The Apple Watch as a fitness device (as written by a runner)
I was supposed to review the Apple Watch. That was the plan, but then, when Engadget had its first chance to test the device, I was on vacation. Specifically, I was in France, where I ran the Paris Marathon, my sixth 26.2-mile race in five years. As it happens, our Editor-in-Chief Michael wrote a fair, thorough review on his own, and he cut a fine figure in that stop-motion walkthrough video, too. If there’s one thing he didn’t go into detail on, though, it was the Apple Watch’s performance as a fitness device. Some background there: Michael is one of those naturally skinny people with a stupidly fast metabolism who doesn’t need to work out to stay trim. Which is a good thing, because he hates working out. That’s why, when I finally had the chance to try out the Apple Watch myself (a $649 stainless steel model), I chose to focus on its abilities as a fitness gadget — a fitting decision, considering my running habit was what kept me from reviewing the watch in the first place.
Getting started
Let’s pretend you haven’t actually purchased the watch yet. If you’re an athlete, you’ll want the silicone sport strap, though you don’t technically need it. That said, I always took the time to swap in my bright green sport band, even though the process of changing the strap can feel a bit tedious. For starters, although the Milanese loop stayed put while I was running (and proved sweat-resistant too), I could feel it coming loose while I engaged in activities that required more vigorous use of my arms — things like kickboxing and burpees. It never fell off, thank goodness, but there were times during those workouts when I would stop to readjust the band before carrying on with whatever I was doing. Meanwhile, the sport version fastens securely, and its soft, rubbery finish feels comfortable against the skin. Which is good, because I really, really don’t need another chafing injury.
From there, you don’t even need to open the pre-loaded Workout app; if you didn’t care about your distance or pace per mile, you could just start running and the watch would automatically detect that you were exercising, and calculate your calorie burn accordingly. (You’d also get credit for your exercise time in the watch’s fitness-tracking Health app.) That said, I do care about pace and distance, and I suspect any self-described runner does, too. At the very least, you care how long you ran, right? To get any of those metrics, you will indeed need to use the Workout application.
Open it up, and you’ll see options for different kinds of workouts: indoor running, outdoor running, the elliptical and what have you. (There’s also a miscellaneous “Other” category that’s well-suited to sports like yoga and circuit training.) If I wanted to, I could cap my run at a certain distance or time limit — say, two miles, or 20 minutes. And for most people, that should be enough. It so happens, though, that I’m a bit of a special case: I follow a run-walk routine, wherein I run for a few minutes and then take a short walking break before starting up again. Because of that, I prefer watches with a timed interval feature so that the device can beep at me when it’s time to slow down or pick up the pace. The Apple Watch doesn’t do that, at least not without the help of third-party apps. Indeed, various apps can keep track of your intervals without you constantly having to keep an eye on the clock.
The catch is that you need your phone nearby for them to work — at least for now. That’s because third-party apps currently don’t have access to any of the watch’s built-in sensors (the accelerometer, heart rate monitor, etc.), which means these apps have to rely on the phone to get their data. That’s changing, though: Apple has said that third-party apps will gain access to the watch’s sensors sometime this year. That will be good news indeed, although I still hope Apple will consider adding a run-walk mode in a future software update. It’s true, I’m probably outnumbered by “regular” runners who rarely stop to walk, but I know I’m not the only one of my kind. In particular, run-walking is popular among beginners and casual runners — ya know, precisely the sort of folks who are likely to use the Apple Watch over a dedicated running device in the first place.
Going the distance
The Apple Watch and Garmin Forerunner 220 could never agree on how far I ran. The gap was especially big when I ran without my iPhone.
As it happens, I needed to carry my phone with me on my first few runs anyway. Everyone does. You see, the handset acts like training wheels of sorts, by using its various navigational sensors to help calibrate the watch’s distance tracking. I didn’t know that when I first unboxed the watch, and was a little dismayed to see that it miscalculated my usual route by about three-tenths of a mile off my Garmin 220, which actually does have built-in GPS for more accurate tracking. (By the way, this meant my pace was off by about 50 seconds, too). Things improved somewhat after I took the iPhone 6 with me for a few runs. When I ran a half marathon, the rated distance was also 0.18 mile off what my Garmin was reporting. Over the course of 13 miles, that comes out to an 11-second difference in my average pace. That’s not nothing, of course, but it’s a small enough variance that either way, I had an idea of how fast (or in my case, slow) I went.
