Category: I-phone

You probably already know what this game is like, especially if you’re one of the many, many people who played earlier versions of it on the Amiga and all of its various ports. Defender of the Crown is a classic medieval empire-building game, presented on iOS as an official Amiga emulation, which means it has all of the old sounds, slowdowns and everything else, good and bad, you remember about the original title.

Honestly, playing it now, there is more good than bad here. The most unfortunate thing is that the app makes strange use of the touchscreen as basically a mousepad, as you can drag a cursor around (even if you’re right on top of the selection), then tap to click. But once you figure that out, the controls work out. Unfortunately, you’ll have to remember how the game plays more than anything else, as there is no in-game manual, even on the App Store.* But much of it is self-explanatory, and even the parts that aren’t (I had trouble remember exactly how sword-fighting went) are easy enough to experiment with and figure out.

This game is almost too faithful to the original. I wouldn’t mind seeing an updated version with new graphics and smoother touchscreen gameplay, not to mention Game Center integration, hit the App Store at some point. But for now, this is what we’ve got — a universal version available for US$2.99. If you like this retro hit, you’ll get exactly what you’re looking for.

*Update: There is actually an in-game manual — it’s under the blue arrow on the Amiga interface. So that will help if you’re trying to figure out how to play.

Daily iPhone App: Defender of the Crown originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It took Mickey Ds almost 26 years to reach 15 billion burgers sold, and about 46 years to hit 100 billion. That means Apple hit the 15 billion mark about 9x faster than McDonald’s. And based on projections, Apple could hit 100 billion within five and a half years, or about 9x faster than McDonalds.

Source: Bite Communications

Core Animation is a topic that I have not mentioned too much as of late as there just haven’t been too many resources created.  Today I received a tip about an excellent example demonstrating many different core animation formulas and techniques.

Here’s a short video of the project source code in action:

The sample include moving around an AVPlayerLayer in 3D space while playing a video, using CABasicAnimation in the creation of a working tachometer, an animated pacman going across the screen, using shadowPath to add depth and realism and much more.

The project is from Bob McCune and can be found on Github here:
https://github.com/bobmccune/Core-Animation-Demos

Some great examples to keep in mind if you want to add some extra visual kick to your apps.

©2011 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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The UITableView is such a versatile class – usable for so many different purposes, but can really be a pain to work with when you’re just creating something simple, and don’t want to mess around with delegates or set up data sources.

I’ve found a library based on the MonoTouch dialog library that can be used as a UITableView replacement in many instances, and can be set up with just a few lines of code.

Here’s a screenshot of a sample login screen created using the library:

The library is QuickDialog from Escoz Inc. You can find the library on Github here:
https://github.com/escoz/QuickDialog

You’ll find an extensive sample included with the library, and documentation on the Github page.  You will definitely want to check this out and take note for the next time you’re creating a UITableView.

 

©2011 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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Today we present a collection of tutorials about Maya.

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The server switch I mentioned in the previous blog post has now been completed but there are a couple of small issues John is chasing down at the moment. One of them is that emails being sent from Particle Designer or Glyph Designer have an incorrect email shown as to who the email is from. […]

We are currently in the middle of switching servers. The DNS on the domain name is currently changing, so you may be sent to different servers while this propagates. If you post a comment and it suddenly disappears, then you may have been switched, so you will need to post again. Apologies for this inconvenience. […]

Wondering where to repair your iPhone? A good iPhone repair service is hard to come by when you don’t know what companies you can trust to fix your iPhone and handle it with care.

On this blog, people have recommended specific iPhone repair services in comments, but often with little information or accountability in place. If you’re looking for the best iPhone repair service in your area, this guide should be a step in the right direction.

This post is an attempt to organize listings and reviews of iPhone repair services. Whether your iPhone screen cracked, you have iPhone water damage, or your iPhone battery died, this guide will show you where to repair iPhone in the following cities, with more to be added soon:

1. L.A. iPhone Repair
2. New York iPhone Repair
3. London iPhone Repair
4. Chicago iPhone Repair
5. … and how to fix iPhone yourself

If your city is not in the list, I recommend carefully reading Yelp and Google Places reviews to get information on potential iPhone repair services in your area.

Disclaimer: The listings on this page are based on my analysis of iPhone repair service reviews and NOT on my affiliation with any of the documented companies. However, sponsored listings may be considered in the future, in which case any sponsorships will be disclosed.

Where to Repair iPhone in the U.S. & London

The following pages list some seemingly notable iPhone repair services in large population centers, including Los Angeles, New York, London and Chicago. More locations to come.

Thanks for your patience as I update the list of iPhone repair companies.

Disclaimer: While I’ve used my best judgment to select the iPhone repair services highlighted in this guide, I can take no responsibility for their actions and can’t be held liable in the event of a negative experience.

L.A. iPhone Repair»

New York iPhone Repair»

London iPhone Repair»

Chicago iPhone Repair»

Alternative: How to Fix iPhone Yourself

If you don’t want to pay a repair technician, you can instead learn how to fix iPhone and attempt a do-it-yourself iPhone repair.

If you are handy with tools and comfortable doing your own iPhone repairs, I recommend that you visit iFixIt for a comprehensive resource on how to fix your iPhone (and other devices).

iFixIt is a company in San Luis Obispo, California that offers free wiki-style repair guides for iPhone and other electronics. iFixIt says it hopes to reduce “e-waste” (or electronic waste) by instructing people on how to repair their devices.

Tip: Buy a Rugged iPhone Case

Now that your cracked iPhone screen or other iPhone accident is behind you, it’s time to invest in a rugged iPhone case to protect your iPhone from drops or water damage in the future.

If you never want to relive a costly iPhone accident again, then be sure to check out our list of rugged iPhone cases in the Apple iPhone Review accessories shop.

Leave a comment below and tell us about your iPhone repair experience and whether you have any advice on where to repair iPhones in your city.

Thanks in advance to commenters who leave helpful iPhone repair tips for the benefit of other iPhone users.

Where to Repair iPhone: How to Find the Best iPhone Repair Service is a post from Apple iPhone Review.

Travel site Kayak.com has released its first OS X app, Kayak Explore. The app works as a sort of travel guidebook that helps users make up their minds about what destinations they should explore on their next trip.

When you launch the app, you’re presented with a map and five photos, each of which represents a different vacation destination. Beneath the photo, you’ll find a price for the trip, including flights and hotel. At the bottom of the screen is a slider with back and next arrows, which cycles through the list of destinations. Adjusting the slider to the left or right allows you to select a price range.

The filter bar allows you to customize the auto-generated vacation destinations. You can select from categories such as romantic, shopping, urban, historic, and more; change your departure airport; adjust the number of travelers and narrow your trip to a specific month. Clicking on any of the destinations brings up a details windows that shows flight prices from different airlines and details about the hotel, such as maps, photos, reviews and rates. If you want to book any of the flights or destinations, click the Book Now button, and it will take you to the provider’s website where you can complete your purchase.

I’m a fan of Kayak.com, and I think their Kayak HD app is one of the best travel apps for the iPad. However, the Kayak Explore Mac app seems almost pointless. It’s more of a kiosk you’d expect to see at an airport or Kayak’s website.

While the effort is appreciated, I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come in the Mac App Store: apps that are little more than branding materials for companies, serve little purpose or provide little more than shallow benefits for users.

Kayak Explore is a free download from the Mac App Store.

Browse vacation spots with Kayak Explore for Mac originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Shuffler.fm, the popular music aggregation and discovery site, announced that they’ll soon have an iPad app to allow music fans to channel-surf the thousands of blogs that shuffler.fm aggregates their music from. TechCrunch got an early look at the app and the overall impressions were quite positive. It notes that while the iPad app has more simplistic features and functions than the website, the shuffler.fm app gives users the “ability to navigate through touches and swipes brings back a feeling reminiscent of flipping through album covers and tearing into liner notes.”

If you’re a music fan and haven’t heard of shuffler.fm, it’s worth checking out before the iPad app hits. It works kind of like a StumbleUpon for music. The site scans thousands of music blogs and radio feeds, then separates all the songs by genre. When you select a genre channel on shuffler.fm, it sends you to the blog where the song is, thus promoting that blog’s music. Don’t like that song? Click the skip button to go to another song on a different blog. Though the artist and song will be different, the genre will be the same.

Shuffler.fm is a great concept, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the iPad app, which the good people behind shuffler.fm says will be available within a few weeks, depending how long it takes to get through Apple’s review process.

Shuffler.fm teases forthcoming iPad app originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Engadget’s Dana Wollman checked out a neat accessory from Logitech, the Logitech Tablet Speaker. It clips onto the back of any tablet and doubles as a stand. It looks bulky, but the review states it’s actually quite nice. The speaker delivers decent sound, which is great for when you’re watching a movie or listening to music.

However, there appear to be limitations. While the Logitech gallery shows the speaker can be clipped on any side of the iPad, the Engadget review and gallery shows that to use the speaker as a stand, the iPad should be in landscape mode and laying down at the angle normally used for typing. This could be a space issue for some people.

The tablet speaker costs US$49.95 and comes with a travel case. Logitech says the speaker has up to eight hours of battery life and charges over USB. If you’re OK with toting around an extra accessory, or you’re looking for a compact iPad speaker for work or road trips, this is worth considering for your holiday wish list.

The Logitech Tablet Speaker is currently available for preorder.

Logitech’s new clip-on tablet speaker is also a stand originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 05:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re looking for a way to beat the heat where you live, you have many options. If every last one of those options is unavailable for some reason, you can always give this iPhone dock accessory from Cellularfactory a try. Dubbed the “Newest Cool Dock Fan Gadgets Cooler,” this dock attachment is essentially a tiny propeller blade, powered by the iPhone’s internal battery, that’s supposed to cool you off somehow.

It’s very reminiscent of those tiny USB-powered fans, but I’ve never been able to figure out if those are actually meant to be useful or just a gag gift. Like those, this iPhone-powered fan doesn’t look big enough to manage much more airflow than you’d get by just breathing on yourself. And unlike the iFan, which was a one-shot fan attachment meant to charge your iPhone off the wind, this fan attachment will probably drain your battery flat in no time.

I’m trying to sympathize with you Northern Hemisphere folks and your brutal heatwave, I really am… but I’m sitting in New Zealand, in the middle of a once-in-50-years snowstorm event. I just ate a banana that tasted like it came straight out of the refrigerator, except it was sitting on my dining room table all night instead. So needless to say, I’m well outside the target demographic for this accessory. Maybe the bitter cold has made me just as bitter, but I’m still giving this iPhone fan a (frozen) solid No Comment.

No comment: iPhone fan attachment blows (air) originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 16 Aug 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I know what you’re probably thinking: “Steve’s blogging about a writing tool and it’s not even NaNoWriMo time yet!” As true as that may be, there’s a version of the powerful Storyist writing app now available for iPad, and I just had to write about it whether or not November is near. Storyist for iPad (US$9.99) isn’t as robust as the $59 Mac version, but I found that the app is perfect for my creative writing. If you’re a novelist, a script writer, or just someone who wants to hammer out your own creative thoughts, Storyist for iPad is going to make your day.

Launching Storyist on your iPad brings up a My Projects page. To aid new users in the process of figuring out the app, Storyist includes a Getting Started document consisting of a 21-page guide, novel and screenplay example files, and a handful of images included in the examples.

