iOS - page 12

We don’t usually post infographics on Cult of Mac — far too many of them are just poorly designed info dumps, without any real focus or design chops — but we’re making an exception for this one showing the evolution of iOS over the last seven years.

Created by the folks at 7 Day Shop, this infographic doesn’t just examine the evolution of the iOS home screen (something we here at Cult of Mac have been known to chart from time to time), but the evolution of individual icons, and the addition of features to Apple’s mobile operating system.

It’s very thorough, and a great primer on how far we’ve come since 2007. Check it out in full after the jump.

Not even Apple’s new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus support super-sharp 4K video recording out of the box, but they do have the necessary hardware to support it. Vizzywig 4K, a new iOS app that was just approved by Apple, brings this functionality to the iPhone 5s — but it costs a whopping $999.99.

While Uber and Lyft are the most prominent example of smartphones disrupting the taxi industry, a new app feature from Hailo is hoping to shake up both companies by letting Hailo users pay for journeys using their iPhone — even when they’re in a non-Hailo booked taxi.

The feature is called “Pay with Hailo” and uses Apple’s iBeacon technology to automatically recognize taxis, with users given the option to connect and pay for a journey automatically as soon as they set foot inside a vehicle. Even if the driver doesn’t have an iBeacon set up in their cab, it’s still possible to pay the fare by choosing their name from a list inside the app.

Apple’s new iPhones went up for pre-order this morning, and for those who stayed up late to get their order in, it turned out to be a very long night. The vast majority had to wait until past 12:30 a.m. before the had any joy loading the Apple Online Store, and when it finally went live, many iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus options were “currently unavailable.”

Being Steve Jobs’ son or daughter would surely mean a never-ending supply of new high-tech devices to play around with, right?

Not according to a New York Times article by Nick Bilton, who claims that Jobs set out to purposely limit the amount of time his kids spent using their iPhones and other gadgets — even going so far as to stop them using Apple’s latest must have-devices altogether.

Baldur’s Gate is one of the all-time classic RPGs, and while it’s iOS Enhanced Edition has been available on iPad since late 2012, up until now iPhone gamers have been left out in the cold.

That’s changed thanks to a new update which adds iPhone support, meaning that we can finally play this epic fantasy game on the move.

But wait, you might say, Baldur’s Gate was already a challenging read on the iPad mini. How on earth is it possible to play on an iPhone? Well, developers Bioware have thought of that too, since they’ve added a new “Font Size” option, which makes the game easier to view on smaller iOS devices.

During yesterday’s unveiling of the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch, awesomely-named developers Super Evil Megacorp took to the stage to show off the iPhone 6’s impressive graphical capabilities through a demo of their forthcoming iOS game Vainglory.

Despite the presence of “scarf guy” (one of the demoing developers wearing an infinite scarf that’s already become an Internet meme), Super Evil Megacorp was able to claw back viewer attention for their “unapologetically core MOBA” (that’s multiplayer online battle arena to the noobs out there) developed by veterans from the likes of Blizzard and Riot.

And no wonder: the game looks fantastic, built on Super Evil’s E.V.I.L engine, and boasting full Metal support from day one. The game’s rolling out globally from next month, but for now excited gamers can check out the trailer after the jump:

Fans have been clamouring for an iOS port of the later Final Fantasy games for years, but it looks as though publisher Square Enix is set to go one step further — announcing that not only will some of these titles soon be making their way to mobile, but also that the company behind them is experimenting with a new cloud-based mobile streaming service called Dive In.

Dive In is set to debut October 9 with an initial offering of three games, including Final Fantasy 7, Final Fantasy 13 and The Cherry Blossom Murders.

The only problem? You guessed it: currently the service is only available in Japan.

Apple’s iPhone event is now just a matter of hours away, and if you’re hoping for some surprises, you should look away now. We already have a pretty solid idea what the iPhone 6 is going to look like, and thanks to some new Geekbench benchmarks, we now know what it’s going to have inside it, too.

Text shortcuts are one of the most useful settings in iOS. Having the potential to just hit a couple of keys to input an entire string of text is a wonderful time saver… as long as you have the foresight to set them up first.

Alas, most of us never delve into text shortcuts on iOS 8. But here’s a shortcut anyone can take advantage of: a text shortcut that allows you to cycle rapidly through your email addresses with just a single keypress.

I’m a massive fan of nostalgic 2-D platformers, so the sight of Goblin Sword has me buzzing. An entirely new iOS action platforming game, the title nonetheless borrows its inspiration from classic 8-bit platformers of the NES era of gaming, with cartoony sprites and highly detailed pixel-rendered backdrops.

