You can now play Blizzard’s Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft on iPhone

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 30, 2018

Fans of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft will be happy to hear that you can now play the game on your iPhone. Blizzard pushed out an update today for the popular card battler that, among other improvements, brings about support for Apple's handset.

Blizzard says the new iPhone version features an all-new intuitive interface, handcrafted specifically for smaller mobile devices. Those devices, however, are limited to the iPhone 4s, or later models, or the fifth-generation iPod touch (iPad 2 for tablets).

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How to control Spotify with Siri

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 30, 2018

As most of you guys know, I'm a huge Spotify fan. I've been using the service ever since it appeared on US shores, and it's by far the best music streaming service in my opinion.

One thing that I've always missed about Spotify when compared to the stock Music app, is the ability to control my tunes via Siri. With the stock Music app, you can use Siri to play any song in your library, or play a music station using iTunes Radio. Spotify? Not so much.

That all changed a few days ago when developer Zaid Elkurdi released Assistant+. With a little finagling, you can get Assistant+ to interface with Spotify on a limited basis. But with Zaid's new add-on called SpotifySiriControls, you can do a whole lot more.

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Activision bringing new Guitar Hero game to mobile this year

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 30, 2018

Gamers rejoice, Activision Blizzard Inc. has confirmed that it's reviving its Guitar Hero franchise this year, and it's bringing it to mobile. Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that, after a five-year hiatus, the California-based publisher has begun work on a new version of the popular video game for consoles, tablets and smartphones.

"Now fans can unleash their inner rock star anytime, anyplace using a phone or a game console,” Activision Chief Executive Officer Bobby Kotick said in a statement. The new product is said to cost $99, and will follow tradition in allowing players to jam on a toy guitar to music from artists such as the Black Keys and Fall Out Boy.

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Apple buys Israeli camera technology company LinX Imaging

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 28, 2016

In a bid to potentially boost its mobile imaging prowess, Apple has purchased an Israeli camera technology company called LinX Imaging for a reported $20 million, according to a Dow Jones report cited in a tweet by CNBC and later confirmed by Apple.

LinX, which builds miniature multi-aperture cameras designed for mobile devices, could help improve imaging features of future iPhones.

And because its technology is also used in tablets and so-called ultrabooks (ultra-thin notebooks akin to Apple's MacBook Air), there's a reasonable likelihood that we may see significantly improved cameras come to Apple's Mac computers and iPad tablet lineup.

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iOS 8 adoption rate passes 79 percent

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 27, 2018

Various versions of Apple's iOS 8 mobile operating system are now running on 79 percent of devices in active use, as measured by the App Store on April 13, 2015. The freshest stats were churned out Tuesday from the App Store Distribution webpage publicly available on Apple's portal for developers.

iOS 7 is now found on nineteen percent of devices, with earlier iOS versions running on two percent of iPhones, iPads and iPod touches in the wild.

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FiftyThree’s Paper gains cloud journals, centralized social interactions and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 14, 2015

FiftyThree's iPad drawing app, Paper, has been refreshed Tuesday with a pair of new features (among other enhancements) — Backup and Activity Center.

The former lets you back up private copies of your journals in the cloud so you don't lose your Paper data in case your iPad is stolen or damaged (and you didn't have enough space on iCloud for full device backup via iOS).

The Activity Center is a new place in Paper's Mix service that collates all your social activity in one place. For those wondering, Mix is an online repository of Paper content posted by creative users from around the world.

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Apple’s ResearchKit available today to developers and medical researchers

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 14, 2018

Today, Apple's made good on its promise to make ResearchKit available to developers and medical researchers. As announced in a media release Tuesday, medical researchers can tap into ResearchKit to write custom apps while developers are permitted to contribute new research modules to ResearchKit.

ResearchKit was designed as an open source software framework to help doctors and scientists mass-gather accurate data from participants using specialized iPhone apps. With today's ResearchKit release, it's now possible to create medical apps for Android in a true open-source fashion.

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Fleksy Keyboard goes free for a week, gains millions of GIFs via partnership with Riffsy

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 14, 2015

Fleksy Keyboard, one of the first and most popular software keyboards for iOS 8 devices, has gone free for a week. The app usually retails for 99 cents a pop and has never gone free since its App Store debut as an iOS 8-compatible downloadable software keyboard in September of last year.

In addition, Fleksy's latest update has rechristened the app as 'Fleksy + GiF Keyboard' to reflect its newly gained integration with Riffsy's GIF Keyboard for iOS. The resulting app now gives you access to millions of GIFs on top of Fleksy's existing emoji support and perks like advanced keyboard capabilities with gestures and much more.

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Assistant+ lets Siri trigger Activator events

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 30, 2018

If you're a big fan of Siri, or even if you're a bit down on the virtual assistant, listen up. Assistant+ can significantly enhance Siri and its capabilities by allowing it to interface directly with Activator.

Activator, the jailbreak tweak that allows you to assign a variety of actions to assorted gestures, is incredibly deep on its own. But when given the ability to invoke the many Activator events with Siri, things really get interesting.

Imagine activating a car mode by saying "Siri engage car mode". All of the sudden, your Bluetooth connection comes on, Wi-Fi goes off, the volume is boosted, and Spotify is launched. That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the things that you can do with Assistant+.

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Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge costs more to build than iPhone 6

Sébastien Page ∙ April 14, 2015

Samsung is taking another hit in the battle for profit and market share, with a bill of materials for the new Galaxy S6 Edge pegged at about $290 for the 64GB version, as reported by Recode. For comparison, the more expensive iPhone 6 Plus money can buy only costs Apple $263 to build. Of course, this doesn't take into account cost of R&D, marketing, etc, but it still paints a dark picture for Samsung who's had a few rough quarters due to its mobile division bleeding profits. Spending more to build a device that will be sold for less doesn't seem like the best idea either.

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Selfie sticks and monopods banned from WWDC

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated March 19, 2019

Apple this morning announced that its annual developers conference will be kicking off on Monday, June 8, and already social media is trending with news of a revised terms prohibiting the use of selfie sticks and monopods at the show.

“You may not use selfie sticks or similar monopods within Moscone West,” or in the whole Yerba Buena Gardens area around it for that matter, as per this note describing attendance policy available on Apple's WWDC 2015 webpage.

So what's going on here?

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