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May 21, 2012

Grant Brünner

Aspyr Discounting Games All Week, Get Prey for Three Bucks

If you’re looking for video games on the cheap, you’re in for a treat this week. Aspyr is discounting one game per day this entire week. Today’s game is Prey.

Wikipedia explains the game as follows:

The game’s story is focused on Cherokee Domasi “Tommy” Tawodi as he, his girlfriend, and grandfather are abducted aboard an alien spaceship known as The Sphere as it consumes material, both inanimate and living, from Earth in order to sustain itself. Tommy’s Cherokee past allows him to let his spirit roam freely at times, and gives Tommy an edge in his attempt to stop the Sphere.

If that sounds interesting, now is the perfect time to try it out on your Mac because you can grab it on the App Store for only $2.99 USD. Be quick, though. The sale is for today only. The good news is that a different Aspyr game will be on sale for $7.99 tomorrow, one for $4.99 on Wednesday, one for $2.99 on Thursday, and one for $9.99 on Friday. Each day, they’ll announce which game is on sale, so make sure you check back to find your daily deal.

If you’re interested in learning about all of the latest and greatest in OS X and iOS gaming, make sure to subscribe to our Gaming News RSS feed. You’ll always be up to date then.

May 21, 2012

Corey Tamas

How Do iPhone Chargers Work?

Ever wonder what’s under the hood of the humble, ubiquitous iPhone charger? Okay, me neither… but the little device that keeps your precious iPhone, iPad or iPod chugging has a bit more to it than you might think. Ken Shiriff did a pretty extensive breakdown of the little white cube and it’s umbilical cord attachment and discovered some interesting stuff, such as how incredibly complex the construction of this seemingly simple device is and (a little less surprising) how much Apple makes off of every unit sold:

I was surprised to realize how enormous Apple’s profit margins must be on these chargers. These chargers sell for about $30 (if not counterfeit), but that must be almost all profit. Samsung sells a very similar cube charger for about $6-$10, which I also disassembled (and will write up details later). The Apple charger is higher quality and I estimate has about a dollar’s worth of additional components inside. But it sells for $20 more.

Though Shiriff is taken aback by Apple’s profit on these devices, he’s also very clear about how the Apple chargers are a cut above knock-offs, saying “Apple went to extra effort to provide higher quality and safety than other name-brand chargers, but this quality comes at a high cost.”

Our philosophy on the high cost is simply this: When a knockoff charger costs a third as much as the Apple product and yet shatters, shorts out, falls apart or simply fails to work when you need it… did you really save yourself something of value by keeping $20 in your pocket?

Source: Ken Shirrif’s Blog
Via: TUAW

May 21, 2012

Corey Tamas

Fix Your Stupid Facebook Mistakes

There are some mistakes you make on Facebook that, frankly, nobody but your psychiatrist can help you with… but the other mistakes? There might be some hope. The average Facebook user arrives without training or savvy as to how the site works or what the pitfalls are. We’ve all seen the novice who says “yes” to every single app, accepts every friend request, joins every group and then posts status updates about how his/her Facebook is out of control. Poor n00bs.

Lifehacker has taken a look at ways to get your Facebook experience under control and, more importantly, to put an end to our dumb mistakes. From auditing your approved apps to filtering your news feeds to managing your privacy settings, you could be having a better Facebook experience overall and greatly improving the signal to noise ratio. In fact, Lifehacker even goes so far as to help you pull the plug if you need to. Kinda:

You can quit Facebook without actually quitting Facebook, effectively making it a lot less distracting. This means disabling a lot of features and locking down your privacy settings (as we’ve previously discussed). If that’s too much for you, start tracking the time you spend online and see when you use Facebook the most. Doing so can help you reclaim your time and start using it more effectively. This way you can still use Facebook, but you can avoid it at the times it hurts your productivity the most. If you can pull that off, you’ll get the best of both worlds.

Facebook may not make up the entire web, but it’s the backbone of many core services and connections for countless sites and resources. Hey, you may say you don’t have the time to sit around streamlining your Facebook experience, but you may want to ask yourself if you have the time not to.

