Fancy building your own glittering high-tech utopia, or a bustling cosmopolitan metropolis?
Either way, gamers will be happy to know that SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition today became available for download, exclusively in the Mac App Store. Combining both SimCity 4 and the Rush Hour expansion pack — which adds bonus disasters like UFO attacks and Autosaurus Wrecks — the game is a steal at $19.99.
Apple has confirmed that none of its products, including web services like iCloud.com, are vulnerable to the nasty Heartbleed web bug that was recently uncovered.
Heartbleed allows hackers to intercept sensitive traffic and steal information like logins from websites using OpenSSL encryption. So when you visit a website with a little padlock in the address bar and think you’re safe, you maybe aren’t.
“Imperfections are not inadequacies; they are reminders that we’re all in this together.” ― Brené Brown
Help us make the magazine better by chiming in to report anything that needs fixing or can be improved.
Some of the improvements on the upcoming version of the app were suggested by readers, so give us a shout if you have a wish list.
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Credits
Publisher Leander Kahney
Editor Nicole Martinelli
Cover design Rob LeFebvre
Contributors Evan Killham, Buster Heine, Luke Dormehl, Rob LeFebvre and Cult of Mac staffers.
@2014 Cult of Media Corp. Produced using Packagr and the Baker Framework.
Thule’s Gauntlet case for the iPhone 5s is a slim, stylish snap-on cover that offers plenty of protection. Just like its big brother, a thin folio that will effectively protect an iPad Air, the Gauntlet employs a molded texture for grip and durability.
The iPhone case provides plenty of access to all buttons, ports and cameras. It comes in black, turquoise or pink, and it will protect your device without making it too big and bulky.
One of the Gauntlet’s best features, however, is its slender price tag. Available from MyBanana, it costs less than £16 ($27) — and it’s worth every penny.
Family Guy is one of the most popular comedy shows on television nowadays. While people everywhere can watch the show, the creators behind the show have made games for fans to enjoy as well. The new app Family Guy: The Quest For Stuff is an interactive touch based game full of fun quests, funny dialogue and much more. After Peter fights the giant chicken and accidentally destroys Quahog it’s your job to help build it back up to what it once was. Do you think you have the skills to help restore Quahog?
Take a look at the video and see what you think.
Rather than slogging through a lake of reviews to find something you’re just going to put down after 10 minutes, Cult of Mac has once again waded through the iTunes store to compile a list of the best new albums, books and movies to come out this week.
Enjoy!
Sage the Gemini – Remember Me
Los Angeles is getting a lot of credit for the west coast’s rap resurgence thanks to Kendrick Lamar, YG, and the A$AP crew, but Sage the Gemini would like to turn your attention to the Bay Area this week with his debut album that has everything from hopping instructional dance floor drills like Gas Pedal and College Drop to your bravado tracks, while also exploring Sage’s variety combined and garrulous charm.
iTunes – $9.99
Todd Terje – It’s Album Time
I fell hard. It took me just 30 seconds to love, love, love Todd Terje’s new album. The other 3,520 seconds weren’t bad either as Terje mixes a delicious cocktail of disco and surf tone instrumentals. It’s kind of like elevator music, only really fun danceable elevator music.
iTunes – $9.99
EMA – The Future’s Void
Erika M. Anderson, better known by her stage name EMA, perked ears up with her debut album Past Life Martyred Saints due to the brutal intimacy of her songs, but with her latest effort, The Future’s Void, EMA goes for something new by turning her focus to things and issues rather than the people she cut herself off from in the first album.
iTunes – $9.99
The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014
by Carlotta Gall
Many many books will yet be written about the war in Afghanistan, but few will have a deeper personal acquaintance with Afghanistan and Pakistan New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall who has been reporting from the area for almost the entire duration of the American invasion. Now that the U.S. is on its way out, Gall’s book outlines how we’ve been fighting the wrong enemy, in the wrong country.
