Cult of Mac

Take a moment and breathe. That’s what new, meditative space building sim rymdkapsel wants us to do. The concept here is to create and expand a space station (rymdkapsel means “space capsule” in Swedish), defending against waves of ever tougher alien spaceships. The goal is to survive as long as possible, reaching up to four monolith structures.

The game itself–originally released on Sony’s PlayStation Vita handheld–is hypnotic, slow-paced, and calming. There’s a strange sense of joy and peace that descends as players build their space station using Tetris-shaped block pieces, sending Pong-shaped minions to build new corridors, gather resources, research the monoliths, and take up arms to defend against the incoming waves of alien shooter ships.

Looks like the venerable video game company is looking to get in on some of GungHo’s Puzzle & Dragons action with Taito’s own arcade-music mashup iOS game, Groove Coaster Zero.

The two companies have just announced a new collaboration in which Groove Coaster Zero gets original and remixed background music from breakout hit Puzzle & Dragons as playable levels in Groove Coaster Zero. In addition, Puzzle & Dragons will get some special Groove Coaster Zero-themed dungeons along with classic Space Invader characters. That’s a mouthful, but super exciting, and it’s coming August 12.

Apple’s Passbook feature in iOS hasn’t really taken off as quickly as people thought it would, but that hasn’t prevented Samsung from throwing developers into making its own Passbook clone. We first got our first look at Samsung Wallet back in February at MWC, but the the app is finally ready for primetime and available on Google Play.

The app is only supported on the Galaxy S3, S4, Note 1 and Note 2, and you have to sign-in with one of those silly Samsung accounts, but if you’re already nose deep in S Health, S Beam, Samsung Link and all the other half-baked Samsung apps you’ll feel right at home.

Here are the release notes:

Beaver Tap Games, comprised of Mike Meade and Mike Gaughen, has polished the speedrun hook game to a fine sheen. Echoing Rocketcat Games’ Hook Champ and Super QuickHook, the team’s first game, Mikey Shorts, garnered a ton of praise from critics and fans alike.

With this second release, Mikey Hooks, the team has again raised the bar for well designed levels, a whimsical art style, and a solid control scheme that works surprisingly well on the touch screen. Fans of the genre and newcomers alike will find plenty to love in this leveled speedrun platforming game.

I may not be a designer, but I know what I like. And even with my lack of craftsmanship in design, I do have a sense of realizing when a color is just a bit, well… a little off. But what I don’t know how to do (at least with ease) is how to fix that “offness” when I really need to.

So I don’t fix it at all.

Only when people who have more design sense than I do tell me that the color that I thought was “a little off” is actually very off do I feel bad about my decision to just let it be. That’s when this app—currently on sale through Cult of Mac Deals—probably could have come in handy.

ColorSchemer Studio 2 is touted as “the professional color-matching application for your Mac” and Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $29 for a limited time.

I know a guy who opens the same 25 or so tabs each day, checking email, news, websites he likes to read, etc. I often ask him why he doesn’t just use RSS or something, but he usually mumbles about liking the layouts of individual web pages.

Whatever. My friend likes to open a ton of tabs every day, and he does so with a bookmarked folder full of those tabs. Now, he created this bookmark folder manually, but there’s an easier way, using either Safari or Chrome

Here’s how.

2013 is, so far, what might be considered a year of regrouping for Apple. The company has seen huge success in the PC, smartphone and tablet markets, but it’s also pushed those about as far as they can go: Incremental improvements, not revolutions, are what we can expect for the Mac, iPhone and iPad from here on out. Meanwhile, the next big thing — the iWatch, the iTV, whatever — is still on the horizon.

To outsiders, it looks like Apple has stalled. Far from it. You only need to look at the changes Apple is making with iOS 7 to see that Cupertino isn’t standing still, and the company has signalled that it is committed to the future of OS X for at least the next 10 years. That said, all the products Apple is set to announce next month — the iPhone 5S, the iPhone 5C, the iPad mini 2 and the iPad 5 — are just sequels to what it’s already done.

People are getting impatient for the next major Apple revolution. And it’s not just outsiders. A new report suggests that Apple’s own board of directors is “deeply concerned” about Cupertino’s perceived slackening in the pace of innovation.

Adding textured filters to your photos: RAD!
Adding pre-made textured filters to your photos? Lame.

That’s why you need to make your own filters right now, and Geri Centonze from iPhoneLife is here to tell you how.

Although it was a great idea, this notion of a cheap Android game console, the Ouya left a lot to be desired at launch. The hardware had some obvious deficiencies, like controller dead spots, but more importantly, the game library at launch was practically non-existent.

Right now, it looks like the Ouya is a dud: a great idea that just didn’t have a chance because it couldn’t get a push. But you know who might be able to take that same idea and get developers to treat it more seriously? Amazon. And they’re working to do just that.

With a new story concerning the extraordinary lengths the U.S. Government is seemingly taking to spy on its citizens’ digital lives hitting the news every day now, President Obama met Apple CEO Tim Cook and a number of other tech executives to discuss government surveillance.