Even now, though, after several weeks of testing, the distance tracking is still off, with the Apple Watch often telling me I went farther than I know I went. Also, I’ve noticed that while the Apple Watch and Garmin might start out neck and neck in terms of distance, the two start to diverge whenever I follow a route that takes me under a thick canopy of trees. Even with my phone nearby, the Apple Watch seems to struggle more in lower-signal areas. On one recent run, I observed a 0.12-mile difference between the Apple Watch and my Garmin, which over four miles comes out to a roughly 20-second difference in my pace. And mind you, that was with my iPhone in tow. When I tried going for another run without my phone, the distance gap ballooned to nearly four-tenths of a mile, which for a three-miler translated to a 1:24 difference in pace. That’s huge — and unacceptable. Even weirder, though? Garmin and Apple gave me nearly identical calorie-burn estimates for that same run, and almost every other workout, too. Huh.
A nice piece of kit
All that said, the Apple Watch is still a nice piece of hardware, especially for a first-generation device. Aside from being very well-crafted and pretty to look at, the battery life was longer than I expected — and that’s even after reading early reviews. I typically had no problem making it through a long day, even one bookended with an early-morning workout and after-work drinks. As I type this, I’ve been wearing the watch for seven hours, and still have 71 percent left. And that’s despite the fact that I did a 75-minute workout this morning and have been periodically checking notifications. As for that recent half marathon, it was a long race indeed — nearly three hours — and I still had plenty of battery life left after I finished. If you think you’ll need even more juice (say, during a full marathon), there’s a power-saving mode allowing you to disable heart rate tracking during workouts. I would happily trade heart rate data for longer runtime, and indeed have made this feature my default. Still, I’m sure heart rate readouts will be non-negotiable for at least a few of you.
The Apple Watch is a nice piece of hardware, especially for a first-generation device.
If anything, my concern with regards to battery life is that the inductive charger comes loose from the device a little too easily, meaning runners might one day have their worst nightmare come true: waking up the day of the race to find their watch didn’t charge overnight. Fortunately, the fitness gods cooperated with me the day of my half marathon; I woke up to a 100 percent charge, as planned. But there was at least one day when I woke up to find I only had enough charge for an early-morning bootcamp class. The watch was dead by the time I arrived at work, a little before 9AM. If I ever do buy an Apple Watch of my own, I’ll be sure to get a spare charger to go with it. I’ll keep it at my office, for days like that when bad luck strikes.
As for durability, the sapphire screen on my stainless steel edition remains free of scratches, as promised, although the casing and Milanese band haven’t fared quite as well; both have picked up small dings in the weeks I’ve been testing this. I’ve also taken it in the shower with me, and even got stuck in a downpour the day of my half marathon; both the watch and sport band survived. By the way, the reason Apple is careful to call the watch water-resistant instead of waterproof is that it can’t guarantee the device will be okay if you go swimming or even spend time in a sauna. So I’ve refrained from doing those things — it’s not like Apple didn’t warn us, right? If, however, you want a little vicarious thrill, fitness nut DC Rainmaker took the watch for a 1,000-meter swim and a jump off a high-dive platform, and the device is still ticking. You can read his review here.
Growing pains
So I generally like the hardware. But the software could use work. It’s not just the fact that there’s no run-walk mode, either. It’s other things: some big, some small. For instance, there’s no centralized place where you can review past workouts; the best you can do is look up your activity for a specific day on the calendar. Compare that to other workout apps, like RunKeeper, Garmin Connect and Strava, which have a long activity feed you can browse through, making it easier to see how your performance has changed over time.
While I’m on the subject, I wish I could export full workouts to other apps, which is something Garmin and others let me do. I can export to Apple Health, where I can then send my data to certain compatible apps, like Garmin. Even then, I’m not preserving an archive of workouts, per se; I can only go back and look at how many steps I took the whole day. Fortunately, at least, some of the apps I’ve paired with Apple Health can talk to an even wider range of applications. So, while it might not be possible to send my Apple Watch data directly to MyFitnessPal, I can at least send that information to Garmin, which will send it to MyFitnessPal. Again, full workouts aren’t preserved, but at least my other fitness and nutrition apps know how many calories I burn in a day. That’s something.
In use, I still find it annoying to hit the pause button on a workout, to the point where I avoid doing so unless I’m actually done exercising. My options are: Either do a long-press (“Force Touch”) on the screen and then tap again when I see a pause button, or swipe all the way to the left while the stopwatch is running, and then hit pause. Both ways feel clumsy. I don’t like how the Force Touch option involves tapping twice (three times, if you count hitting the “end” button to stop the timer). But if I swipe left on the screen instead, I often hit something else by accident, and end up, say, toggling the time and time elapsed. It’s so much easier to just hit a physical button on my Garmin, as I would with an old-school stopwatch. That said, I can see where it would be problematic to use the Apple Watch’s home button that way; that’s also what you use to open the app menu. Still, what if there was an option to use the home button like a stopwatch while a workout was in progress?
Speaking of the sort, I wish there were a “Do Not Disturb mode” for workouts, where I could automatically suspend notifications while working out. Indeed, there were times I stopped to walk, lifted my wrist to check my distance and saw Gmail notifications on the screen instead. I’m sure some athletes actually prefer it this way, but it would be nice to have the option of just shutting everything out while I’m in my running zone.
A bright spot
While the Workout app needs polish, there is a bright spot, and that’s the separate Activity app, mirrored on the watch itself as well as the iPhone. The Apple Watch may be limited as a running gadget, but it makes an excellent fitness tracker. Part of it’s that Apple puts fitness in terms I can understand — namely, it tracks my calorie burn, minutes spent exercising and whether I got up to move regularly. That’s more useful than knowing how many steps you took, no? Each person’s goals are customizable, but whatever yours are, the app layout is the same: You’ll see your progress represented in three concentric rings, each with a different color: pink for calories, yellow for exercise and blue for standing time.
Additionally, you can view a basic graph showing when throughout the day you were active (or inactive, as it were.) Each time you check the app, you’ll see those rings fill up before your eyes, representing the activity you’ve done since you last checked in. Meet your goal, and the ring will completely fill up, and even overlap on itself if you’ve been an overachiever. Meet your goals consistently — like, every day for a week — and you’ll unlock a bevy of awards, not unlike the badges you get on Foursquare.
I don’t know what it is — the color-coding, the awards, the occasional notification nudging me to keep going — but I find this design highly compelling. In fact, I would go so far as to say the Activity app is my favorite thing about the Apple Watch, aside from the stylish hardware. On the rare day I forgot to put on the watch when I left for work, it was the Activity app I missed most; I wasn’t going to get credit for all my moving, and that was a shame. Otherwise, for the most part, I didn’t fiddle much with the watch in day-to-day use; occasionally a notification would come in and I would check it, but for much of the day, the watch just sat on my wrist; little more than a high-tech piece of jewelry. With the Activity app, though, the watch often felt like a really nice fitness tracker; one that, unlike competing products, I actually liked enough to wear every day.
Who should buy this?
The problem, of course, is that even at $349, the entry-level price, it’s one expensive fitness tracker. And while it has a top-notch app, it still lacks some features the competition offers, like sleep tracking. Meanwhile, serious runners will be better served by a dedicated running watch, many of which cost somewhere in the $200 range. Then again, Apple’s watch is more stylish than what Fitbit or even Jawbone are selling, and it also does smartphone notifications, which most of its rivals don’t.
Is it too expensive? At $349, not necessarily.
So is it too expensive? At $349, not necessarily. But at $649, the price I would have paid for my test unit, maybe. As Michael said in his review, it depends how much you like the design; how much of a watch person you are; how much status symbols even matter to you. As for me, I won’t be trading in my Garmin just yet, and I probably won’t be laying out $649 of my own money to buy an Apple Watch. It’s a lot to spend on a device that mostly just sits on my wrist, but I also wouldn’t want to settle for the cheaper $349 model because I really do prefer the pricier stainless steel edition. But if someone wanted to get me one as a gift, I’d be most appreciative — both for the pretty design and the Activity app. For me, the Apple Watch is impractical, at least at this price. Even in its first iteration, though, it’s a great fitness tracker and has the potential to one day be a good running watch. But it won’t be until Apple lowers the price (or comes out with an improved model) that more people will be willing to try it out for themselves.
Hold on, now GameStop’s buying Think Geek
There was a hushed silence as the Priest shouted “should anyone have an objection to the marriage of ThinkGeek and Hot Topic, speak now or forever hold their peace.” Suddenly, a side-door slammed open as GameStop rushed in, demanding that the ceremony stop, because it alone was ThinkGeek’s one true love. Hot Topic blanched as ThinkGeek struggled to make eye contact, before nodding in agreement, apologizing and bolting from the altar. As ThinkGeek and GameStop ran down the aisle, arm in arm, the online retailer knew that it had done the right thing because, after all, GameStop had loads more money.
The purchase between Hot Topic and GeekNet, ThinkGeek’s parent company, was seen by many, including us, as a done deal. At the last minute, however, it appears that GameStop stepped in with a better offer, pledging to buy the company’s shares for $20 a pop — compared to the $17.50 price Hot Topic had agreed. As part of the deal, Hot Topic will receive a “termination fee,” the value of which hasn’t been disclosed, but will probably not be enough to ease the pain that only comes when your corporation is jilted.
The press-release makes mention of GameStop using the company to broaden its “product offering in the fast-growing collectibles category.” It makes a big chunk of sense, since the store is suffering at the hands of its online rivals and has recently decided to go into the retro gaming business in a big way. Perhaps, much in the same way that Radio Shack stopped being a supply store for ham radio enthusiasts, GameStop will soon become a place you go to buy things other than games.
