Cult of Mac

By enhancing discoverability and human curation in its App Store, and favoring innovative indie developers over brainless money-hungry giants, Apple is doing a lot of things right these days when it comes to iOS.

An area it could still work on, however, is kicking out knockoff titles — or making sure they never make it into the App Store to begin with.

Case in point is Cloned Blek. Brought to our attention by Gamezebo, the title is a shameless display by apparent ripoff artists Coffee House Apps.

It seems like ages ago that the original iPod touch helped boost the popularity of iOS. With seven years behind the device, Apple still believes in the product and has introduced a price cut. Watch today’s news roundup to hear all about the latest version of the iTouch. You’ll also get the latest iPhone 6 rumors, a look at Google’s wacky cardboard virtual reality goggles and the rest of this week’s big stories.

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Verizon Wireless is having massive issues with its systems across the country today that has spurred a horde of frustrated customers to take to Twitter after the outage has blocked new phone activation for the past 24 hours.

Current issues with Verizon’s payment and upgrade systems aren’t affecting calls or data, but The Verge reports that Verizon and its retail stores have confirmed there’s a major issue they’re working to resolve, leaving new iPhone purchasers trapped with an error message until its fixed.

Apple gave developers an early preview of its upcoming Photos app this month at WWDC, but what it didn’t tell anyone is that new app for iOS will also overthrow Apple’s iPhoto and Aperture apps for OS X.

A new Photos app for OS X isn’t expected to land on Macs until next year, but in a statement released to The Loop, Apple says it has already stopped development on its professional photography application, Aperture.

Here’s the official statement:

Warhammer 40,0000 is nothing if not crazily over-the-top, as this new trailer for a first-person shooter set in the far-future setting of the game universe shows.

This is the first video captured exclusively within the game engine, Unreal Engine 4, showing off all the lighting and texture effects in great detail.

In this game from developer Streum On Studio, you’ll play as a Librarian of the Deathwing, an elite force of hugely-armored badasses from the future who are trapped in a Space Hulk, a massive derelict space ship drifting in the outer reaches of the galaxy. You’ll take on hordes of Genestealers, the Alien-like enemies who are out to, well, kill you dead.

Check out the trailer below.

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Yesterday, Apple quietly updated the 16GB iPod Touch, adding a rear-camera to the base model device while dropping the price of the entire line by $30 to $50 each.

Was anything else new? To find out, the famed gadget vivisectionists at iFixIt ripped apart a new 16GB iPod touch.

Endless runners are a popular genre on iOS, and the newly-launched Go Go Ghost looks like it’s not going to buck that trend.

A side-scrolling auto-runner, it varies up the formula by adding missions. To complete each mission, your character (a ghostly figure with a flaming skull, a bit like a cuter version of Marvel’s Ghost Rider) must collect coins, power-ups and other objects, chase down enemies, avoid pitfalls, and defeat sinister bosses. To help you are a variety of colorful supporting characters, who will do some of the gem-collecting work on your behalf.

There’s no shortage of killer iPhone cases, including the Yellow Jacket, a stun gun case that can deliver 650,000 volts of electricity to an assailant while extending your iPhone’s battery life for 20 hours.

But why buy a case when you can use a stun gun disguised as an iPhone to get the drop on people instead? That seems to be the questionable logic that seems to be sweeping a small community in Canada, which has seen more than a couple of people fried by a fake iPhone stun gun.

If you’re looking for a way to charge your Apple devices in the simplest, most hassle-free way possible, you may want to check out the new Kickstarter project, MOS Reach.

Acting as an extension of the traditional wall outlet, MOS Reach is a rectangular device that includes a standard socket alongside two 3.1 amp USB ports — giving you enough power to charge both your iPhone and iPad simultaneously.

Siri’s starting work — or at least something like that. SRI International, the brains behind the Siri standalone app bought by Apple back in 2010, has announced the creation of Kasisto, a business version of Apple’s virtual assistant.

Kasisto will enable companies to integrate their own branded Siri-style assistants within apps, providing a way of letting helping consumers navigate complex tasks through a conversational Artificial Intelligence program. While SRI International has yet to release many details, this means that it should be possible to harness the regular Siri interactions for more specialized tasks within apps, allowing specific businesses to “train” their own version of Siri to become an expert in a variety of areas, from medical advice to, say, movie rentals.

iPads are sexy, but would you have sex with one? Fleshlight sure hopes so. The company behind the gross silicon sleeves that aim to put a simulated vagina in the palm of your hand has just revealed the LaunchPAD, and surprise! It’s an iPad case you can pork.

