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‘Faster Than Light’ for iPad now available in the App Store

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 16, 2018

Last week we told you that the popular PC/Mac title Faster Than Light would be making its way to the iPad soon, and today, the game landed in the App Store. You can now play the roguelike-like real-time strategy game on your Apple-branded tablet.

Even if this doesn't look like your cup of tea, FTL is worth checking out. Early reviews of the game have been glowing, with some awarding it 5 out of 5 stars, and others calling it a potential Game of the Year candidate. Keep reading for a full overview...

‘Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff’ landing on iOS April 10

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 16, 2018

It looks like the highly anticipated Family Guy project from Fox and TinyCo is set to be released next week. At a launch event in Los Angeles last night, the two firms announced that 'Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff' will be landing on iOS on April 10.

First revealed in December of last year, the game will be set in the infamous town of Quahog and feature elements of resource management, with multiple story lines. It looks similar to Fox's other hit TV series-turned-game: The Simpsons Tapped Out...

‘Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft’ for iPad launches in select countries

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 16, 2018

Back in March, Blizzard launched its digital card trading game 'Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft' on the Mac, and as promised, it has brought the game to iOS. The title soft-launched for iPad last night, and is now available in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand App Stores.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, for those unfamiliar with it, is a strategy card game set in the 'Warcraft' universe. Players compete in 1-on-1 battles—either against the computer or other users via Battle.net—in an effort to grow the size and power of their card collections...

Microsoft finally unveils its Siri competitor ‘Cortana’

Cody Lee ∙ Updated February 11, 2016

It's been nearly three years since Apple unveiled Siri on its iPhone 4s, and Microsoft finally has its answer to the digital assistant: Cortana. Named after a virtual character in the company's popular Halo gaming franchise, the feature is powered by Bing and offers a mix of Google Now-ish and Siri-like characteristics.

We first got a glimpse of Cortana earlier this year courtesy of a developer leak, but Microsoft officially unveiled her this morning at its Build Developer Conference in San Francisco. The assistant will ship alongside several other new features in the Windows Phone 8.1 update, expected to launch in the next few months...

DEAD Room – The Dark One review: welcome to your worst nightmare

Lory Gil ∙ Updated January 24, 2018

My first discovery of the fabled “Slender Man” happened a few years ago. A friend showed me YouTube videos of found footage starring a tall, thin figure with a featureless face. In the videos, the electronics of the camera would fail every time Slender Man would appear on screen. Although I knew it was make believe, it still creeped me out.

Dead Room – The Dark One is a play on the fictitious figure. Only this mysterious entity looks and moves differently. The gameplay is similar to other Slender Man survival titles, but seems to have no ending, except a bad one…

Shapematic turns your iPhone into a 3D scanner

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 26, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmb5BcBZhdM

Shapematic is a new app that just launched in the App Store, and that aims to turn your iPhone into a 3D scanner. Simply snap a few pictures under different angles of the object you want to scan, and let the app work its software magic. The result will be a three-dimensional reconstruction of the object. The app also includes a feature that lets you edit your 3D photos to remove little flaws that might have showed up in the process.

The 3D models created are printing ready, and you can request a 3D print directly from the application to get the three-dimensional model shipped to you.

Download Shapematic in the App Store for $0.99.

Amazon unveils its Apple TV competitor: meet the $99 Fire TV set-top box

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 13, 2018

Amazon has just taken the wraps off its new media-streaming device designed to compete with the likes of Apple's $99 Apple TV hockey puck, Roku devices and other media-streaming boxes available to cable-cutters today.

It's rather predictably called the Fire TV in a nod to the successful Kindle Fire tablet brand, costs $99 and runs a forked Android version code-named 'Mojito'.

Powered by a quad-core processor with 2GB RAM and a dedicated graphics processor, the set-top box is capable of streaming full HD 1080p resolution video (1,920-by-1,080 pixels) and Amazon claims it's three times more powerful than the Apple TV.

