iOS - page 93

Sometimes 10-digits can be a few too many numbers to remember or too boring to want to remember. That’s why Sprint has decided to spice up your phone number with its new StarStar Me service. Forget those boring digits and have people call you using a unique name or handle. Perhaps all your friends know you as the baconater and you want to keep it that way. Simply sign up for the number **baconater and allow anyone with an iPhone or Android-powered smartphones to call you by dialing **baconater.

Well that didn’t take long. It’s only been three days since Rovio teased us with the possibility of an Angry Birds Star Wars game, and today, it’s official. Rovio has announced that they will be launching Angry Birds Star Wars worldwide on Novemeber 8th and a barrage of merchandise starting October 28th (in time to get your kids into Angry Birds Star Wars costumes).

As a gadget reviewer, I go through a lot of shipped packages. Which means I have to deal with a logistical nightmare second only to the Allied supply lines following the D-Day landings (except my packages tend to be, for the most part, somewhat less liable to explode or cause diarrhea). But that’s OK — I have a secret weapon to help keep everything straight.

Junecloud‘s Deliveries Status ($5) tracks shipments in a wonderfully simple, easy-to-read, straightforward manner; and like many of Apple’s own products, it just works.

After 30 years (and a mountain of quarters), SEGA has unleashed the next chapter of the hit classic Zaxxon. Now that you’ve defeated the evil Zaxxon, it’s time to shoot and tilt your way past Zaxxon’s evil army as you try to escape the collapsing asteroid base. This modern sequel to an everlasting classic features:

As Apple patents go, it’s not always easy to tell which ideas will make their way out of Cupertino in future devices, and which will be written off. But I’m guessing this one falls into that last category. Published by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office on Thursday, this patent covers a new feature, which could one day make its way into iOS, that would demand users change print settings by shaking their device.

Back in early September, we reported that Acclaim’s classic radio-controller car racer, Re-Volt, was coming to iOS, and today it has landed in the App Store. The title is an exact port of the original game released on the PC and Sega Dreamcast back in 1999, only it’s been visually optimized to look great on Retina display devices, and adapted for the touchscreen.

Re-Volt boasts “fast paced, exciting driving, with explosive weapons and unique track designs [that] deliver a larger than life racing experience like no other.

Missing Street View on your iPad? Good news: Google has enabled it in Mobile Safari, letting you check out street-level detail from your iOS device, right there in the browser.

Hoops fans rejoice, 2K’s NBA 2K13 has dribbled down from its prime-time launch to embrace our mobile devices. One of the most successful NBA video game franchises creates another slam dunk with its impressive game simulation, amazing graphics, and intuitive One-Finger controls. Head fake your way to a winning season while breaking ankles with your wicked crossovers. If there’s any hoops game to pick up for your mobile device, it’s this one.

While iOS 6 may be “the world’s most advanced mobile operating system,” its new Maps app is, quite frankly, a heap of trash. It boasts some terrific features, such as 3D Flyover and voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation, but they’re only terrific when the Maps that power them actually work. And Apple’s don’t in a lot of places.

The Cupertino company’s CEO, Tim Cook, has apologized to customers for the frustration the new app has caused, and it’s led us to wonder why Apple even released it. It still had a year left on its contract with Google, so why did it rush into releasing its own, half-baked service so quickly?

Well, one reason behind the move is that Steve Jobs had grown to hate Google. So much so that he set up a new Maps team just to kick Google Maps off the iOS devices.

While the App Store has listed Things as an “amazing app” for iPhone 5 for the past week or so, the app didn’t actually support the new handset’s larger display. But it does now, thanks to a brand new update, which also delivers the ability to create new to-dos using Siri.

Brian Eno has a new app out. It’s called Scape. Like other apps he’s produced, it’s about making music – even for people who have no musical skill or knowledge whatsoever.

Google has started to index the contents of your e-mail attachments, and you can now search on them in the Gmail interface. This is new, and pretty great.

But if you’re using the iOS Mail app to wrangle your Gmail accounts, it works there too. I discovered this in the process testing out the browser version and — as you might expect — Apple’s version is both more elegant and less useful.

It’s pretty much an open secret that I can’t stand Twitter, and about the only thing I really like about Facebook is photo sharing, so I really love Instagram. In many ways, it’s against my better instincts, since I’ve always hated the romanticizing of Polaroid and other low-grade cameras of the 1970s by millennial hipsters… a romanticizing Instagram is pretty much built around.