Source: Lifehacker

May 21, 2012

Grant Brünner

See Where You’re Plugging With CordLite

When you’re in a dark or poorly lit room, plugging in your phone is a hassle. You feel around for the slot, and then you try jamming it in the wrong way. Small inconveniences add up, and there is no reason to keep banging your head against the wall if there is a clever solution. That’s why this Kickstarter project is clever as hell.

CordLite looks like your everyday standard 30-pin dock connector for your iOS device of choice, but when you pick it up, it starts to glow. That’s right — it is touch sensitive. Pick it up, find the slot, plug it in. You don’t have to turn it on or off. “It just works.”

Scrap Pile Labs, the designers of CordLite, are based out of Florida, and they’re looking for a minimum funding of $70,000 USD. As of writing, they are just under the $30,000 mark with 36 days to go. If you’re interested in ordering a CordLite of your very own, all you have to do is back the project for $30 USD or more. US shipping is free, but you’re going to need to add $10 USD for everywhere else. Even better, you can pick between black or white plastic to match your device. Maybe pick up a white one for you and a black one for your significant other.

For those of you who are interested in this technology for other devices, the developers are working on a MicroUSB version, but it is Apple-only for the time being. Continue reading…

May 21, 2012

Corey Tamas

App Store “Sandbox” Deadline Is June 1. Really And Truly.

Apple has re-iterated through an email sent to developers this past Friday that yes, June 1 is the start date for properly “sandboxed” Mac App Store app submissions. Here’s the word from Apple, as reported by MacStories:

As a reminder, the deadline for sandboxing your apps on the Mac App Store is June 1. We’ve made the process easier with new sandboxing entitlements and APIs now available in OS X 10.7.3 or later and Xcode 4.3.2.

If you have an existing app on the Mac App Store that is not sandboxed, you may still submit bug fix updates after June 1. If you have technical issues that prevent you from sandboxing your app by June 1, let us know.

For those of you who aren’t aware, the process of sandboxing is a new direction for the MAS and is more than a little controversial: An app that’s sandboxed will have limited ability to interact and use other apps. This is intended to limit the ability of malware to access other programs and wreak havoc upon the user. It’s not an unreasonable concern, either: How many Windows viruses enter through the browser and then use Outlook to do their damage? Apple has decided the Mac will have none of that and has said that after June 1 only sandboxed apps will be accepted to the Mac App Store.

The problem, however, is that apps can call upon other apps for much-needed help from which the user greatly benefits. Apps such as TextExpander or Dropbox use inter-app or background functionality to deliver their features to the user, and so obviously the sandboxing will greatly diminish their ability to work as intended. Developers aren’t super crazy about this. Luckily, a system of “entitlements” is created for apps to establish which other apps they need access to, and those entitlements are approved by Apple. So it’s not as if sandboxed apps are unable to access other apps. It’s just that they can’t do it without a “license”, so to speak.

It’s imporant to note that one does not have to acquire apps from the Mac App Store. As it has always been, anyone can download any app they like from anywhere on the web or install via CD and run it (in fact, for most apps, you still have to). The twist comes from the fact that Mac developers who don’t distribute their apps via the Mac App Store make 20 percent of those who do. This incentive catches developers in a bad place where they may have to choose between making the app they want to make or being able to make rent.

Source: MacStories

May 21, 2012

Corey Tamas

Instacast’s Upgrade Makes Some Users Pay Twice

Complaints have been surfacing about Instacast’s dubious suspicious system, and for good reason: it makes some users pay for the product twice. Here’s how it works: The app was originally $2.99 (and lots of people bought it). Now, the new version of the app is merely $0.99, but if you want certain features which were free in the first version (such as re-ordering podcasts) you have to use an in-app purchase to acquire them. Here’s what rubs people fur backwards: If you bought Instacast at $2.99 and then you update to the newer version, you lose those features and have to re-purchase them. The move has garnered Instacast some one-star reviews and a lot of nasty comments on the App Store and, to be blunt, deservedly so.

