Stealth survival game République can be pretty intense at times. For players who just want to experience the story and spend time exploring the game’s beautifully rendered environments, however, there’s a new update available which adds an easier “Story Mode” for just that purpose.

Launched in the App Store back in December last year, République features an episodic type of gameplay which sees protagonist Hope fight back against an “an oppressive totalitarian state” (making it pretty appropriate imagery for Apple.) Unlike games such as the tremendous GTA: San Andreas port, République is a console-worthy game especially designed specifically for the touchscreen environment of the iOS platform.

Certainly, it’s an immersive experience, and that doesn’t change with the game’s Story Mode, which simply makes the title more accessible to less experienced players.

While iOS 8 has seen tons of improvements — from FaceTime call waiting to the ability to purchase iTunes content using Siri — there’s one area that hasn’t seen a major overhaul: Apple Maps.

Although the new version of Maps does now offer vector maps and other improvements in China, as well as a feature designed to give owners the ability to add more indoor positioning data, this was reportedly nowhere near what Apple originally had planned for the next version of its mobile OS.

Over the past year we’ve reported on various map-related patents which seemed like they would land on iOS before long, related to innovations such as user customizable maps. There’s also been plenty of talk regarding major under-the-hood changes to improve map accuracy; adding more points of interest; overhauling labels to make locations like airports, highways and parks easier to find; changing the overall map interface to make it cleaner; and adding public transit directions.

So why didn’t anything like this happen? According to sources the problems may have been the result of internal politics and generally chaotic project management.

Based on the sheer amount of biotech experts it’s been hiring, the fact that Apple has its eyes set on the health and fitness tracking sector is one for the “Cupertino’s Worst Kept Secrets” file. But after tons of speculation about the iWatch, Monday’s WWDC keynote provided a first glimpse of an actual Apple creation in this category with its upcoming Health app for iOS 8.

Then Apple dropped a brand new ad for the iPhone 5s, adding a sporty spin to the company’s current trend for showing Apple products used in real-life scenarios in its commercials. If you’re anything like us, it makes you think two things. Firstly, that Apple will revolutionize the health tracking field like it did the personal computer, music player, smartphone and tablet market. Secondly, that we need to hurry up and drop the flab for summer.

With that in mind, here are our picks for the best iOS-compatible fitness devices currently on the market — including the skinny on specific gadgets from the latest iPhone ad (which, incidentally, had fitness-tracking watches conspicuous by their absence.)

Let us know in the comments what tracking gear you’re using and what you hope Apple will provide next.

Wow! This year’s WWDC keynote was one of the most important in years, and on this week’s CultCast, we unpack all the new features announced for Yosemite and iOS 8, and tell you which ones we can’t believe we ever lived without. Plus, with so many new developer APIs and a whole new programming language, we think Apple in on the verge of something big, and if you thought they had cool products before… well, hold on to your butts.

Snicker your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the uproarious good time commence.

And thanks to Lynda.com for supporting this episode! Learn at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at Lynda.com.

Click on for the show notes.

Brothers Denis and Davor Mikan make it look easy. They created a memorable and graphically beautiful puzzler called Blek that rocketed to the top of the paid game chart in the iOS App Store, making them millions in the process. Deceptively simple — with a nod to 60s pop art — the game caught the attention of Apple, too, which recently handed them a Design Award in recognition.

“It may sound simple, but it’s the Apple kind of simplicity that actually takes a lot of work,” Denis Mikan says of the game he co-created.

“It may sound simple, but it’s the Apple kind of simplicity that actually takes a lot of work.”

The idea behind Blek is ingeniously straightforward. At its simplest you draw a line on screen, and then this line repeats itself over and over until it encounters a black dot, or goes outside of the screen borders and resets. Draw the line slowly and it moves slowly, draw it fast and it moves fast. Your aim is to clear the screen of colored dots without accidentally touching a black one. But from small acorns grow mighty oaks, and since Blek arrived in the App Store a few months ago it has received close to a million downloads at $2.99 each.

Still reeling from their breakout success, Mikan told us about Blek‘s unlikely odyssey from the brothers’ hometown of Vienna, Austria, into the hearts of iOS gamers around the world. Befitting the game they brought into the world, their journey was hardly a straight line.

Six years after Apple pioneered what it means to be a mobile app, the company has reinvented the concept in iOS 8.

Thanks to what the company calls Extensibility, iOS 8 can let apps talk to one another and work together like never before. Once developers figure out how to implement their newfound flexibility, apps won’t just be apps anymore. They will become tools and services. Not just silos that can’t communicate, but pipes feeding into each other.

“Extensibility is tremendously interesting, and it’s fair to say developers have hoped for something like this practically since day one,” said David Chariter of AgileBits, makers of 1Password. Developers like AgileBits see iOS 8 as a sign that mobile apps will become not only smarter, but more powerful in their ability to aid users.

OS X Yosemite is the biggest visual overhaul Apple’s made to the Mac in years, but developers at WWDC seemed most excited about one tiny UI tweak – dark mode.

Beta testers eager to try out the the new OS X 10.10 feature were disappointed to find out it didn’t make it into the first Yosemite beta, but our friend Jean-David Gadina, from the DiskAid developers team, has done some digging into the OS X Yosemite beta and discovered a new file not present in Mavericks that can be manipulated to enable the hidden dark mode feature.

Here’s how to do it:

Apple’s long awaited and heavily rumored iWatch is set to land in stores and on wrists this October, according to a new report from Japanese business newspaper Nikkei.

Unnamed sources tell the paper that Apple has begun finalizing specs for the device, which will feature a curved OLED touchscreen and run a version of iOS 8. In keeping with Apple’s push into fitness and health tracking, as seen through the announcement of its upcoming Health app and API for iOS 8, the device will allegedly use biometric sensors to collect health-related data such as calorie consumption, sleep activity, blood oxygen levels, and more.

If you’re a Flickr user you might be annoyed by Yahoo’s latest power play, which removes third party logins — meaning that from June 30 you’ll no longer be able to log in to your account using your Facebook or Google ID.

Yahoo claims that it’s so that the service can offer “the best personalized experience to everyone,” but it seems a pretty shameless way of getting users to sign up for Yahoo accounts (which you’ll now need to sign up to, or keeping using, the service). While Yahoo announced that this would be happening earlier this year, this is the first time we’ve had an actual date to put with the report.

Apple has finally revealed the latest version of OS X, and it’s one of the biggest updates for the operating system in years. In today’s video, we take a quick look at OS X Yosemite in action and provide a quick overview what it has to offer.

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