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Firemint: Flight Control for iPhone Hits 4 Million Downloads, $2 Million Budget for Real Racing 2

Developer Firemint has always been one of the biggest “players” in the iOS gaming scene with hugely popular games and Apple Design Awards won at the WWDC, and they’ve been under the press spotlight again recently thanks to the release of Real Racing 2 HD – a version of their successful racing game specifically optimized for the iPad 2 improved graphics, processor and gyroscopic controls. With more updates on the way and a brand new iOS game announced last month, Agent Squeak, Firemint has become one of the top names in the App Store for iPhone and iPad games.

In an interview with Pocketful of Megabytes, Firemint’s Logan Booker has answered some interesting questions about what’s going on behind the scenes of Real Racing and their other game franchise, Flight Control. As revealed by Booker, Flight Control, released in 2009, recently surpassed 4 million downloads for iPhone, and it keeps growing. The game was the result of weeks of sketching and prototyping back in 2008 and early 2009, when the App Store was a relatively new platform and no one really knew whether or not Apple (and third-party developers) could turn a profit out of it. Read more

Angry Birds HD Updated: 15 New Levels→

Angry Birds HD Updated: 15 New Levels

Just in time for the release of the iPad 2, Rovio updated (again) Angry Birds HD last night to include 15 new levels and continue “the adventures in the frontier badlands”. A new golden egg has been included in version 1.5.3 as well.

Looking at early iTunes reviews, it sounds like Rovio also changed something in the “pause” screen of the app, putting a news section (some people say ads) in there and forcing users to wait for the animation to finish before resuming the game. If you’ve noticed this too, please let us know in the comments below.

Angry Birds HD is available here.

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iPad 2 Gets “Real” Photo Booth with IncrediBooth Update

Apple’s Photo Booth software that comes pre-installed in the iPad 2 is great and offers lots of fun, but if you’ve been looking for an actual photo booth app with the vintage look of photo strips to virtually print with your friends and loved ones (who hasn’t done that at least once), then you should consider re-downloading IncrediBooth for iOS, which has been updated to natively support the iPad 2.

I was one of those that bought IncrediBooth last year but never really used it because the iPhone’s screen was too small to have fun with my friends in front of the camera. But on the iPad? Should be much better. As usual, you can take photos with 4 different effects, share to Facebook or email, save to the camera roll. In this update, a new photo setting has been introduced: Betsy X.

Combined with Apple’s Photo Booth, IncrediBooth is one of those apps that will grant you hours of fun and picture taking. Go get it in the App Store at $0.99.

A Backup Dream: WD My Book Studio Edition II Goes 6 TB, Time Machine-ready

I’m a proud owner of a WD My Book 750 GB edition with FireWire 800 – a trusted system when it comes to storing my media and using a second partition for Time Machine – but I guess I’ll be making the switch to the newly announced My Book Studio Edition II pretty soon. Western Digital has, in fact, revealed this new My Book product that goes straight to 6 TB of storage in RAID, has a quad interface, and it’s compatible with Mac and Windows. The best part? Western Digital touts the model as “Mac-ready” with HFS filesystem out of the box and full Time Machine compatibility.

The My Book Studio Edition II comes with the usual FireWire 400, FireWire 800, eSATA and USB 2.0 connections – no, there’s no Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 here. Still, you should get pretty decent transfer times with FireWire 800 – I truly recommend you consider FireWire for your next Time Machine or SuperDuper backups.

The My Book Studio Edition II can be yours for “just” $550. You could get a new iPad for that price, I know, but if you’re serious about backups and external media storage (hello, iTunes) you should consider this. Press release below. [via Gizmodo] Read more

Steve Jobs Offers Support To Apple Employees Affected By Disasters In Japan

According to a letter forwarded to Chihouban.com and MacRumors, Steve Jobs has sent an email to all Apple employees regarding the continuing disasters in Japan and wishing the best for those affected. This follows the Red Cross donations set up in iTunes and the story of the Apple store in Japan going out of its way to support people.

To Our Team in Japan,

We have all been following the unfolding disaster in Japan. Our hearts go out to you and your families, as well as all of your countrymen who have been touched by this tragedy.

If you need time or resources to visit or care for your families, please see HR and we will help you. If you are aware of any supplies that are needed, please also tell HR and we will do what we can to arrange delivery.

Again, our hearts go out to you during this unimaginable crisis.
Please stay safe.
Steve and the entire Executive Team

[Via MacRumors, InterfaceLIFT]

2011 MacBook Pro Users Having Issues With iTunes Home Sharing

A support thread in Apple’s Discussion forums is abuzz with 2011 MacBook Pro owners having issues with iTunes Home Sharing. The users are having issues connecting to certain iOS devices as well as having devices disconnect and display error messages.

The user who started the discussion thread; ‘themacbear’, reported that his new 17 inch MacBook Pro initially seemed to work fine using Home Sharing with his Apple TV. However later on in the day “…although the Apple TV could see the name of my iTunes library, it wouldn’t connect to it, or sometimes, would report that “There are no movies in this library”. I tried every solution I could think of, but no dice.” He went to an Apple Store, which managed to replicate the issue on a different MacBook Pro, but couldn’t resolve the problem and consequently gave ‘themacbear’ a full refund. Others too have contacted Apple through their retail stores and via phone support but so far there is no fix for the problem.

Apple recently beefed up its Home Sharing features with iOS 4.3 and iTunes 10.2 and it could be that the issues these users are facing are related to these updates. Furthermore there are also some users with older Mac’s also having similar issues, although this seems to be a more isolated group of users.

[Via AppleInsider]

New “If You Don’t Have An iPhone” Ads Feature Apple’s Three E-Commerce Stores

Apple has today added three new adverts for the iPhone to their website and YouTube which have the general theme of “If you don’t have an iPhone” and what you miss out on. The three specific features that the ad’s highlight are the App Store, iPod + iTunes and iBooks which highlight Apple’s strong integration between the iPhone and their three e-commerce stores.

Jump the break to watch the three 30 second ad’s which also all finish with the “Yup, if you don’t have an iPhone, well, you don’t have an iPhone.” phrase - which in typical Apple style is a little self-congratulatory (which you either like or dislike).

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Mondo Solitaire: Deliciously Beautiful Solitaire For Mac

There isn’t too much you can say about solitaire on its own. It’s the card game your coworker plays instead of writing formulas for Excel spreadsheets on Windows, but that doesn’t mean we can’t turn solitaire into something more than a time waster. Proof of concept: Mondo Solitaire from Ambrosia Software is solitaire done right. You aren’t just playing the same game of Klondike over and over - instead you’re offered over 300 variants of solitaire madness to choose from. If you include the beautiful game board that looks like it should bundled with Apple’s own Game Center, then you have yourself one premium handful of card games.

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WordPress for iOS Updated, Quashes Bugs and Improves UI

The WordPress iPhone and iPad app just got updated to version 2.7 and it’s a big bug-quashing update that supposedly fixes 117 bugs to vastly improve performance and reduce crashes.

UI has also been retooled with the ‘Post Editor’ interface improved to “make it easier to write and edit posts and pages” with quick access to edit post settings, view attachments and add media. Finally multiple attatchments can be added simultaneously, you can use the “pull down to refresh” feature to quickly update comments, posts and page lists and email and URLs left in comments are now able to be clicked on.

[Via WordPress Blog]