Reviews - page 87

You’ve got to love a big, gorgeous hunk of wood, right? The Signature Vinyl Record Player Classic Turntable Hi-Fi Stereo System from Electrohome is all that, plus a delicious vintage-styled bag of chips, and it’s almost perfect.

The dark, solid-wood cabinet is like a throwback to your mom’s stereo furniture of the 1960s, with deep grain and resonating power like you wouldn’t believe. Plus, you can play CDs, listen to AM and FM radio stations, and plug your iPhone into the auxiliary input for some modern tune action.

All of this makes for a fantastic package, but there’s one essential thing missing that may have you looking elsewhere for your all-in-one stereo system.

Let’s be honest — the Apple Watch is already kind of bulky, and most of us aren’t climbing mountains with them on anyway. The craziest I get is maybe leaving it on while I shower at the gym.

For those of you who actually engage in rugged outdoor activity, a case might be warranted. You’ll certainly want to have some drop protection so you don’t get stuck with a shattered watch face.

Seriously, though, a case for your Apple Watch just might be overkill.

I went outside for the first time today. Working at home is an easy way to get a bad case of couchlock, so I like to try and get out for little 15 minute breaks when I can.

Today was a bit different. I downloaded and installed a game some buddies of mine are raving about on Facebook: Ingress.

I launched the app, followed the instructions, and was hooked. What started as a 15 minute walk to try out a new mobile game became a 45-minute obsession as I roamed my neighborhood, looking for portals to hack, collecting XMP particles to power my technological takeover, and finding a little feature of my ‘hood I’d never known about before.

Want to get obsessed about a new game? Want to maybe get in a little better shape? Be sure to download Ingress and see what everyone’s talking about.

How do you keep a jaded gamer engaged on the small-screened Apple Watch? Strand a young astronaut on an alien moon and ask that gamer to keep the doomed traveler alive.

That’s exactly what happens in Lifeline, which is simply the best game I’ve played on the Apple Watch so far.

Oh. My. Gosh. The Stromer ST2 electric bike is so much fun, it should not be street legal.

Two weeks ago I had zero interest in electric bikes. I’ve ridden traditional bicycles my entire life and I love them. The very idea of an electric bike was repellent — even in a hilly city like San Francisco. Hills and exercise are the entire point.

Then I test-rode the Stromer ST2.

Three seconds in, I’m laughing like a madman as the ST2 takes off like a rocket. I spend the next 30 minutes flying up and over the hill where I live, laughing like a loon and having the time of my life.

Now I’m a convert. The ST2 is the best electric bike on the market. It performs like a champ, has a ton of high-tech features (including an iOS app), and actually looks cool and not ridiculous.

Best of all, it’s a screaming blast to ride.

Bloodborne’s village of Yharnam is a dangerous place. It’s full of werewolves, trolls, giant pigs and a host of other terrible beasts that want to kill you. And they can. And they will. But that’s all part of the fun.

Yharnam is a towering, Gothic, often claustrophobic place with buildings piled on buildings and dead ends everywhere. It isn’t a vacation spot, and it isn’t here to make you happy. It exists to give those who venture within exactly what they deserve, for good or ill. The village rewards those who take their time, study their enemies, and plan their moves carefully. And it punishes those who rush or are otherwise careless.

If you want to survive Bloodborne, you must be careful and learn everything you can about both your own and the monsters’ capabilities. This might take a while, but it’s a game in which progress really feels like progress, and you have nobody to blame for failure but yourself.

Far from being a superfluous device strictly for hard-core Apple fans, the Apple Watch is a surprisingly delightful and useful device.

Now that we’ve spent enough time with the latest gadget from the mothership, we’re noticing quite a few sweet little positives (and a couple negatives) about Apple Watch.

Bottom line: The more you use this thing, the better it is.

You don’t always have to sit down to an epic, 100-hour slog to get your gaming in. Developers are delivering plenty of great bite-size, episodic games that (usually) release one part at a time.

If you’re looking for something you can play in installments, here are four great places to start. These games are all fully released, so you won’t have to wait for the next episode if you can’t stand the suspense. This is great if you’re like me; I watched all of Breaking Bad in a week once it was all up on Netflix. That’s just how I roll.

Apple Watch is the most confounding device to come out of Cupertino since Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone. Is is it a watch? Is it a tiny computer on your wrist? It’s both — and it’s so much more.

After four days playing with the Apple Watch, we’ve found it to be far more futuristic — and far more fun — than we could have imagined. (It’s even more impressive if you’ve tried any of the other smartwatches on the market.)

Apple Watch isn’t without its disappointments, though. If you’re still unsure whether to shackle yourself to Jony Ive’s fabulous timepiece, here’s our take on what works — and what doesn’t.

Imagine an iPad Air sliced in half. The top half peels up to reveal a pin-sharp high-res screen. The other half has a full-size keyboard that’s almost flat.

This is the new MacBook. As usual, Apple’s latest crazy-thin laptop is dividing the tech punditsphere.

Because it comes with only one port, some think this machine is too radical, too new. It’s been called a glorified netbook — short on features, and, to really rub it in, high on price.

But I’m smitten. We have one in here at the Cult of Mac offices, and I’ve been putting it through its paces. Here’s what I found.