It supports 7.1 Dolby Digital Plus surround sound via HDMI and optical audio-out, has dual-band, dual-antenna Wi-Fi, comes with a Bluetooth remote and ties into Amazon's vast ecosystem of digital content licensed from Hollywood majors and broadcasters.

I don't think Apple should be concerned because the Fire TV's user interface appears clunky (I even like Chromecast's better) and it's hard to see much that isn't already out there, though I have no doubt in my mind that the Fire TV is here to stay and tie existing Amazon customers even deeper into its ecosystem.

Read on for the full reveal...

Auxo 2 is now available in Cydia

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated April 16, 2018

The long-awaited update to the hugely popular Auxo has just been released in Cydia. Designed by Sentry and developed by Qusic, Auxo 2 is poised to become one of these tweaks that will go down in history.

But don't just take our word for it. Go get it in Cydia now. It's available for $1.99 for those of you who owned the previous version. If you're new to Auxo, it will cost you $3.99...

Reversible USB Type-C coming in July

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated April 2, 2017

Apple in late-2012 debuted the then new Lightning I/O as a replacement for the aging, decade-old 30-pin Dock connector. One of its most compelling features: the symmetrical design allowing the cable to be inserted with either side facing up.

I reckoned at the time that the industry would scramble to replicate Apple's innovation. Sure enough, the USB 3.0 Promoter Group last December unveiled a new USB Type-C specification with much smaller, twice as fast connectors and cables.

You guessed right, USB Type-C is reversible so the new cables and connectors can be plugged in without worrying about the orientation. Leaked straight out of the world's top contract manufacturer, Foxconn, the first renders give us a glimpse into the USB's new Type-C, coming this July...

TextExpander updated for iOS 7, adds a bunch of snippet management features

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2018

If you're going to do serious typing on your iPhone and iPad, why not save yourself precious time by having short abbreviations automatically expanded into long snippets (i.e. have 'idb' auto-expand to 'iDownloadBlog')?

Although iOS 7 lets you create shortcuts in Settings > General > Keyboard that'll automatically expand into words and phrases as you type, the basic implementation of the feature leaves a lot to be desired.

Enter Smile Software's TextExpander, a tool that gets this job done better than any other software. Available for iOS since last summer, the app contains advanced features like clipboard integration, macros and fill-in snippets. And thanks to the official SDK, third-party apps can implement TextExpander functionality to use your commonly-used strings of text.

On Wednesday, Smile updated the iOS snippet expansion utility with iOS 7-friendly design and a host of group and snippet management improvements. The app is now available in the App Store free of charge for existing customers and I've included additional tidbits right after the break...

ProCamera 7 gains TIFF and high-res Instagram support, printing, Vimeo sharing and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ April 2, 2014

ProCamera by German developer Cocologics GmbH has been featured on our 10 Best Photography Apps of 2013 list, you rated it one of the Best Apps of 2013 and it's been consistently featured throughout our ongoing iPhone photography series.

Small wonder, given ProCamera combines photo and video recording, advanced editing and sharing into a single app laden with rich controls, more than 76 pro-grade filters and effects, a dedicated Lightbox (like in Camera+), full-res photo preview and lots more.

Cocologics has pushed a major new ProCamera 7 update this morning, adding numerous nice-to-haves while implementing some nice new features like high-resolution Instagram uploads, support for the lossless TIFF file format, in-app printing, an improved Lightbox and Night mode, Vimeo sharing, Open-in functionality and lots more.

The new ProCamera 7 version 5.3 is now live in the App Store and available free to existing users. We have a few promo codes to spare so read on for the full reveal...

Fantastical 2 for iPad: the best calendar app is now available on iPad

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated March 16, 2018

I'd probably be wasting my time if I spent more than a few words introducing Fantastical, an app that most of us here at iDB use on a daily basis, and which we recently ranked as one of the best calendar apps for iPhone. And it's not just us!

Up until today, you could only use Fantastical on your Mac or your iPhone, but things are changing as Flexibits just released Fantastical 2 for iPad, now available in the App Store...