sábado, 29 de junio de 2013

iPad By Davis: “Apple, still trying to get out of bed with Samsung, finally gets a little TSMC on the side...” plus 17 more

iPad By Davis: “Apple, still trying to get out of bed with Samsung, finally gets a little TSMC on the side...” plus 17 more

Apple, still trying to get out of bed with Samsung, finally gets a little TSMC on the side...

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 09:16 PM PDT

Apple, still trying to get out of bed with Samsung, finally gets a little TSMC on the side...

Apple, eager to find a manufacturing partner who isn't also their chief rival, Samsung, has apparently finally come to a deal with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) to start taking over at least some of their chipset production. Jessica E. Lessin, Lorraine Luk and Juro Osawa, writing for the Wall Street Journal report:

Apple is finding that breaking up with Samsung is hard to do. For evidence, look no further than Apple Inc.'s effort to find a company other than ferocious rival Samsung Electronics Co. to make the sophisticated chip brains used in Apple's iPads and iPhones. This month, after years of technical delays, Apple finally signed a deal with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.. to make some of the chips starting in 2014, according to a TSMC executive. The process had been beset by glitches preventing the chips from meeting Apple's speed and power standards, TSMC officials said.

Much like Google, who partnered with Apple on the iPhone only to learn their approach and ultimately compete against them with Android, Samsung built parts of Apple's mobile business only to learn how to make their own, Galaxy-branded devices. Having partners less likely to enter into competition with them is likely high on Apple's must-do list these days, and while it doesn't sound like TSMC will be doing the heavy chipset lifting, at least for a while still, that they're beginning is in and of itself interesting.

Smart move or foolish move? Should Apple get the best parts from the best providers, or is doing business with a competitor simply untenable?

Source: Wall Street Journal

    

Despicable Me: Minion Rush for iPhone and iPad review: Temple Run style game play, but with minions!

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 03:45 PM PDT

Despicable Me: Minion Rush for iPhone and iPad review: Temple Run style game play, but with minions!

In Despicable Me: Minion Rush you're tasked with the job of overcoming lots of obstacles in order to become employee of the year and impress your super villain boss, Gru. Flicking and swiping the screen as well as tilting it will guide your minion through each course. The object is to get through each level without running into any obstacles along the way. If you're a fan of Temple Run games, you'll find Minion Rush just as enjoyable, if not more.

As you play Minion Rush, you'll want to make sure you collect all the tokens and bananas you can because if you run into something, you'll have to cough up some of them in order to continue. Each time you run into an obstacle during a level the amount of bananas or tokens you'll need to advance becomes larger. If you don't have any, you can either start the level over again or buy more tokens and bananas for real world money.

The minions are competing to impress their boss, super villain Gru, in order to win employee of the month and the ultimate award, employee of the year. Each set of levels has a unique set of challenges and obstacles you'll have to overcome in order to complete them. You'll also be able to see your friend's high scores via the leaderboards. You can send them entertaining minion messages as well in order to taunt them to compete against you.

Minion Rush also features many fun bonus levels featuring many other characters in the game.

The good

  • Any Despicable Me fan will love the interaction with all their favorite characters
  • Temple Run style game play makes it easy to pick up on but challenging at the same time
  • Interaction with friends is entertaining to say the least

The bad

  • Tokens and bananas can get quite expensive if you decide to buy them in real money

The bottom line

Despicable Me: Minion Rush brings with it some of our favorite styles of game play paired with adorable characters and even unicorns. If you're a Temple Run fan, you'll love the general game play. The bonus rounds and additional content make it even more entertaining.

While bananas and tokens are a little on the expensive side, you're never forced to buy them and you're welcome to just start levels over until you get good enough to pass them without running into obstacles.

    

iOS 7 preview: Sprite Kit and UIKit dynamics

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 02:25 PM PDT

iOS 7 preview: Sprite Kit

I've written a lot already about how Apple is changing the interface game by making iOS 7 not only objectified but gamified. It almost feels like you play it as much as you use it. The original iPhone's interface required OpenGL support to such a level that it eventually birthed a mobile gaming empire. iOS 7's physics and particle engine -- rumored to have been built by a first-class gaming engineer who's work you've likely enjoyed, a lot -- seems poised to take all of this not only to the next level, but to the next generation. The reason for that is as simple as it is spectacular -- Apple's taken everything they used to make iOS 7's engine and bundled it together into not only a new set of UIKit dynamics for app developers, and Sprite Kit for game developers.