Frankly it looks gorgeous, and the promise of a whopping 48 levels, 6 bosses, multiple weapons and suits of armor, and (arguably best of all) utter lack of in-app purchases just makes it sound all the more promising.

I can’t tell you how much I love Adobe’s Lightroom Mobile. But like an insatiable lover, I want more. Specifically, I want to add my own presets. LR Mobile ships with a selection of the desktop app’s image presets built in, but unlike the desktop version, you can’t save your own settings as a preset, nor can you add any made by third parties. Or can you?

In this tutorial, we’ll see how to add any preset to Lightroom Mobile, using any and all of the image-editing tools available in the Mac version and making them available on iOS.

Apple is constantly looking to improve the App Store experience, and ahead of the long-awaited release of the iPhone 6 and public version of iOS 8, it is doubling its efforts.

With these two landmark events coming up rapidly, the company has updated its App Store review guidelines to add all-new sections dealing with features such as HealthKit, HomeKit and TestFlight, extensions and more.

There have been numerous companies, from Samsung downwards, willing to leap onto the smart watch bandwagon to try and beat it to market. Wellograph’s new smart watch, however, perhaps comes the closest to what many users are expecting to see from Apple — with the world’s first wellness-focused smart watch sporting a sapphire crystal display.

The 1.26-inch LCD display watch is available to ship now, and comes with various smart functions, including a Tri­-LED heart­ rate sensor, which replicates the action of a doctor using their fingers to feel for a pulse and provides real-time readings of heart signals.

If you make something private, obviously you want it to stay that way. But with hackers trying to get at your data, you need to be prepared. Following the recent iCloud hacking that leaked tons of private celebrity photos, there’s a renewed focus on security.

In today’s video, we show you how to enable two-step verification on all your Apple devices so you’ll have a better chance of keeping everything that’s near and dear to you private and secure.

Subscribe to Cult of Mac TV on YouTube to catch all our latest videos.

Reddit AMAs (Ask Me Anythings) are everywhere, attracting even the likes of President Obama (who answered his questions on a MacBook) to respond to questions fielded by users from around the globe.

Up until now there have been some pretty great apps for viewing Reddit AMAs, such as Interviewly, which takes AMA threads and polishes them to look more like a Sunday newspaper feature than an online forum. However, to date there has been no official AMA app available on iOS.

If you’re the type of person who enjoys/has a work-related need to track airplanes using their iPhone or iPad, you may want to download plane-tracking app Plane Finder, which has just received a brand new update — letting you watch previous flights, dating all the way back to April 2011.

The app lets you replay holiday flights, diversions, and major incidents, as well as easily seeing the effect of storms, ATC strikes, volcanic ash clouds, and more.

Last weekend, we reported that the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 seemed likely to boast a 1334 x 750 Retina Display, while the 5.5-inch iPhone 6L could have a 461 PPI Super- Retina Display. Now it looks like that working iPhone 6 cobbled together may have confirmed the iPhone 6’s resolution.

As more and more of our lives are lived on social media, the importance of being able to efficiently search through content is greater than ever.

With that in mind, Facebook is currently user-testing a new feature letting mobile users sift through old posts by friends using keywords — allowing them to more easily find content that would otherwise be lost.

The feature, which only counts for posts you’re allowed to see (meaning that private posts won’t show up) has currently only been rolled out to a select few, but will likely be officially added into an update of the Facebook iOS app in the near future.

Are we seeing the collapse of freemium game makers as the monster money spinners they were a year or so back?

Following the recent news that the recently-public Candy Crush Saga maker King had posted a disappointing quarter in terms of revenue, now the CEO of Angry Birds dev Rovio has announced that he is stepping down for similar reasons.

CEO Mikael Hed says he is “passing the hoodie” to new CEO Pekka Rantala, who recently joined Rovio after serving as head of Finnish drinks maker Hartwall.

“It has been an amazing ride and in the coming months I will be very happy to pass the hoodie to Pekka Rantala, who will take Rovio to the next level,” Hed noted in a statement. “Pekka is known to be a great leader with experience building successful global consumer brands. I will continue to play an active role and will support Pekka in any way I can to ensure Rovio’s continued success.”

While it certainly has its fair share of clones and discoverability issues, Apple’s mega profitable App Store is still the toast of the App Store world.

With that in mind, Microsoft is using it as its (unofficial) model for rethinking its own Windows app store which, to put it bluntly, is downright broken.

Are you itching to play the original BioShock on your iPhone or iPad? Then get ready, because it’s coming to the App Store tonight.