To celebrate the upcoming release of Modern Combat 5: Blackout, Gameloft has rolled out an awesome new challenge inside one of its other hugely successful titles, Asphalt 8: Airborne. It features a new track inspired by the hit FPS series that’s full of explosions and crumbling buildings — and there’s a nice prize for the best racers.
I know that TwoDots, the followup to last year’s megahit Dots, has been out for a little while, but I have a pretty good excuse for not having reviewed it yet: I’ve been playing it this whole time.
It’s taken me so long to get to this article, in fact, that the developer has since released an update with a bunch more levels, and now this review is timely again. So take that, Time.
Anyway, TwoDots is a lot of fun. Provided you’re incredibly lucky.
Apple is set to open a new brick-and-mortar retail store at the Paradise Walk mall in China’s Jiangbei District of Chongqing, according to Apple’s official retail website.
The store will open at 10am local time on Saturday, July 26, and will represent the company’s eleventh Apple Store in China: the first of several that will be opening in 2014 and 2015.
When Steve Jobs was still alive, he seemed adamant that the size of the iPhone’s screen was perfect, since it was the maximum width a screen could be and be comfortable to hold while typing one-handed.
With the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 on the horizon, though, it appears that Apple no longer agrees. But why? Why are smartphone screens getting bigger anyway?
Getting into the streaming TV business might be all the rage right now, but it’s far from an easy game to play. (Which is why Tim Cook referred to Apple TV as “a hobby” for so long.)
Proof positive of this is Qplay, the Internet video-device and iPad app startup launched by the founders of TiVo, which has announced that it’s closing shop less than six months after launching its debut product.
We’ve heard a lot of rumors about the upcoming iPhone 6. But which ones are true? With the release of Apple’s latest and greatest smartphones just three months away, we can start synthesizing the likelihood of which rumors will pan out (and which won’t).
This gorgeous infographic exploding the iPhone 6 into its various components does a great job of showing where the consensus is right now.
Inside a New York City morgue, the rich, famous and celebrated rest in the same space with the soldier, the wheat farmer and nuns trained in the martial arts. There’s even a car show model who was mauled by a lion.
Darcy Eveleigh pulls drawers at random and gives these people another day. They’re not dead, just filed.
Eveleigh is a New York Times picture editor who curates the popular Tumblr blog, The Lively Morgue, a collection of historic and often quirky images found in the Times’ photo archive.
Eveleigh will not live to see every photo. The files are believed to hold between 10 and 20 million images. The site reports that if Times picture editors posted 10 new archived photos on the blog each day, they might have every picture online by the year 3935.
“They are all accidental small treasures I did not mean to come across,” Eveleigh said of the serendipity she relies on during her regular visits to the morgue, located three stories below ground level.
Google Now users can now use Google Search to create new reminders from their desktop. It’s as simple as visiting Google.com in your browser, and typing things like “remind me to call mom when I get home” into the search box.
Apple today announced the eighth annual iTunes Festival in London with a whole bunch of massive acts already confirmed. Those lucky enough to bag tickets will see the likes of Pharrell Williams, Maroon 5, Kylie, Sam Smith, and Blondie.
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Is former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney talking to Apple about becoming its new head of PR? That’s the question still circulating around Silicon Valley after a pair of conflicting reports came out earlier this week.
According to a friend of Carney’s who spoke anonymously to Bloomberg, Carney has indeed talked to Apple about potentially filling the recently vacated position.
This time on the CultCast: rumored new Apple tech could give weeklong battery life to future iPhones; why your grandma will love the new iTunes; after a 30-year feud, Apple and IBM kiss and make up; Kim Kardashian’s iOS app makes way more than it should; Beats brings the marketing magic back to Apple; and we pitch our favorite apps and tech then vote on which one’s best—it’s an all new Faves N Raves!
Hem and haw your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the chuckles begin.
Our thanks to TextExpander for supporting this episode! TextExpander for Mac saves you time and effort by expanding short abbreviations into frequently-used text, pictures, code blocks, and more, and it’s an application we use every single day. Try it out for free at Smilesoftware.com/cultcast.
In what has been a great year for iOS gaming, Monument Valley stands head and shoulders above most of its competition. Part M.C. Escher and part Fez, the game lets you journey through a surrealist world full of optical illusions and hidden paths — all the while avoiding and outsmarting the sinister Crow people.
It’s great, compelling fun — and apparently we’re far from the only people to think that, since developers Ustwo announced late last week that their game has now been downloaded in excess of 1 million times.
So you don't have to slog through a lake of reviews to find something you’re just going to put down after 10 minutes, Cult of Mac has waded through the iTunes Store to compile a list of the best new books, movies and music to come out this week.
This week we've found some soulful garage rock, a book to cure your summer wanderlust and a documentary about the world's biggest movie fan (made by the top names in the industry).
