May the fourth be with you on Star Wars Day this year.
The droid-loving folks over at SMS audio (a company majority-owned by rapper 50 Cent) have put out a set of surprisingly good on-ear headphones based on the company’s entry-level Street by 50 on ear wired headphones.
Each set boasts a Star Wars-themed logo on the ear cups (see below) with associated fan service pack-ins like stickers and a poster.
Hundreds of new games come out every week in the App Store. A select few are the next must-play title that everyone will be talking about (and ripping off) for the foreseeable future. Most of them are perfectly decent but may not receive the attention they deserve. And then you have the third group: games so odd, bizarre, and head-scratching that you’re not sure what to make of or do with them.
They aren’t necessarily bad; they’re just confusing and weird. And worst of all, people may never know that they exist. But that’s why we’re here.
Here are some of the strangest games to drop into the App Store this week, and they’re all about food (mostly desserts, oddly enough). What you do with this information is between you and your iPhone.
This time on The CultCast: rumored new EarPods take your pulse and more; updated Macbook Airs get faster and cheaper; a leaked “iPhone 6” case indicates an iPod-inspired design; Google takes on Office with new iOS apps for Drive; we ponder the state of the iPod; and we pitch our favorite tech and apps then vote on which is best… it’s an all new Faves N Raves!
Have a few chuckles while we catch you up on 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 audio adventure begin!
And thanks to Lynda.com for sponsoring this episode! Learn at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at Lynda.com.
Click on for the show notes.
Cult of Mac Deals is starting off the weekend right with a couple of offers that aim to make your life easier – both at home and on the go!
We’ve lined up a great price for Typinator, the productivity-boosting text expansion app, offering it for 42% off the regular price. And for those of you who want to stay charged while on the go, we’ve got The Apple Approved Lightning Cable and Car Charger available for only $26.99!
The jury is done deliberating. The results are in. And Samsung is guilty. Again.
Weeks of legal sparring between Apple and Samsung has finally culminated this week in San Jose, as a federal jury just ruled that Samsung did indeed infringe on at least one of Apple’s patents while it only partially infringed on others.
If you’re looking to get away from it all, you might want to check out this game. …and then it rained is an arcade game full of sound, rain, and colors, and it’s the perfect game for a quiet few minutes away from the hectic pace of your life.
With true zen-like minimalism, there are just a few simple mechanics at work here, but it may just be the best game you play all week.
Check out the video below to see how it plays.
What if you had a Mophie-like battery pack for your MacBook? Available for preorder now, the BatteryBox is exactly that.
The box itself is about the length of a credit card and packs a whopping 12,000mAh battery. That equates to about 12 hours of extra juice for the MacBook Air and 6 hours for the Pro. The BatteryBox can charge any device over USB, and it has its own MagSafe2 connector.
The complications behind creating a small screen for something like an iWatch are immense, but Apple has bought the company it may need to make it all possible.
TechCrunch reports that Apple has acquired LuxVue Technology, a small California-based company that specializes in “microLED-based displays for consumer electronics applications.” It turns out that microLEDs could work very well with wearables.
Celebrities like Samsung phones, but they love marketing paychecks even more.
The wave of Samsung-sponsored selfies that started with massive retweets at the Oscars, has become one of the most popular viral campaigns in the history of the Internet as everyone from Ellen to Big Papi have been spotted snapping Samsung-selfies in exchange for a fat paycheck.
And Apple is totally jealous.
The weekend is nearly upon us, so why not grab some great savings before it arrives from Cult of Mac Deals?
We’ve got the GripGo Universal Car Mount available for just $13.99 and the BACtrack Breathalyzer for iOS for only $99.99 in two very limited time offers!
Those hoping to get a peek at Apple’s game-changing future products at next month’s Worldwide Developers Conference reportedly need to “dial back [their] expectations or be disappointed.”
Despite Tim Cook’s promise from the WWDC stage last year that Cupertino would enter “new product categories,” no big reveals are forthcoming on the iWatch or Apple TV fronts at this year’s big conference, according to a report from Re/code.
A week full of news has passed and your host Joshua Smith is here to give you a wrap-up on some of the biggest features. Warrants to search cell phones, leaked iPhone cases and the latest Snapchat update are among just some of the featured stories in today’s rundown. Take a look at the video and be sure to return next week for another.
Subscribe to CultOfMacTV on youtube.com to catch new episodes of the roundup and other great video reviews, how-to’s and more.
Great games don’t always need amazing graphics and sound, but they do need a strong premise and a lot of heart. A Dark Room, an outstanding text-based adventure game with minimal graphics, starts off as a simple survival story and eventually blossoms into a full-on Fallout-style role-playing game (RPG).
Much of the joy of playing A Dark Room is watching it unfold in surprising new ways. The game starts simply — you’re alone in the dark with a single button to press to start a fire. Eventually, new buttons appear so you can perform actions like collecting wood, and a character called the Builder shows up to help you form a shelter.
For the second time in around one month, a major flaw has been found in popular open-source security software. The hole, which exists in the login tools OAuth and OpenID, affects many websites including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Yahoo, GitHub and others.
