SAN FRANCISCO — We’re gearing up for our weeklong foray into the world of video games at the Game Developers Conference here. Cult of Mac will bring you the best of the conference, from heartfelt chats with independent developers to wacky schwag we find on the expo floor.
Stay tuned as we add real-time posts to this liveblog all week.
While many have developed puzzle video-games, not many have compared to the popularity of the hit game “Tetris”. Symbol Link is a new puzzle app created by Alexey Pajitnov, the mind behind Tetris, that has players connect symbols in the least amount of paths. Do you think you can link all symbols and get a high-score?
Take a look at Symbol Link and find out what you think.
This is a Cult Of Mac video review of the iOS application Symbol Link brought to you by Joshua Smith of “TechBytes W/Jsmith.”
Unlike iOS and Windows Phone, Android devices don’t have an iTunes or Zune alternative that helps them manage all their data in one place. But that doesn’t mean it’s not easy to sync your music, photos, and videos with your Android smartphone.
In the previous edition of our iPhone to Android switching guide, we explained how to transfer your contacts, messages, and calendar entries. In this one, we show you how to sync your iTunes music library, along with your photo and videos, the right way.
Picking the right word can be challenging. Or maybe you’re just trying to make yourself sound smart by using something that would be a formidable figure on a Scrabble board. Either way, Thesaurasize can get you those synonyms but quick. All you do is type in the boring word you’re starting with, and it spits out a list of other candidates.
Just make sure you read the definitions Thesaurasize provides so that you know what the synonyms mean, though. You don’t want come off sounding fatuitous.
I don’t own a whole lot of Lego at the moment, and that’s intentional because if I did, I’d just sit around building things all day, and none of these reviews would happen.
Building something from scratch is satisfying, and if it has a function to perform and succeeds, it’s even better. Loco Motors plays on this by letting you build your own vehicle and then use it to complete tasks on a test ramp. It’s essentially two puzzle games in one: one in which you build a car that will run, and another where you let it loose on the track to complete specific tracks.
And luckily, it has an interface that lets you do these things both easily and quickly.
Next time you hit the road, this Cult of Mac Deals promotion will help you bump your favorite tunes with ease.
The TOCCs Car Music System solves your boring over played radio experience and gives you the ability to play all your best tunes as loud as you want with no static interference. And you can get it for only $27.99 during this limited time offer.
Since taking over the Tonight Show from Jay Leno, Jimmy Fallon has brought in a host of stars to sit down and goof around with him in the studio. Last night was no exception as singer Billy Joel stop by and the pair form an improvised Doo-Wop group using nothing more than an iPad app.
They got a bit of help from The Roots to really bring it home at the end but for only mixing it up on the spot with an iPad even Tim Cook himself was impressed.
Check this out. @jimmyfallon and @billyjoel with iPad and a cool app called Loopy HD. Magical. https://t.co/dWlZr6Lsm6
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) March 21, 2014
Yesterday it was reported that Oscar-winning actor Christian Bale was in talks to play Steve Jobs for David Fincher’s upcoming biopic with Sony and Aaron Sorkin. While nothing has been confirmed, the rumor has already fueled some imaginations, as evidenced above.
Reader Ste Smith sent us this Photoshop job of Bale in the iconic Jobsian pose. It’s pretty believable, if we do say so ourselves.
Bale is known for his intense process of getting (and sometimes staying) in character. He’s great at losing and gaining weight, and he has already played balding characters multiple times. Is there really anyone more perfect to play Jobs?
And lets not forget that he already auditioned for the role like five years ago.
Thanks: Ste
It’s well known that Apple products are regularly the target of pickpockets, but apparently iThievery extends to less evolved primates also.
A 10-year-old girl visiting New Zealand’s Auckland Zoo had her brand new iPod touch (a combined birthday and Christmas present) pilfered by a sneaky spider monkey.
Three months after its launch, kart racing game Angry Birds Go! has received its first major update.
The update ushers in a change in weather by adding a snowy theme, which sees a brand new track covered in slippery ice.
Want to take good night photos using your iPhone, but find that the device’s in-built flash — consisting of a couple of LEDs — doesn’t result in the kind of pictures you want?
If so, you may be interested in this Kickstarter campaign to build a new iPhone 5/5s case, packing a whopping 56 LEDs into a hard case to provide a bright panel of lights for all your nocturnal photographic needs.
Jony Ive has made it to the final ten to crown the UK’s Designer of the Year at The Drum Design Awards in April.
“This is the cream of the UK’s design crop,” says The Drum editor Gordon Young. “Each individual here is a pioneering presence in design and thoroughly deserves to be celebrated for their ongoing contribution to this dynamic industry”.
