News - page 1616

You may have figured that the rhythm game genre was finished, what with nary a Rockband, Tap Tap Revenge, or Guitar Hero game to grace the App Store in recent months.

You’d have figured wrong, at least as far as the devs behind updated iOS game, Duck & Roll, are concerned. WildFactor released Duck and Roll last November at a premium price. We can only assume that after several price drops and price increases, they weren’t finding much success.

Luckily, free games can attract an audience. Even more luckily, this one is pretty darn fun.

Whenever rumors about a new product from Apple begin to pop up, so do the concept drawings, 3D renders, and mockups. The latest rumored Apple device to get the mockup treatment has been the iWatch, Apple’s supposed foray into wearable computing.

Already, I’ve seen no less than half a dozen concepts illustrating what people think the iWatch might look like. Some play heavily off of the design of iOS, others take design influences from the iPhone and iPad, and others yet attempt to emulate the 6th generation iPod nano, the closest thing that Apple has made to a watch so far. While all of these designs take influence from what Apple has already created, none of them take into consideration the external influences that shape the way Apple designs their own products.

Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, has called out Android multiple times recently. It’s only been a few days since Schiller warned Android users to “stay safe out there,” and now he’s gone on the offensive in a brief interview with The Wall Street Journal.

None of Schiller’s comments are particularly surprising, as Apple executives (Schiller included) frequently make jabs at the competition from the stage of a new product keynote.

Last year, Twitter acquired a small music discovery service called We Are Hunted. The site was shut down, and now Twitter might be ready to use it in a big way.

A new report claims that Twitter will launch its own music discovery app for iOS called Twitter Music. If things go well, we might even get the app as soon as this month.

Martin Hajek creates concepts of imaginary Apple products that I always think look pretty good, but have no thought given to usability. For example, his iWatch concept the other day, which basically shrinks an iPad mini to the size of an inch and doesn’t even try to imagine how such a design wouldn’t suck… but hey, it has a leather band!

His new iTV concept for Dutch site iCreate is a similar affair. The black, chamfered design of the device looks very beautiful, but nothing after that makes any sense. It’s like this guy has never even used a television before, right down to the fact that he envisions the iTV as having a Camera app (why?) but not one for either TV or Videos.

More pictures after the jump. I advise Apple to perhaps take the look, but not the UI.

I hate taxis. I hate having to find one. I hate having to talk to the driver. I hate paying them, and then worrying about how much I’m supposed to tip them (presumably spending the entire journey chatting to their cousins via Bluetooth headset counts as “service.”) So I’m very happy to have Taxi Turvi in my arsenal. It’s a weapon to be wielded against dodgy cabbies.

NBA hoops legend, Shaquille O’Neal – or as his friends call him, ‘Shaq’ – is used to dominating foes on the basketball court, but when he went up against Steve Jobs he got a heavy dose of his own medicine.

The Big Artistotle has come out of the closet. He’s a geek. In fact, he says he was a geek before geeks were cool. Back when the original iPhone was announced, Shaqtus knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knew Steve Jobs. Rather than waiting for the iPhone to be released, Shaq Fu called up Steve Jobs multiple times and begged him for an iPhone, but El Jobso wouldn’t budge.

It was one of the first, and only times, that The Big Maravich has been denied. Don’t feel bad for him, though; Shaq Diesel has a bright rapping career ahead of him if the geeky iOS development stuff doesn’t pan out.

Here’s a video of Wilt Chamberneezy retelling the story to Bloomberg:

There has been an ungodly amount of talk in recent months about how Apple is losing its edge to Samsung. Even some of Apple’s most faithful analysts have said that Samsung is more innovative now than Apple, but is that really true?

In the Cult of Mac chat room this afternoon, we found this video of Gene Munster saying Samsung is innovating faster than Apple. Some of us agreed with him, while others didn’t. What followed was a great discussion of what innovation really means, and whether Samsung is beating Apple. Rather than composing it into an article, we’re just going to post our chat and see what you guys think. Does Samsung really innovate faster than Apple now?

Piikki is a fairly average receipt-scanning app with a couple of standout features: One, it auto detects the receipt in the camera frame and then – once it has a lock – auto-snaps it. And second, you can have the result uploaded directly into your Evernote notebook of choice. I would suggest the “receipts” folder, but I’m not so original.

Last year, Apple was hit with an antitrust case from the U.S. Department of Justice over the pricing scheme of e-books in Apple’s iBookstore. Since that time, 11 executives at Apple have already been deposed over the issue, but the Department of Justice is demanding Tim Cook be involved, and they just got their way.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote granted the Justice Department’s request to get Cook to testify on the ebook antitrust case for four hours.

These days my desk is my lap. My work machine is an iPad, and my iMac is hanging on the wall, acting as little more than a BitTorrent machine and photo store. I still have a desk though, but it is useless for most of the year thanks to a marble top which sucks heat from my hands and wrists like a prisoner sucks on a cigarette after a week in solitary confinement.

