“If something ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a phrase Etymotic must have taken extremely seriously, judging by a look at their now-mythic, $99 ER-6i. The set has been around since their release in 2004, after which they quickly became the standard against which all other sub-$100 IEMs were tested. But seven years is an eon for a product to have remained essentially unchanged in the gadget world. Are they still as good now as they were then?
Illusion Labs – the team behind the hugely successful Touchgrind skateboarding game – have taken everything that made their first hit such a success and used it to create Touchgrind BMX. Put the skateboard to one side and become a BMX pro – performing spectacular tricks in beautifully crafted locations all over the world.
The Heist is currently famous for its overwhelming popularity that has helped it knock Angry Birds off the top spot of the App Store’s paid chart. Featuring a collection of mind-bending puzzles that you must solve in order to get your hands on the valuable prize inside the vault.
Siege Hero boasts gameplay similar to Angry Birds, in that you must destroy a group of enemies protected by glass, rocks and timber. However, instead of taking aim at a group of ugly pigs, vikings are your enemies, and rocks replace the birds as your ammo.
Find out more about the games above and check out the rest of the week’s must-haves – including Back to the Future: Episode 3 and To-Fu: The Trials of Chi – below!
Already famous for its excellent Pro Messenger IM application, eBuddy has taken real-time messaging to the next level with eBuddy XMS – a free, real-time messenger that enabled you to chat with text, pictures, emoticons and more. It features a highly-polished user interface and an experience guaranteed to give apps like WhatsApp and PingChat! some real competition.
In addition to the recent launch of ‘Apple Store 2.0′, the Apple Store application for iPhone also got a much-needed revamp. The latest version of the app works internationally and boasts some great new features.
Opera Mini has been the iPhone browser of choice for many since it launched, promising to be the fastest, most cost-efficient web-browsing experience for your iOS device today. Its recent update made it a universal application delivering all its Opera goodness to the iPad, which impressed Cult of Mac’s Giles Turnball in his recent review.
Find out more about the applications above and check out the rest of this week’s must-haves – including Contacts Journal and Aelios Weather – below!
Like the brilliant Insight we reviewed a month or so ago, Belkin’s Conserve Valet comes form their new line of green-angled tools created with the idea of saving energy. Unlike the Insight, the Valet — a $40, four-port USB hub designed around the idea of smart organization and energy conservation — isn’t as well executed, and not nearly as effective.
As we’re probably all aware by now, Apple’s Thunderbolt I/O debuted earlier this year with the new generation of MacBook Pros and threatened to make all other interfaces, like USB and FireWire, seem like stone-age relics — and at the same time, make obsolescent all current external HDDs. All, that is, except Seagate’s line of GoFlex drives.
When I first got my iPhone 3GS, I immediately wondered what it would look like in a nice tweed jacket. I’ve always had this thing for geeky professor types and my iPhone was so smart that it just seemed like a good fit.
There’s nothing like traveling with several thousand dollars worth of expensive photo gear to kick up the ‘ol stress levels: Will I be able to pack all my stuff, and will it ll be easily accessible? Will any of it break? Are colleagues or clients going to laugh at me because it doesn’t look pro enough? If it does look pro, will it make a tempting target for thieves? Can it fit into the overhead bin or under my seat on a plane? And what the heck am I going to do with my laptop?
So it’s always a welcome relief when a bag answers those questions soothingly, in a way that sets the mind at ease — which, except for one or two of those questions, Crumpler’s $172, ruggedly adventurous 8 Million Dollar photo/laptop bag does.
Kicking off this week’s list of must-have iOS games is one of the most enjoyable music quiz games in the App Store called Tuned. It’s is an innovative new game for the iPhone that offers music lovers an endless number of entertaining quizzes from just about every genre there is.
Storm in a Teacup is an adorable little platform adventure in which you navigate your way through magical lands in a teacup, avoiding the bad guys and solving puzzles in an effort to complete every level.
Bumpy Road is another wonderful platformer that features a unique play mechanic and tells a wonderful love story. Despite its slightly soppy storyline, it’s brilliantly entertaining.
Find out more about the games above and check out the rest of this week’s must-haves – including Draw Jump and Casey’s Contraptions – below!
This week’s roundup of must-have iOS applications begins with the second edition of PhotoForge – the popular photo manipulation tool for iOS. Completely rebuilt from the ground up, PhotoForge2 promises to be a breakthrough for image editing on the go, with unparalleled tools and amazing effects to transform your photos into masterpieces.
Foodish is a new application that claims to make dining and drinking twice as much fun (is that even possible?), by providing a quick and easy way for you to keep a record of your diet, but in a way that’s fun and enjoyable rather that dull and tedious like traditional diet tracking applications. It makes it simple for you to see how healthy or how dreadfully unhealthy (like mine) your diet is.
Zootool is a great little tool that makes bookmarking, organizing and sharing your favorite images, videos, documents and links from all over the web incredibly effortless.
Find out more about the application above and check out the rest of this week’s must-haves – including Audibly and eBay Motors – below!
