Placing FaceTime calls over cellular, especially video, can eat through data quickly if you aren’t monitoring them.

Since unlimited cellular data plans are pretty much a thing of the past, most of us keep a watchful eye on our data usage. When it comes to FaceTime, Apple gives you several different ways to check and see how much data FaceTime is using over your cellular network. You just have to know where to look!

One important thing to point out about viewing individual call usage for FaceTime is that Apple doesn’t currently specify whether or not the call was placed over cellular or WiFi. That being said, viewing data for FaceTime audio and video calls is a good way to get an idea of how much data they really do take up. If you only want to monitor cellular consumption for FaceTime, skip to the very last section on how to view all cellular activity for FaceTime. You’ll need to do this plus reset statistics each month, which is also explained in the last section.

How to view FaceTime data usage for an individual call in the FaceTime app

1. Launch the Phone app on your iPhone (or iPad with cellular built-in).
2. Tap on Recents in the bottom navigation.
3. Tap on the Info button to the right of the FaceTime audio or video call you’d like to see data usage for.
4. The data usage will show underneath each FaceTime call at the top.

How to view FaceTime data usage for an individual call in the Phone app

1. Launch the FaceTime app on your iPhone (or iPad with cellular built-in).
2. Tap on either Audio or Video at the top to sort calls.
3. Tap on the Info button next to the call you’d like to see cellular usage for.
4. The data usage will show underneath each FaceTime call at the top.

How to view overall FaceTime cellular usage in the Settings app

1. Launch the Settings app on your iPhone (or iPad with cellular built-in).
2. Tap on Cellular.
3. Scroll down and find FaceTime in the list. You’ll see the data usage amount below it.

Note that this usage is for the current period. If you have never reset your cellular data counter, this is lifetime usage. If you want to monitor FaceTime cellular usage monthly, you’ll need to reset your cellular data statistics each month when your usage cycle starts over. To do that, just scroll to the very bottom of the Cellular section and tap on Reset Statistics.

Best Buy is currently running a promotion in its retail stores that offers potential buyers of Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 at least $200 towards the purchase of the 12-inch device if they trade in any old, but still working, tablet.

1Password for iPhone and iPad has hit version 5.4 with Apple Watch support, letting you access your secure information from your wrist.

On the Apple Watch, 1Password will show you the codes, credit cards, and more that are most important to you, and you’ll be able to select specific items that will appear in the watch app. In order to use 1Password on Apple Watch, you’ll need to purchase the Pro feature set for $9.99. From AgileBits:

After a couple months of diligently attending the gym, you’ve earned a coveted private locker. Of course, remembering your locker combination is probably not a priority when you’re counting reps. But if you store that combination in 1Password, it only takes a couple of taps for you to see the combination in 1Password for Apple Watch when you’re back at your locker.

In addition to the Apple Watch support, 1Password 5.4 will let you turn off the badge for Message Center announcements. The app will also remember where you left off the last time you used it, so you can resume what you were doing when you return.

1Password 5.4 is available on the App Store now.

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Source: AgileBits

Microsoft has acquired Datazen Software, a Toronto-based company that has released business intelligence apps for Windows 8.1, Windows Phone, iOS and Android devices. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Trivia Crack has been updated to version 1.2 in the Windows Phone Store. The update will now show how many turns you have waiting to be played on the Live Tile. A previous update enabled Live Tile support, but the new addition gives you a real time number for how many friends are waiting for you to take your turn.

Apple made a bold statement at its recent Spring Forward event, that its all-new MacBook had reinvented the notebook. We’ve all had our own opinions on it, especially given the strength of the Windows Ultrabook scene right now. But they’re also opinions based on early looks and spec sheets. Thankfully, our buddies over at iMore have reviewed the MacBook in full to give us a little more information.

With the likes of the Asus Zenbook UX305, Samsung Ativ 9, Dell XPS 13 and Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon to name but a selection, in the Windows stable, there’s a ton of great laptops out there right now. So how does the MacBook stack up?

Steam reports they have over 4 million Mac-using customers. But how many are playing games that aren’t mobile shovelware?

Macs still make up a tiny percentage of Steam’s customers —less than 3.5 percent, in fact — but it’s heartening to talk about Mac gamers in the millions. Still, numbers don’t tell the whole story.

A quick look around Steam’s OS X section or the Mac App Store reveals a sad truth: A lot of the games that get published on these services are tired retreads — ports, essentially — of games that were originally developed for mobile platforms. I wonder how many of those 4 million Mac gamers are playing crap that was never designed for their platform to begin with?

This isn’t unique to Steam, either. I frequently have this problem when I’m cruising the Mac App Store looking for new stuff to play. I’ll find something that looks a bit interesting, will click through or do more research on it only to find out it’s been on Android or iOS for months.