Here's how the public-facing portion of Apple's iOS developer portal describes them:

UIKit allows you to incorporate realistic motion and transitions with new APIs that enable your user interface to respond to every touch and swipe by following the behaviors and physical constraints you define.

Create new immersive experiences using the latest game technologies in iOS 7. Develop high-performance 2D games with the powerful new Sprite Kit framework, which combines everything you need to animate sprites, simulate physics and create beautiful particle systems all in one easy-to-use set of APIs.

The public side of the Mac developer portal has more on Sprite Kit:

Create high-performing 2D games with the powerful new Sprite Kit framework, which allows you to control sprite attributes such as position, size, rotation, gravity, and mass. Sprite Kit's OpenGL-based renderer efficiently animates 2D scenes. Built-in support for physics makes animations look real, and particle systems create essential game effects such as fire, explosions, and smoke.

As does this bit from Graphics and Animation:

Sprite Kit is a powerful graphics framework for 2D games such as side-scrolling shooters, puzzle games, and platformers. A flexible API lets developers control sprite attributes such as position, size, rotation, gravity, and mass. Sprite Kit's OpenGL-based renderer efficiently animates 2D scenes. Built-in support for physics makes animations look real, and particle systems create essential game effects such as fire, explosions, and smoke. To assist SpriteKit-based game development, Xcode supports texture atlas creation and includes a particle creator.

It's easy to see what this means for game developers, or people who want to be game developers. They get a lot of really good stuff that used to have to be custom made, or brought in independently from something like Box2D , and they get it "for free". Existing projects can throw away code and let Sprite Kit take its place, and new developers can just include it from the get go, adding effects they might not have been able to do on their own.

The new, more dynamic UIKit frameworks sound even more interesting. Making high quality interactions in iOS 6 and older versions sounded tough and tedious, animating more than modeling, and building even a few types really well was really difficult. iOS 7 and technology like what Apple showed off at the WWDC 2013 Keynote looks like it removes that burden. Designers and developers can dream up the perfect interactions for their apps, and iOS 7 will help make it a reality.

Neither the new UIKit dynamics or Sprite Kit are user-facing feature. Neither was a 10 tentpoles Apple's senior vice-president of software, Craig Federighi, spent any time on during the WWDC 2013 keynote. However, he did show off every delightful ricochet in Notification Center, every bounce in Messages, every flip, every spin, every zoom, every parallax, every pan, and every bit of interactive awesomeness that the new physics engine enables.

From Core Animation, which handles animation, to SceneKit for 3D scene manipulation, to UIKit dynamics and Sprite Kit which allow 2D physical interactivity, Apple is continuing to provide amazing frameworks that'll allow for even more amazing apps down the road. 3 months post-iOS 7 launch, 6 month, 1 year... They could fundamentally change the nature of the apps we use every day. It's something that could be transformative. Again.

The new UIKit and Sprite Kit are both available to developers now, and the rest of us will get our first look at the results of it this fall when Apple ships iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks. Check out the resources below for more, and let me know -- are you looking forward to getting App Store apps that have the physics and particle effects of iOS 7?

Update: Corrected to remove the conflation between UIKit dynamics, which will be used for standard app elements, and Sprite Kit, which focuses on games (though both are apparently based on the same underlying physics).

    

Improved multiple monitor support in OS X Mavericks; who's going to use it? [Poll]

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 02:17 PM PDT

Multiple monitor support is being improved for OS X Mavericks, but just who is going to make use of it? Currently, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion will allow you to use multiple monitors, but things get ugly when you go full screen on an app and all you get everywhere else is linen. So, Apple is improving on how OS X handles multiple displays with Mavericks.

The linen effect in Mountain Lion is ugly — unless you like linen — and completely impractical. After all, why wouldn't you want to go full screen on something you're working on? For me, it's one of the main reasons I don't use it currently; I actually have a second Mac hooked up to an external monitor, so I just use that instead. Mavericks promises to fix this with proper full screen support for each display you're working on. There's no longer a master display and a secondary display, wherever you're working you can have a menu bar and the dock, multiple apps on any display, even use AirPlay to your Apple TV to turn your HDTV into another display for your Mac. Sounds great.

But, at the same time, it also sounds a lot like a power user feature. The sort of person who really needs a multiple display set up likely already has one. But, Mavericks could make it easier on them to set up. The thing is though, with this added functionality, will any new, perhaps more casual users start to use it? That's where you guys come in. We want to know how many of you plan on using this enhanced capability in OS X Mavericks when it lands later this year. As ever, drop a vote in the poll up top, and share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

    

Mr. Reader for iPad Updated: Another Good Google Reader Replacement

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 12:34 PM PDT

Mr Reader iPad app

The Mr. Reader RSS app for iPad was updated this week, to Version 2.0. The big news in this update is that the app now has available several good options for replacing Google Reader as the sync engine for RSS feeds.