Pop quiz:
Is the iTie
a) A derogatory term used by older English people to insult Italians?
b) An electronic collar which uses a tie as a flexible screen – kind of like an iPhone, only a tie?
c) All of the above?
The answer is of course c), and we have the pictures to prove it.
You know how you see folks running or jogging and holding those pathetic little half-kilo (one-pound) dumbbells in their hands? And you know how sometimes you also see runners carrying their iPhones in a hand?
What if there was a product which was both a weight and an iPhone case? Somewhat predictably, given the title of this post, now there is. It’s the ToneFone, and it is billed as “The World’s Heaviest iPhone Case.”
In a world where Apple’s far and away the most valuable brand in existence, it’s easy to forget that once upon the time it was “the little guy.”
Which is why it’s nice to see Apple highlighting indie game developers in a new section of the App Store called “Indie Game Showcase.”
The section looks set to highlight different indie developers on a regular basis — both shining some much-neeeded light on particular titles, and also offering behind-the-curtain looks at particular indie studios.
Leitz’s Icon is a label printer for iOS (and other mobile) devices, and it actually looks good enough to be an Apple product – the shape is clean and pretty, yes, but it also looks dead easy to use.
There was a time when practically every new console or games computer you bought came with a title called something like Winter Olympic Games.
That time was the 1980s — and the games in question tended, for the most part, to suck. While it was probably just a way of getting rid of unsold stock, the games seemed purposely designed to rob your excitement at receiving a new console — featuring uninspired graphics, repetitive sound, and controls that didn’t work worth a damn.
Jump forward a few decades and I had severe flashbacks of that sinking feeling while settling in to play Cubed Snowboarding.
What was your first Tweet? Now you can find out with a cool new tool from Twitter that shows you the first public Tweet of any user. My opus is above, and not as embarrassing as I’d expected.
To use the tool, just follow the link and tap in a user name. That’s it, so without further ado, let’s embarrass the rest of the Cult of Mac morning crew by publishing what they wrote, and seeing who joined Twitter earliest.
Byword on iOS just got around 100 times more rad, and way easier to use, with the addition of one single feature: keyboard shortcuts. It doesn’t sound like much, but in addition to adding bold and italics using just the keyboard, you can also control pretty much every aspect of the app, all without reaching up to touch the screen.
Tweetbot for Mac has been updated with large image/video thumbnails to match the recent update to its iOS counterpart. The thumbnail option can be turned off entirely in the display settings, but I’m not sure why you would want to do that because they look great.
The app also supports three finger left/right swipes in the timeline if your Mac’s trackpad is configured that way. Some bugs have been squashed as well, so be sure to get the update in the Mac App Store. Tweetbot costs $20.
Source: Mac App Store
Medium, the publishing platform from Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, has finally released its official iPhone app. As you would expect from a site that prides itself on clean, minimalistic aesthetics, the app is quite nice.
It is also incredibly limited.
There are no editing or posting options for actually sharing content on Medium. The app is solely for reading, at least for now.
Amazon has been rumored for years to be making its own smartphone, but now, according to reputable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, it’s actually going to happen.
But the weirdest thing isn’t that Amazon’s planning on releasing a smartphone… it’s that they are going to release a smartphone with six cameras per unit. What what?
When Jony Ive ripped Scott Forstall’s spine out (metaphorically speaking) and took over as the design head of iOS, he got rid of many gradients, shadows, and other elements that made the app look, at worst, skeuomorphic.
Sadly, though, Ive hasn’t had a chance yet to take the same approach to OS X. But everyone’s expecting OS X 10.10 to flatten OS X out, and Dribbble designer Danny Giebe has a gorgeous look at what the next version of Mac OS X — which he codenames ‘Syrah’ — would look like if Ive extended iOS’s design to the Mac.
Check the full redesign out after the jump. What do you think?
Everyone at Cult of Mac knows I’m a sucker for wood-paneling all of my gadgets. I wood-paneled my iPhone 4s, my iPhone 5, my iPad, my iPad mini, and even my MacBook Air.
I have to say, though, that as understated as they are, I love Richard Clarkson’s wood-panels for the iPhone 5 most of all. They replace the tiny glass accents on the upper and lower parts of the iPhone 5 with little wood slivers in a variety of accents that looks amazingly understated and lovely.
Currently only available for the iPhone 5, Clarkson’s wooden replacement accents cost $38 a pair. There’s cheaper and easier to apply options, but we love this none the less.
Source: Richard Clarkson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3QWRY_k6V0
Sadly, iOS 7.1 finally put an end to the Evasi0n jailbreak, the versatile hack that allowed anyone running iOS 7 to iOS 7.0.6 to run unsigned (i.e. Apple verboten) code on their iOS devices.
But all is not lost! Seasoned jailbreaker Winocm has posted a video of iOS 7.1 running on a jailbroken iPhone 4, untethered.