The flaw was discovered by Wang Jing, a Ph.D student at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Jing notes that the serious “Covert Redirect” flaw can act as a login popup based on an affected site’s domain. Exploited by an attacker, affected sites may result in users losing control of their login information and personal data — including email addresses, birth dates, and contact lists.
Style My Floor is a decorating app that lets you sample an assortment of different hardwood materials and styles. And even cooler, you can request a “Quick Key” that’ll let you see how different floors will look in your house. You just print out a PDF, lay it in a corner, and then point your iPhone or iPad camera at it. Magic does the rest.
Or technology. Probably that.
Either way, it hits my “easily impressed” button.
When you first start playing Hill Runner, it seems impossible. And then after a few dozen dismal failures, you have a really good run and restore your faith in yourself. And then you’ll mess up the next try immediately.
It’s a glass case of emotion, this game.
But it’s very simple, and it’s free, and it’ll offer some distraction and charm for a few minutes if that’s all you’re looking for.
New game Mutants: Genetic Gladiators aims to be your go-to when you want to battle it out with comic book-style monsters that you mutate and create yourself.
The game, from French publisher Kojobo, originated on Facebook, gathering almost 6 million players with a turn-based arena battling scheme that mixes role-playing level-up mechanics with an interesting combat system that uses various monster “genes” to add to the strategy. You’ll choose three mutant gladiators for your battle team, and then pit them against other teams — both AI-controlled and actual other players — for ultimate supremacy.
Check out the launch trailer below for some hot comic-book creature battling action.
Two coders who’ve never met sat in their respective man caves 1,400 miles apart making a game that proves once and for all that whiz-bang graphics aren’t necessary when it comes to building a hit.
Called A Dark Room, their “minimalist text adventure” has stormed the App Store — averaging 10,000 downloads a day (at $0.99 a pop) and currently holding the No. 1 position for paid iPhone games (see our review here).
Here’s how Michael Townsend and Amir Rajan created an indie iOS game with no graphics that became the most unlikely success of the year.
When I was about 11, my best friend was a guy called James Brzezicki, who used to spend hours drawing out super-detailed level designs for platform video games. I copied him, although mine were never as good.
The real problem, though, was that when the drawings were finished we had no way of turning them into actual games. Neither of us was able to code, and the idea that it might be possible to create a video game approaching the quality of, say, Super Mario World was pretty unimaginable stuff.
Thankfully, technology has moved on a lot in the past couple of decades. Proof of this is the launch of a new iPad app called Pixel Press Floors, which lets you create side-scrolling platform games using nothing more than a few basic school supplies.
CHICAGO — I thought I was boarding the train with a camera that gave me a cloak of invisibility.
But even before the train began moving away from the station, the eyes of a man with a handlebar mustache drew a bead on my Autographer, a tiny, continuous-shooting photographic device clipped to my breast pocket.
He furled his brow. He did not blink. What was he thinking? Could he see the lens? Was he wondering if that thing was on? Maybe some insecurity set in, but the vibe felt like he was suspicious.
Of all the many,many, many manga takes on Steve Jobs we’ve inexplicably seen in recent years, this one is by far the weirdest.
Depicting Apple’s late founder as, um, an attractive young lady with a come-hither stare, the gender-switched CEO is gracing T-shirts across Japan.
Originally created as the central character of Chocolate Apple, an unusual manga biography tribute from the illustrator of IS <Infinite Stratos> and the Xenosaga series, the mascot now seems to have taken on a life of his/her own, as a fashionista of sorts.
Somehow I suspect that when Apple began considering entering the wearables market, this was the last thing on anyone’s mind.
Apple has launched a new section of its iOS App Store, offering a roundup of the past month’s best mobile apps as selected by an Apple editorial team.
The “Best of April” selection is split into two categories: “Great Games” and “Amazing Apps.” These include titles such as Monument Valley, Fantastical for iPad, Duolingo, and Hitman GO.
Since the glory days of Neo-Geo, I’ve been a massive fan of Metal Slug: the run and gun series of video games that sees you blast the living heck out of everything from enemy soldiers to undead zombies and giant crab monsters.
Now a new iOS game set in the Metal Slug universe, called Metal Slug Defense, has been released — and it actually looks pretty good.
Unlike recent abominations like RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile, which are the nostalgic equivalent of being forced to burn your favorite childhood toy while your first girlfriend points and laughs at you, this game has taken the superb pixel art, animations and manic destruction that fans loved about the Metal Slug series and turned it into an entertaining iPhone experience.
In a blatant attempt to steal Apple’s thunder, Samsung has announced a conference to take place on May 28 — promising to kick start “a new conversation around health.”
Why is this stepping on Apple’s toes?
Because the very next week is Apple’s eagerly-anticipated Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) — where Apple is expected to introduce the first stages of its new health-tracking family of innovations, beginning with the Healthbook feature for iOS 8, and likely to later expand to include the iWatch.
There are some fantastic photos hidden in the videos you’ve shot on your iPhone over the years. You just need to know where to look.
That idea’s the starting point for new iOS app Vhoto, which uses computer vision technology to intelligently scan through your videos to find and extract the best photographic moments.