iTunes – $18.99
The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry
by Gabrielle Zevin
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, the third novel from Gabrielle Zevin, is about a 39-year-old widower named A.J., a cranky drunkard with a bookstore in shambles, but mostly it’s about reading. Each chapter starts with the title of short story or book and note from A.J. that introduces each new character along with what they read, using literature as his prism for judgement.
iTunes – $11.99
The Divide
by Matt Taibbi
The yawning economic gap has promised to be a huge issue coming up in this year’s midterm elections which makes Matt Taibbi’s new book, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap a timely read if you’re curious about two alarming trends – growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration.
iTunes – $13.99
Philomena
Philomena is based on the incredible true story of British journalist Martin Sixsmith, who reluctantly decides to accompany Philomena Lee on her search to find the son who was taken from her at a convent 50 years ago. The film could’ve been a sentimental nightmare in other hands, but thanks to the stellar cast, journey is both smart, funny and heartfelt.
iTunes – $14.99
Ride Along
I usually find Kevin Hart’s hyperactive comedy riffs too exhaustive to be enjoyable, but tempered against the stone- cold attitude of Ice Cube he’s pretty great. Here in Ride Along, the two actors are a police duo out on ride-along designed to scare the hell out of Hart’s character so he’ll stop foolin’ around with Cube’s sister.
iTunes – $14.99
Patton Oswalt: Tragedy Plus Comedy Equals Time
Technically you can also get Patton Oswalt’s latest stand-up special as an album, but Patton’s jokes on the trials and tribulations of frozen foods, failed outings with prostitutes, fatherhood and other uncensored topics are so much more entertaining watching them on the big screen with your friends.
iTunes – $14.99
This new self-improvement app from the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance has a simple premise: Trying to do everything is hard, but doing one thing isn’t.
Sounds obvious, but what you do here is select a few habits you’d like to form; pre-loaded examples include drinking more water, inviting friends over, and going to bed early. You can also devise your own if you want to do something that isn’t on the list. The app sets goals, and you check them off when you do them. Eventually, you can “commit” to doing a thing without prompting and start on something else.
If I’ve learned nothing else from science-fiction shows like Firefly and Cowboy Bebop, it’s this: If society crumbles, even a little, we will revert back to a Wild-West mode of life.
I’m not sure why that is. Maybe it’s just more simple. Maybe it’s more practical. Odds are, though, that it’s just a cool motif for a story, and if you can get some spaceships or motorbikes in there, too, it’s like a bonus.
Trials Frontier, the latest in publisher Ubisoft’s physics-driven racing game franchise is out now, and it takes place in a rustic, post-apocalyptic world. But if you don’t care about that stuff, it’s also the series’ first appearance on mobile. And it’s free to play. And it’s really, really good.
Running out of space on your phone? Worried about losing those irreplaceable photos and videos? Pogoplug has your back…and your backup.
Through this Cult of Mac Deals offer you’ll get Pogoplug, which gives you unlimited storage on your phone, tablet and computer for one year. That means you’ll have access to your files anytime and anywhere – and all for just $39.
Monument Valley is one of the most original iOS games ever. A triumph of isometric design, it’s a trippy puzzle game in which you guide a white-clad princess through a series of twisting, turning structures, inspired by the mind-bending art of M.C. Escher.
Creating a world of this complexity might sound like a nightmare project, but for the UK-based game developers at ustwo, coming up with such an audacious creation was something of a dream.
“One of the first things we did when designing Monument Valley were to try and come up with images that seemed impossible,” says lead designer Ken Wong.
Still reeling from the success of the game — priced at $3.99, it was the top paid iPad app in its first week of release — Wong cracked open his sketchbooks to give Cult of Mac readers a glimpse at how Monument Valley‘s breathtaking designs came to be.
Here’s what we found.
Editor’s Note: Due to the sheer size of Elder Scrolls Online, we’re publishing our hands-on impressions in three chunks. Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here. What follows is Part 3.
I had just finished a long assignment from the elven ambassador in the province of Elsweyr. I was tired from running to and fro, tangling with spies and fighting the Sea Elves at every turn.