Enjoy!
Even the BeachSafe won’t save you if you leave it alone on the beaches of Barcelona, but it’s still a pretty neat idea. It’s a tote bag that folds out to make a seat for sitting on the sand. Slide your towel out of its compartment, fill that compartment with sand (for ballast) using the built-in scoop and secure the bag’s opening with a combination lock. It won’t stop anyone from making off with the whole thing, but I like the idea of a combo bag/seat, whether it’s safe or not. €60
People waiting for the rumored 12-inch Retina MacBook may just have to keep right on waiting, according to a new report from Taiwan’s Economic Daily News, which blames the wait on Intel’s delayed 14-nanometer Broadwell chips, which are reportedly used in the computers.
Because of these production delays, the report claims that the 12-inch MacBook may not ship until Q3 2014 or even early 2015, when the chips will be in greater supply.
Could it be that the much-anticipated sapphire displays for the upcoming iPhone 6 isn’t actually sapphire at all? Sort of, according to a new video posted by YouTuber Marques Brownlee.
Brownlee made waves a few weeks back when he apparently managed to get hold of one of the super-tough 4.7-inch displays reported to feature in Apple’s next generation handset, and ran it through the most brutal assault course this side of Full Metal Jacket. The display was subjected to a scratch and shatter test involving keys, a knife, and even Brownlee himself trying to bend it with his foot.
Provided the display (supplied by renowned Apple leaker Sonny Dickson) is genuine, this test suggests that the iPhone 6 screen will be considerably stronger than the displays used in its predecessors.
But it may still not be pure sapphire. Here’s why.
Google Search for iOS has got a new Easter that allows Android-hatin’ fanboys – or anyone else who just likes destroying things – to tear apart the GOOG’s childish logo, one letter at a time.
To find the Google Search easter egg just open the app to the main search screen and you’ll be able to drag, flick and drop letters from the Google logo anywhere on the screen. Titling right and left makes the letters float or fall based on your tilt, and if you want to restore order, each letter can be put back in its proper place.
If your app still has the Nelson Mandela logo you’ll have to wait for an update, but in the meantime, checkout the easter egg in action in the quick video below:
Concept designer extraordinaire Martin Hajek is a master of taking rumors and images about forthcoming Apple products and using them to create stunning design concepts.
With that in mind, he’s borrowed the new, rounded design language seen in many of the iPhone 6 leaks, and adapted it to show us what an upgraded iPad mini could conceivably look like in the same style. To make it more authentic, he’s also incorporated the reports of added Touch ID, which we’ve heard from multiple sources is expected in the next wave of iPads.
As with pretty much all of Hajek’s designs, the results are outstandingly authentic-looking — and offer a tantalizing glimpse at what Apple’s next miniature tablet might look like.
Imagine a world in which you order your Starbucks drink of choice from your iPhone, pay for it instantly, and then pick it up from a smiling employee minutes later.
That dream will soon be a reality. Starbucks is bringing the ability to place pickup orders in its mobile app later this year.
Today Amazon took the wraps off its Kindle Unlimited subscription, an all-you-can-read plan that was uncovered earlier this week. For $9.99 per month you get access to 600,000 Kindle titles, including “thousands” of audiobooks from Audible.
Everything is available though Amazon’s Kindle apps, including iOS and the Mac.
Long-time rivals Apple and IBM partnered up this week to work together on enterprise software, but what does this mean for Siri? If Apple’s trusty voice assistant gets together with IBM’s extremely intelligent A.I. Watson, it could be a beautiful “relationship.”
Watch today’s Cult of Mac news roundup to hear all the latest news and rumors about this potential Apple-IBM hookup, possible trouble in the iPhone 6 sapphire glass pipeline, a toaster that burns your selfies into bread and the rest of the week’s biggest stories.
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Microsoft’s hopes of slowly taking over the U.S. tablet market just took another hit as Lenovo, the world’s largest PC maker, has decided there’s pretty much no demand for any Windows tablets under 10-inches.
Lenovo told PC World that they’re seeing stronger interest in larger screen sizes in North America, so they’re going to stop selling all of their small Windows Tablets in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and push the ThinkPad 10.
Most of us take videos from time to time. You know, the kind of videos that are taken from boring, ground based, vantage points. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have the freedom to take high definition videos from any angle or elevation?
Meet the DJI Phantom FC40 drone. Using its on-board Smart Camera, you can record just about any event from one stunning perspective after another. Now, the DJI Phantom FC40 can be yours for the very low price of $499 at Cult of Mac Deals. As an added bonus, use the promo code phantom50 to get an additional $50 off, for a final price of $449!
While Android has a significantly larger user base, iOS has always been the more profitable platform for app developers. That’s expected to change over the next three years, however. One analyst believes that by 2018, Google Play will bring in more revenue than the App Store for the first time ever.