Year: 2014

Zagg offers 40% off their Sparq portable battery pack

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 24, 2016

For the next 48 hours, Zagg is having a sale on its line of portable battery packs, offering 40% off the Sparq, an iPhone backup battery that I've actually reviewed a while ago. The Sparq comes in two different flavor. The ZAGGsparq 1220 will give you one extra charge and comes will only one USB port, while the ZAGGsparq 3100 will give you no less than two extra charges for your iPhone and comes with two USB ports allowing you to charge two devices at the same time.

Both variations have been heavily discounted by 40%, significantly reducing the price to only $23.99 for the Spar 1220 and $41.99 for the Sparq 3100.

Carousel by Dropbox gains native iPad UI, sharing to Instagram and WhatsApp and web app

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 29, 2018

Released in April of 2014, Carousel is a great app to enjoy all your photos stored in Dropbox, but I've always resented that it didn't have a native interface on the iPad. The Dropbox-owned software has received a refresh Thursday, at last adding the native interface on Apple's tablets.

In addition, Carousel now lets you share images from your Dropbox to Facebook-owner Instagram mobile photography service and WhatsApp mobile messaging platform. And as a nice bonus, the team has thrown in a compelling Carousel web app.

Carousel is available free in the App Store.

America First Credit Union’s Visa cards now accepted in Apple Pay

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 9, 2017

America First Credit Union said in a media release Thursday that cardholders can now use its America First Visa credit and debit cards with Apple Pay. In addition, as explained in a FAQ outlining the service, customers can also use their Visa Business credit and debit cards with Apple's mobile payment service.

Apple Pay is accepted at more than 220,000 retailers and does not require any special merchant equipment aside from a standard NFC-enabled terminal.

Kingdom Rush Origins arrives to App Store

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 4, 2017

There goes my productivity: Kingdom Rush Origins for the iPhone and Kingdom Rush Origins HD for the iPad have been released in the App Store today priced at $2.99 and $4.99, respectively.

Created by Ironhide Game Studio, Kingdom Rush Origins is a prequel to both the original Kingdom Rush game and the sequel titled Kingdom Rush Frontiers.

Once again, the player will be tasked with defending mystical lands from sea serpents, Gnoll tribes, enchanted creatures and twilight elves and commanding an arsenal of “unique towers, epic heroes and mighty powers that will help you crush your foes and save the world once again.”

The game features a bunch of new levels and spells, eight new special towers, thirty new enemies, nine new heroes, more than seventy achievements, three difficulty modes and more.

Download Things for iPhone and iPad, Apple’s latest Free App of the Week

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 12, 2018

Things for the iPhone and iPad, the popular task management application by Cultured Code, is now available at no cost in the App Store until next Thursday, courtesy of Apple's ongoing Free App of the Week promotion.

You're looking at a cool combined savings of $30 on both the iPhone and iPad edition of Things which normally sell for $9.99 and $19.99, respectively.

Things for Mac has received a nice discount to celebrate the promotion and can be now downloaded for $34.99 in the Mac App Store, 30 percent off its full price of $49.99.

Download Things for iPhone and iPad at no cost until next Thursday, November 28.

iPhone 6 Plus downsampling artifacts explained

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 4, 2017

With the iPhone 6 Plus, Apple took the unusual route of rendering apps at 3× scale into a backing store of 1,242-by-2,208 “logical” pixels which the GPU then scales down to the device's native full HD screen resolution of 1,920-by-1,080 pixels.

This is different from every other iOS device to date and required to simplify app development as developers must simply create two times crisper graphics assets for standard Retina screens and three times denser images to account for the new “Retina HD” screens of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

On the downside, the system down samples everything by approximately 13 percent to the native resolution so some unwanted artifacts do appear which degrade image quality slightly in certain situations.

iPhone cover glass maker Corning unveils two times tougher Gorilla Glass 4

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 28, 2019

Corning, a company that supplies Apple and many other device vendors with its chemically strengthened glass, on Thursday announced the fourth-generation Gorilla Glass which it says has been designed to be up to two times tougher against drops on rough surfaces than “any competitive cover glass design now in the market.”

The announcement comes at an interesting time for Apple in light of its failed experiment with sapphire maker GT Advanced Technology which led to GT's unexpected bankruptcy and an unused $1 billion manufacturing facility in Mesa, Arizona.

Although the California firm planned on protecting the 4.7 and 5.5-inch screens on the latest iPhone 6 devices with ultra-thin sheets of sapphire, the plan was scrapped following GT's failed attempts to ramp up production and meet Apple's exacting standards in terms of volume and yields.

Storyframes greetings card app comes right on time for the holidays

Lory Gil ∙ Updated January 23, 2018

I’ve been a fan of the Felt Cards app for iPad for years now. I use it to send thank you cards, birthday cards, and the occasional Halloween greeting to my more obsessed friends. The thing that makes the Felt Cards app so special is that you write your own words in your own handwriting inside the blank card, and then staff prints it and mails the physical copy by hand.

This week, the company launched a holiday-based picture card app on the iPhone called Felt Storyframes. Now, you can send personalized well wishes to all your friends and family, complete with pictures, decorative overlays, and your own handwritten notes.

Space Age: A Cosmic Adventure: an homage to traditional adventure games of 20 years ago

Lory Gil ∙ November 20, 2014

In the 1990s, point-and-click adventure games were really hitting their stride on desktop computers. It may have been the only time when there was a chance that PC gaming had the potential to overtake console gaming in popularity. Now mobile gaming is filling that spot.

Space Age: A Cosmic Adventure is a science fiction set quest in the 1970s about a group of space travelers that land on an alien planet. Your job is to help this story unfold by completing missions. We’ve got an in-depth game review of Space Age for your reading pleasure today.

Apple adds new data providers to enhance Maps business listings

Cody Lee ∙ Updated October 3, 2016

Apple has added 10 new companies to the list of data providers for its Maps app, according to Apple Maps Marketing. In a post, first spotted by 9to5Mac, the site says it was given the information by the Cupertino company itself in response to an inquiry.

The inquiry was in regards to submitting one of its clients with a few hundred locations to Apple Maps Connect. Apple replied, saying it's currently only accepting submissions from businesses with 1,000+ locations, but it could reach out to several firms.

Sony drops Steve Jobs biopic, Universal rumored to take over

Cody Lee ∙ November 19, 2014

Sony Pictures has dropped the highly-anticipated Steve Jobs biopic penned by Aaron Sorkin, according to Deadline. The outlet reports tonight that Sony has put the film in turnaround—meaning that another studio can purchase the movie.

It sounds like that studio is going to be Universal. Deadline's Mike Fleming Jr says he is hearing that the Comcast subsidiary is nearing an agreement, and the deal could close by tomorrow, meaning the project should lose little momentum.

New ‘Sync Solver’ app sends Fitbit data to Apple’s Health app

Cody Lee ∙ November 19, 2014

In October, Fitbit announced that it had no plans of integrating its activity trackers or software with Apple's Health app. This means that if you have a Fitbit Flex or other device, the data it gathers will not be shared with Health, crippling its attempt to be your fitness data dashboard.

But a new app launched this week in the App Store that aims to change this. It's called Sync Solver, and it allows Fitbit wearers to track all of the important data collected by their wearables within the Health app, without ever having to use the standalone, dedicated Fitbit application.