We here at the MacStories institute of app reviews have a feeling that your stack of Dōjinshi, Green Latern, and The Walking Dead comics have been dwindling at an alarming pace. Surely you could fulfill all your Hentai Manga needs online, but what fun is downloading RAR files just to peep JPEGs when you could get with the times and scoop some CBZ or CBR files from your favorite digital vendors? And no doubt you’ve been pulling shenanigans like scanning Super Man covers into PDFs for easy reading in iBooks instead of faxing ass photos to your boss in Italy. While there’s nothing like tearing the plastic off Wonder Woman, flipping pages is best left for the DC fanatics who have a thing for glossy covers and tongue inspired paper crinkling. It’s time to give comics a quick swift kick in the rear and bring the treasure trove of paneled heroism into the 21st century. That’s what Danger Duck would have wanted right?
How to Read Comics Like a Pro on the Mac & iPad
The Iconfactory Posts Astronut for iPhone Trailer, We Can’t Wait
Astronut app by The Iconfactory is a game we at MacStories are really looking forward to. What would you expect from the makers of Twitterrific and Ramp Champ? Absolute excellence. And it looks like Astronut will keep up with Iconfactory’s history of great software.
A trailer of Astronut is now online, and it was produced by my good friend Josh Hellferich (@Digeratii). From what we can see, the game looks beautiful and there’ll be a lite edition in the App Store.
We can’t wait.
The Incident for iPad Is Coming To Your TV, With iPhone As A Controller [Update: Video]
We are big fans of The Incident by Big Bucket Software. Developed by Panic’s Neven Mrgan and Matt Comi, The Incident is a simple and addictive 16-bit styled game where you control a man named Frank who has to constantly jump and avoid obstacles falling from the sky. From our review:
As Frank, you’ll be climbing your way above and beyond mountains of just about anything that might fall from the sky. Couches, minivans, and propeller blades attempt to crush you under their fantastic weight; even with a little pushing and shoving, you’ll have quite the challenge in avoiding dangers from above and below.
Now, after a 1.2 update that brought game controlling from the iPhone, The Incident 1.3 will come to a TV near you. That’s right: you’ll be able to play an iOS game on your television (just like we always used to, remember?) using the iPhone as a remote controller. No technical details have been provided by the developers yet, except that all you need to get the thing up and running is “pluggin your iPad into the TV”. I guess it’s a standard VGA cable from Apple, anyway. Read more
iTunes 10.1 and OS X 10.6.5 Coming Tomorrow, iOS 4.2 On Friday at 10 AM PST
An inside source at AT&T told MacStories that Apple is planning to release iOS 4.2, a major OS update for iPhones, iPods and iPads, on Friday November 12th at 10 AM PST. We also learned that updates to iTunes and Mac OS X will be released sometime tomorrow – iTunes will be reaching version 10.1 and Mac OS X will jump to the long-awaited 10.6.5 version. Read more
MacGraPhoto Bundle: 9 Mac Graphics Apps, $39.99
It looks like bundles of OS X software are back and this time their creators are really focused on providing quality, rather than mere quantity. The MacGraPhoto bundle, launched yesterday, features 9 popular Mac graphics applications worth $444 at the affordable price of $39.99. That’s not a bad deal, is it?
Among the included applications, some real gems I’ve used in the past and reviewed here on MacStories. Sketch by Bohemiam Coding, for example, which we reviewed here. With the bundle you’ll also get Hydra, Posterino, Snapshot, ImageFramer, Layers, AtomicView, Swift Publisher, Sandvox and the bonus app DVD Library.
You can go buy the MacGraphoto bundle here. Again, we think it’s a great deal featuring some really neat apps for OS X.
Meet The Chinese MacBook Air 11-inch Clone
Oh, Chinese computer manufacturers. You’ll never grow tired of releasing weird Apple product clones, won’t you? These products are clearly bad rip-offs of Ive’s creations, yet some people are still buying them. It’s a mad, mad world. Read more
Apple’s Tablet Computer History→
Apple’s Tablet Computer History
Now that Apple has released the market-leading iPad, with a barrage of other tablet computers and dedicated eReaders flooding the market, it’s worthwhile to look back and see where all of this came from. The focus will be on Apple, and their history with tablet computers.
I didn’t know many of those devices even existed. Great collection.
Adobe Ideas 1.1 Adds Layers, iOS 4 Support, Goes Universal
A huge update to Adobe Ideas for iPad has been released a few hours ago in the App Store. First off, the app is now Universal for iPhone and iPod Touch, supports the Retina Display and iOS 4 multitasking both on iPhones and iPads. A Universal version of the app was one of the most requested features since the app came out on the tablet, and it’s a great addition to an already popular app.
Then, layers: available as in-app purchase (smart move, Adobe), you can insert up to 10 layers plus a photo layer in each sketch. The user interface for this functionality looks fairly simple and accessible. You can also “redo” actions now. Last, the app is now much faster and optimized for every device.
Adobe Ideas is available for free here. Check out the introductory video below.
A Stun Gun for iPhone
We’ve featured creepy iPhone and iPad experiments gone totally wrong in the past. Don’t remind me of that Japanese weirdo who used to eat off his iPad. For this reason I hope what we have here today is a spoof video, I don’t want to believe the stun gun dock accessory for the iPhone called the “Stun Fone” is real.
The guys you can see in the video below built this dock stun gun which you can use by pressing the volume buttons on the iPhone. No jailbreak required. While it’s fairly easy to build such an accessory and hack it to work with the standard iPhone keys – this looks just wrong to me. Read more