To make up for last week’s lack of a featured Weekly Game, we’re going to cover two different iOS games this week. The first one is Battleships, an intriguing (and pretty challenging) puzzle game for the iPhone developed by Rits Plasman and designed by pixel rockstar Marcelo Marfil. Read more
MacStories Weekly Game: Battleships
BlackBerry vs. iPhone: What’s In Your Pocket?→
BlackBerry vs. iPhone: What’s In Your Pocket?
Apple says the iPhone is more than a mere appliance for sending e-mail. The device, with its sleek touch screen and ability to run hundreds of thousands of Web-connected applications, games and utilities, can be used for nearly any purpose, business or personal, a line that Apple hopes to blur out of existence.
“Most people now want to use a single device to handle both their personal and professional lives,” said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Bros. “That’s what Apple’s really good at — and now RIM is playing catch-up.”
I guess the question is: can they even catch up at this point? 275,000 apps is no small difference. [via]
iPad Gift Cards Spotted at Apple Stores
As noted by iLounge, Apple has started selling “iPad Gift Cards” in its retail stores right ahead of Christmas. The cards aren’t anything special – actually, they’re just standard Apple gift cards wrapped inside a nice iPad-specific package.
What’s interesting is that, apparently, Apple updated its iPad purchase policies to include support for discounts through the aforementioned gift cards. Until a few weeks ago, Apple only allowed customers to buy an iPad via a debit or credit card.
Now you don’t have excuses anymore: your wife wants an iPad. You know what to do.
“The iPad Is Not Newspaper With Moving Words”→
“The iPad Is Not Newspaper With Moving Words”
The problem for anybody wanting to believe that the iPad is a newspaper or magazine replacement is that it is not. It’s a digital device, which means people will get easily distracted and start playing Scrabble, or listening to music or whatever else one can get up to on a crowded carriage.
It’s also still too easy to jump from one news source to another, because digital has fundamentally changed people’s relationship with printed news sources. Once, a newspaper was not just a source of information, but a statement of identity, where most buyers would not dream of picking up a competing title.
Paid Content also cites a report from Screen Digest according to which the average iPad user downloads 60 apps a year – but only 6 are paid apps. Where did they get these numbers? I’m curious.
Perhaps the problem with the publishing industry on the iPad is that most newspaper / magazine apps suck? [via Brooks Review]
Steve Jobs is a Ninja!
UPDATE: Ninja Steve was approved and is live in the App Store for $.99 -> LINK
The gameplay is very simple, Ninja Steve is all about fast reflexes and accuracy. The ‘Smartbots’ fly around until they get close enough to zap you. Touch an enemy to fire a shuriken. After a while you will build up a RDF, which is like an electromagnetic shock, shake your iDevice to activate it. There are three different stages and four different ‘Smartbots’. There are 15 main levels, plus 2 extra levels.
It’s a really simple game with a few Apple-like references but it gets a little stale and repetitive after a while but for $.99, Apple fanboys can kick ‘Smartbot’ ass ninja-style!
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Remember when Steve Jobs couldn’t take his ninja stars aboard his private plane back in September? Maybe he should have used a smoke bomb to get them aboard.
Anyway, Woltz Media is developing an iOS game called Ninja Steve. It’s about a CEO named ‘Steve’ (no official affiliation with Jobs or Apple) that is also a trained ninja assassin.
Webcorder: iPhone Browser That Can Record Quicktime Videos
Available at $0.99 in the App Store, Webcorder is a rather simple browser for iPhone that doesn’t come with breakthrough functionalities or a beautiful interface. Instead, it stands out because it allows you to capture a Quicktime video of your web browsing session. Read more
Slow Down: An App That Will Make You Slow Down Your Car, With Music
This is an app I’m completely supporting, as it’s been developed and promoted by the Belgian organization OVK, Parents of Children Killed in Road Accidents. Slow Down, available for free in the App Store, will make you slow down your car by slowing down the music you’re listening to while driving.
Thanks to a combination of GPS to retrieve a road’s driving speed limit and access to the iPod library on your iPhone, Slow Down will remind you when you need to slow by slowing down a song or completely stop its playback. Simple and genius at the same time, as as I said – a concept I’m seriously rooting for.
Go download the app here. Then use it.[Engadget via OVK] Read more
Swish - Nothin’ But Pixels!
One thing the iPhone (and iPod Touch) does not have is a large amount of Dribbble clients, but most people who have an iDevice don’t have a Dribbble account or even know what Dribbble is for that matter. Swish, by Stunnify members Joshua Lee Tucker and Mathieu White, is taking a shot at the competition. Read more
Fring Update: Full-Screen Video Calling, “Dynamic Video Quality”
Fring, a popular VoIP service that allows you make regular phone calls, video calls and chat, released an update to their official iPhone client today which brings a number of new features and fixes.
First off, fring is introducing a new video calling technology called DVQ (Dynamic Video Quality) that automatically adjusts the quality of a video calling session according to your bandwidth in order to provide an always-good experience. I’m testing it on 3G and, admittedly, it works pretty well. There’s also a new video quality indicator that enables you to check on the quality of the connection in real-time. Neat. Read more