Whether you love video games or not, there’s no doubt that games like Halo and Dead Space feature some incredible artwork to breathe life into the make-believe worlds populated by crazed gamers looking for thrills.
Usually a game studio will publish a physical book of all the fantastic concept drawings and sketches that helped bring form to a video game, but Titan Books is releasing the latest Dead Space and Halo art books on iPad this week instead.
There’s been a lot of hullyboo about skeuomorphism in the Mac and iOS community right now. Ever since the debut of iOS, Apple’s software has become increasingly ornamented with unnecessary textures and details that many people consider tacky, such as the fake Corinthian leather in Calendar or the green felt background in Game Center. This style of design is called skeuomorphism, and outed ex-Apple VP Scott Forstall was one of Cupertino’s main proponent for its wide spread use in iOS and OS X.
All signs point to Jonny Ive getting away with a lot of skeuomorphic details in iOS 7, adopting instead a more modern, ‘flat’ design.
The way people talk, though, it’s like skeuomorphism is a unique problem of the digital age. It’s not. In fact, the ancient Greeks had a problem with skeuomorphism too. So before you revile Scott Forstall for using it too much, keep in mind, it’s a design technique as old as civilization.
Siri’s good at simple things like creating appointments, sending texts, calling people and looking up random bits of information on the Internet, but what I really want Siri to be great at is managing stuff in my house.
One Redditor decided he was tired of turning his Philips Hue bulbs on and off all on his own, so he employed some clever hackery to get Siri to do it for him. In the video above you can see that the results are a little bit clunky, but it makes us drool for Apple to release a Siri API so other smart products can be controlled through Siri.
To complete the Siri Hue Bulbs hack, a jailbroken iPod was hacked to re-route Siri functionality to a Siri proxy. The iPod’s Siri beeps were replaced with WAV files for Iron Man’s Jarvis, which adds a little flair to the project.
Source: YouTube
Via: Reddit
Netflix is one of the greatest tools ever invented for absolutely destroying your weekend with laziness. All you got to do is pull up one of your favorite TV series and watch the entire thing in one glorious weekend of binge TV viewing.
A new update for the Netflix iOS app just hit the App Store and it’s going to make binging even easier, thanks to to the added “post-play” feature that will start up the next episode after one ends. Other features included in the update are a recommendation feature after you’ve finished a movie and enhanced second screen options.
Here are the release notes:
Apple is expected to launch a new low-cost iPhone later this year, but as long as you’re willing to buy an older model, you can already bag an Apple smartphone for as little as 50p a day.
British retailer Carphone Warehouse will offer the iPhone 4 on a two-year contract for just £17 a month from tomorrow, May 10, with no upfront cost. It will be the cheapest iPhone tariff available in the United Kingdom.
New MacBook Airs might be revealed at WWDC, but if you’re just looking for the cheapest price on the current MacBook Air lineup, then Best Buy’s got you set this week.
To celebrate Mother’s Day, Best Buy is taking $100 off the price of certain MacBook Air models. Then to make things even better, you can get $25 more off the price by entering the code MOM25.
Here are the prices you can expect after the discount:
Last week we reported that AT&T was planning to launch a new pre-paid brand to compete with T-Mobile and other pay-as-you-go carriers, and it looks like it’s finally here.
AT&T just pulled back the curtain on its new pre-paid BYOD service provider that’s a subsidiary of AT&T called AIO Wireless. The new pre-paid nationwide service is launching in Houston, Tampa, and Orlando today but new markets should be opened up in the U.S. over the next year.
Last year, there was a lot of debate about whether the iPhone 5 (the sixth iPhone at the time) would be called the iPhone 5 or the iPhone 6, and the same happened the year before as people bickered about whether Apple should call the iPhone 4S the iPhone 5.
As the seventh-generation iPhone approaches, the debate is opening up again: what should Apple call it? Ex-Apple ad man Ken Segall has raised convincing arguments saying that Apple is shooting itself in the foot with the “S” series naming convention, signalling to consumers that every other year, you get a half-baked iPhone instead of a fresh new one.
Now, some slim evidence is pointing towards the notion that Apple might be listening to their former advertising prodigy, and that the next iPhone might be called the iPhone 6.
Apple continues to rollout 3D Flyover support to Maps users all over the world, and it appears the features latest destination is Paris, France. Until this week, Lyon was the only French city that boasted Flyover support, but that’s no longer the case.
Pixelmator 2.2 just hit the Mac App Store, bringing more than 100 new features and improvements to one of the finest image editors on OS X. The update includes smart shape tools, a new light leak effect, a custom shapes palette, and lots more.
Facebook Pages Manager for iOS just got a big version 2.0 update that brings a number of performance improvements and new features. Facebook says the app has been rebuilt to offer a smoother, faster experience, while photo filters and support for emoji and stickers have been added.
If you want proof Apple is planning a ‘budget’ iPhone to address untapped markets, look no further than a new report which says that Apple’s suppliers are going on massive hiring sprees… and citing the imminent arrival of a new, cheaper iPhone as the cause.
Another potential component for the iPhone 5S has popped up, a small section of circuitboard that seemingly governs the upcoming iPhone’s rear camera.
