iOS - page 16

Future Apple devices may be able to dynamically modify user interface elements, security levels, and other types of behavior based on location, according to a new patent application published Thursday.

Referred to as “Location-sensitive security levels and setting profiles based on detected location,” Apple’s application describes a setup in which both the hardware and software of your iPhone, iPad, and whatever other mobile devices Apple releases in future can seamlessly work together to automatically adjust various UI and device behavior settings.

It may be painfully average as a kart game, but the uber popular Angry Birds Go! iOS racer has just upped the ante by finally adding a much-requested multiplayer mode.

Letting you race against other players from around the world to determine the fastest bird or piggy on the track, the presence of multiplayer was first teased by developers Rovio all the way back in December, when they asked: “Who wants to see multiplayer in Angry Birds Go!? It’s coming in spring!”

As it turned out, Rovio missed the spring deadline, but hopefully the extra time to work on the update will have been well-spent.

This is how my non-gamer girlfriend shows me which games are worth playing: She stays up until 3 a.m., wearing down the iPad mini battery to 22 percent while she tries to solve the next level.

This time, she bathed our dark bedroom in colorful reflected light while she moved Niko, Groggnar, Eek and Claude around on the screen in Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake. If it’s so important to solve environmental puzzles on the bright screen in the middle of the night, I know the game’s addictive.

This morning, still playing on the couch after charging up the iPad while she (finally) got some sleep, she told me like it is.

“It took me 15 minutes, but I finally got that level,” she bragged. “With three stars, bitch.”

The native iTunes application offers many features and controls for handling your songs and movies, but sometimes it can seem too overwhelming to understand. In today’s video, we give you five quick tips that will help you master iTunes. You’ll learn how to customize your store settings, access a convenient mini player and so much more in just seconds.

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

Apple has announced that it’s updating its iTunes U app with new iPad-friendly features designed to make it easier for teachers and students to use tablets for their online courses. The new features will roll out starting July 8.

“Education is at the core of Apple’s DNA and iTunes U is an incredibly valuable resource for teachers and students,” says Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “iTunes U features an amazing selection of academic materials for everyone around the world. Now, with the ability to better manage and discuss educational content, learning becomes even more personalized on iPad.”

The app’s update will let teachers create full courses entirely on their iPad by importing content from iWork, iBooks Author and other educational apps in the iOS App Store. Teachers will also be able to use the iPad’s in-built camera to incorporate photos and videos into the course material.

If the idea of using your iOS device to help track your fitness appeals to you, it’s worth checking out the newly-updated Fitlist app.

Since one of the best things about the new wave of fitness trackers is the ability to see how you progress over time, the most useful new feature of the popular workout log is the addition of new progress graphs. These allow you to view your cardio and strength exercise history in the form of attractive, easy-to-read charts. (This feature is available to premium users only.)

By enhancing discoverability and human curation in its App Store, and favoring innovative indie developers over brainless money-hungry giants, Apple is doing a lot of things right these days when it comes to iOS.

An area it could still work on, however, is kicking out knockoff titles — or making sure they never make it into the App Store to begin with.

Case in point is Cloned Blek. Brought to our attention by Gamezebo, the title is a shameless display by apparent ripoff artists Coffee House Apps.

Endless runners are a popular genre on iOS, and the newly-launched Go Go Ghost looks like it’s not going to buck that trend.

A side-scrolling auto-runner, it varies up the formula by adding missions. To complete each mission, your character (a ghostly figure with a flaming skull, a bit like a cuter version of Marvel’s Ghost Rider) must collect coins, power-ups and other objects, chase down enemies, avoid pitfalls, and defeat sinister bosses. To help you are a variety of colorful supporting characters, who will do some of the gem-collecting work on your behalf.

Way better than it sounds iOS collectible card superhero beat-em-up Injustice: Gods Among Us recently received a notable update.

Adding four new challenge characters, players can now expect to confront the likes of Killer Frost, Luchadore Bane, Arkham Origins Deathstroke and Red Son Batman, all of whom will go live in the coming weeks. The interface for challenges has also been reworked, meaning that it’s now a whole lot easier to tell how many challenge levels it is that you’ve completed, and what the rewards are for each one.

Bad news for those of you who use Apple’s Podcasts app: For the vast majority of users running iOS 7.1.1, the app crashes immediately after launching.

There’s currently no word as to why this is happening, since the Podcasts app was last updated May 29 — adding only minor bug fixes — but the malfunction has just kicked in.

A couple of months after debuting its new look iPhone app complete with updated iOS 7 design, The Weather Channel has finally given its iPad app the same treatment — with a new look interface that is “closely aligned to the iOS 7 aesthetic.”

While it’s certainly taken its time (apparently weather apps change a whole lot slower than the weather itself), there’s no disputing that the app looks better than ever, with a flat interface and simple menu that makes this particular meteorology app incredibly easy to use.

If you like a bit (a lot!) of wanton carnage in your iOS games, you may want to check out World of Tanks Blitz, which has finally rolled into App Stores around the world.

Based on the massively popular World of Tanks game for PC and Xbox, World of Tanks Blitz is a free-to-play mobile massively multiplayer online game, which lets you battle it out in explosive 7v7 PvP battles, using 90 iconic tanks from Germany, the US, and Soviet Russia.

3-D scanning is set to get a whole lot more user-friendly, thanks to a new app from visual technology company Itseez.