TUAW took a look at Instacast’s “upgrade” and made a few comments of their own. In particular, they take some time to whittle down all the extremely weak counter-arguments they could think of, such as “it’s not that much money” (does that mean they’re entitled to take it?), “support the devs” (why does someone who bought the app early have to support them twice?), and the perennial favorite: “it’s Apple’s fault”… and they’re somewhat inclined to agree:

Imagine you’re GadgetSoft and you’ve just released WidgetThing v1.0 to great acclaim. All ten of its main features are popular. You have some great ideas for how to expand and improve it, but it’s going to take a good chunk of time and effort to do so. At the end of that effort, you’ll be able to release WidgetThing v2.0 with five new features in only one of two ways: as an in-place upgrade, meaning all your existing customers get it for free. Or as an entirely new app, in which case your existing customers have to pay all over again.

TUAW goes on to explain that Apple doesn’t allow paid upgrades, but what irks us isn’t the question of whether developers should be paid for their hard work; it’s that users are being asked to buy features they’ve already paid for. Paid upgrades? Fine. Charge for new features? Fine. Raise the price of the original app because a developer’s mortgage is overdue? Fine. But don’t ask the consumer to pay for something they already paid for. That’s a cheap trick.

Source: TUAW

May 20, 2012

Corey Tamas

Diablo III: What Does Everyone Think So Far?

Last week, Blizzard Entertainment launched the hotly-anticipated and long-awaited third instalment of the Diablo series: Diablo III. 12 years since the last Diablo release (Diablo II in 2000), the game hit the market with a resounding boom, and it was clearly number one on gamers’ minds. But how did the critics take it? Pundits can be cruel and cold and sometimes even unfair in their damning of a game that doesn’t blow their doors off on first blush.

GamesIndustry.biz took a look at what people were saying on the web about the magnum opus, and not everyone would have predicted the overflowingly positive response. Here’s a taste of what game blog Quater to Three’s Tom Chick had to say:

“Now that Diablo III is out, it turns out Blizzard was right and I was wrong,” he says.”I love it when a developer does this. I love it when a developer has the confidence, experience, vision, competence, and balls to not listen to us.”

VideoGamer’s Martin Gaston…

“For erstwhile aficionados, this is a game that begets multiple playthroughs, as characters advance through Normal, Nightmare, Hell and (the new) Inferno difficulties. In this sense the game becomes a fairground ride, as players run back to the front of the game for another go, and Blizzard’s design focus is clearly to welcome back its players time and time again with open arms.”

While not every review is an unqualified thumbs-up, it seems that the overall impression is a good one. It’s equally amazing how good the will towards Diablo III is, considering the stumbling server issues which plagued opening day (and which are reportedly still an issue). Though even Blizzard wasn’t ready for the thronging hordes of gamers waving their cash to get into the Diablo III experience, but all appears to thankfully be forgiven.

(Sorta)

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

May 20, 2012

Corey Tamas

IPO Pumps Facebook Up To Be Bigger Than McDonald’s

If you were around last week you may have heard about a little website called Facebook having it’s Initial Public Offering. Well, after the dust settled, it turns out that little website called Facebook is pretty big. Bigger than a little restaurant called McDonald’s.

Facebook’s first day as a publicly traded company saw them worth a whopping $105.19B, which is roughly as much as Pepsi. This put them ahead of McDonald’s (worth $91B), Amazon ($96B), Disney ($78B), VISA ($92B) and Volkswagon ($70B). They’re still lagging behind some of the biggest juggernauts in the tech industry, such as Apple ($496B), Microsoft ($246B), or Google ($196B) and some non-techies such as Coca-Cola ($167B) or Wal-Mart ($212B). It is, however, the largest IPO in history, and Facebook is clearly not hurting for cash at the moment, despite a small delay in entering the market: Facebook (FB) was supposed to enter the NASDAQ at 11 AM on May 18, but there was a huge overload on the systems which reportedly caused a delay of 30 minutes. Some analysts are saying this put a dent in Facebook’s IPO results. Mark Zuckerberg could not be reached for comment, as he was busy lighting fire to thousand dollar bills and throwing them into his swimming pool made of gold.

Source: Mashable