Suddenly, Commander Karinth stopped me in my path and pressed me into duty fighting these ocean foes. I had to run into the fabled Wind Tunnels, looking to destroy the foul Storm Totems. Enemies at every turn of the weaving passages forced me to dodge back and forth to avoid vicious attacks while retaliating with my own spells and sword blows.
After what seemed a lifetime of combat and destruction, I returned a hero. Then I took some time out for me, finding a crafting table to put together some ingredients I’d gathered to make something useful. A restorative meal got me feeling better than usual.
As in many MMO games, Elder Scrolls Online offers many activities to engage in, including questing, crafting, cooking, combat (both player versus player and player versus environment) and traveling through dungeons with a few close friends. Even marriage — if you bought the digital Collector’s Edition.
There’s a reason people get addicted to games like Elder Scrolls Online: There’s so much to do that it’s incredibly easy to get sucked into these deep virtual worlds.
We’ve heard multiple reports that Apple will release a larger-screen iPhone 6 (possibly in two different sizes), but who really wants a bigger iPhone with a larger screen anyway? Actually, a lot of people: as much as 40% of prospective smartphone buyers are chomping at the bit for a bigger iPhone.
If you’ve ever come across a great snippet of text you want to Tweet right from your Mac, you know the drill: you have to copy it, open Twitter, create a new message, and then paste in the text there. Then hit the Send button.
Sure, it’s not that difficult, but what if there was an even easier way?
Well, there is, and here it is.
Slowly but surely, the worldwide PC market is drying up. In the first quarter, a recent report from IDC says that worldwide PC shipments have slipped 4.4% year-over years. And not even Apple has proven immune to the wasting away of the PC market, but they’re still making up for it on other ways.
When we think about the iWatch, we tend to think of a little smartphone that you wear on your wrist, or at least a bit of technology, but if the latest reports are anything to go by, Apple’s iWatch play is going to much bigger than that: with the iWatch, Apple intends to do nothing less than conquer the world of fashion, becoming just as synonymous with luxury watches as Rolex. But how?
Could Apple’s revolutionary re-imagining of Apple TV not be a set-top box at all, but rather an Oculus Rift style headset?
A patent published Thursday hints that this might be the case, as it refers to a head mounted display (HMD) capable of providing a personal media viewing experience for users.
The patent describes how data processing circuitry could feature optical component capable of adjusting left and right images to display 3-D media, or else to account for a user’s eyesight limitations.
The success of The Simpsons: Tapped Out meant it was only a matter of time before Family Guy got similar mobile game treatment.
First announced back in December, today marks the arrival of Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff in the App Store.
A joint venture between Fox and TinyCo studios, the game lets you help Peter Griffin and the rest of the Quahog residents to rebuild their city after it’s destroyed.
Expect lots of fan service, in the form of regular Family Guy characters and reprised gags from previous episodes (Mermaid Peter, Rambo Lois, and the Petercopter, for instance.)
When you’ve got $158.8 billion in the bank, there’s not a huge amount you need to be envious of.
But while Apple is beating rival Samsung on both the quality of its products and adverts, it is perhaps losing out when it comes to the kind of big digital media strategies that really attract attention (and customers) — like Ellen DeGeneres’ famous Oscars selfie which Publicis CEO Maurice Levy recently valued at between $800 million and $1 billion.
With that in mind, Apple is reportedly changing up its marketing approach to invest more in digital marketing and social media support — adding four new digital agencies to its roster.
Each week we pull the best Apple-related gadgets from the Cult of Mac and collect them here for your perusing pleasure.
The little Luxi turns your iPhone’s front camera into a light meter. A what? A light meter, a device that measures the amount of light falling on a subject so that you can set the exposure correctly on your camera.
But wait, doesn’t you camera already set its own exposure? Doesn’t it have a light meter built in for when i want to kick it old school in manual mode? Yes and yes, but this $30 widget might still be handy.
Buy it $30
Ever wanted to take photos of people without them knowing? Perhaps a sneaky shot of a pretty girl to help you “remember” her later, or some equally creepy bit of deceit? Well then, we have good news for you, you pervert: it’s the COVR Photo, an iPhone case which lets you shoot in secret.
