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Apple’s Grand Central Store: A Collection of Photos from Around the Web

After months of speculation, more rumors, a confirmation and then sneak peaks, the Grand Central Apple Store opened today at 10am to large crowds eager to see the latest flagship Apple retail store in this very unique setting. As is typical for any new Apple Store, staff were handing out 4,000 launch t-shirts with the text “Apple Store, Grand Central” (photo below the break).

The actual store will be open 7am to 9am from Monday to Friday, 10am to 7pm Saturday and 11am to 6pm on Sundays. With over 300 employees and two genius bars, the store is well-suited for the large flow of people that is expected to come through its doors - and popular services such as Express Workshops and Personal Pickup will all operate in the store.

We’ve sourced some photos of the new store which you can see past the break and we will continue to update this post over the next few hours as we find more nice shots of the store.

[Images via Engadget, BGR]

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Review: Twitter 4.0 for iPhone

That gorgeous app up above? That’s the next-generation Twitter app. Twitter 4.0 melds Twitter’s brand new web experience with your mobile phone, making it easier to discover and share information that matters most to you. Conversations, your activity feed, stories and trends have now been given focus in four new tabs that make Twitter more accessible than ever before.

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Square-Enix’s Highly Popular Chrono Trigger Now Available for iPhone

Square-Enix has released one of its most popular titles for iPhone today - Chrono Trigger. The heavily popular classic 16-bit jRPG from the Super Nintendo days adds the Dimensional Vortex and Lost Sanctum areas from the Nintendo DS remake for its iPhone release.

So how popular is Square-Enix’s Chrono Trigger? Well, IGN named it the #2 SNES game of all time, behind A Link to the Past. The iPhone port features touch-controlled menus, eight language options and “optimized” graphics for the iPhone. Read more

#MacStoriesDeals - Thursday

Apps now show in parentheses what category it is classified under. Here are today’s @MacStoriesDeals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get them before they end!

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TV Purchases & Streaming Now Available For Australian, Canadian & UK Apple TV Owners

Owners of the Apple TV in Australia, Canada and the UK were given a nice surprise today with an over-the-air update enabling TV Shows to be purchased and watched directly on the device. It was a curious absence from the Apple TVs in those countries because although users could purchase TV shows from iTunes and on iOS devices (even stream it to the Apple TV with AirPlay) - until now they couldn’t purchase TV content directly from the Apple TV.

Apple hasn’t made any announcement about the update, but prices remain the same as they did previously. The update also introduces the “cloud locker” feature that was introduced with version 4.3 on the US Apple TV. If you are unaware of this feature, it allows you to play previously purchased TV content (the same feature is available for music, apps and books) - all thanks to iCloud.

[Via Engadget]

OnLive Gaming Service Launching on iOS and Android

OnLive has announced that its brining its streaming online gaming service to tablets and mobile phones via a playable client that will soon be available in the App Store. The OnLive app will make available console games previously unavailable to the iPhone and iPad, as digital gaming content is streamed over the Internet from a central location (processing and gameplay is done “in the cloud”). Those that have the bandwidth available can instantly pick up and play new titles without having to consume local storage or wait for the game to download. As games are played in the cloud, all save data is completely mobile and can be accessed from any device.

From the press release:

Over 25 OnLive titles, including L.A. Noire, family titles like LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 and 5-7, and indies like Defense Grid Gold, will work with touch control on tablets and smartphones. And most of the nearly 200 games in OnLive’s growing library, including recent top-tier releases like Batman: Arkham City, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and Lord of the Rings: War in the North, are immediately playable on virtually any device with the Universal OnLive Wireless Controller, which utilizes OnLive’s exclusive adaptive wireless technology to automatically find an optimal wireless connection for a given tablet, smartphone, PC, Mac, TV or Blu-ray player. The Universal OnLive Wireless Controller will be available soon for purchase in the US and the UK, for $49.99 and £39.99 respectively.

The OnLive app will make use of OnLive Cloud Touch controls so you can manipulate the game on a touchscreen, but an optional controller is available for an additional fifty dollars that should seamlessly work with your iPad or Android tablet. OnLive says the iPad version should be available soon. TechCrunch notes than an iPhone version of the OnLive app is planned, but won’t be immediately available for the mobile launch. While the app itself will be free, you still have to pay to play games per title through OnLive’s PlayBack Bundle. Anyone who downloads the OnLive app will be able to play LEGO Batman free of charge.

[OnLive via MacRumors]

New Revisions for Apple’s Spaceship-Campus Reveal New Solar Roof and Renderings

It was back in June when we last talked about Apple’s 2nd mothership, or the proposed circular spaceship-like campus that’s currently planned to occupy a 98-acre plot of land purchased from Hewlett Packard (the total campus area includes 175 acres of land). On Wednesday, new revisions surfaced from the City of Cupertino detailing the new campus submissions from Apple, which includes new renderings and details about the structure’s massive size.

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