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We want Mario, Link and Pokemon on our iPhones

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What new Nintendo games will we get on the iPhone?Photo remix: Stephen Smith
What new Nintendo games will we get on the iPhone? Photo remix: Stephen Smith

Hell just froze over.

Nintendo has finally given in to the fact that smartphones have dealt its handheld gaming business a huge blow; the only way they’re going to stay relevant is to release their immensely popular gaming characters and game franchises onto the devices we all have in our pockets.

Whether you’re a Nintendo super fan or just looking at the gaming history this venerable Japanese company represents, you’ll be excited for this new era in which Nintendo partners with social and free-to-play juggernaut DeNA to bring it’s valuable content to mobile devices.

Even though Nintendo’s president Satoru Iwata insists that the company has no intention of porting existing games to mobile devices, he said nothing about not brining the incredibly popular and cash-generating characters and franchises that have become synonymous with the company, and with video gaming in general.

Here, then, are ten of our top wishes for the characters and franchises Nintendo should bring to the iPhone or other smartphones.

Inside Apple’s top secret health lab

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Where no camera crew has gone before. Photo: ABC News

Apple rarely gives tours of its facilities, but it showed ABC News the inner workings of its top secret health lab for the purpose of hyping the upcoming Apple Watch.

Located in an unassuming lot near its Cupertino headquarters on 1 Infinite Loop, Apple employees have been working out for years in secret to collect valuable health and fitness data.

Messages master class: How to set up Continuity in iOS 8 and Yosemite

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Messages 1

The new messaging capabilities built into OS X Yosemite make your Mac even more useful for day-to-day communication. With this new set of features (part of Continuity), you can send SMS text messages and make phone calls from your Mac. Than can be super-helpful if you’re forgetful and leave your iPhone in another room.

It doesn’t take too long to set it all up; in fact, we’re going to show you how to set up Continuity in less than two and a half minutes! Check it all out in our video below.

Siri and App Store will make Apple TV a game-changer

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We're finally going to get the TV experience we deserve. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

A new Apple TV set-top box is set to arrive this summer at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference, according to a new report citing sources familiar with the situation.

The upgrade would represent a much-needed “significant overhaul” of the device, letting it go far beyond Apple’s current TV offering and crossing over into other areas such as music, apps and even home automation — with a nifty Siri-based interface, to boot.

College Humor pulls no punches in lampoon of new MacBook

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Not a new charger! College Humor makes fun of Apple and the new Macbook. Photo: College Humor/YouTube
Not a new charger! College Humor makes fun of Apple and the new Macbook. Photo: College Humor/YouTube

Did you roll your eyes when you saw the latest MacBook had a new kind of USB port?

So did the website College Humor, which went to work satirizing Apple’s pride in its product design.

Under the headline Why Every New MacBook Needs a Different Goddam Charger, College Humor released a new video that pokes fun at the latest Apple laptop.

Watch these 5 great horror-comedies before Zombeavers eats your brain

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Zombeavers
I do have to hand it to them for that tagline. Solid work, everyone. Photo: Armory Films

I don’t know if you’ve heard of Zombeavers, but it’s out now. And, true to its name, it is about beavers who are also zombies, and they lay siege to a cabin full of hapless, idiot teens on a weekend trip to the woods.

Watch the Zombeavers trailer if you don’t believe me, but this is a thing that is happening to all of us. And I can’t actually speak to its quality without having seen it, but it absolutely looks like something I would watch on Netflix at 2 in the morning. But only then.

What I’m saying is that you can probably wait to see Zombeavers, which will screen in select theaters starting today and is also available to stream on demand. And while you’re doing that, you should check out these other films that blend horror and comedy into something special (and don’t forget to share all the ones I missed in the comments).

Moju image app puts your moments in motion

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Just twist and watch your Moju file come to life. Photo: Moju Labs
Just twist and watch your Moju file come to life. Photo: Moju Labs

We grew up in homes with robust photo albums, reels of 8 mm home movies and stacks of VHS tapes. These represent the branches and blossoms of our growing family trees.

In the digital age, we’ve filled out the branches, capturing millions of pictures and video clips almost out of concern we will miss something.

And we rarely look at any of it.

Mok Oh wants to change that with Moju, an iPhone app that distills the essence of a life moment by taking a sequence of photos and creating seamless motion in a file that comes to life with a simple twist of your phone.

ICYMI: Revelations from new Steve Jobs biography

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Tons of stuff in this week's issue! Photo: Stephen Smith
Tons of stuff in this week's free issue! Photo: Stephen Smith

This week, Luke gives us a sneak peek inside the new Steve Jobs biography, Alex takes a good look at the upcoming Apple TV service, Leander helps us decide whether the new gold in Apple Watch is anything special, John figures out who invented USB-C (hint: it’s Apple), and Leander checks in with an Android user who made the funniest Apple parody video we’ve seen in a long time. All that and more in Cult of Mac Magazine, free to download (and subscribe to!) right now.

