Macgasm

Double Fine, the company behind such beloved games as Psychonauts and Brütal Legend, has decided to crowd source their funding of a brand new adventure game through Kickstarter. Of course, if any company can make a fantastic adventure game, it will be Double Fine. Tim Schafer, the founder of Double Fine, is known for heading up production of Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango at Lucas Arts. Working with Tim is Ron Gilbert. Gilbert, as many of you know, pretty much invented the genre of adventure games with Maniac Mansion as well as the Monkey Island series.

In their video, Schafer makes it clear that they need $300,000 USD for game development and $100,000 USD for filming of their documentary series. Within eight hours of going live on Kickstarter, they reached their goal. As of 12:30 PM Eastern today, they are over $700,000 USD with no sign of slowing down. Clearly, there is a substantial market for this type of game, and only Double Fine, headed up by the pioneers of the genre, have the balls to make it happen.

Now comes the most important question for us. Will there be an OS X and iOS version of this game? Well, luckily that is covered in their Q&A.

Being that they are in their first day of a total of thirty-three, and they are on track to double their goal by the end of the day, it is almost guaranteed that we’ll see OS X and iOS versions of this game. Want to make sure that happens? Well, don’t hesitate to chip in by backing their Kickstarter program. Your money will help make this happen.

Image Source: Wikipedia

By snooping around a bit, the folks at Your Daily Mac have found some evidence that March 9th might be the planned launch for iOS 5.1.

While this is far from definitive, iOS 5.1 has been in development for quite some time, so a March 9th target isn’t exactly controversial or hard to believe. However, the proposed timing of this release coincides with the assumed iPad 3 launch in early March. It isn’t proof, but the facts fit the theory. Keep in mind, all of this is just conjecture. For all we know, the iPad 3 won’t come until later in the year, and iOS 5.1 will be delayed. This is worth keeping an eye on, but we won’t be placing any bets.

What do you think? Are we going to see iOS 5.1 right along side the next iPad? Are we going to see any surprises in the OS that isn’t in the beta similar to Siri in iOS 5? Sound off in the comment section with your thoughts and theories. Better yet, hit us up on twitter. Our username is @macgasm. We’re open to alternate timelines, so don’t hesitate to provide some new evidence.

Source: Your Daily Mac

In a recent well-thought out article about the iOS-ification of OS X, Frederico Viticci states, “This transition obviously started years ago, and in retrospect it’s hard to dig up the very first example of iOS-ification on the Mac.”

The fingerprints of iOS encroaching on OS X may be more tangible than realized. As I’ve watched Apple — in particular its video offerings — over the years, it occured to me sometime last year that if you want to know where Apple is taking OS X with regard to iOS, here’s a sure bet: Watch iLife.

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Yesterday the news circulated faster than a bunk iPhone 5 rumor on a slow news day, Path, the sexy-popular social network for the iPhone, was automatically uploading your contacts to their servers. Today, Path CEO, Dave Morin, took to the web to post an apology and explain to the masses why things were happening the way they were. In the post, titled We are sorry, Morin states:

There’s doing it, and then there’s doing it right. It’s pretty clear that Dave Morin immediately realized Path’s misstep and took immediate action to clean up the security concerns that its users had with the company storing contacts. Starting today, in version 2.0.6, users are now being asked if they would like to upload contacts to the company’s servers. The process is now opt-in, not automagically uploaded behind your back. It’s a small win, but a win nonetheless for iPhone users.

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The Tapbots gang has rolled out version 2.0 of their popular Twitter client. Tweetbot has received a huge update today, including some new timeline features, support for readability so you can avoid advertisements and poor design on your favorite blogs, as well as all around design enhancements (DMs, image thumbnails, etc).

We’re going to let you discover the rest of the update goodness on your own.

The app update is free for anyone who has purchased the original Tweetbot, so you don’t have to worry about paying an additional couple of dollars to gain access to the update.

Tweetbot is easily my favorite Twitter app for the iPhone, and even more so now that Twitter decided to completely bastardize its own offerings earlier this year. Normally we’d suggest trying out a free alternative for Twitter, like the free Twitterific option, but Tweetbot is easily worth the $2.99 on the App Store. I paid the fee, and I haven’t made a switch yet, which is highly unusual for me when it comes to iOS apps.

Quick Look At Some Updated Features

Quick Update: Tweetbot is now available for the iPad too… we’re putting it through the paces and we’ll have an update here for you when it’s ready.

Miniature iPhone speaker company Motz has created a nifty little wooden Apple logo-inspired speaker for your favorite iDevice. The speaker is 100% hand crafted, and contains a rechargeable Lithium Polymer battery so you can get some extra juice out of your music while you’re on the go.

The speaker lasts between 5 – 10 hours depending on how you’re using it. The speaker will set you back $55.00 and you can buy it on the Austrailian website ModLifeOnline.

To be honest, this probably won’t last too long on the market once Apple’s lawyers find it, so make sure you pick it up as fast as possible if you want it.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably realized that there’s been a lot of lawsuits being thrown around in the mobile arena over unapproved patent usage. Apple’s been on both ends of these lawsuits, obviously. However, it seems that Apple has decided that it’s time to lobby the European Union’s Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to get guidelines set up for Fair, Resonable, And Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) licensing of some of these patents in the mobile space.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Apple has gone on the record stating that, “the telecommunications industry lacks consistent licensing schemes for the many patents necessary to make mobile devices, and offered suggestions for setting appropriate royalty rates that all members would follow.” Long story short, Apple wants a fair and open approach to licensing technology that has become standard in the mobile telecommunications industry. Currently, it could become very difficult for competing companies to gain access to the necessary patent licenses to release a mobile phone.

Apple wants the EU and ETSI to set clear rules about how patent licenses are negotiated, and to ensure that companies working on and developing standard-centric licenses agree to license patents under FRAND terms.

In the original article, it’s pretty clear that Apple, and more specifically Apple’s intellectual property head Bruce Watrous, is worried that the current system gives patent holders a huge advantage in negotiating patent licenses because competing products could be forced to remove products from the market place due to injunctions. Apple’s legal team wants injunctions to be abolished under FRAND terms.

The EU is currently investigating both Samsung and Motorola’s patent licensing practices for anti-competitive behaviour.

If you’re interested in reading up more on this topic, you can give the Wall Street Journal article a read, but sadly, it’s behind a paywall.

Sprint announced on Wednesday that it has sold 1.8 million iPhones during the first quarter in which the iPhone has been available on the network. Big news, but perhaps even bigger news is that 40 percent of all iPhone sales went to new customers on the Sprint network. That works out to being 720,000 new Sprint customers, just for carrying the iPhone on its network.

From the Washington Post:

If I was in the US, that unlimited data plan would be mighty enticing. It always blows my mind just how obvious it is that customers want the freedom of an unlimited plan, but carriers absolutely refuse to give it to them. I rarely use over 2GB on my data plan, and I’d still go for an unlimited option if it was available to me. The irony is that it’s not about the data being unlimited as much as it is about not wanting my carrier to clean out my bank account for going over once or twice a year.

If you’re interested in the ins and outs of the Sprint financial call, the company has posted a news release online for you to look through.