As the nation grows more obese yet car culture still rules, here’s the nudge of the hour: your car and your fitness app talking to each other, reminding you that you’re not moving enough.
Automatic’s smart driving assistant can turn your old hunk of junk into a smart car, but the company announced today that it’s teamed up with Jawbone to whip your belly rolls into shape by giving drivers more insight into how your physical activity and driving patterns are connected.
With Gesture Alarm Clock, you set wakeup alerts by drawing numbers on the screen. It has a sleep timer that plays a variety of soothing music and sounds to lull you off. Plus, it has three different vibration strengths, several gesture-based snoozes, and if you think you’d wake up easier if your iPhone’s flashlight turned on, it’ll do that for you, too.
It will also automatically wake you up earlier if it detects traffic delays, and it displays the current weather.
But it won’t cook my breakfast, so I can’t really recommend it.
Source:Gesture Alarm Clock – Free ($1.99 upgrade for full features) | RV AppStudios LLC
I really can’t get enough of twin-stick shooters.
I don’t know what it is, but they have a very specific kind of frantic energy that appeals to me without being overwhelming. And I like them so much that every time I have an opportunity to play one on iOS, I give it a chance despite the fact that my iPhone has no sticks to twin, so the touch controls usually suck.
Ekon the Cyborg is a new two-pad shooter that somehow has controls that work. And I’m as shocked as anyone. But beyond that, it’s a nostalgic and colorful romp that is pretty much made of my childhood.
Nintendo won’t bring its popular game franchises to iOS, and Apple won’t allow emulators in the App Store. In order to play titles like Super Mario and Zelda on your iPhone, then, you have to look at unofficial alternatives. GBA4iOS was one of the most popular — but after its creators received a DMCA notice from Nintendo this week, it is no more.
Your iPhone’s speakers suck. No amount of magical design from Jony Ive can change the laws of physics to give those itsy-bitsy tweeters earth-shattering bass, but plenty of acoustic iPhone docks are willing to try.
We’ve seen a menagerie of speaker docks over the years, and while most stick to being practical, we love the weird creations that make you do a double-take. We’ve gathered 14 of the most incredible iPhone docks you’ll ever see in the gallery above.
Got your own favorite bizarre dock for your iDevice? Let us know in the comments below.
If you’re looking for the next super-addictive iOS hit, you may have found it in JoyJoy, which arrives in the App Store tomorrow, priced $1.99.
The game, which comes from developers RadanGames, was actually released on Xbox Live Indie Games a few years ago, but this mobile version has been totally revamped. It’s an above-view arcade shooter in which you see off wave after wave of assailants using a wide range of weaponry.
Is it wrong that — regardless of how many times I get burned on either Michael Bay Transformers movies, or video game movie adaptations — I’m still excited at the prospect of a new Transformers game?
DeNA and Hasbro has just announced the official tie-in game for the upcoming Transformers sequel, Age of Extinction. As with the movie, the mobile game will be landing on iOS devices (as well as Android and Windows Phone) this summer.
The iPhone has hit a new all-time high when it comes to market share in Japan: representing a massive 36.6% of all Japanese smartphones in the first quarter of 2014.
This increase, which is up from last year’s 25.5%, was driven by Apple’s deal with NTT DoCoMo, a.k.a. Japan’s largest carrier. Apple launched the iPhone 5s and 5c with NTT DoCoMo back in September, and sales have been rocketing upwards ever since. Sales have proven so good, in fact, that Apple recently moved Doug Beck, chief of sales for Japan and Korea, over to handle the North American beat — where it is hoped he can apply some of the same sales mojo to increasing U.S. market share.
If you’ve ever wanted to run iOS apps on an Android device, six PhD students at Columbia University may be able to help.
They’ve created a piece of software called Cider which allows Android-powered devices to run both domestic and foreign binaries – meaning both Android and iOS applications – on a single handset or tablet.
There’s a reason the majority of apps in the App Store look like they fit together, and that reason is Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, a document that ensures all developers incorporate Apple-approved elements into everything they do on the iOS platform.
To make these guidelines transparent and readable, Apple has released an iPad-friendly version of its latest iOS Human Interface Guidelines reference material. Available to the public as a free download through the iBookstore, the guide covers everything from general design practices to rules about content, and features the usual iBooks flourishes such as page numbers, resizable fonts and annotation support. It also incorporates embedded videos to illustrate certain topics.
It looks like a chopping board made of wood — but it isn’t, and it isn’t. Instead, Thingk’s Gkilo (we imagine the names were conjured up during an alcohol-induced haze late one night and scrawled on the back of a cocktail napkin, then semi-deciphered the next morning) is actually a dual kitchen scale and clock disguised as a chopping board.
Griffin’s wired iPad keyboard at first it seems like a ridiculously tardy April Fool’s joke, or a signal that perhaps Nashville has been overcome by some bizarre warping of time; aren’t we supposed to be taking wires away instead of adding them? But under the right conditions, a wired iPad keyboard is actually a smart idea.
Critics slammed Steve Jobs when he opened the first Apple Store nearly 13 years ago, but now that Apple’s retail space makes more money per square foot than Tiffany’s, everyone from Samsung to Microsoft has been trying to duplicate Apple’s success.
