Apple

Review: Astropad Mini turns your iPhone or Apple Watch into a pro graphics tablet for your Mac

We wrote about Astropad Graphics Tablet, an app that turns your iPad into a graphics tablet for your Mac, shortly following its February 2015 debut.

Designed and built by smart ex-Apple engineers Matt Ronge and Giovanni Donelli, the app has since been updated with support for FiftyThree’s Pencil stylus and gained other new features.

The team just released Astropad Mini, an iPhone edition of Astropad's iPad app with Apple Watch support for remote drawing into Mac apps and more.

Review: Lara Croft GO is the essence of adventure that feels unmistakably Tomb Raider-y

It only took a few minutes for me to get hooked on Lara Croft GO, a new premium title from Hitman GO creators Square Enix Montréal.

Created in partnership with Crystal Dynamics, this gorgeously done puzzle-solving adventure takes Hitman GO's turn-based strategy concept and simplicity of action to a whole new level while managing to incorporate several marquee aspects of the traditional Tomb Raider formula and gameplay.

But Lara Croft GO, a $4.99 download in the App Store, is hardly the same game as Hitman GO. More than the collection of its impressive parts—mesmerizing soundtrack, artful animations and gorgeous visuals—Lara Croft GO manages to distill the famed series down to its essence.

I spent a few hours playing and reviewing this game in the days leading up to its release, here are my hands-on impressions and findings.

Apple rumored to hold September event at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium

Apple has rented out the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco for its all-but-confirmed September iPhone event, reports Hoodline. The publication says it has seen documentation from event logistics indicating the company has the building through September 12th.

Today's news follows speculation from earlier this week that Apple is behind a mysterious "trade show" booking at the Civic Auditorium for the first two weeks in September. On Monday, SFPD officers and private security guards began patrolling the grounds at the building.

Jony Ive, Jimmy Iovine to speak at upcoming Vanity Fair event

Apple's chief of design Jony Ive and Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine are set to speak at an upcoming Vanity Fair event. The publication just announced that the pair will join a cornucopia of tech and entertainment luminaries at its New Establishment Summit in October.

Ive spoke at last year's VF New Establishment Summit, touching on a number of interesting topics such as his design process, relationship with Steve Jobs and thoughts on copycats. So we're anxious to see what he has to say when this year's event kicks off on October 5th.

Apple now selling third-party Watch accessories in its retail stores

Folks in the market for third-party Apple Watch accessories may want to keep an eye on their local Apple Stores. MacRumors has confirmed that the Cupertino company has begun carrying third-party Watch add-ons in at least some of its retail locations.

The first such accessory spotted in an Apple Store is ElevationLab's NightStand for Apple Watch. It's a simple, elegant stand, that costs $29.95 and it appears the company has partnered with Apple on product packaging and Sport band-matching colorways.

Scanbot 4.0 rolls out with Quick-Actions, Workflows, FTP & OneNote support and more

Scanbot, a powerful document and QR code scanner for iOS which sports optical character recognition and a slew of other cool features, was bumped to version 4.0 today.

Available on a freemium basis with optional paid upgrades, Scanbot 4.0 for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad introduces Workflows and Quick-Actions, a pair of major new features aimed at increasing your productivity by automating repeating tasks such as uploading scans to cloud services.

Google’s new YouTube Gaming app is now available in the App Store

As expected, Google's YouTube Gaming app has begun rolling out in the App Store. Earlier this morning, Google launched a new website which sits at gaming.youtube.com, dedicated to watching and live-streaming gameplay videos.

The free of charge companion mobile app should be now available for download in your local App Store. Featuring a selection of live-streaming and on-demand content, the app acts as your one-stop shop for not just gameplay videos but video how-tos and walkthroughs as well.

Swatch attempts to justify ‘One more thing’ trademark with a silly explanation

Swatch would have you think that its controversial “One more thing” trademark has nothing to do with Apple. A company spokesperson told Techradar today that its trademark for the “One more thing” phrase was inspired by a line from the TV show “Columbo,” an explanation people following technology news will have a hard time believing.

Swiss watchmaker Swatch became the subject of the Internet ridicule following news that it was recently granted a trademark on “One more thing,” a catch phrase late CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs used extensively when introducing new surprise products during Apple’s media events.

Google takes on Twitch with YouTube Gaming

Originally announced two and a half months ago, YouTube Gaming went live this morning as the search giant's Twitch competitor slowly but surely comes into full view.

Basically a YouTube built for gamers, the all-new YouTube Gaming website is live in the United States and United Kingdom at gaming.youtube.com with a selection of live-streaming videos showing people playing various games.

Much like Amazon-owned Twitch service which allows people to stream their gameplay videos and others to watch it, YouTube Gaming was designed to host gameplay videos, video how-tos and walkthroughs pertaining to popular games and more.

Portal for iOS: wireless file transfers from your computer to iPhone made easy

Portal, an Android app that launched earlier this summer, is now available on your iPhone free of charge in the App Store.

Created by a company called Pushbullet which makes a namesake cross-platform notification mirroring utility, Portal for iPhone uses QR codes and takes advantage of peer-to-peer connectivity to transfer very large files and folders between your devices in a snap.

With Portal, you can transfer files from your computer to an iOS device via a simple interface that can be accessed through any web browser. The app lets you transfer as many files as you’d like and imposes no file size limits.

Here's a quick review of Portal based on my brief hands-on time with the app.

Official: Samsung stole trade secrets from TSMC

Samsung lifted trade secrets from rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC), the world's #1 independent semiconductor foundry, Taiwan's top court has ruled.

According to a report published Wednesday by Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes, the court has determined that Liang Mong-song, a former senior director of research and development at TSMC, revealed TSMC's trade secrets and patents related to its advanced FinFET process technology to Samsung Electronics.

The report makes no mention of Apple, but the connection couldn't be clearer: Samsung might have been able to leverage the stolen secrets to win orders for Apple's next-generation 'A9' processor. Prior reports have posited that both Samsung and TSMC got to build Apple's A9 chips on the advanced 14-nanometer FinFET process technology which uses entirely new three-dimensional transistors.

Read-later app Pocket rolls out personalized Recommendations feed

You can now check out the most interesting articles and videos you might have missed using Pocket's newly launched Recommendations feature. Available in Pocket's latest 6.0 update in the App Store, Recommendations takes “the absolute best content being saved across Pocket” and tailors it to your own saving and reading habit, based on what you save, read and watch in Pocket.