If you’re looking for a good deal on an iPhone — and aren’t too concerned about being the first person on your block to own an iPhone 6 — it’s a great time to be a customer.

A few months back, RadioShack lowered its prices on the iPhone 5s, and now Walmart is doing the same. From today, Walmart is making the 16GB iPhone 5s available for $99 on a two-year contract, representing a $50 saving. The 16GB iPhone 5c is even better value, costing just $29 (down from $49) for a similar two-year contract.

Way better than it sounds iOS collectible card superhero beat-em-up Injustice: Gods Among Us recently received a notable update.

Adding four new challenge characters, players can now expect to confront the likes of Killer Frost, Luchadore Bane, Arkham Origins Deathstroke and Red Son Batman, all of whom will go live in the coming weeks. The interface for challenges has also been reworked, meaning that it’s now a whole lot easier to tell how many challenge levels it is that you’ve completed, and what the rewards are for each one.

Apple has been focusing on improving App Store discoverability as of late, and now it has added a “Best New Updates” section for games, which introduces users to notable updates of top-selling titles.

Prior to this addition, Apple included game updates as part of its curated “Best New Games” section, which resulted in a long list that took ages to scroll through. By separating updates from entirely new games, users can now more easily browse through the list to discover games that they might otherwise miss.

Back in August, a new game arrived in the iOS App Store and almost immediately vanished without a trace.

“I received a few great reviews from news sites, but not enough to have an impact,” says Robert Topala, founder of RobTop Games and developer of the disappearing game. “Since I had no marketing budget it quickly dropped in rankings after release.”

For most games that would have been it. And if the story stopped there, it wouldn’t have been a tale of total failure: Topala wasn’t a professional coder, and had only been making mobile games for a couple years at the time. Simply finishing a game, getting it in the App Store and picking up a few accolades would have been nice enough.

But that wasn’t Topala’s story.

With Google showing off Android-powered wearables from Samsung, LG and Motorola at its Google I/O developers conference this week, the smartwatch competition has officially heated up.

The LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live will ship in early July, so Android Wear smartwatches will definitely beat Apple’s rumored iWatch to the market. In today’s video, Cult of Mac shows how these handy, Android-powered devices — which let users access smartphone features from the convenience of their wrists — set the bar high for the iWatch.

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Apple has made another interesting hire to augment the already impressive number of biometrics experts the company has snapped up in recent times.

Alex Hsieh, who joins Apple as a new firmware developer, was formerly lead engineer at the weight training-oriented, fitness-tracking company Atlas Wearables.

Launched on Indiegogo back in February, Atlas raised an impressive $629,000 to create the most accurate and social wearable activity tracker yet available on the market. This accuracy was largely the result of an impressive suite of internal sensors, designed in part by Hsieh.

With reports about the iWatch in full swing, this hire confirms once again that Apple has one of the most biosensor impressive teams ever assembled for its long-awaited arrival in the wearables field.

Source: Networkworld

Bad news for those of you who use Apple’s Podcasts app: For the vast majority of users running iOS 7.1.1, the app crashes immediately after launching.

There’s currently no word as to why this is happening, since the Podcasts app was last updated May 29 — adding only minor bug fixes — but the malfunction has just kicked in.

With Apple’s mobile and desktop platforms growing closer in iOS 8 and Yosemite, I started wondering: Is the laptop inherently better for computing than a tablet, or does it just seem that way because we’re so used to the folding form factor?

Could it be that, if the iPad had launched before the Mac and we’d spent the last 30 years using touchscreens, we would balk at using keyboards, mice and dumb screens to do our computing work? Or, in my time-reversed world, if Apple unveiled the Mac in 2010, would we all cling to our iPads and claim Cupertino was nuts for foisting OS X upon us?

“Die, fish. Die! Die, shark!”

That’s what one goggled attendee shouts near the end of Sony’s new video (below) showing people’s reaction to its not-yet-released virtual reality headset, codenamed Project Morpheus, at the Electronic Entertainment Expo a couple weeks back in Los Angeles.

He and many other gamers got the chance to try out Sony’s answer to the Oculus Rift at the expo, and boy is it weird to watch them from the outside.

It’s hard to show what VR is really all about without, you know, actually having you wear the headsets. VR rigs like Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus have an uphill battle to convince the rank and file that VR is going to be compelling enough to shell out even more money for their gaming systems.

Sony opted to show us people from the outside, and I’m not sure it’s any more compelling than a 2D video of the VR games on offer right now.

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