When the brimstone rains down and hell freezes over (or whatever the heck is supposed to happen) on Judgement Day, making sure my iPhone stays safe in Griffin’s damn near impervious-to-everything, military-spec Survivor case ($50) means I’ll be able to tweet the whole thing. Assuming there’s still Internet and power and stuff.
Your iPad case isn’t a boring accessory. It’s modern day armor, and it says as much about you as the breastplate strapped to the sinewy torso of any medieval warrior ever did. The sturdiness and thoroughness of its construction reveal your wisdom; its extravagant flourishes of design reveal your spirit and pomp. In the gouges, cracks and dents, you can trace the rigors of an entire life. Picking an iPad case is as much as to tell the world what kind of warrior you are.
Tuned is an innovative new game for the iPhone that offers music lovers an endless number of entertaining music quizzes from just about every genre there is. The unique thing about this game is that it takes its music from the song previews in the iTunes store’s top charts, so even if you don’t have a single track of your own stored on your device, you can still enjoy the quizzes.
During the pre-review back-and-forth with Jerry Harvey’s vaunted audiophile-focused lab — the flagship creation of which are the JH Audio JH16 Pro in-ear monitors being reviewed here — I asked them offhandedly how a set of IEMs with eight drivers in each ear (that’s right, almost unbelievably, eight tiny armatures and a crossover are cocooned within each earpiece) would compare with something akin to the single-driver-per-ear Etymotic hf2’s we liked so much. The answer came back: Don’t be daft.
The paper-based comic book has been, for at least a decade, an absurdity. Each 32-page issue takes up a significant amount of space without delivering very much story. And the idea of taking a fat stack of them on vacation or a plane ride is as bad an idea as it appears on its face. Even more so than the novel, comics and electronic readers are a natural match. And the Mac now has a signature way to read comics in the form of ComicNerd, a new app from A Nice Cut of Tea and a Sit Down LLC. As the owner of a huge comics collection, much of it digitized at this point, I can state unequivocally that this is pretty much exactly what I’ve been looking for. And it’s hard to imagine anyone doing it better.
When it was first revealed at CES earlier this year, we were all amazed with the Spiderpodium Tablet by Breffo ($35). Somewhere in between a toy, and a multipurpose iPad stand, the Spiderpodium has an extremely unique design that is adaptable for almost any tablet device. I got the chance to play around with the unique stand over the last few weeks, and while I think that it’s incredibly clever, there are definitely some drawbacks.
As a big fan of the TV show here in the U.K., I was very much looking forward to the release of the Dragons’ Denofficial game when I heard it was making its way to the App Store. With little disposable income in real-life, I was looking forward to getting my hands on some virtual millions and carefully investing in some whacky inventions.
I downloaded Dragons’ Den from 2waytraffic as soon as it hit the App Store, but I’m rather disappointed with version 1.0.
I’ve seen a lot of iPad and iPhone cases over the last few years and the iSkin Summit is the first iPad case that makes me want to scratch my head in disbelief. It’s so different that I just have to call it weird and the garish red color of the sample I was sent only made it worse.
How often do you find yourself goofing around on Facebook when you should be working? It’s OK, you’re not the only one. But in future, you might be able to keep yourself productive with a clever little app called Obtract.
Nike+ used to make great fitness wearables Photo: Graham Bower/Cult of Mac
The new SportWatch GPS offers Nike+ functionality without the need for an iPod or iPhone. There’s lots to like about Nike’s latest toy, but early teething trouble combined with poor GPS accuracy are currently letting it down.
Green Farm is Gameloft’s answer to popular farming sims such as Farmville. It’s a free, online ‘social game’ that can be played on your iPhone, iPad, or through Facebook. It boasts a fresh design and huge variety that attempts to “take farming apps to the next level.”
Hector is the hugely entertaining detective from Telltale Games who’s been solving crimes on our iPhones for some time — and now he’s brought his foul mouth and vulgar wit to the iPad. We Negotiate with Terrorists is the first episode of this law-enforcement comedy in HD.
Find out more about the applications above and check out MetalStorm: Online and Samurai Girl below.
At the top of this week’s list of must-have iOS applications is one of our favorite instant messaging tools: IM+ Pro. It has already featured in our list of the ‘Best iOS Apps for Instant Messaging‘, but the introduction of its new Neighbors service meant we couldn’t help but shout about it again.
TweetyPop is a super new Twitter application from TapFactory that allows you to view and interact with your tweets in a unique new way. It throws away the chronological list you get with every other Twitter client and delivers a 3 dimensional Twitter space.
Adobe first announced its first three Photoshop Touch applications at Photoshop World back in March, and they’re now available to download from the App Store. Color Lava, Eazel and Nav are all designed for the iPad and aim to enhance your desktop Photoshop experience with the help of a touch-based device.
Find out more about the applications above and check out OmniOutliner – this week’s final must-have – after the break.
Look, memory and me just don’t get on. I forget where I’ve left my keys, even when I’ve left them on the Special Key Hanging Hook that I put up precisely to avoid that.
I forget why I went upstairs. I forget why I walked from one room to the next. Once, I forgot why I stood up from my chair, stayed there swaying in confusion for a moment, then just sat down again.
Imagine, then, the state of dribbling horror a game like Memneon leaves me in.
