Apple

Alto’s Adventure creator teams up with LA studio on a game about building a house of cards

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 2, 2016

Snowman, the makers of Alto's Adventure, the award-winning endless snowboarding odyssey, has teamed up with the folks over at The Game Band, a Los Angeles-based studio, on a brand new project—Where Cards Fall, a “dreamlike journey through youthful uncertainty.”

The game challenges you to build various structures using cards only to break them down and rebuild them in different ways. What started off as a fun school project at the University of Southern California about four years ago is now a full-time project.

Where Cards Fall does not have a release date just yet and they've only released two teaser images thus far. But if Alto's Adventure is anything to go by, this could easily become another smash hit for Snowman.

iOS 9.3 beta 5 disables Night Shift mode when your iPhone is in Low Power Mode

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 2, 2016

Along with the latest betas of watchOS, tvOS and OS X, Apple yesterday seeded a fifth beta of the upcoming iOS 9.3 software update to its registered developers. The new beta appears to pack in a few interesting changes as Apple continues to refine the experience ahead of the software's public release.

Night Shift mode, one of the headline new features in iOS 9.3, has been tweaked again in the latest beta and now permits users to manually enable the feature until tomorrow within Settings, and the feature is now automatically disabled in Low Power Mode.

Apple leases old Pepsi bottling plant near its not-so-secret Project Titan industrial complex

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 2, 2016

According to The Silicon Valley Business Journal, Apple in November 2015 quietly leased a 96,000-square-foot site in Sunnyvale, California which used to be Pepsi's bottling plant.

Interestingly enough, this industrial property is located in the neighborhood of a complex of warehouses and offices which Apple leased about a year ago for purposes unknown to the public (hint: permits mention things like an “auto work area” and a “repair garage”).

How to update your Apple TV Siri Remote

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 10, 2023

A tvOS update may include new firmware for the Siri Remote to fix bugs, improve reliability, and add new features. Improve your Apple TV experience by learning how to effortlessly update your Siri Remote, and stay in control with the latest features and improvements.

How to place Apple TV in recovery mode

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated July 20, 2018

If your Apple TV won't start up properly, or you are a developer who wants to install a tvOS beta, you must first put your set-top box in recovery (DFU) mode. As is the case with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices, entering DFU mode makes a malfunctioning Apple TV discoverable in desktop iTunes so you can restore it to factory settings, downgrade to an earlier version of the software or side-load a beta firmware onto it.

The method to put an Apple TV into DFU mode differs from that for other iOS devices. In this post, you'll learn how to put an Apple TV into recovery mode so you can restore it to factory settings if it's acting up.

Tip: use 3D Touch to export PDFs on your iPhone

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated June 10, 2019

iOS includes a Share sheet action for saving PDFs to iBooks. This is great for, say, turning a webpage or other document into a PDF form with one notable complaint—not everyone wants to read PDFs in the Books app.

As it turns out, you can export a PDF to any app on your device with 3D Touch right from iOS's Print Preview screen. This is an extremely convenient feature, but it's unfortunate that it requires 3D Touch so owners of previous-generation and older iPhones cannot take advantage of it.

iOS 9.3 lets your boss lock apps to the Home screen and impose other restrictions

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 1, 2016

Apple's upcoming iOS 9.3 software update will allow employers to lock apps to the Home screen of company-issued devices, preventing them from being moved around, as first discovered by Irish developer Steven Troughton-Smith.

Buried within Apple's documentation for developers, the Home Screen Layout Payload, which defines a layout of apps, folders and web clips for the Home screen, is supported on iOS 9.3 and later.

Rumor: iPhone 7 has a thinner Lightning port, flush camera and stereo speakers

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 1, 2016

The fairly reliable Japanese blog Mac Otakara today shared some new details pertaining to Apple's iPhone 7 refresh, which we're expecting around its usual September timeframe.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, Mac Otakara says that the next iPhone will be 1mm thinner than the current iPhone 6s, which measures 7.1mm in depth, making the new phone the same 6.1mm thickness as the sixth-generation iPod touch.

Somewhat surprisingly, the iPhone 7 won't be waterproof after all and should also incorporate a thinner Lightning port. The camera bulge on the back will be gone because the phone's iSight camera is now flush with the chassis. Oh, and the new iPhone will come outfitted with stereo speakers—for the first time in iPhone history.

Get directions to home and work with 3D Touch and Google Maps

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 1, 2016

As part of yesterday's update to Google's iPhone and iPad mapping application in the App Store which brought pit stops to navigation mode, the refreshed software has replicated one of my favorite 3D Touch features found on Apple Maps: the ability to get directions to home and work right from the Home screen.

In the new Google Maps 4.16 for iOS, iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus owners can press the app's Home screen icon to bring up the shortcut menu with two useful Quick Actions: Directions to Work and Directions to Home.

GoPro is buying powerful iPhone video-editing apps Replay and Splice

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 1, 2016

GoPro, an American manufacturer of action cameras that are popular in extreme-action videography, has acquired two mobile video editing apps, Replay and Splice.

In a media release yesterday, GoPro said that merging these apps into its mobile strategy will help them deliver powerful mobile editing solutions to GoPro customers “and billions of smartphone users,” indicating the apps will continue to be available in the App Store.

In fact, both apps will be coming to Android later this year, said GoPro.

Apple patents hybrid wireless/wired earbuds for iPhone that are magnetically detachable

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 1, 2016

The United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) on Tuesday awarded Apple a patent for magnetically detachable earbuds for an iPhone that could work in both wired and wireless mode. The invention is of particular interest in light of the rumor that the next iPhone will ditch the 3.5mm headphone jack in favor of Lightning-enabled and wireless Bluetooth headphones.

The proposed device would use two cables, one to connect the headphones together in wireless mode (like the connecting cable found on the Beats Solo2 wireless headphones) and the other to connect the headphones to a host device in wired mode.

Sony confirms remote play feature for PlayStation 4 games coming to the Mac soon

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 1, 2016

Sony today confirmed in a blog post that it's working on a Mac and Windows app with remote play functionality for PlayStation 4 games.

“We’re bringing PS4 Remote Play to Windows PC and Mac,” said the Japanese gaming giant. “This feature won’t be available to test in the beta, but you can look forward to it soon.”

Remote play via Mac and Windows will require the forthcoming PlayStation system software update version 3.50, codenamed “Musashi,” which is now available to those who have signed up for the beta and were selected.