Like its desktop sibling, Storyist for iPad provides a powerful outliner and an “index card” feature for organizing your thoughts. There’s an amazing amount of control over line indentation and paragraph and line spacing, and a full palette of fonts to choose from. Images can either be inserted into your document from the project folder or from your photo library.

The editor supports rich text, comments, footers, headers and style sheets. For manuscripts and screenplays, the text is automatically formatted into the generally accepted formats for submission. When working on a manuscript project, special pages for plot, character and setting descriptions are created for authors to reference when they’ve forgotten the details.

The app syncs with Dropbox with a tap, and the files are compatible with Storyist for Mac. Other import and export formats include RTF, Plain Text, and Final Draft v8. Since many writers would gag at the thought of having to crank out a novel or screenplay on a virtual keyboard, the app works seamlessly with Bluetooth wireless keyboards.

For doing updates to manuscripts and screenplays on the run, I can’t think of a better writing tool, and for ten bucks Storyist for iPad is a bargain.

Daily iPad App: Storyist for iPad originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 16 Aug 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Martin Lindstrom says he found something interesting while doing some research for an upcoming book about brands: He handed a BlackBerry phone to about 20 different babies, and then watched their reactions to it. Without exception, they all reached up to touch the screen of the phone, which didn’t do anything (since the BlackBerry wasn’t a touchscreen), and then got bored. “These babies, all under two years old,” he says, “have already been converted to the Apple brand.”

Which makes for a fun tagline, and that leads into an article about how old brand experiences, like waiting for film to process, are being replaced by technology. But Lindstrom apparently forgets another possibility: That these babies aren’t already conditioned to a certain brand, but that touch is just the natural way they would deal with the world anyway.

Yes, Apple has done a lot of work to build its brand and its reputation, and yes, the quality of the iPhone speaks volumes to anyone who has experience with one. But babies looking to touch something shiny doesn’t mean they’ve been “brandwashed” by Apple — it more likely means Apple has simply “tapped” into something that was already there in the first place.

[Image from oxtopus on Flickr]

Babies go gaga for Apple? Not hardly originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 16 Aug 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last October Autodesk announced AutoCAD for Mac 2011, signaling a return of the computer automated drafting app of choice to the Mac after a fifteen-year absence. Today Autodesk followed up by announcing two new products for the Mac and a Lion-optimized update to its flagship software.

AutoCAD LT 2012 for Mac is available only through the Mac App Store. AutoCAD LT will set you back a cool US$899.99, but the cost is understandable if automated drafting is your thing. The differences between AutoCAD LT and the full version of AutoCAD for Mac can be seen here.

AutoCAD for Mac 2012 was built specifically for OS X Lion. The flagship app will be available on August 19th and cost $3,995, but it won’t be in the Mac App Store.

AutoCAD WS for Mac is a free app that provides tools for viewing, editing and sharing designs in AutoCAD formats. Think of it as Adobe Reader for AutoCAD. AutoCAD WS for Mac has complimentary versions on Windows and iOS, which allows users to collaborate on designs across multiple platforms — desktop, mobile and web. AutoCAD WS for Mac ships August 19th.

In the official press release Amar Hanspal, senior vice president of Autodesk Platform Solutions and Emerging Business said, “Since the release of AutoCAD for Mac last year, customer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, further validating the need for professional design and engineering software on the Mac platform. Bringing AutoCAD LT and AutoCAD WS to the Mac shows our continued commitment to making design more accessible for an ever-greater number of people to shape the world around them.”

What’s also notable about AutoCAD LT is that Autodesk is the one of the first major publishers to bring its flagship product to the Mac App Store. The thing that stopped them from bringing the full version of AutoCAD for Mac to the Mac App Store was its price: $3,995. As Hanspal noted, developers can not price apps above $999.99 on the Mac App Store.

With Autodesk leaping into the Mac App Store it will be interesting to see if other major developers like Adobe and Microsoft follow suite with their flagship products.

Autodesk expands Mac application line, enters Mac App Store originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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