If you’re not already familiar with my love of Joypad, you might want to check out yesterday’s video filled review. It’s really neat (and nerdy) to pull an iPod touch out of your pocket to play a classic on your Mac or PC with a virtual controller, and I think you’ll love this app-controller gone must-have-gizmo too. We’re giving away ten copies of Joypad to several lucky readers this weekend, so if you love blasting pixel pirates or have an iOS toting gamer in your life, you might want to click the tweet button after reading our rules past the break.
Posts tagged with "iOS"
We Think You’ll <3 Joypad Too: We Have Ten Copies To Give Away
iOS Notifications: No More, No Less
With today’s rumors about Apple considering the purchase of a third-party developer to improve the notification system of iOS, I thought I should explain why, in my opinion, Apple really needs to focus on this, developer buyout or not. The problem: iOS notifications get in the way, interrupt one’s workflow or media consumption and once they’re gone, they’re gone. In my usual setup, these are the apps that send me notifications: Twitter (replies from users I follow, DMs), Messages, Facebook, Calendar, Skype / IM, Appshopper. I think most of these apps are used by several iPhone and iPad owners. Read more
#MacStoriesDeals - Friday
Is Apple Buying A Third-Party App To Fix iOS Notifications?
Most iOS users agree that notifications on iPhones, iPod touches and iPads are nothing compared to what Google has implemented in Android, or what HP showed at the webOS event a few days ago. Personally, from what I’ve seen so far, I believe the notification system demoed on the HP TouchPad is the most intriguing one, with messages staying out of the way in the top menubar but still accessible with a single tap that opens a popup menu.
Last year, it was rumored that Apple might improve iOS notifications after hiring Rich Dellinger, creator of the webOS notification system. It didn’t happen with iOS 4 and 4.2 before that, but according to Cult of Mac Apple is now seeking to buy a “smaller” third-party developer to entirely rebuild iOS notifications. According to Cult of Mac, who cites a source that asked to remain anonymous, the smaller company already has an iPhone app in the Store.
Our source, who asked to remain anonymous, didn’t know the identity of the company, except it already has an iPhone app in the App Store.
One candidate is Boxcar, a free app from Appremix that enables push notifications for Twitter, Facebook, and email. Boxcar’s system has been highly praised, especially the new iPad version.
There’s no doubt that Boxcar offers an advanced and easy way to stay on top of updates coming from social networks, email and websites; Boxcar currently has a universal app in the App Store but the service also works on the web. The app of course doesn’t deploy its own notification system on top of iOS, but it aggregates notifications inside a single UI that’s easy to navigate and manage. I can see Apple wanting to build something like this in iOS 5, although they would still need to find a way to get rid (and thus redesign) the annoying alert boxes and unread badges that come with iOS now. Apple might as well ditch popup alerts altogether and take an approach similar to HP, aggregating everything into a central notification app as well.
It will be interesting to see what iOS 5 will bring to the table with notifications and social connections; Boxcar can be a great fit for Apple.
Echofon For iPad & iPhone Update to 4.0
How could Echofon’s magical sync-a-bilities get anymore improved between Echofon on the desktop and your favorite iOS devices? How about the addition of user streaming to the iPad, global push notifications for direct messages, and the ability to temporarily mute tweet happy users? User streaming is something I’ve wished for in all clients as long as it continues to retain your place on the timeline (Twitter for iPad is good at this), and not too many have successfully took a swing at Echofon’s syncing features. There’s nothing more annoying that re-reading a garbage bin full of old tweets - pick up where you left off with Echofon, and download the free updates in the iTunes App Store via the links below.
[Business Wire: UberMedia: Echofon 4 Press Release via The Next Web]
#MacStoriesDeals - HUGE Thursday
The third day in a row for extra great savings! Here’s today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot!
More Evidence of iOS Gaming on the Apple TV Unearthed, Online Multiplayer too?
Since the Apple TV was revised last year with an iOS backend there has been ample speculation that Apple would eventually allow users to run apps and games and Engadget has today reported that some code in iOS 4.3 beta 3 further backs up that speculation. More specifically, the uncovered code references “ATVGames” and “ATVThunder” which also point to leaderboards, a controller, a way to schedule games and a storefront.
Two other strings were particularly noteworthy; “com.apple.appletv.play.live.thunder” and “.play.archive.thunder”. No one is really sure what they fully mean but as Engadget points out, the AppleTV is limited to 8GB’s of storage which is admittedly fairly minimal possibly suggesting that “archive” or “live” could mean streaming games or multiplayer. Engadget’s source also comments that “OpenGL is mature and thoroughly implemented enough that streaming low bandwidth data and computing locally could happen”.
Twitterrific 4 For Mac Review
My first exposure to Twitterrific was when MacHeist casually offered Ollie as part of their first nanoBundle, alongside great applications such as WriteRoom and TinyGrab. While the third version quickly grew outdated in part because of Twitter’s continual feature growth and the IconFactory’s focus on providing parity between iPhone and iPad iterations, Ollie remained perched in my menubar for quite a while thanks to its minimal HUD interface. It was this Aqua-less client that faded into the background as I went about my other tasks that was supposed to be a permanent mainstay on my MacBook. I loved everything about it despite criticisms of it being ugly or lacking features, and if I wasn’t as vigorous on Twitter as I am today it would still be perfect for simply reading the latest incoming tweets. Though times changed, and I shelved my favorite mascot for Echofon while Tweetie garnered droves of followers in its presence.
While the OS X version of Twitterrific remained seemingly stagnant, the IconFactory made a rather large push into the Twitter realm with the iOS versions we’re familiar with today. Starting with the iPhone, the IconFactory practiced bringing a familiar experience across mobile devices by simplifying how we interact with Twitter. There is no excess interface or useless presentation of information: the IconFactory replaces Twitter’s originally dull and now confusing web interface with an inline, color-coded approach whose design is recognizable across the Apple community. Macworld named Twitterrific the ‘Twitter Client of the Year’ in 2010’s App Gem Awards, and you can bet the IconFactory would take their award winning design to the desktop. Steve Jobs wasn’t kidding when he said everything was coming, “Back to the Mac.”
Today, I’m glad to say that with the launch of Twitterrific 4 for OS X, it has once again reclaimed dominance on my Coca-Cola bottled desktop.
iOS and App Backups→
iOS and App Backups
Craig Grannell is right about iOS lacking an option to easily restore game backups:
That Apple doesn’t provide a workaround for this is inexcusable now that we’ve reached iOS 4.x. In the days of 10 MB iOS games, it wasn’t a problem: you could stuff dozens on a device without problem. But in this age of Rivens and Puzzle Quest 2s, Apple’s (from a gaming standpoint) fast turning its high-end devices into the equivalent of crappy cartridges without battery back-up. The only difference is that an iOS device can hold a bunch of ‘cartridges’, but when one’s removed, the result is the same: all your progress is lost.
Game Center could have been a solution with cloud-based backups for gamers, but I think this is a wider issue. Apple should provide single backups for any app, not just games. Either cloud-based (tied to your MobileMe account, would be nice) or local, users could restore an app’s library after an OS update in seconds. The problem with the current iTunes backups is that they keep everything in a single package that’s often incompatible with updates / downgrades because, again, apps aren’t separated from system files in the backup file.
A single-app backup method would make everything much easier.