This brute-force device can crack any iPhone’s PIN code

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Photo: MDSec
It's not exactly the Enigma Machine, but it'll do the trick! Photo: Mobile App Hacker's Handbook

Touch ID might be a more convenient and secure security implementation than PIN codes, but for now at least PINs are sticking around — which makes your iPhone vulnerable to anyone who gets their hands on it.

Of course, your iPhone only gives you a certain number of failed guesses, which means that unless the hacker somehow quickly guesses the correct code out of the 10,000 possible combinations, your iPhone’s contents remain safe.

A new video which has surfaced online, however, shows off a brute-force machine capable of trying every possible four-digit numerical combination in turn, while also resetting your iPhone to try again when it runs out of attempts. You can check it out below.

The year’s creepiest puzzle game goes free on iOS as App of the Week

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Could this be 2015's most atmospheric game? Photo:
Could this be 2015's most atmospheric game? Photo: RAC7 Games

Although the App Store is still full of freemium games like Angry Birds, Apple is pretty great when it comes to highlighting some of the more unusual titles that pop up on iOS — from the M.C. Escher gorgeousness of Monument Valley to the nihilistic weirdness of Sometimes You Die.

The company continues that trend with its latest pick for App of the Week, which would normally set you back a couple of bucks, but can be downloaded completely free of charge for the next seven days. It’s Dark Echo, a uniquely twisted puzzle game by RAC7 Games — and I’m here to tell you it’s excellent.

Check out the trailer and a description below. Trust me, if you like unusually minimalist puzzlers, you won’t be disappointed.

Tesla, blackjack and burgers: Woz tweets his Reno roadtrip

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Photo: Steve

Given everything we know about him, you wouldn’t have ever expected Steve Jobs to tweet out his hotel room number, details of a greasy meal at Chili’s Grill & Bar, or brag about winning $300 at blackjack in Nevada.

That, in short, is what separates Jobs (and, indeed, Tim Cook) from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

Woz recently took a road trip to Reno with his wife in his $100,000 Tesla — pausing only to send out a string of entertainingly wacky tweets to his 370,000 Twitter followers regarding hamburgers, Segways, an unnamed “blackjack system” he’s been working on and, naturally, a number puzzle that revealed exactly where he was staying.

Apple makes targeted ads possible on iTunes Radio

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Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

Apple is beefing up its iAd network for iTunes Radio by making it easy for advertisers to target certain customers. Like iAds for apps, advertisers can also buy their own audio ads without having to go through Apple’s sales team.

The change seems geared towards making advertising on iTunes Radio a more attractive opportunity, especially now that brands can use Customer Match, Apple’s ad-targeting system.

How Yahoo plans to blast your Apple Watch with news

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Will you read the news on Apple Watch? Photo: Apple

Developers are making a mad dash to finish their first Apple Watch apps before the wearable goes on sale in April. Yahoo is among those looking to make a big splash with must-have apps, and when it comes to bringing you the news, the company is hoping you’ll want it in bite-size chunks.

Yahoo’s Nick D’Aloisio sat down with Bloomberg today to talk about how digesting the news is going to change once you slap a tiny Apple Watch screen to your wrist. To bring long-form news to wearers, D’Aloisio says Yahoo Digest will focus on giving you the most salient pieces of a story, accompanied by little visual elements called atoms.

Watch Nick explain the news revolution Yahoo plans to unleash:

Steve Jobs’ high school yearbook lands on eBay for $13,000

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Jobspic
The luscious hair didn't last into the Apple years, unfortunately. Photo: Homestead High School

 

Have you always wanted to own a piece of Steve Jobs history, while also disposing of $13,000 in a hurry?

If so, you may be the perfect buyer for an eBay copy of the high school yearbook for Steve Jobs’ graduating class, in which the long-haired future Apple co-founder looks more on course to be voted “Most likely to start a progressive rock band” than “Most likely to become CEO of the world’s most valuable company.”

Carrying a Buy It Now price of $12,999.98 (or an opening bid value of $4,999.98), the book currently belongs to a fellow student at Homestead High School, who spoke with Cult of Mac about the sale.

30 Mac SEO tools to boost your website’s traffic

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Ready to solve your SEO woes?
Ready to solve your SEO woes?

This post is brought to you by SEO PowerSuite.

Search engine optimization can make or break your website. And Google and other search engines’ constant tweaking of their algorithms means a “set it and forget it” policy can lead to disaster for your site’s SEO.