Called Itseez3D, the just-launched free iPad app works with the $499 Occipital Structure sensor, which launched on Kickstarter in the fall of 2013 and went on to raise more than $1.2 million. Using the app and sensor, you can scan an object simply by circling it with your iPad — and then send this scan directly to SketchFab, a browser-based 3D design viewer and online portfolio.

I recently wrote about an upcoming game that re-imagines SNK Playmore’s The King of Fighters as an, um, music-based beat-em-up, called The Rhythm of Fighters. As a huge fan of the franchise (and the proud owner of a 4 CD compilation of the series’ various soundtracks) I was intrigued by the idea — even if it is a major departure from what we’re used to.

Jump forward a week and the game has now landed in the App Store, priced $0.99.

Apple’s constantly evolving set of Apple Store policies cracked down on apps earlier this month that incentivize users to watch crappy video ads for certain rewards. Two weeks later and Apple has already reversed course.

Developers who monetize their apps by offering rewards for sharing to social sites or viewing videos ads were sent packing by Apple’s Review Team, but according to a report from TechCrunch, Apple had a change of heart and is allowing those apps back in the App Store, but there’s a catch.

Tim Cook and Craig Federighi took a few swipes at Android during WWDC’s keynote, but now that Google is readying its hype machine for Google I/O tomorrow, Sundar Pichai, the head of Android, tossed a few jabs Apple’s way in an interview with Bloomberg this morning.

Pichai noted that all the data points to people adopting Android faster than any other operating system, but the dude’s so gosh darn nice, he couldn’t insult Apple without flattering them in the same breath.

Addressing Tim Cook’s comments that Android is a “toxic hell stew of vulnerabilities,” Pichai said it’s difficult to compare the two, because iOS is like the $100,000 Mercedes Benz of mobile platforms, and Android is like your cheap ass Honda Civic, taking over the world one delicious dessert fueled update at a time.

Are you running short of inspiration when it comes to new music to listen to? Whyd may be able to help.

The popular music bookmarking tool has just made the leap from desktop to mobile, with the launch of its official iOS app. Giving you the key to a community of music curators interested in sharing and discovering the best music around, Whyd lets users collect the songs they like from virtually any music service (YouTube, Soundcloud, Vimeo, and Deezer, to name a few), organize it into playlists, and then connect with thousands of other music lovers with similar (and complementary) tastes.

Amazon Instant Video — the official iOS app of the e-commerce giant’s Prime video streaming service — has just added a great new update.

The app will now attempt to lure you in by letting users stream the first episode of selected TV shows for free, with added ad breaks before and during playback.

In addition to this, the app features new video playback controls, including one-touch play/pause and 10-second skip forward/backward buttons, alongside a handy “Next Episode” button to make your binge watching sessions even easier and more tempting. It also promises faster playback start time after hitting play.

I’m a sucker for old school platformers in the vein of Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia, and upcoming iOS game Escape from the Pyramid certainly fulfills those criteria.

Set across 45 levels — representing three worlds in all — the game borrows from ancient Egyptian art to create something that definitely looks like it could stand out in a year already full of interesting-looking iOS titles.

If you’re a New York-based coder or wannabe coder looking to learn Apple’s new programming language Swift, you may want to check out an upcoming evening tech workshop organized by software development firm TurnToTech.

With the next session taking place Monday at their 5th Avenue offices, the number of spaces available has just been upped to allow more people to attend.

Yesterday we wrote about Yo, the messaging app which has become inexplicably popular over the past month, and has netted $1.2 million in venture funding.

Less than 24 hours later it seems that Yo has hacked by a Georgia Tech student, together with two of his room mates. The hack allows for them to access any Yo user’s phone number, spoof Yo messages from any user, spam users with multiple messages, and even send push notifications featuring any text they want. Another hack appears to let hackers Rickroll users with the infamous Rick Astley song.

I’m a massive fan of SNK’s King of Fighters franchise, to the point that I own a 4 CD compilation of the series’ soundtracks over the course of its lifetime. Which is why I’m incredibly happy to hear that SNK Playmore is working on a rhythm game based on the King of Fighters fighting game franchise “packed with legendary SNK tracks!”

We’ve written a lot about how there’s no shortage of great games in the App Store, and just to gobble up even more of your time this summer, Electronic Arts has just staged a massive sale on some of its most popular titles — discounting them by as much as 90 percent in some cases.

Some of the company’s hottest games are included, so this is a great opportunity if you’re looking to pick up some worthwhile bargains.

Here’s the complete list of titles on sale for just $0.99!

You know those ideas that are so simple you feel like you really could have come up with them yourself? Yo is one of those apps.

Launched on April Fools’ Day, it has recently become inexplicably popular — with 2 million messages sent over just the past month. If you haven’t used it, the idea behind it is simple: like Snapchat, you establish a username inside the app and can then send push notifications to friends reading “Yo” and featuring audio of a voice saying the same thing. Oh, and did I mention that it’s creator has just raised $1.2 million in funding?

Cult animated faves the Powerpuff Girls are back in a new iOS game, published by Cartoon Network in association with JoyJoy and Fluid SE developers RadianGames.

Called Powerpuff Girls: Defenders of Townsville, the game sees the Powerpuff Girls blasted with evil simian nemesis Mojo Jojo’s Disremember Gun, which leads to them forgetting how to use their superpowers. In a Metroidvania/Castleroid-style adventure shooter, you start out playing as Buttercup, before rescuing Blossom and Bubbles. Once the heroic trio is united, you get to use each of their superpowers to battle Mojo Jojo’s evil robots, and unlock and discover new areas.