Fortunately, there’s an accessory for people who – like me – love both felted wool, and their carpal tunnels. It’s the Desk-Pad Classic, and I will probably have ordered one by the time you finish reading this post.

Readdle, the creator of some of the best productivity apps for iOS, has today replaced its awesome $6.99 Calendars app with a new version that won’t cost you a penny. It has all of the same great features it’s always had, only now you can enjoy them for free.

Here at Cult of Mac, we’re huge fans of Philips Hue LED lightbulbs and Minecraft. Any hack, then, that mashes together the two and we’re in… especially if there’s a father delighting his ten year old, Minecraft-obsessed son at the end!

Which is why Jim Rutherford’s Hue/Minecraft hack is so awesome. It uses the Hue, Minecraft and an iPad to make the lights around you correspond to the game’s pixellated day cycles.

Ever wanted to pick up an awesome Mac or iOS accessory after it’s been funded on Kickstarter, but had no idea where to find it? There’s a good chance you’ll get it at BiteMyApple, a new online store that sells the coolest and most innovative Kickstarter projects as soon as they hit retail.

Netflix is a fantastic service, but it doesn’t do much of that “social” jazz everyone’s talking about these days. That’s about to change, though, with Netflix now introducing the appropriately christened Netflix Social, which will let you see what’s popular amongst your friends.

I love being able to whisper instructions to Siri as I walk along the street. My favorite trick is to get her to play a song, album or playlist. “Play something by Daft Punk,” I order, and off he goes. The problem is that I use Spotify and Rdio for most of my music, and Siri doesn’t talk to either of them.

But this neat hack will get her most of the way there.

Joby Ingram-Dodd is a lucky guy. First, he has an awesome name which sounds like he’s a successful gold prospector from the 1800s. And second, he bought a tough-as-boots iPhone.

Oh, and he has, like, the best job ever.

You see, Joby managed to drop his iPhone 4S 60 meters (almost 200 feet) from the top of a wind turbine onto a concrete parking lot way below. And guess what?

Heads up. Steve Jobs will be the subject of a new Japanese manga series by artist Mari Yamazaki of Thermae Romae manga fame.

Tony Stark is essentially Marvel’s answer to Steve Jobs, if Steve Jobs looked like Robert Downey Jr., was kidnapped by the Taliban, had a nuclear reactor installed as a replacement heart, and built himself a set of power armor.

In every other way, though, the two are exactly similar, which is what makes it natural that Steve Jobs’s greatest creation — the iPhone — is now capable of “suiting up” in Tony Stark’s greatest invention, the Mark VII power armor.

In France, the proletariat is not a force to be trifled with. There are expectations on how companies are to treat workers: whether there are enough golden crusted, freshly baked baguettes in the breakroom, for example, or how many fromage breaks one gets per hour. “Vive les grenouilles!” the workers cry, sousing themselves silly with wine.

It’s a good system, but Apple has fallen afoul of it, with seven Apple Stores in France now being rapped on the knuckles for violating a French law that prohibits employers from making their workers work past nine PM at night.

YourTube, a popular jailbreak tweak that brings new features to the official YouTube app — including video downloading and ad-blocking — has been updated to support jailbroken devices running the latest iOS 6 firmwares. The latest version is available to download from Cydia now, and it’s free to existing YourTube and YourTube HD users.

When Apple launched its new Maps app with iOS 6 last September, one of its headline features, Flyover, only supported a handful of big cities. But the Cupertino company has been hard at work in the background to extend its reach, adding support for additional locations all over the world.

In the past few months, Apple has brought Flyover to an additional 16 cities, plus extended its coverage in 14 of the cities already supported.

Everyone knows that Apple’s maps suck, right? After all, they were pretty poor at launch, and anything to do with Apple never changes: Apple gear is overpriced ($330 for an iPad!), Apple should license its OS (Android is open! And winning!). Etc.

Except that maps have gotten a lot better in the intervening months. The app mightn’t have gotten an update, but arguably its the same old app that used to use Google maps anyway. But the software and map tiles behind the scenes? Oh boy.

Google Now, the intelligent personal assistant that was introduced to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean last June, appears to be gearing up to make its debut on iOS. The feature will be integrated into the Google Search app for iPhone and iPad, according to a promotional video that was allegedly posted to Google’s official YouTube channel prematurely — before quickly being pulled again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=BcsXkj88-KQ#!

The Homeworld series, launched in 1999 by Relic Entertainment and Sierra Entertainment, is considered by many to be the birth of the modern 3D real time strategy game. Homeworld: Cataclysm was released the following year, with Homeworld 2 following in 2003.

Today, development house teamPixel wants to license the Homeworld franchise, liberating it from the THQ bankruptcy, and create two new games: Homeworld Touch, a remake of the Homeworld game with a new, modern, touchscreen interface for iOS and Andriod, and Homeworld 3 for Mac and PC, to extend the game to new frontiers and new audiences. They’d also like to bring the older, legacy Homeworld games to Steam and Good Old Games. All they need is your support with their Kickstarter project.