But Instagram’s a lot more than that, and I think this video by Casey Neistat nicely illustrates why: regardless of what filters you use, Instagram is about sharing your life openly, honestly and without being disingenuous. While Twitter is all bluster and sanctimony, and Facebook is all mindless affirmation, Instagram at its best is about sharing the essence of your life.

There are also some great tips in Casey’s video on how to not be an annoying jackass on Instagram, so that helps too. If you love Instagram, check it out.

Via: Laughing Squid

Apple’s developer guidelines have always had weird caveats that Apple uses to protect the quality fo their own products first. Their newest strategy is to protect the App Store by putting in place a new guideline that might kill any app that promotes other apps. App recommendation apps, like FreeAppADay, and Daily App Dream might soon find themselves banned from the App Store if Apple begins to enforce the new guideline.

Have you ever looked at your iPad and wished it ran OS X, Apple’s desktop operating system? I have — like when I attempted to use WordPress in mobile Safari. But a Mac-powered tablet is no longer just a dream, thanks to the Modbook Pro. The Modbook Pro comes with all the benefits you get with an iPad, such as a touchscreen and excellent portability, but it runs Mountain Lion. And you can pre-order yours from October 3.

EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding has called for Apple’s warranty adverts to be examined in the European Union’s 27 states. Reding hopes to establish whether or not the Cupertino company fails to mention a buyers’ right to a minimum two-year warranty for all electronics, including Macs and iOS devices.

Kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup is an awesome new Twitter client that reminds me of the old (and awesome) Tweetie app — before Twitter bought it and ruined it. It’s accompanied by Camera+, which now supports the iPhone 5’s larger display, and comes to the iPad; an awesome new update to Mixel; and more.

FIFA 13 kicks off this week’s must-have games roundup, delivering a much-improved version of everyone’s favorite soccer sim. In addition to new visuals and optimization for the iPhone 5, FIFA 13 finally boasts an online multiplayer mode, allowing you to play against friends and random opponents over the Internet.

We also have Rovio’s latest release, Bad Piggies; a stunning adventure RPG called Lili, a new Monsters Ate My Condo game, and more.

If there were ever a time for Google to play “good guy” it would be now. Apple has simply been piling up the negative criticism with everything from its ridiculous legal attacks to its latest Mapsgate debacle. While Google has been going down the wrong path by setting itself up to bite back (see Motorola Mobility), I believe now to be the perfect time to turn the other cheek. Specifically with their Maps service.

The iPhone 5 has been a massive success for Apple. It’s only been out a week, but it’s already the fastest-selling iPhone in history, racking up 5 million units sold during its first three days of availability. But this isn’t just having a positive affect on Apple’s revenue; it’s also big business for iOS developers, who are seeing massive boosts to their download figures.

One of the improvements Apple made to Safari 6.0 was to take the search and address bars and roll them into one — just like a lot of popular web browsers do. The change hasn’t been made to the mobile Safari app, though, which is puzzling, because it’s a more efficient use of screen space on a smaller display.

But there is a good reason for that omission.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has today issued a letter to customers regarding the issues they have been experiencing with Maps in iOS 6. Cook says Apple is “extremely sorry for the frustration” the new service has caused to its customers, and he insists the company will continue to work incredibly hard until Maps is fixed. Cook even suggests a number of alternative services users can try in the meantime.

The full letter is below.

Stories about valuable items going missing at airport TSA checkpoints are worryingly common, but it’s not often you can prove your possessions have indeed been stolen by the people employed to protect you. Fortunately, Apple has made iOS devices easy to track when they go missing, and ABC News recently took advantage of this feature to catch a thieving TSA officer red-handed.

I remember playing MechWarrior 2 in the mid 90s. Man, what thrill — I spent days piloting horribly destructive giant robots around a 3D battlefield, firing rockets, blasting anything that moved with terawatt lasers.

Of course, that was on my old 386 PC clone, back when I still followed the dark side of the force and hadn’t jumped onto a Mac yet. But the MechWarrior / BattleTech series of games has been around on Apple machines since day one — so I’m pretty jazzed to finally see the a MechWarrior game arrive for the iPad in the form of MechWarrior: Tactical Command.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=445DW89GO2c&feature=youtu.be

I’ve never actually played Taboo (which is apparently massively popular; shows you just how much I get out); so when Clucks‘ PR guy referred to this new game as “video Taboo for iPhone,” my reaction was: Huh? So I looked up the game on Wikipedia (and finally realized that I had, indeed, heard of Taboo before), and it turns out that’s a perfect description for Clucks. But he might have called it “the next big social media craze on the iPhone,” because that might turn out to be an even better description.