Google Reader is going to be closed down for good by Google in just a few days, on July 1 – so all of us who use RSS to follow our favorite sites and keep up with news need to find good alternative solutions and apps now.

Mr. Reader is a popular and feature-rich RSS app so it's great to see that it now offers a number of options to replace Google Reader. These are BazQux Reader, Feedbin, FeedHQ, Feedly, Feed Wrangler and Fever.

I'm especially glad to see Feedly on the list, as it has become my go-to Google Reader replacement up to now. I reinstalled Mr. Reader earlier today and was happy to say that it quickly imported all my subscriptions and starred items from...

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ZEN & TECH 54: Change aversion

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 10:47 AM PDT

Windows 8 made us want our Start button back. iOS 7 caused icon strife. BlackBerry 10 was a huge departure. Going from TouchWiz to Sense can be stressful. And that's just technology! Imagine changing jobs, partners, and places in life! Georgia and Rene discuss the challenges of change!

Hosts

Disclaimer

While Georgia is a therapist, she's not YOUR therapist. Everything said or implied on this show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. And shouldn't be taken in any way as a replacement for proper, professional care.

Credits

Music is Peace on Earth by wellman.

Thanks everyone, you're the best community on the web and we love having you with us!

    


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Newsblur will look after your RSS long after Google has said goodbye

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 10:38 AM PDT

In rounding up the possible go-to RSS services after Google Reader closes its doors, it seems one slipped our attention; Newsblur. On the face of it, Newsblur looks to offer a similarly solid product to some other RSS services, and comes with the option of a paid, premium account to access the full range of features. The recommendation for Newsblur actually came from iMore community member Ben Pike, who particularly likes the "training" aspect of Newsblur:

I REALLY dig their "Intelligence Trainer" which allows you to favorite specific authors on blogs, specific tags, or keywords in headlines and then only look at THOSE sites - essentially it's filters.

For example - I like to know when my fav Apple blogs mention "Google" or "Gmail" or "update" and on the other side when my fav Android sites mention "update" or "Cyanogenmod" or "Gmail" etc... I also use it on a music blog I follow to filter down on artists I like that way I can get a quick glance at stories I'm more likely to care about.

So, I went and took a look at Newsblur and came away pleasantly surprised. As with many other RSS providers, Newsblur will import all your feeds from Google Reader on your behalf, preserving all the folders you've set up along the way. A free account will let you sign up to a limited number of feeds, so if you're a heavy user the $24 a year subscription for a premium account is something you'll need to look at.

The training aspect of Newsblur is an interesting tool to help you sort the wheat from the chaff. By identifying key tags as thumbs up and thumbs down, Newsblur will aim to hide things you're less interested in, while highlighting the thumbs up content; the stuff you've told it you want to read, basically.

The web app is decent enough, with plenty of options for customizing your experience, and of course all the premium, power tools are there at your disposal. Reading wise, Newsblur gives you real-time RSS updates, and the ability to read the content as it was meant to be, in its original form. Beyond getting everything set up, I doubt i'll use it again on my Mac, because there's a much better option; ReadKit.

ReadKit is available in the Mac App Store for $4.99, and besides Newsblur will also pull in your content from Pocket, Readability, Instapaper, Feedbin, Feed Wrangler and more besides. It's very clean, has an essence of Reeder about the Interface, and is a very pleasurable way to read on your Mac.

Over on the iPhone and iPad, Newsblur has an official app, which mimics to a large extent the overall design of the web app. Instantly recognizable, it looks great on both the iPhone and the iPad, but the larger screen of the iPad is definitely a winner.

So, better late than never, Newsblur is another great way to carry on your RSS needs after July 1. If, like Ben Pike you're a Newsblur fan, drop into the comments and tell us why!

    

Happy Birthday to 2 Great Services: Evernote and Google+

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 09:55 AM PDT

Google Plus and Evernote

This week marks the birthday of two great services that I love and use heavily on my iPad and elsewhere: Evernote and Google+.

Evernote has been a stalwart for me since back in 2008 – on the iPhone and Mac, clipping from the web, and just about anywhere I've needed it. To say it's a powerful and feature-packed notes app is still not coming close to doing it justice. I've seen Evernote spoken about as a 'second brain' sort of service and I have gotten that sort of benefit from it over the years. It remains a fixture for me across all my devices and is still constantly improving and adding features.

