Anyone afraid that the robot apocalypse is imminent might head to the panic room now: Reports are coming in that Amazon’s Alexa smart speaker has begun laughing all on its own.
People who claim to have experienced this generally say they’re not interacting with their Amazon Echo, but it will suddenly begin laughing. Many of the descriptions describe the robolaughter as “creepy.”
The augmented reality revolution sparked by Apple’s ARKit needs a dash of accuracy if it’s really going to catch fire — especially when it comes to mapping.
That’s why London developer Andrew Hart created a location-aware toolkit that uses artificial intelligence to punch up the precision in apps built with ARKit.
“One problem with AR location experiences is the low accuracy of phone GPS and compasses, which makes it difficult to ensure that things line up,” Hart told Cult of Mac. “The toolkit uses computer vision techniques to recognize landscapes from tagged imagery, and then aligns the AR environment upon recognition. It works in different weather conditions, and means you can have really precise experiences.”
After a lengthy period in soft launch, The Sims Mobile is finally available for download worldwide — and it looks impressively close to its desktop older sibling.
As one of the top-selling game franchises of all time, everyone is surely familiar with The Sims. If you’re not, it’s a game in which you create your own virtual humans, design a home for them to live in, pick a career, and then, well, get on with living everyday life. Only more fun than that makes it sounds.
Check out the trailer below.
A rare Macintosh prototype that was once rescued from the trash recently sold for more than $10,000 on eBay.
But the winning bidder backed out and now, the clear-plastic Macintosh Portable M5126 laptop is back on the auction site. Bidding started at 99 cents with no reserve.
Google Street View now offers panoramic views from nearly a dozen Disney theme parks, giving users a glimpse inside.
These join thousands of other immersive images from attractions around the world already in the app.
Xiaomi is gearing up to invade the U.S. with its Apple clones.
We’ve been waiting years for the Chinese company to make its most popular gadgets available outside of Asia. Now Xiaomi has confirmed that it plans to enter the U.S. market in late 2018 or early 2019.
Is your Mac stuffed fit to burst? Do you look at the Finder’s Status Bar, see “1GB available,” and then give up what you were doing and go check Twitter instead? What if I told you that you could offload much of the junk/important data on your Mac to iCloud, just like you do with your iCloud Photo Library? Well, you can, and it’s easy. It’s called Optimized Storage.
The latest iOS 11.3 beta, rolled out to registered developers Monday, includes a small but significant change to one of Apple’s apps. “iBooks” has returned after briefly being renamed “Books.” The move could suggest a rumored revamp is currently on hold.
Fresh beta versions of iOS 11.3, macOS 10.13.4 and tvOS 11.3 point to the full release of these new versions drawing nearer.
A great instant markup app for Mac that lets you easily annotate screenshots is just one of our selections for this week’s “Awesome Apps of the Week.”
In addition, we’ve got a great multifaceted journey through video game history, a music mastering app for iOS, and a card battler based around one of the all-time great console fighting game franchises. Check out our picks below.