We all know how to draw the "Marvel way," right? Step 1: some lines; a skeleton for your figure. Step 2: ovals and circles, pencilled in to show the head, limbs and body. Step 3: The amazing, finished, inked-and-colored result. Congratulations: You’re now Jack Kirby.
Peterson Hamilton’s Draw This App aims to help out with step two-and-a-half.
I’m posting about this Android-based tablet for a few reasons. One, I want it, and as it’s crowd-funded, my chances of getting one are helped if you want it, too.
Second, I figure that if you love your iPad as much as I love mine, then you might miss it when you get all outdoorsy and go camping/hiking/biking.
And third? It’s just awesome: the Backcountry Tablet is an e-ink, solar-powered iPad. With GPS. What’s not to like? It’s even cheap, at $250.
One question I get asked a lot (well, quite a lot anyway, considering the small size our team) in the Cult of Mac chatroom is "what camera should I get for taking better product shots?"
As reviews editor, this make me happy – of course I want better pictures on our reviews! – but the truth is that the iPhone is more than capable of making amazing product shots, especially as the target is a 640-pixel web-ready JPG.
With that in mind, Photojojo put together a tutorial for Etsy to help its users take better pictures of their home-made wares. The same advice also applies to your Ebay listings, pictures for your insurer or – yes – review shots.
It’s hard to oversell the usefulness of a good iPad stand stand for travelers. It starts on the plane so you can bypass the in-flight movies with something better, and continues from there.
You can prop the iPad up in the bathroom or on the nightstand, you can – in concert with the removed Smart Cover as a base – fashion a quick in-bed theater, and you can type, play music and everything else, all without having to put your pristine iDeice down onto filthy hotel furniture. Ugh.
It looks like another month, another 10.8.4 seed, as a new download on Apple’s developer download site, build 12E47, contains the same focus areas as last month’s seed, Wi-Fi, Graphics Drivers, and Safari.
The seed is the fifth for this particular dot release of OS X. The previous release was April 23, 2013, while the seeds before that came out on the 1st, 4th, and 17th of that month.
Mac OS X 10.8.3 went through 13 revisions over a five month period, so this could just be particularly busy focus area changes.
The release notes bundled with the seed note that there are no other known issues at this time.
Source: Apple Developer
If there was one concept I came away with from the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas this year, it’s this: Bluetooth has quickly seeped into everything audio.
Nowhere was this more evident than with higher-end headphones; it felt like every manufacturer we visited that week had an obligatory wireless Bluetooth headphone on display.
One booth I didn’t get to stop by was Scosche’s, so I missed a chance to get ears-on with their new Bluetooth-enabled RH1060; but the details about these cans have my interest piqued.
It’s not much bigger than a (large, fat) thumb — but this PhoneSuit Flex battery has more juice than all but the very, very largest iPhone battery cases. While it’s been available in 30-pin and Android/micro-USB flavors for months, it’s now also available for the iPhone 5.
Most Mac users will experience one of three reactions after reading the word “Rosetta.”
The first involves breaking into a cold sweat, and possibly hives, after remembering that Apple no longer supports the translator that ran all those old, useful apps written for PowerPC-based Macs after Apple switched over to Intel chips.
Option two, imagining the Rosetta Stone itself, the magical key to unlocking ancient script, stumbled upon by Napoleon’s troops
Or there’s an association with foreign phrases, mall carts and almost certainly the most recognizable name in language software, Rosetta Stone.
We’re focusing on that last one here, and about how Rosetta Stone has finally brought their language software, in the form of the Navigator series apps, to the iPhone — for free.
EveryThink, an amazing get-it-all-done-and-in-one-place app, has just updated to version 1.3.1, bringing a host of improvements to an already pretty great app.
The new update adds Dropbox to the already existing Google Drive support, meeting invitations from within the app itself, Siri Reminder integration, and Facebook support, which brings contact photos and Facebook calendar events in automatically.
New usability features have also been added, including a guided introduction to the many features of the EveryThink app, as well as landscape orientation, so you can hold your iPhone the way you want to and still use the spatial organization central to the app’s interface.
Before the 100+-million-user-giant that is Instagram, Hipstamtic was all the rage. No really, like totally. It was one of the first iPhone apps that helped popularize the retro filter look before Instagram stole the show.
Hipstamtic still exists believe it or not, and later this week it will be re-branded as “Oggl,” a paid, subscription-based photo sharing network for the iPhone.
Over at The New York Times, Bits columnist Nick Bilton has a gripe to pick with Apple. He doesn’t like the fact that push notifications keep pouring in during a voice call on the iPhone. “Even when the device is placed on mute, it vibrates when a notification comes in, rattling your skull for a never-ending second,” says Bilton.
I had never actually thought about this annoyance until I read Bilton’s piece. And coincidentally, it actually happened to me while I was on the phone earlier today. I remember quickly pulling my iPhone away from my face in shock at the vibration and loud noise in my ear.
This seems like something that should be fixed. What say you? Should Apple say hasta la vista to notifications during phone calls in iOS 7? Let us know in the comments below!
FiftyThree’s Paper app is probably the best drawing app out there for the iPad. If it’s not the best, it’s certainly the sexiest. Artists have created some stunning drawings with Paper since it was released last year. Today, a big update to the app highlights the work of its users and adds a much needed feature: pinch-to-zoom.