The COVR has a little prism stuck on the back, and when want to use it you slide it into place. Now you can hold your iPhone like a TV remote and shoot whatever is in front of you while looking down at your iPhone’s screen.
Buy it $75
Here’s the Das Keyboard 4, possibly the most bad-ass clacky keyboard in existence. No keycap markings, USB 3.0, Cherry MX switches and a huge knob. All that plus Das’s trademark feature: it’s as big as a boat. A “Das Boat” if you will.
You know how when you leave a pack of cookies open instead of sealing them in an airtight jar? They still taste the same, but they get all mushy: the satisfying snap has gone out of them. That’s how I feel now when I use even Apple’s excellent keyboards. They’re mushy compared to my clackety Filco keyboard.
Buy it $169
Elgato’s Thunderbolt Dock has a few unique features that are appropriate for a company that makes video accessories for Apple devices. First, there’s an HDMI port around back, and second, the USB ports put out enough juice to charge your iPad at a decent speed.
Buy it $230
Pad&Quill is at it again, this time with a low-profile rear-shell style case for the iPhone 5/S. While calling anything from Brian Holmes’s P&Q “minimal” would be a stretch, the Traveler Case gets pretty close. It is also gorgeous to look at, and would surely be just as lovely for the hands. It looks like the kind of case you couldn’t stop fingering.
Buy it $80
The Confidant is a 192-page notebook, packed with blank, ruled or dot-grid paper. It opens flat, has its own cotton bookmarker, is covered in pale gray fabric and has neat, extra-wide pages.
There are also 12 perforated pages at the back of the book so you can tear them out without ruining the binding. My copy doesn’t have these, so maybe I have a beta version.
Buy it $16
Look at this graph. Just look at it. The colored section represents all color visible to the human eye. The large black triangle shows the Adobe RGB color space, which is the space used by pro apps to process images, and can be captured by some cameras.
And the little white triangle, sat in the middle cutting out a fraction of the available colors? That’s the standard sRGB color space, which is what you’re looking at now on your Mac or iPad or iPhone (but probably not on the Retina iPad mini).
That’s because monitors don’t usually display so many colors. But the Eizo ColorEdge CG247 not only displays the full gamut of Adobe RGB, it calibrates itself too.
Apart from “correct horse battery staple,” the most secure passwords aren’t words, they’re phrases. You don’t even need crazy symbols or hard-to-determine numerals (is that an l or a 1, a 0 or an O?) – just a good, longish phrase made out of words.
And now you don’t even have to make one up. Using the XKPasswd generator, based on but not associated with Randall Munroe’s amazing comic strip XKCD, you can generate secure pass phrases easily.
The worst thing about losing a lens cap is having to buy another one. You can go with a generic but ugly replacement and save a few bucks, or you can buy the manufacturers official version, which will make you hate yourself.
Now there’s a third option – don’t lose the cap in the first place. Instead, spend $10 now on Photojojo’s Hufa Lens Cap Strap Holder, and never buy a cap again.
Unless you’re a hipster – you can still buy as many sweet ironic trucker caps as you like.
I wonder why every backpack doesn’t use a roll-top. They’re waterproof, they’re mechanically simple (and therefore they never go wrong), they let you extend the size of the bag and they form a handy grippy handle.
They also look cool, and the Becket bag has one.
“The best backpack we’ve ever made” — a heady statement from an outfit with a focus on making packs and cases to keep traveling Apple stuff safe. The Icon certainly looks impressive, with its Airflow channels and more specialized pockets than a troop of kangaroos. And at $200, it also might be the most expensive backpack the Southern California-based company has ever made.
When iTunes Radio was introduced, it was clear that Apple hadn’t made the true Spotify competitor everyone had hoped for. Instead, it was designed to get people to buy more music from the iTunes Store—hence the buy button at the top right of every song.
Sadly, iTunes Radio hasn’t helped drive music downloads for Apple, so the company is considering a “dramatic overhaul” of the iTunes Store.