Remember KT, they recently announced pre-selling 130,000 iPhone 4s in 13 hours? Now they plan to sell a tablet, and it is not the iPad. The “Identity Tab” has a 7-inch screen and is powered by Android. The Apple partner says it is “definitely thinking of launching the iPad in Korea,” however. Apple was mum on this rather schizoid marketing strategy.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the “Identity Tab” is priced at $23 for a two-year KT contract or $411 without any ties. The Android-based tablet “is rather cheap” compared to the expected $600-$700 price tag for either the iPad or Samsung’s Galaxy Tab in Korea, an analyst told the newspaper.
Valve has done a lot for Mac gamers in the last few months: first releasing the popular Steam digital delivery service for OS X, then following by quickly releasing native ports of most of their catalog for Mac gamers to play. In fact, Valve managed to squirt all of their Source-engine games (including Half-Life 2, its’ episodic add-on packs, Team Fortress 2 and Portal)out the door, before their release schedule stalled due to performance issues inherent to OS X, leaving their two most resource-hungry games — the team-based zombie shooters Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead II in limbo.
Come Halloween, you’ll be blowing away zombies with the rest of your buddies, though. Now that Apple has ironed out the kinks in OS X through a graphics update, it seems like Valve is now getting ready to finally release the Left 4 Dead series to Mac gamers. You can now expect to be able to download Left 4 Dead and its sequel through Steam for Mac by October, along with the upcoming DLC mission pack, The Sacrifice, which bridges the stories of both titles and is fully playable under either game.
Starting in October, Mac owners will again get to design their minds-eye mansions and skyscrapers without ever dropping to Boot Camp, while taking advantage of native Mac features like multitouch gestures. Of course, professional software like this isn’t cheap, and Mac-friendly architects can expect to drop $4000 for the trouble… but might be a small price to pay to migrate your architecture firm back to the Mac.
AutoDesk isn’t stopping there: they’re also reportedly working on an IOS version of AutoCAD called AutoCAD WS, a free download that will allow you to view (but not make major changes) on your iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone. Possibly a death blow to the profitable architecture paper roll and blue ink industry!
There are hundreds of decent iPad cases out there. Unfortunately, very few leave you room for anything other than the iPad itself. What about your stand, your wireless keyboard, your charger or your headphones? Carrying all the accoutrements needed to set your iPad up and use it more like a notebook may seem to defeat the purpose somewhat, but a lot of us use our tablets like that every day. If you like to carry your iPad fully loaded, the Incase Travel Kit Plus ($59.95) is a great solution.
It may be somewhat hard to remember — what with sporadically poor call performance, lots of other hardware to play around with and all those apps — that the iPhone is more-or-less primarily a tool for voice communication. And there’s no better or cheaper way to use that tool than through the Skype app.
Cult of Mac has been going nuts with iPad and iPhone app giveaways lately, and today is no different! Today, we’ve got some great apps for your iPhone and iPad. We’ll pick 5 random winners to win 4 great apps. If you want a chance to get your hands on some of these sweet apps this week, then follow the instructions carefully below:
“Like” Us On Facebook (you must do this, if you’re not a fan of us, we can’t contact you if you win).
Post a link to your favorite Cult of Mac article from the past week on our Facebook Wall. Make sure you post it on OUR wall, not your own.
Your wall post will be your entry into the giveaway, only ONE entry is allowed per person, and the giveaway will last until 11:59pm tonight. We’ll contact the winners later this week and explain how to get the codes!
Optional step: If you want to go the extra mile, you can post it in your Facebook status and status tag us. Do it ’cause you love us.
Special Thanks to Appular for helping us put together these app code giveaways! If you’ve got a mobile app that you’d like marketed effectively, contact the good folks at Appular!
The Just Mobile UpStand iPad stand is simply perfect. The form factor the stand assumes and the material it is made of coupled with how much it weighs makes it the perfect place to perch my iPad on. The stand sits just right upon my desk and holds my iPad horizontally or vertically leaving complete access to all buttons, switches, and ports — especially the docking connector.
Click the read link for more information about this product and a gallery of photos of it in use.
Ever since the first rumors creeped out that Apple intended on reinventing its “hobby” AppleTV platform to a $99, iOS-driven streaming media device, people have been assuming that the device would have to support multitouch through some sort of Magic Trackpad-esque remote. Now Dan Wiseman has come along and mocked up what he expects the new iTV remote to look like.
It’s an attractive render, but I’m going to say, “No way.” There are numerous problems with this approach, the least of which is knowing where your fingers are resting on the displayless remote in relation to the elements on the television half a room way. The only way that could work is if the iTV overlay mice-like pointers on your display to show where your fingers were in relation to the trackpad… a clumsy and decidedly un-Apple-like solution.
Then there’s the cost: if the iTV costs $99, and the Magic Trackpad costs $69, how could Apple afford to give one of these away for free with every iTV sold? They can’t. End of story.
If I had to guess, I’d say that the iTV, even if it is iOS-driven, will eschew multitouch as an input method in favor of the tried and true Apple remote. The only possibility I see is the possible ability to pair an iTV to your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to directly interact with the iTV display elements… but surely we would have seen an inkling of that functionality in the iOS betas by now if that was planned, and we haven’t. The iTV may be iOS-driven, but I wouldn’t bet on multitouch.
My dad was a magician at sniffing out great places to eat. We’d drive by some hole-in-the-wall we’d never seen before, and he’d point and say, “that’s where we’ll eat, it’s good.” Then I’d scramble to check out the hole-in-the-wall’s rating using the Yelp app on my iPhone, to see if he was right. The result was always the same: me shaking my head in disbelief as Yelp’s vast community of raters would invariably agree with him.
Unfortunately, most of us don’t have a magic nose. But that’s ok — we’ve got Yelp.
This week’s must-have iOS games features plenty of zombies, addictive games galore and some fantastic bargains guaranteed to keep you entertained this weekend. There’s also two retro classics thrown in for good measure. Check out Cult of Mac’s favorite games from the past week after the break!