Google+ is only two years old, and it feels like that time has flown by, as they say. I was lucky enough to get an invite from +Louis Gray on the first night the beta became open to invites and I've been enjoying the heck out of Google+ ever since.

Yes, I've read all the...

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Apple tweaks Purchased tab in iPad App Store, now lets you view purchased apps alphabetically

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 10:08 AM PDT

Apple tweaks Purchased tab in iPad App Store, now lets you view purchased apps alphabetically

Apple recently made a small change to the Purchased tab in the App Store on the iPad, allowing users to view their purchased apps not just chronologically, but alphabetically.

Select any given letter from the left-hand side of the Purchased tab to find the results you're looking for. Tap the clock above the letter "A" in order to switch back to a chronological view of all of your apps. Viewing items alphabetically still allows you to see both all of your apps, or just those that are not on your iPad.

The old way was a huge pain, the new way much better. Let's hope this is the kind of thing Apple keeps improving.

Thanks: Balazs

Update: Looks like it happened a couple weeks ago, according to iDB

    

Strange Flavour offers sneak preview of new iOS games

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 09:56 AM PDT

Aaron Fothergill is a veteran Mac game programmer who turned his attention to iOS as soon as Apple let him. The result is some of the biggest hits published by legendary game maker Freeverse, which has since been acquired by Ngmoco (which itself was acquired by Japanese publisher DeNA). Fothergill's company Strange Flavour treks on, however, now as developer and publisher of its own unique content on iOS. It has a fun slot car racing game called Slotz Racer which just got a major overhaul, and is working on new games including Apple Dash - which features parallax moving backgrounds similar to iOS 7 - and Any Landing, a fun game that involves crashing airplanes. He recently gave us a sneak peek at WWDC.

    

Borderlands 2 updated for PC, breaks Mac multiplayer compatibility

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 09:37 AM PDT

Borderlands 2 updated for PC, breaks Mac/PC multiplay

Gearbox has updated Borderlands 2 for Windows. Unfortunately, the update breaks multiplayer compatibility with the Mac version, which is published and maintained by Aspyr Media.

We pinged Aspyr Media to find out what's going on, and here's their statement:

"The Borderlands 2 update released on June 26, 2013 for the PC will cause an out of sync [error] with the Mac version of the game. We are working tirelessly to ensure the Mac version is caught up with the PC with this new update, but please be aware that the Mac and PC versions will be out of sync for a very short time, disabling cross platform play. We hope to be back in sync as soon as possible. Any questions please contact us at http://support.aspyr.com and log a ticket for one of our agents!"

    

Sprinkle for iPhone and iPad review: Fight fires and save villages but don't run out of water first!

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 09:10 AM PDT

Sprinkle for iPhone and iPad review: Fight fires and save villages but don't run out of water first!

Sprinkle for iPhone and iPad is a great casual puzzler in which you'll control a water cannon in order to distinguish fires and save villages. The trick is that you've only got so much water and obstacles stand in the way of you and several fires. You'll have to use the water in order to move objects out of the way or cascade water on top of them in order to splash it up where you need it.

Sprinkle takes place on Titan, a moon of Saturn. Its inhabitants all live in straw houses and when space tourists crash through Saturn's rings, it sends asteroids crashing into Titan, setting blazing fires. The Titan dwellers built a huge water cannon in order to fight the flames. That's where you come in.

In order to play Sprinkle you'll use the water cannon the Titans built to extinguish all the fires. You can move your cannon up and down by tapping and dragging it or drag your finger up and down anywhere on the screen to adjust the angle in which water comes out. As you progress through the levels of Sprinkle, you'll notice that the difficulty level of extinguishing fires increases. You'll have to activate switches, move objects out of the way with a stream of water, and even use them in order to gain leverage and bounce water off of them to where you need it to be.

You only have a certain amount of water in each level in order to complete it so you'll have to use it sparingly and make sure that you're getting it where it needs to be. If you run out of water, you'll fail the level and have to start over again.

The good

  • Great water physics that is not only realistic, but will keep you challenged throughout several of the harder levels
  • Cute characters and an even cuter story line
  • Easy game play controls makes Sprinkle fun for kids and even big kids of all ages

The bad

  • No complaints

The bottom line

Sprinkle is an insanely fun and even cuter casual game that will keep the kids, or yourself, busy combatting fires for hours. If you are a fan of games like Where's My Mickey?, Sprinkle will be right up your alley.

