Year: 2016

Gameloft’s Asphalt Xtreme screeches its way into App Store

French games developer and publisher Gameloft today released Asphalt Xtreme, the latest installment in its popular Asphalt mobile racing franchise. If Asphalt 8: Airborne was too boring for your tastes, this new racer should get your adrenaline going and juices flowing.

In Asphalt Xtreme you'll be ripping around dunes, charging through canyons, drifting across the mud and flying past your opponents to reach the finish line.

Like many, many, many premium games on the App Store, Asphalt Xtreme is a freemium download with extra features, in-game currency, optional upgrades and other items available optionally via the In-App Purchase mechanism.

Apple’s free app of the week: Lost in Harmony

Apple on Thursday updated its App of the Week promotion with the hit free runner Lost in Harmony. This means that for the next 7 days, you'll be able to pickup the popular game for both iPhone and iPad for free—a solid savings of $4.

For those unfamiliar with the title, Lost in Harmony is a cross between a rhythm game and free-runner. It features beautiful visuals, a mesmerizing soundtrack, and easy, addictive gameplay that gets more challenging as you progress.

Vimeo to rival Netflix, Amazon, YouTube & others with its own user-faced subscription service

Video wars are heating up with news that Vimeo is readying a consumer-facing subscription video service (not to be confused with its Plus, Pro and Business tiers for content creators). The firm prepared for the move months ago by buying VHX, a platform for over-the-top subscription video.

Vimeo, owned by IAC, broke news of its upcoming service on Wednesday as part of its earnings report.

Broadcast live interactive video to the world with Hype for iPhone from Vine creators

Just a few short days ago, Twitter announced plans to phase out Vine, a shortform video-sharing service it acquired nearly three years ago.

Vine's discontinuation's prompted its creators Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov to pursue new projects and yesterday they unveiled a live interactive video app, Hype for iPhone.

Does the world really need another video-streaming service?

Only time will tell. For the time being, Kroll and Yusupov are hoping that Hype's rich feature set will help set the app apart from Twitter-owned Periscope, Facebook Live and similar video broadcasting services.

Strategy role-playing game DC Legends launches globally on App Store

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC Entertainment today announced that their new mobile game called DC Legends is now available worldwide on the App Store following a recent soft-launch in select markets. A strategy role-playing game for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, DC Legends has you forming unlikely alliances of Super Heroes and Super-Villains from across the DC universe. The game is available for free from the App Store.

Password manager LastPass makes multi-device sync a free option for all users

LastPass, a free of charge password manager for the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac and the web, announced yesterday that all customers can now synchronize passwords across multiple devices at no additional charge.

Previously, the app required buying a $1 per month subscription to take advantage of multi-device sync. If you manage your passwords and logins in LastPass, this should be music to your ears as most people use multiple devices.

OWC’s new Thunderbolt 3 Dock adds 13 additional ports to your MacBook Pro

Other World Computing (OWC), a U.S.-based company and online store for Mac upgrades and accessories located at MacSales.com, today announced the ultimate docking station for your brand spanking new MacBook Pro.

With the new Pro the Cupertino firm is (rightly) betting on USB-C, effectively putting us in a dongle hell for now. Enter the new $279 Thunderbolt 3 Dock, a successor to OWC's Thunderbolt 2 Dock and USB-C Dock.

Billed as the best expansion solution they've ever made, it offers the speed of Thunderbolt 3 technology coupled with a whopping thirteen expansion ports to help get the most out of the new late-2016 MacBook Pro.

Beautiful concept envisions Apple extended keyboard with Touch Bar

German magazine Curved.de and Dutch 3D artist Martin Hajek created plausible concept renderings of a future Magic Keyboard with a contextually aware OLED strip replacing the physical row of function keys, but that was months before Apple unveiled the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar.

Now that the new notebook has been formally announced, Reddit user “Hazza42” felt inspired to create his own mockups of what a standalone extended aluminum Apple keyboard with an integrated Touch Bar might look like.

A fix for issues with 2nd and 3rd generation Apple TV is coming soon

It seems that the most recent Apple TV software update has rendered a lot of second and third-generation Apple TVs virtually unusable, with the set-top box device's Home screen displaying only the Computers, Music and Settings apps with no other channel options available.

According to a thread on Reddit, an Apple representative has confirmed that a fix for the bug will be included in a future software update for the Apple TV. Users can manually check if any new firmware update is available at any time through the Settings app.