Inkflow 3.0 adds an amazing new feature to the vector-based sketching app: InkPort. Inkport lets you import your paper sketches from the real world and turn them into editable vector art, just using the iPad’s camera.

We’ve known for a long, long time that the fifth-generation iPad would borrow the iPad mini’s design cues and have thinner bezels on the side for a more streamlined form factor. Heck, iLounge’s Jeremy Horowitz said as much as early as January of this year, claiming that the iPad 5 would be “a lot smaller than one would guess is possible” with “virtually no left or right bezels.”

For months now, we’ve seen parts leak out of Asia confirming that report, including cases, rear shells, and more. Today, we have leaked images of the front panel and digitizer. And yup! Look, Ma! No bezels.

We’re probably about a month and a half away from the debut of the next iPhone, which means it’s about the time when we historically see deals on the latest model hitting the big boxes as they look to clear inventory. And right on cue, here comes Best Buy, with an aggressive offer on the iPhone. But there are bigger discounts than just that, including some sweet deals on select MacBook Pros.

If you liked my how-to on rolling your own ImageMagick-based OS X Services using shell scripts, you’re going to love OptiPNG. It’s another command line utility that can be used to shrink PNGs without losing any quality.

Would you like a Leica, but don’t-a like-a the price tag? You could do what I did, and buy a $70 Leica strap for your cheap-ass $1,300 camera. Or you could buy this cute Leica-inspired SD card holder. Price: a mere $185.

Grain, light leaks, color shifts, low contrast caused by lens flare—these are all familiar Instagrammatical filters which mimic the limits of film. And ironically, they were all considered Bad Things when people actually shot with film.

Now we try to avoid digital noise just as we add back fake analog noise (grain). But what about native digital glitches? There is—as you have no doubt predicted—an app for that. It’s called Glitché.

If you use Pinboard (and if you don’t, you should), then you might also consider using a Mac app to save and browse all those achieved bookmarks. Which brings us to Shiori, a very plain-yet-pretty iOS 7-inspired Mac app for your Pinboard.

The Ukrainian folks behind the iblazr, a little four-LED accessory flash that plugs into an iDevice’s 3.5mm jack, have almost doubled their $50K Kickstarter goal and now offer something new: a diffuser, included free with the flash.

This is something we don’t see often enough: outside-the-box thinking applied to sports armbands for the iPhone. Digifit—an outfit we’ve covered before that makes fitness tracking devices and software—took the tired old bicep-hugging armband and slid it all the way down to the forearm; presto, no more yoga poses just to see your lap times.

Just like the Disney theme parks, the new Disney Animation iPad app is saddled with a heavy price for admission—but reveals a vast trove of wonder once inside.

For $14, the app makes an immense amount of material available—almost two gigs worth—from Disney’s digitally and traditionally animated titles.

The Roku iOS app got another update today. In addition to the previous “Play on Roku” feature which let users stream music and static images to the set top media box, the company has now added the ability to stream video directly from the iOS app as well.

In a market that includes Apple TV and Google’s nascent Chromecast technology, Roku is making some positive steps to stay relevant.

iOS 7 is a radical departure from anything Apple has done design wise, but OS X Mavericks largely still looks like the Mac operating system we all know and love. Much of the leather and linen has been removed in Mavericks, but the OS hasn’t been fundamentally redesigned like iOS.

A designer from the U.K. named Stu Crew sent us his “Ivericks” concept for OS X that blends the design language of iOS 7 with the desktop. “In order to visualise the new style on a Mac screen I recreated several elements and applied them to several programs,” said Crew. “Created to explore the idea of an updated OS X, this is just a update of looks with a few new functions taken from both the iPhone and iPad.”

Parts for Apple’s rumored low-cost iPhone, recently dubbed the ‘iPhone 5C’, have been trickling out of the supply chain overseas for the past few months. We’ve seen nearly all facets of the upcoming device, including a slew of bright colors Apple is considering for the plastic back.

China has been historically known as the homeland for cheap Apple knockoffs, and the unreleased iPhone 5C is no exception. Thanks to the wealth of leaked parts that are floating around, you can buy a hollow iPhone 5C right now for 98 Chinese Yuan.

Popular music video platform Vevo is working on its own channel for the Apple TV, according to a new report from AdAge. The channel will offer free access to premium music videos 24-7, and Vevo will likely use ads to make money. Vevo already offers a free iOS app that plays short ads between videos.

On the Apple TV, Vevo will probably create an experience akin to Vevo TV, the company’s free, round-the-clock internet station that shows music videos and is supported by ads.

Because the Apple TV doesn’t have an open SDK for developers, Apple has to reach out to content makers specifically. More channels have been added to the Apple TV in recent months from the likes of HBO and ESPN.

Source: AdAge

Apple is in the early stages of building a new R&D facility in Taiwan which will house an engineering development team to work on the next-generation iPhone, according to internal communications from Apple viewed by VR Zone.

Right now, the facility is just in the recruiting phase of the process, but rather than advertising the job listings, Apple has chosen to hunt for candidates via word of mouth alone. Apple is looking to hire a number of experienced and junior level engineers who will work out of Taipei on next-gen tech for the iPhone and report directly to the Apple spaceship in Cupertino.