    

AOL’s New iPad App: Back to the Future?

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 08:52 AM PDT

AOL Mail New Video

AOL released a new iPad app yesterday – it's catchy title is AOL: Mail, News, Weather & Video. The App Store description promises that 'AOL puts the online world at your fingertips'. Here's a bit more of its App Store description:

Stay in the know with access to up-to-the-minute news, top videos and impactful stories from the editors of AOL.com. Plus, gain quick and easy access to your AOL Mail inbox, now optimized for iPad.
Features:
• Discover the latest stories and videos in an engaging news stream format
• Connect and share via AOL Mail, Facebook and Twitter
• Choose the news categories that matter most to you by customizing your stream
• Save articles and videos to read, watch and share at your leisure
• Delight in the featured news stream as it reflects your personal news interests over time

I feel a little like Marty McFly when I read...

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Talk Mobile Apps Week Recap: The best things you said

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 08:49 AM PDT

While the first week of Talk Mobile 2013 was all about mobile gaming, in the second topic we tackled broader issues with apps, developers, and app stores. As with last week, we're working to move past the debates over features and specs and spark a discussion on what really matters: how these advanced devices have actually impacted our lives.

We're going to continue to tweak the Talk Mobile formula as we go, and your feedback is always welcome as we work to make Talk Mobile the best that it can possibly be. So feel free to sound off in the comments about what you think of Talk Mobile so far.

As with our first week's recap, we want to focus on the discussion that was generated, because that's really what we're after here. We've seen a lot of great comments spurring even better conversations about what's great and not so great about apps today, and we'd like to take a few minutes to highlight the best.

    

Deal of the Day: 36% off the Incipio Frequency Semi Rigid Soft Shell Case for iPhone 5

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 07:24 AM PDT

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Offering full wrap-around protection, the FREQUENCY case by Incipio is crafted with shock-absorbing polymer. Designed with a transparent response deco pattern, the music influenced case offers a smooth, unique and protective design for your iPhone 5. Available in black, pink, purple, teal and gray.

List Price: $24.99     Today Only: $16.00

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BlackBerry still promising BBM for iOS before the end of the summer

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 06:00 AM PDT

We're still getting asked this all the time, so just in case you were wondering, BBM — aka BlackBerry Messenger — is still coming to iOS, and it'll be with us by the end of the summer. BlackBerry CEO, Thorsten Heins, used this mornings earnings call to let us know, but didn't provide any other, more specific details. And, since we're only just at the beginning of summer, it's not likely its just around the corner. Ah, well. Who's waiting, oh so patiently, for BBM?

More: CrackBerry earnings call live blog

    

OS X Mavericks Finder tabs and tags de-clutters and organizes your Mac

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 04:53 AM PDT

Following the early previews of OS X Mavericks delivered by select media outlets, we're starting to see them broken down a little further and the latest covers the tabs and tags feature in Finder. Finder tabs takes cues from the web browser by combining many finder windows into one. Macworld's Jason Snell takes us through it:

"Each tab behaves like its own Finder window; you can adjust the view settings of each one accordingly, so one tab can show an icon view, another a list view, and so on."

And, with tags, it works just as you might expect it to. Adding a tag to a file means you can group your stuff together however you like, and then find it all by tag. It can be likened to the way we tag articles here on iMore, or at any of the Mobile Nations sites:

"Borrowed from the world of blogging and social networking, tags form a simple, arbitrary method of categorizing information. On a blog, you might add a bunch of tags to every post to indicate its subject matter. This has the benefit of letting users quickly find all the blog posts about a particular subject."

It's a great in-depth read on how tabs and tags operates, and to the right user could add significantly to their workflow. As Snell points out, it's unlikely that casual users will ever pull off the cmd+click operation to bring up a new Finder tab, and that's just fine. I'm pretty sure tabs and tags are going to help get a better handle of the mess that is my Mac, what say the rest of you?

Source: Macworld

    

Apple pushes Camera RAW update to support new Panasonic Lumix cameras

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 04:04 AM PDT

Apple is this morning pushing out all a small update to the Digital Camera RAW Compatibility that adds support for Panasonic's newest Lumix cameras in iPhoto and Aperture 3. As of version 4.07, RAW image files from the Lumix G6 and the Lumix GF6 are supported by OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. The Sony Alpha SLT-A58 is also included, and to grab the update for yourselves head into the Mac App Store now or check the Software Update menu.

Source: Apple

    
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