. You might also have a baby scale to do the same, (only for the baby). Now you can get a smart scale for dinner. Not to eat for your dinner–to weigh your dinner. Or breakfast. You know what I mean.
The Smart Food Scale is a Kickstarter project and comes from Chef Sleeve, the folks behind the Chef Sleeve, the ultimate wipe-clean iPad prophylactic.