It’s an existential crisis for self-identified computer gamers

Mac gamers have long played second fiddle to PC gamers, but now they’re playing second (or maybe third) fiddle to mobile gamers, as well.

It’s an existential crisis for self-identified computer gamers, but a few different phenomena have converged to make it happen. First, mobile games are incredibly popular. There are hundreds of millions of people who play games on mobile devices, so it’s a huge potential market. The mobile market has been quick to embrace alternative payment methods like free to play/pay to win models, which

What’s more, the tools used to develop games make it easier for developers to create one product that can be published on multiple platforms. It’s not just Xcode’s portability between iOS and OS X, either. Unity is a popular game development tool that has been used in thousands of apps and games, including lots and lots of mobile games. But Unity is not just for mobile games: Look at Cities: Skylines, the popular city building game that some say is better than EA/Maxis’ SimCity reboot (and works great on the Mac).

Tools like that are making it easier for developers to cast a wide net without having to invest lots of money and assume the risk of supporting unfamiliar platforms. Mac users are benefitting from that most directly.

What difference does it make if the game I’m playing started life on the iPad, as long as it’s fun?

For a fair number of those four million gamers, the difference between a “mobile” game and a “computer” game may be increasingly irrelevant. We’re looking to spend a few minutes with a diversion on our computer in between meetings and other work, or perhaps in front of the TV relaxing after supper. What difference does it make if the game I’m playing started life on the iPad, as long as it’s fun?

In fairness, it really shouldn’t. But my concern is that right now, differentiating first-run Mac games and game ports from mobile conversions requires a bit of detective work. Sometimes it’s pretty obvious: If a game is free to play and has some sort of in-app purchase mechanism, I assume it’s a mobile port (and I’m usually right). If the screenshots or video show a touchscreen, that’s a dead giveaway that the Mac really wasn’t targeted as a primary platform.

But it shouldn’t be that difficult. And I’m saying this as someone who trolls the stores as part of his job; I can’t imagine the casual gamer is going to invest a lot more time or effort in doing so, and as far as I’m concerned, people spending money on software deserve to know what they’re getting.

I just wish that the Mac App Store, Steam, Macgamestore.com and other places where Mac games are sold made it easier to differentiate unique Mac games and first-run Mac game ports from the increasingly undifferentiated horde of mobile games that have come to the computer as well.

Caveat emptor, as the expression goes: Let the buyer beware. And ultimately it’s on the consumers to educate themselves. But let’s not make buying the games any more of a user-hostile experience than it has to be.

A number of screenshots showing what Windows 10 might look like when running on small tablets have been leaked, showing how the UI and apps will scale to fit the displays for those devices.

Apple has announced that ResearchKit is now widely available for medical researchers and developers to use in their apps.

ResearchKit was first introduced at Apple’s “Spring Forward” event in March with the aim of fixing problems with medical research such as small sample sizes and inaccurately-reported data. Users can sign up to participate in studies right on their iPhones, sending relevant data to medical research institutions as they wish.

An open source framework, ResearchKit lets developers build new modules on top of the existing ones to expand its capabilities. The modules that come with the framework address three common elements of studies, according to Apple:

The open source framework allows any medical researcher to take advantage of the initial modules in ResearchKit to study health and wellness and better understand disease. Developers can also build new modules based on the open source code and contribute them to ResearchKit. The initial customizable modules address the most common elements found in research studies—participant consent, surveys and active tasks.

Five apps built with ResearchKit have already been released. They include tests for Parkinson’s Disease and a cardiovascular health study. In addition to researchers, users have also shown a great deal of interest in ResearchKit, with Stanford reporting that their MyHeart Counts study saw over 10,000 signups in the first week of availability.

You can learn more from ResearchKit.org.

Source: Apple

FiftyThree’s Paper app has been updated to version 2.4.1 with support for cloud backups of journals, and a new place to see all of your activity in the app’s Mix service.

Free backups of all of your Paper journals are now available to anyone with a free FiftyThree account. Backups are secure, and remain viewable only to you. With backups, you can easily restore work that has been deleted, or easily bring in your old work to a new iPad.

This update also adds the Activity Center for the Mix social drawing service. The Activity Center shows all activity related to you and the work you’ve shared on Mix. You’ll see if someone likes your ideas, who remixes them, and who follows you.

Because of continually falling numbers, Paper will no longer support the Pogo Connect Bluetooth stylus in version 2.4.1. FiftyThree currently offers their own Pencil stylus, which starts at $49.95, for those that need to switch. The update also fixes a number of bugs.

You can download Paper 2.4.1 from the App Store now.

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