With Nintendo recently admitting that its Wii U console has flopped — slashing its sales forecasts for the device by 70 percent, despite U.S. spending on games consoles reaching a three-year high — the rumor mill has been abuzz with reports that the Japanese games manufacturer would exit the hardware business altogether, and instead focus on creating games for existing smartphones and tablets.
Less than two weeks after its iOS launch, intelligent news app NewsBrain has received an update that allows it to read news articles aloud to you.
To activate NewsBrain’s text-to-speech capability, simply tap the “share” button or press and hold on an article, before selecting the “speak” option — letting you get caught up with your reading while, for instance, jogging or driving to work.
Way back in early 2012, Cult of Mac reported on the way that genius artist rap singer Kanye West had raised the ire of Apple fans by claiming that he was “[picking] up where Steve Jobs left off.”
Since then he has repeated the statement on several occasions — telling the New York Times in 2013 that, “I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means,” and describing himself as, “undoubtedly, you know, Steve of Internet, downtown, fashion, culture. Period. By a long jump.”
A New Zealand father-and-son duo tracked down their stolen iPad using the device’s “Find My iPad” function.
After enjoying a meal in a restaurant in Nelson, New Zealand, Chris and Markham Phillips returned to the parking lot to find their car had been ransacked — and cash, glasses and an iPad were missing.
“As despair and disgust begin to kick in, we remember a newly installed tracking application on both the stolen iPad and the retained iPhone,” son Markham told a local reporter. “We fire up the app [and] the iPad icon pings onto the map.”
Joining the likes of iTunes Radio, Pandora, Spotify, and Rdio, Beats Music — the music subscription service spearheaded by Jimmy Iovine — launches today, 21 January.
Combining human curation from “the best music experts” to algorithm-based automated recommendations, Beats Music will offer access to over 20 million songs via unlimited, ad-free streaming for $9.99 a month on all the usual platforms — including iOS and Mac.
Man, do I feel clean today. No, it’s not the fact that I quit drinking two summers ago. Nor that I stopped smoking a few years before that. Nope. I feel clean because I finally deleted iPhoto from my Mac. It’s gone, never to spin up the fans again because it’s detecting faces with the accuracy of a demented uncle, nor to inexplicably flip away from the album I’m viewing every single time I switch to another app, however briefly.
I don’t even need Apple’s worst app (worse than iTunes I say) for Photo Stream any more, becasue now I have the $4, 6 MB MyPhotostream to take its place.
VLC, the versatile play-anything video app that I have installed on every Mac I’ve had admin access to in the last half decade, has gotten a great update in its iOS incarnation. VLC for iOS not only looks better, but will now grab video from Dropbox and Google Drive.
When Apple unveiled the iPad Air back in October, they curiously decided to keep the iPad 2 around for another generation at a $399 price point… the exact same price as an entry-level iPad mini with Retina Display.
In theory, Apple’s idea here seems to have been to price the vintage iPad 2 at a sub-$400 price point so as to have a cheaper 9.7-inch tablet available for educational institutions, budget shoppers and the like. But it looks like no one’s really all that interested, with only one customer in twenty opting to buy an iPad 2 in the latest quarter. Despite this, though, average price of a purchased iPad fell for the second year in a row.
Mega Jump 2 is a game about jumping. Forever.
For those unfamiliar with the original 2010 Mega Jump, think of it as a variation on a pinball game — with your mission to keep your character (in this case a squishy red monster named Redford, or one of his animal pals) airborne for as long as possible.
To do this you tilt your iOS device to control the direction of vertical leaps: trying to bounce on platforms and collect power-ups that will keep your avatar hurtling on an ever-upwards trajectory.
There was a rumor early this morning that iOS 7.1 beta 4 was coming to developers to tomorrow, but it looks like it’s here now. Apple just made iOS 7.1 beta 4 available to developers as an OTA update. You can also grab it from the Dev Center.
Along with the iOS 7.1 beta 4 release, there’s a new beta for Apple TV as well. We’ll update you with all the new changes once we get it downloaded on our devices. Feel free to yell at us on Twitter (@cultofmac) if you come across anything yourself.
In the meantime, get to downloading. Here are all links:
