I’ve never had much interest in real golf, a sport that requires more money, patience, and dedication than I will allocate to anything besides my significant other and Apple products. I have to admit, though, that I’m a sucker for anything on the videogame golf spectrum, from the ultra-simplistic Desert Golfing to Wii Sports’ golf.
Much of what I enjoy about golf videogames appears in OK Golf, a zen, bite-sized take on the genre. It’s no mini-golf simulator, though, and its distinction will leave you immersed in a tiny world of varying terrain and challenging gameplay.
Where Cards Fall is the newest title coming from Snowman, publishers of the beloved Alto’s Adventure. Today the company announced a fall 2017 release date for the game and confirmed its release platforms: iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac, and PC.
Snowman also shared a new trailer today that contains the most revealing look at the game so far.
A blog post from Snowman breaks down the trailer and provides additional details about the core of the game:
In Where Cards Fall, you’ll build houses of cards to form and shape the world around you. These houses not only help you move through imaginative puzzles, but also bring to life vivid memories of adolescence.
This particular memory [from the trailer] is of teenagehood in the suburbs. Filled with far more cacophonous uncertainty than the playful magic of the forests, the suburbs are home to a crucial question: who will you become? Would you rather remain comfortable at home, or venture into the world outside?
At its core, Where Cards Fall is an exploration [of] these questions, and a look at the way our most fragile memories of the past can become the strongest foundations of our future.
On the heels of the success Snowman found with Alto’s Adventure, it’s exciting to see the company continue to push themselves to explore new and unique ideas in their next game. Where Cards Fall looks like it will be a highlight of the gaming scene when it hits later this year.
The Apple Monitor III kicked off a long line of displays, but it’s not all that interesting. Let’s take a look at some of the standouts in a sea of forgettable beige products.
As I wrote in my story on one year of iPad Pro, I consider cloud services a necessity for managing files on iOS. Dropbox and iCloud Drive make it possible to keep the same sets of documents and app libraries synced across devices, but, more importantly, they help overcome iOS’ file management woes through centralized storage spaces. In the article, I espoused the flexibility of Documents and its tight integration with Dropbox, noting how Readdle had built the missing iPad file manager with features Apple omitted from their iCloud Drive app.
Since early January, I’ve been thinking about my larger writing projects scheduled for 2017 and whether Documents can scale as a reference and research tool. Looking back at 2016 and the time I poured into organizing and referencing files for my iOS 10 review draft in Scrivener (which I covered here), I realized that neither Scrivener’s built-in file manager nor Documents could meet the basic requirements I have set for this year’s review. These include the ability to search different file types with advanced operators as well as a system to reference individual files and folders throughout iOS with local URLs. It was during this meta-research phase1 that I decided to try DEVONthink To Go again.
Apple today announced that WWDC will take place June 5-9, 2017 in a new venue: the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California. The announcement came as a bit of a surprise because in past years, WWDC was announced closer to the event and it has often been scheduled for the second full week in June. But the biggest departure of all is the change of venue. WWDC has been held at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco for the past 16 years. San Jose is much closer to Apple’s new Campus 2 headquarters, which should facilitate the logistics of putting on the conference.
The McEnery Convention Center will be the hub for thousands of attendees with great hotel, restaurant and entertainment options, all within walking distance. In addition to the keynote address, get-togethers, sessions and labs for developers, Apple is working with the city of San Jose and local businesses to celebrate the return of WWDC with very special experiences around San Jose throughout the week.
Tickets will go on sale March 27th. Apple said that the number of tickets available for WWDC 2017 will be roughly the same as in recent years.
Hidden Folks, by game developer Adriaan de Jongh and illustrator Sylvain Tegroeg, is a relaxing diversion into beautifully-detailed, hand-drawn worlds. The object of the game is simple: find people, animals, and objects in huge illustrated landscapes. After you’ve found enough items in each area, the next one is unlocked and ready to explore.
The comparison that comes to mind immediately is the Where’s Waldo book series for kids. But there’s a lot more going on here than that suggests, and this is not a game that’s just for children. Hidden Folks comes alive with whimsical animations and over 960 silly mouth-generated sound effects. Each of the fourteen hand-drawn, black-and-white scenes is vast and full of minute details that make finding each item challenging.
Yesterday at Recode’s Code Media event, a new TV box called Caavo was unveiled. Rather than being a competitor to existing products like Apple TV, Roku, or Fire TV, Caavo is a hub into which you plug those other streaming boxes. Once a device is connected, Caavo can navigate through each box’s interface in a way that’s hidden from the user, all for the purpose of promptly and easily delivering the content you want.
Caavo is controlled primarily by voice, using the microphone-equipped remote control or an Amazon Echo. Tell Caavo what you’d like to watch, and it will turn on the necessary devices, find what you’re looking for, and play it – no navigation necessary.
[Caavo is] processing the video your TV streaming boxes send over HDMI, using machine vision to figure out what’s on-screen, and then determining what command to send next based on that information.
Essentially, Caavo has built an AI that simulates a human user to control any device you might attach to a TV, through whatever method the system can use, whether it’s IR, HDMI-CEC, or direct control over an API on your home network. They’re calling this system “visual analytics,” or VA, and it is quite possibly the thing that will crack the entire living room convergence game wide open.
He gives a practical example of Caavo navigating an Apple TV:
There are still some hacks involved in the Caavo system, and ways for other companies to potentially block the device. Caavo can’t control the Apple TV unless you install the Caavo app, for instance — but the way it works is wild: when it decides to control the Apple TV, it goes to the home screen, sends a bunch of scroll commands to the box, uses machine vision to locate the Caavo app icon, and then opens the app so it can pass a URL to the streaming app you actually want to use.
Caavo’s creators gave a demonstration at Code Media, which can be viewed below:
Caavo will be available in June at a price of $399. If it can deliver on what it promises to do, in a fast and effective way, it may be an appealing device for those looking to bring smart home technology to their TV experience.
One of the longest HomeKit equipment absences has been security cameras. Despite Apple expanding HomeKit to support cameras in iOS 10, nothing has hit the market before today. MacRumors reports on the end of the camera drought, as D-Link’s Omna 180 Cam HD is now available for purchase.
The cylindrical Omna 180 Cam HD features a 1080p camera with a 180-degree field of view, a built-in microphone and speaker with two-way audio, infrared night vision up to 16 feet, and motion detection with the option to record motion-triggered video clips directly to a microSDXC card up to 128GB with no subscription costs.
HomeKit support enables users to control the Omna 180 Cam HD with an iPhone or iPad through Apple’s Home app on iOS 10. When the camera detects motion, users can receive Lock screen notifications to get a snapshot of what’s happening in their homes. The camera can also trigger Scenes with other HomeKit products.
The Omna 180 Cam HD is not currently available in Apple retail stores, but can be purchased from Apple.com in the US for $199.95, and it’s available from Apple’s online stores in other countries as well.
Niantic announced a big update to its hit game Pokémon Go. Later this week, more than 80 Pokémon from the Johto compendium will appear in the game. That’s not all the generation two Pokémon, but it is nonetheless a substantial update to a game that has seen bug fixes and refinements, but limited new content since it debuted last summer.
In addition to adding a subset of Pokémon from the franchise’s Gold and Silver games, Niantic is adding new game elements including two new collectable berries, new Pokémon trainer outfits, and evolution items. Other items will be available for purchase from the in-game Pokémon Go shop.
Pokémon Go became an instant phenomenon in many parts of the world when it launched last year, but its popularity has waned substantially. It will be interesting to see if the new content released this week will reignite interest in the game.
