Posts tagged with "iPhone"

Doodle Jump Now Even More Addictive With Game Center Support

Doodle Jump is the iPhone game that started the “Doodle something” trend in the App Store. A simple game where you control a tiny…”thing” that has to jump using the iPhone tilt controls. Simple and addictive.

Doodle Jump’s latest 1.25 update brings support for Game Center: you can now compare your score with your friends to see who’s the best Doodler out there. Please don’t get mad at us when you’ll find out that you wasted 6 hours just trying to beat your friend’s record on Game Center. This update also brings the beloved ghost theme back.

You’ve been warned. Doodle Jump is available at $0.99 in the App Store.



Rumor: iPhone 5 To Hook Up With Any Mac via NFC Technology

We covered NFC (Near Field Communication) technology before: many rumors and patents surfaced in the past detailing how Apple might be interested in implementing NFC in future iPhones to turn them into “digital wallets” capable of doing things such as on-the-go instant payments. While NFC cellphone-based payments are already reality in Japan and there are a couple of applications that can already do that on the iPhone without NFC (like Visa payWare), we have been speculating about Apple deploying its own solution for months now.

According to new report by Cult of Mac from an anonymous source, Apple might implement NFC in the iPhone 5, but not just for mobile “iWallet” payments. The source claims Apple has been working on a solution to let iPhone users carry their whole OS X experience around and use any Mac as if it was their own computer through an iPhone-based transfer system. Neat stuff. Read more



iPhone DST Bug Spreading Across Europe - And The US?

It happened a few weeks ago in New Zealand and Australia and it’s happening again in Europe: not that European countries have switched from Standard Time to Daylight Saving Time, the annoying iOS 4.1 clock bug that makes alarms go off an hour later is spreading like a virus across European users and it’s making the rounds of Twitter.

Apple promised a fix to ZDNet Australia when the bug was first discovered weeks ago. We speculated that Apple might release a fix the same week to prevent the same bug from happening in Europe (last weekend) and the US (they’ll switch to DST on Nov. 7). No fix has been released yet, and iOS 4.2 is scheduled to ship this month. Perhaps they’ll just wait for the new OS to release a DST fix? Read more


The Addictive Allure of Instagram

The Addictive Allure of Instagram

But Instagram is, maybe more than anything else right now, a community of people who enjoy making & taking charming photos, sharing them with their friends and seeing what their friends have shared. It is a community that lives on top of other, existing communities, and has pulled this off seemingly without any pain or friction. The Instagram community is composed of people from Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Flickr, which of course has helped it tremendously in gaining widespread adoption so quickly.

Starting where Camera+ left off, the Instagram developers have a huge opportunity on their hands.

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You Can Now Use Your iPhone On Mount Everest

Oh, how many times in the past I wished I could add stuff to Instapaper while climbing the Everest. I mean, that damn mount had seriously bad 3G coverage. We were forced to use those ugly satellite phones every time, and man those things don’t even run Twitter. Or Cydia. Or Angry Birds: Snow Edition. I was so pissed I even sent Steve Jobs an email and told him I wanted my money back because no Everest mention had been made on Apple’s website. Lack of support. 1 star.

If you happen to climb the good ol’ Everest nowadays, though, you might be lucky enough to be able to use the iPhone up there. Reuters reports that Nepali telecom company Ncell installed a new 3G facility at the base camp of Mount Everest – which in case you don’t know, is the world’s tallest mountain at 29,035 feet. Read more


The iPhone 4 Becomes Japan’s Best Selling Cellphone In October

According to the latest numbers by GfK Japan (via Analytica1st), the iPhone has become Japan’s best selling mobile phone. The numbers refer to the week October 18-24 and are the result of a survey across 4,000 point of sales.

As you can see, the iPhone, both in the 16GB and 32gB edition, is the only Softbank device in the chart, which includes cellphones by NTT DoCoMo and KDDI au. The iPhone 4 came out in Japan on June 24th, but Apple –as usual – hasn’t released country-specific numbers of units sold.


MacStories Weekly Game: Samurai II

For this week’s “MacStories Weekly Game”, I needed a good ol’ action game to talk about. You know those hack & slash type of games, where you usually wander around levels focusing on killing enemies and making combos? I grew up with them. Then God of War came around and the new kids got a new concept of hack & slash. But Samurai II is different: while clearly inspired by the post-God of War generation (the level schemes, the rich graphics, the bosses, the upgrades, the roll), it retains a somewhat old-style feeling that I was missing on the iPhone.

Samurai II: Vengeance is the sequel to last year’s Samurai: War of the Warrior, featured by Apple in the Best Games of 2009. It was indeed a great game, packed with stylish manga-like graphics, swipe-based controls and good action. Quite possibly, the original Samurai for iPhone is still one of the best action games out there. With Samurai II, though, the developers enhanced the whole system, create even better graphics and took away a few things. Read more