To see just how quickly Apple Stores have invaded the U.S., Retale created an interactive map that plots each new store opening since 2001. Each blue dot in the GIF above represents a new store opening, starting with the original Apple Store in Tysons Corner, Virginia.
254 Apple Stores now dot the country with an additional 170 outlets open internationally, but six sad states in U.S. are still waiting for their first Apple shrines to open. Check out Retale’s site for a full breakdown on when each store opened and the flagship products that brought customers into Steve’s aluminum and glass utopias.
Apple stores around the world are considered shining examples of exquisite design in the cutting-edge world of retail. Steve Jobs was famously picky about every detail that went into the stores, all the way down to the type of wood grain used for the tables.
An Apple reseller’s new store in Poznań, Poland, takes a unique approach to design by incorporating materials used in actual fruit stands. The result is decidedly retro, and actually pretty cool.
If you listen to the CultCast, you know how much our own Leander Kahney loves Sonos. It’s actually kind of scary.
You don’t have to feel as strongly as Leander about Sonos to appreciate the major update to its remote app that’s available today in the App Store.
Beats Music is in an interesting spot as a new service, mainly because we don’t know when (or if) it will be swallowed by Apple.
After it was revealed last week that Apple plans to buy Beats for billions, the company’s fledgling music subscription service has received a new level of attention. But that doesn’t mean its growth has been healthy.
According to a leaked royalties report, Beats Music only had around 111,000 subscribers as of last month.
Those are incredibly low numbers for a startup with a lot of funding, aggressive advertising, and a juicy promotion in place with AT&T. But to Apple, stagnant growth isn’t an issue. It’s about what Beats Music can do for iTunes.
The second charity auction to offer a sit-down with Tim Cook has closed, and $330K has been raised by the winning bid for the RFK Center for Justice & Human Rights.
The winner, who’s identity has not been disclosed, will get to have lunch with Cook at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. Another perk was added by Cook before the auction closed, but even that failed to garner as much interest as the previous auction.
At a price of $3.2 billion, Beats Audio is the most Apple has ever paid to acquire a company in its 38 year history, but even after writing that fat check Apple will have nearly $148 billion in cash burning a hole in its pocket.
Tim Cook says he’s not afraid to go on a shopping spree, so what else should he buy while he’s tossing around mountains of cash at companies? The folks at Funny or Die have a few ideas of their own, including a $13 billion acquisition that could finally bring the iToilet to your bathroom in classic Apple white.
Check it out:
Weather apps are a dime a dozen, but what do you use when you want to know the exact temperature where you are right now? That’s the question that drove app company Robocat to make Thermodo, a small thermometer that plugs directly into a smartphone’s headphone jack.
What makes Thermodo incredibly unique is the overwhelming amount of support it received on Kickstarter last year. The project raised over 10 times its original goal of $35,000. People clearly loved the idea of a portable thermometer for the iPhone, as over $336,000 has been pledged by backers.
Now that Thermodo is shipping and out in the wild, does it live up to the all the hype?
Apple’s rumored iWatch could give the watch industry a much needed shot in the wrist once its finally revealed, but what if Apple decided to make iWatch a platform like CarPlay instead of an actual product?
It sounds crazy but putting Apple’s tech in the hands of the world’s classiest watchmakers could yield better results than if Cupertino dives into the fashion world alone. In its newest concept, Curved imagined what Rolex could do with the iWatch and the result is the manliest smart chronometer a non-geek could want.
Checkout the full concept video below:
When it comes to getting sued over U.S. patent infringements, no one gets targeted more than Apple.
A new study from legal analytics firm Lex Machina found that in 2013 Apple was the most frequent target of patent lawsuits, followed by Amazon at No. 2, as both companies came under heavy fire from a group of 10 “patent monetization entities” that were responsible for a staggering 13 percent of the 6,092 patent-infringement suits filed last year.
Here’s a breakdown of the top 10 most-sued companies:
Sliding two distinctive iRings between my middle and ring fingers on each hand and then conducting the bouncy electronic beat coming out of my iPad mini and into my big fat headphones made me feel less like a conductor and more like an awkward boxer, punching at a touchscreen.
Once I relaxed into it, though, the music started to flow and my hands began to dance; this is one cool iOS music-making peripheral.
The iRing is made for making music, but the potential here is stunning: Imagine a video game controlled with your hands, a webpage that scrolls at a speed you define with your fingers, or an e-book that turns pages with a swipe through the air. This is a truly innovative new product.
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Here’s a fitness app with an interesting extra feature.
BetterFit lets you keep track of when and how you exercise. You can design custom routines from a giant list of activities or make your own. But it also includes a second tracker that lets you measure how much protein you consume during the day. It has a list of preset food items, or you can input it manually and set daily goals to make sure that you’re feeding your muscles properly.
So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go stock up on lentils because they’re as delicious and full of protein as they are fun to say.
Here’s a quick, funny, and surprisingly challenging word game for movie buffs.
Plot Twistz presents you with a slightly modified plot to a famous film, and your job is to figure out the name of the augmented movie. You get the answer by changing one letter of the original title, which doesn’t sound like much, but you’d be surprised.
It’s also pretty hilarious if you love puns.