Marvel’s new show about blind superhero Daredevil swoops into your Netflix queue this Friday, and the looming arrival of “the man without fear” got us in the mood to watch some other comic-inspired TV shows and movies. To make it interesting, however, we’re avoiding the obvious Marvel and DC characters and focusing on lesser-known and original characters.

Here are a few more metahuman stories to help you get your fix of “BIFFs!” and “POWs!” Be sure to tell us some of your favorites in the comments.

The Resident Evil franchise has suffered a bit of an identity crisis in recent years, straying from its survival-horror roots toward something considerably more action-based. The latest entry, Resident Evil: Revelations 2, tries to have it both ways by splitting its four-chapter tale between two storylines. One features two frantic survivors struggling for resources, and the other has you playing as a heavily armed man of action.

It seems like mixing these two extremes would end up diluting them both, but somehow developer Capcom managed to take the best of both play styles and create something distinctive, harrowing and still damned scary.

Humankind is not depending on me to cure some terrible epidemic. That takes the pressure off and lets me have a little fun as I try a device that turns my iPhone into a fairly powerful microscope.

With a clip-on aspheric lens and transmitted light base that weighs only a few ounces, the makers of uHandy Microscope boast of it having a resolution comparable to a traditional microscope that weighs down a lab table in a classroom.

Samples can be magnified and viewed in the field using your smartphone’s camera app to record the image and, of course, an instant ability to share the image with colleagues in other places.

First Twin Peaks, and now this. Fox is bringing back its seminal monster-of-the-week series The X-Files for a six-episode run, complete with original stars Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny.

We don’t know yet what former agents Mulder and Scully have been up to since we left them floating in the middle of the ocean at the end of 2008 film I Want to Believe (they had a raft; don’t worry). But I imagine it will involve aliens, conspiracies and perhaps an alien conspiracy or two.

If you’re excited about these series making their returns, here are five ’90s cult TV shows to take you back to the world of crappy computer effects and even worse pants. And be sure to let us know more of your favorites in the comments.

If you’ve snatched up one of Nintendo’s nifty New 3DS handhelds, you’ll be glad to know the updated hardware will help you get a lot more out of the 3DS gaming library.

Here are four games you should check out now that you have the latest, greatest 3-D gaming gadget.

Your iPhone and iPad are decent options for gaming on the go, but they can’t do everything. Sometimes touch controls work, and sometimes they don’t.

If you’re a dedicated gamer who wants something that combines the simplicity of touch controls with the precision of actual buttons, I recommend Nintendo’s newest handheld gaming device.

The latest incarnation of the 3DS handheld system is appropriately named the New Nintendo 3DS XL (North America didn’t get the smaller version, but my massive man hands and I are not complaining). It offers a wider viewing angle for its glasses-free stereoscopic 3D graphics, a faster processor and even more buttons than the old one. And if you can swing the $200 price, you’ll be buying a lot of fun. But as commenters love to point out to me, this is Cult of Mac and not Cult of Whatever I’m Writing About, so we’ll skip to the big question:

Will this replace your iPhone or iPad for gaming?

We’re just weeks away from the Apple Watch’s launch, but maybe you’re not as excited about it as some of us are. It’s understandable; not everyone needs a $550 watch that offers many of the same capabilities your phone already does (albeit more conveniently).

If you’re in the market for a cool new watch and don’t need all the smart features and gadgetiness of Apple’s offering, here are a few less-shiny options you could check out. And they are, in fact, far less shiny than the Apple Watch. Because they’re made of wood.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of Zombeavers, but it’s out now. And, true to its name, it is about beavers who are also zombies, and they lay siege to a cabin full of hapless, idiot teens on a weekend trip to the woods.

Watch the Zombeavers trailer if you don’t believe me, but this is a thing that is happening to all of us. And I can’t actually speak to its quality without having seen it, but it absolutely looks like something I would watch on Netflix at 2 in the morning. But only then.

What I’m saying is that you can probably wait to see Zombeavers, which will screen in select theaters starting today and is also available to stream on demand. And while you’re doing that, you should check out these other films that blend horror and comedy into something special (and don’t forget to share all the ones I missed in the comments).

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is back from its mid-season break to resolve some cliffhangers — and introduce new ones, because absolute closure has no place in TV shows based on comic books.

If you don’t like waiting a week between episodes and want to fill that time with more stories about secret agencies, government-sanctioned or otherwise, that are charged with sorting out the crazy junk your civilian brain just couldn’t even handle, we have a few suggestions for you. Kick your TV into super-secret-spy mode with these shows and movies that are guaranteed to give you your daily allowance of secrets, acronyms and people in suits with guns.

I finally pitched the cheap plastic desk lamp I’ve had since high school and replaced it with the light I’ve always wanted: the iconic Anglepoise 1227.

If you’re looking for a classic desk lamp that won’t fade into the backdrop next to your sleek iMac, this is the one for you.

Launched in 1934, the design of the 1227 has changed astonishingly little. It still looks functional and modern, which makes perfect sense given Anglepoise started out making hard-wearing lamps for factory workers.

Netflix’s super-political drama House of Cards returns for its third season Friday, and if the Muppet version wasn’t enough to hold you over before you watch all the new episodes in one sitting this weekend, we’re here to help.

You should check out these shows if you need a fix of shenanigans and power plays that go all the way to the top.