This story first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine.
Back when I worked exclusively on my iPad, writing posts for Cult of Mac and everything related to that, I had a hell of a time getting some things done. It seemed like every tiny step needed to be researched before I could get anything done.
In the end, I quit and went back to a split iPad/iMac setup, but not for the reasons you might think.
What do you get when you combine several hundred serious geeks, two large rooms, five decades’ worth of vintage computers, and a weekend in New Jersey? The Vintage Computer Festival East, of course!
The ninth running of the VCF East was held April 4-7 at the InfoAge Science Center in Wall Township, New Jersey. Hosted by MARCH, the MidAtlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists group, the 2014 show saw the largest number of exhibitors and attendees for a VCF East yet, with exhibit halls expanded from one to two rooms and three days of lectures and seminars available for attendees. The show featured a wide range of computing history, from a seminal, room-size UNIVAC computer, through the DEC, Prime and HP minicomputer era, to the workstations and home computers of the 1970s and ’80s.
Folks who work with words have Drafts. People who want to capture a quick picture have a home-screen shortcut to the built-in camera. But what do musicians have to remember a tune when it pops into their head? Now they have Hum, an iPhone app for capturing song-writing ideas.
There’s a familiar look you see on the faces of parents at theme parks. It’s a look their children are rarely able to understand — caught as they are in the clutches of school vacations and roller coasters with names like Afterburn and the Dahlonega Mine Train. It’s a look that says, ‘No matter how much fun this is, the credit card bill at the end of the holiday is going to be hell.’
I wanted to be the carefree kid when playing RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile. After all, this is a sequel to a game franchise I loved to death growing up. There are few better things in life than riding roller coasters — but designing them may be one.
When I sat down to play RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile, however, I quickly found the childlike innocence behind my eyes fading. Not only did I want to put away childish things by the time I stopped playing — I wanted to smash my iPad and send the bill to Atari.
And I would have been entirely justified in doing so.
Have you played Monument Valley yet? Our previous choice for ‘Game of the Week,’ this surreal, M.C. Escher-inspired puzzle game has proved an absolute phenomenon since its launch in the App Store.
But what if you’ve already finished ustwo’s masterpiece, and are now on the lookout for more of the same?
Never fear, gentle reader — we can help. Although there are precious few games which be described as similar to Monument Valley (some people aren’t even convinced it’s a game to begin with), Cult of Mac spoke with lead designer Ken Wong for his picks of the top games currently available on iOS.
Here’s what he came up with:
Venus — the 256-foot super-yacht, commissioned by Steve Jobs — has been sighted in Ensenada, Baja California.
A coastal city in Mexico, on the Baja California Peninsula, Ensenada is a popular cruise ship destination. Photos of the vessel in dock were sent in by Cult of Mac reader Felipe Cornejo. Cornejo notes that he did not see any of Jobs’ family at the site, and that dock workers he spoke with weren’t aware this was Jobs’ boat.
Faster than a speeding bullet,
As one of last year’s top-grossing iPad apps, the digital comics platform has sold an astonishing 6 billion comic book pages since its 2009 debut — 4 billion of those coming in 2013 alone.
In helping revive an industry that was almost dead on its feet, ComiXology has done for comics what iTunes did for legal music downloads.
At the height of its success, it’s now been snatched up by Amazon for an undisclosed amount of money — prompting the question of whether Apple has missed out. (Particularly when taking into accounts the reports that Amazon is reportedly set to debut a smartphone of its own — capable of busting out 3-D.)
After all, ComiXology’s CEO David Steinberger has always had big ambitions. He once wrote that his “crazy goal” was to turn everyone on the planet into a comic reader. Sounds just like Steve Jobs.
Before the acquisition, CEO David Steinberger told Cult of Mac ComiXology’s backstory and its deep ties to Apple. Sometimes the Cupertino company has acted as its Krypton-esque home planet, and other times more like its Lex Luthor-style nemesis.
Ready for ComiXology’s secret origin story?
It has been months since I opened Reeder, my longtime app of choice for RSS. I don’t have anything personal against Reeder, it’s just that RSS has lost a lot of its appeal for me. Twitter is where I mainly get my news now.
Reeder 2 for Mac, which launches as a public beta today, might just make me give RSS a second chance.
I’m not usually a big fan of the whole “do it over and over until you get it right” genre of games typified by the Trials series of games, but this one has me hooked. Developed by RedLynx and now published by Ubisoft, the latest version of the game is also the first on mobile: Trials Frontier. You can grab it for free now for your iPad or iPhone.
Like all of the other installments in the series, Frontier is all about piloting a motorcycle with a rag-doll rider through increasingly intense tracks with jumps, loops and environmental hazards.
Here’s a quick gameplay video to show you how it works.
I know that your iPhone already has a calculator in it, but here’s a specialty app for people who suffer from the curse of Man Thumbs.
SwipyCalc is a basic calculator that gives all the screen space to the numbers. Only the numbers. You enter your basic functions — adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing — with swipes in one of four directions. It’s fast and easy, especially once you realize that the comma in the lower left corner is what you use for a decimal point.
Unless you’re in one of the 60+ countries that uses the decimal comma. That won’t slow you down at all.
