Ubisoft seems to be bringing Christmas a little early to iOS gaming fans as they announce plenty of titles on the way for iPhone and iPad: Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars, Assassin’s Creed: Recollection, Prince of Persia, Assassin’s Creed: Rearmed, Michael Jackson: The Experience as well as some lesser-known titles such as Rabbids Go HD and Rabbids Go Phone Again, and a new title called Monster Burner.
October 31, 2011
Here’s a classic Apple logo from Martin Langelier.
October 31, 2011
Yes, it’s true. Today is Halloween, and when you think of geeky Halloween costumes, you think of kids, or adults, dressing up as Albert Einstein, a nerd with glasses held together by tape, or just Bill Gates. When you think of geeky Apple costumes, you think of dressing up as a Mac or Steve Jobs himself, right? Well NASA employee Mark Rober took things a bit further. By using two iPads, he made a creepy, but cool illusion that will only cost you $1,000 (plus tax).
Here is where it gets clever. Setup a FaceTime call between the two iPads and you’re set! Now your friends can see right through you!
P.S. Make sure you have a Wi-Fi connection or you’ll just look stupid. Have fun!
October 31, 2011
Where is that new Mac Pro model we’ve all been waiting for? It was supposed to be smaller and rack-mountable. As it turns out, it may be neither of those things. In fact, the Mac Pro may not exist for much longer.
From AppleInsider:
The consensus among sales executives for the Cupertino-based company was that the Mac Pro’s days — at least in its current form — were inevitably numbered. In particular, internal discussions were said to focus around the fact that sales of the high-end workstations to both consumers and enterprises have dropped off so considerably that the Mac Pro is no longer a particularly profitable operation for Apple.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Mac Pro ended up being discontinued. I own one currently, and love it, but it’s cumbersome and gives off enough heat to heat my entire office in the dead of a Canadian winter. I purchased it because of it’s expandability, but clearly I was kidding myself. The 2009 Mac Pro that I have has only been upgraded once, this year, with new hard drives, and extra RAM. It’s not a consumer level machine, and the consumers who were purchasing them seem to be doing just fine with the latest iMac and MacBook Pro.
October 31, 2011
According to anonymous tipsters, Apple could be working on bringing AirPlay mirroring and iMessages to the Mac in the upcoming months. 9to5 Mac, while stating that the project may not see the light of day, has indicated that “they are definitely on the table for release in future versions of OS X Lion.”
October 31, 2011
In this week’s episode of our video podcast (not yet on the site, but available on YouTube) we looked at the Glif and the PadPivot, both fairly popular Kickstarter projects that seemed to explode over night. Both are great in theory, but we were pretty disappointed in the PadPivot. Their PR team, or someone claiming to be them in our YouTube comments, left us a message falsely accusing us of a malicious review because they hadn’t sent us a product to review for free.
A screenshot of their comment to us on this video:
To that I say, pardon?
In an attempt to clarify their claims that they denied us a review model, and that we paid for one instead, thereby eliciting a negative review, here’s a copy of our back and forth emails, which clearly illustrates how this played out:
Josh to Rocket Fish: “We’d love to test one out. :)”
Chelsea: “Hi Joshua – thanks for the follow up. I’m out on vacation beginning tomorrow, but my colleague Richard <removed last name> (cc’d here) can ship a sample to you next week. Best, -Chelsea”
Richard: “Hi Joshua – Sorry for my delayed response. We’d love to get you a unit shipped out this week. Can you confirm for me what the accurate address is to direct the shipment? Let me know if you have any questions or concerns as well. Best, Richard
Josh to Richard: *Sends Address*
Richard to Josh: Thanks, Joshua. Just got this out and it should arrive by early next Monday. I’ll check in then to make sure it arrived, but let me know if you have any questions or concerns in the interim. Best,Richard”
So here’s our thoughts on this and how it played out. We got a PR message for the PadPivot, we asked them if we could review it, and they shipped us a review unit. No review request was ever denied, ever.
Falsely accusing us of maliciously writing a review because you refused us a unit to review, despite the truth being the exact opposite of what you claim, is pretty low and pathetic. Moving forward we will no longer be reviewing any of your products, nor will we be looking at any products from Rocketfish.
Your product sucked and we told the world. Don’t like it? Stop making shitty products.
October 31, 2011
Elements 2 has been updated to version 2.1, and now includes syncing to iCloud. All settings, appearance preferences and scratchpad contents will be synced over iCloud to your other iOS devices. Elements 2.1 now also includes the ability to copy HTML to your clipboard from the Markdown preview, making it easier to use third party applications like WordPress.
Given the iCloud support, Elements now also requires iOS 5 to run version 2.1.
For those of you not using Elements, the application is a much-loved text editor from Second Gear. The application is also universal, clean, and distraction free.
October 31, 2011
A couple of days ago we posted about some quick tweaks to help you get the most out of your iPhone 4S battery. I didn’t think it would matter much at the time, but it turns out those tweaks we mentioned really do help with the battery. Pre-tweakage, we got about a full workday’s worth of battery life, taking the iPhone 4S off the dock at 8 AM and then having to place it back on the dock around 11 PM on a daily basis. That norm pretty much continued, plus or minus an hour, depending on usage patterns, and without the implementation of the tweaks we mentioned.
After implementing the tweaks, we went from about a 15 hour day (including idle time) to a 38 hour and 17 minute day. To be fair, that was over the course of a weekend, and usage time was only 6 hours and 17 minutes of that total. That being said, it was a huge increase in battery life.
Long story short, the point we want to emphasize is that Location Services really does affect your batteries lifespan. By tweaking the location settings to better match your needs, you’ll be able to greatly increase the amount of time between recharge sessions. For instance, I don’t use traffic information, so I turned that off in my settings.
If you’re worried about iPhone 4S battery problems, and you’re on the fence about still picking one up, I’d recommend against waiting. The battery likely isn’t the problem in most cases. The problem seems to be way too many location based applications running at once. Turning some of them off, based on need, certainly helped me get through the day without worrying about running out of juice, and it’ll help you too.
If you want more info on what we did, you can check out our recommendations here.
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October 31, 2011
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