Luckily, there are plenty of DIY tools to help you boost and maintain your site’s search engine ranking. Some are free, while others come in a variety of paid versions to accommodate businesses of all sizes. All offer different tool sets to help you achieve various goals. The roundup below shows the key features and pricing info for 30 top Mac SEO tools so you can quickly and easily decide which one works best for you.

This museum wants you to touch the art and take lots of pictures

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Go ahead, touch the art and have your picture taken at Art in Island interactive musuem in Quezon City, Philipines. Photo: Art in Island/Facebook
Go ahead, touch the art and have your picture taken at Art in Island interactive musuem in Quezon City, Philipines. Photo: Art in Island/Facebook

It figures that the city known for generating the most Instagram selfles would open a museum to attract selfie shooters.

Art in Island, an interactive art museum in a suburban Manila, Philippines, has installations designed for visitors to incorporate themselves into master 3-D copies of some classic works.

Tony Stark is The Avengers’ Jony Ive

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Tony Stark really does make the Avengers look cool. Photo: Marvel Studios
Tony Stark really does make the Avengers look cool. Photo: Marvel Studios

Tony Stark isn’t just Iron Man — he’s The Avengers’ own personal Jony Ive.

“He’s the boss,” says Stark (referring to Captain America) in the new TV spot for The Avengers: Age of Ultron. “I just pay for everything … and design everything … make everyone look cooler.”

While Ive doesn’t pay for everything at Apple, the rest of that self-confident self-description sounds a lot like Cupertino’s design guru.

Get ready for used Apple Watch trade-ins

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Apple Watch - useful, or just a trend? Photo: Apple

One of the biggest questions surrounding the Apple Watch is how well its value will stand the test of time. Will Apple offer some sort of upgrade program for the opulent 10K Edition model? Will the tech-laden timepiece on your wrist be obsolete in two years?

Gazelle is banking on there being a thriving market for used Apple Watches as early adopters upgrade, much like there already is for used iPhones and iPads. The company announced its new trade-in program today ahead of the Watch’s April release.

Slide over, car companies are ready to take the wheel

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Drive from SF to Seattle without touching the steering wheel. Photo: Mercedes Benz
Drive from SF to Seattle without touching the steering wheel. Photo: Mercedes Benz

The future of automobiles is getting closer every day.

German auto maker Mercedes Benz showed off a “car of the future” prototype self-driving car in California on Wednesday and futurist and Steve Jobs wannabe Elon Musk’s new Tesla Model S is getting an autopilot mode within the next few months.

It’s only a matter of time before we’re all sitting in a living-room style automobile, sipping slow-brewed coffee and reading the latest social news from our iPads as we zip along to our next appointment or meeting, right?

Because as Musk famously said: “Someday, driving a car will be illegal.”

Count down to your death with this Apple Watch clock

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Countdown to your date with the Reaper. Photo: Rehabstudio
Countdown to your date with the Reaper. Photo: Rehabstudio

Tim Cook touted Apple Watch’s supreme timekeeping capabilities at last week’s Spring Forward event, but Rehabstudio plans to give wearers a unique look on time — by counting down to their death.

Life Clock is an upcoming Apple Watch app that’s like the reverse of an activity tracker. Rather than giving you a readout of actions you did in the past, Life Clock tracks all the positive and negative actions you take throughout the day to calculate when you’re going to kick the bucket.

Angry Birds lose a few feathers in first revenue drop

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It's hard out there on a pig. Photo: Rovio Entertainment
It's hard out there on a pig. Photo: Rovio Entertainment

It’s tough at the top.

Mobile video game publisher Rovio Entertainment detailed Thursday its first revenue drop since the Finnish company hit it big with the Angry Birds franchise in 2009.

Perhaps the saturation of the market with no less than 11 Angry Birds-themed games since then (and three spin-offs) and way too many toys and animation projects has something to do with the loss of revenue, down 9 percent to $170.6 million in 2014.

Of course, as Rovio’s mobile gaming business did rise a bit (16 percent), making the overall drop in revenue that more incredible, the company seems to be focused on doubling-down on its mobile game offerings.

“2014 results show that steps in the game portfolio, free to play competency building and advertising are going in the right direction. I am confident that with new simplified organisation and clearer vision, we will be back to the path of growth in 2015,” said CEO Pekka Rantala in a statement.

iDown: Apple struggles during its first day on Dow

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AAPL shares are down the first day on the Dow. Photo: Cult of Mac
AAPL shares are down the first day on the Dow. Photo: Cult of Mac

Apple officially joined the Dow Jones Industrial average today, placing the world’s most valuable company among historic brands like Coca-Cola, Boeing and 3M. But Apple’s first day with the big boys isn’t getting off to a great start.