Source: GameStop
Acer’s smart diaper is the crappiest demo at Computex
Ever since the introduction of the Edison, Intel’s been actively pitching this tiny computer module to makers by way of workshops and hackathons. At Computex, the chip giant took the opportunity to show off the latest round of hacks based on its $50 kit, and we were amused by one particular demo: the DiaperPie*, a smart diaper solution created by four Acer engineers. The module — which will be the size of a coin if Acer commercializes it — sits inside a regular diaper and is able to monitor a baby’s temperature plus sleeping posture, as well as detecting the presence of pee (moisture) and poo (methane) in the diaper. The data is logged on both the app (via Bluetooth LE) and the cloud, and if the baby needs attention, you’ll get a notification. Given that we haven’t heard much about the previous smart diaper attempt, it’d be cool to see Acer realizing this project.
*Ted plush not included.
Counterpoint: Samsung to sell 50 million Galaxy S6’s, won’t match the iPhone though
The Galaxy S6 may be one of the best Android smartphones of the year but Samsung is still reportedly struggling to outsell the Apple iPhone 6 and Apple iPhone 6 Plus. This follows on from another report that suggested the Galaxy S6 has failed to match Samsung’s expectations in Korea, although another report suggested that the Galaxy S6 Edge was exceeding expectations.
According to new figures from data tracker Counterpoint Technology Market Research, Samsung shipped ten million devices to partners in the three weeks after the handsets launched on April 10, with six million of these being sold to customers. These sales figures were enough to double the sales of the Galaxy S5 in the same period but not enough to match the performance of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus during April.
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A Samsung spokeswoman told the WallStreetJournal that the two flagship devices “are well accepted in the market and sustain the high demand since their market launches” before adding that the company was ramping up production of the Galaxy S6 Edge to “support further growth“.
Samsung told its investors earlier this year that it expected to sell three Galaxy S6 devices for each S6 Edge it sold but the Galaxy S6 Edge has been received better than its sibling in the market, resulting in demand exceeding the supply. As a result, Samsung already confirmed it was opening a third manufacturing plant to increase production of the Galaxy S6 Edge and a report suggested the company planned to triple production of the Galaxy S6 Edge.
Increased supply and availability would certainly increase overall sales of the Galaxy S6 Edge but the high price of both the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge could also be a stumbling block for would-be owners of Samsung’s two flagships. Neither Apple nor Samsung report sales of individual smartphones but this quarter’s financials will certainly reveal whether the two flagships were enough for Samsung to revert its mobile decline.
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Maybe if Samsung were to make the Galaxy S6 Edge Iron Man Edition widely available and release other Avengers-themed Galaxy S6 smartphones, it would be enough to finally topple Apple.
Asus Zenfone 4, 5, and 6 receive Android 5.0 Lollipop
Asus has begun rolling out Android 5.0 Lollipop updates to its budget friendly Zenfone 4, 5, and 6 smartphone ranges, bringing the collection up to date with Asus’ latest version of Android.
The Zenfone 4 (A400CG) is being updated to version 7.3.3, which is available over-the-air or through a direct download. The Zenfone 5 A500CG and A501CG are also in line for the same update, finally bringing these models up to date with the A500KL, which received its Lollipop update back in April.
The Zenfone 6 (A600CG) is a little behind the other models as it is currently without an OTA update, but this should begin rolling out in the next few days. However, a manual download link is already available for those confident enough to install the update themselves. Full instructions can be found on the Asus support page.
The full changelog for the Android 5.0 Lollipop Zenfone updates can be found alongside the manual download links. Along with the Material Design UI redesign and changes to a few apps, Asus has also had to drop some pre-installed apps, such as the Battery widget, Google Text-to-Speech, and Magic Smoke wallpapers, because of Lollipop compatibility issues.
Keep an eye out for that OTA notification in the next few days.
First HomeKit-Compatible Products Launching Today, Led by Lutron, iHome, Elgato, Insteon and Ecobee
Ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, several of the company’s HomeKit partners are today announcing the availability of the first HomeKit-compatible products. HomeKit is Apple’s home automation platform, first introduced at the 2014 Worldwide Developers Conference.
HomeKit provides a standardized framework for manufacturers that develop home automation products, letting them interface with the Apple ecosystem and with each other. Through HomeKit, connected devices like lights, thermostats, speakers, smart plugs, and more can be controlled by Siri. For example, HomeKit enables commands like “Siri, turn off my lights,” or “Siri, turn the temperature up before I get home.”
Though HomeKit was announced in 2014, it has taken nearly a year for companies to complete Apple’s certification process and get products ready for store shelves. Several companies like iDevices, Schlage, and Elgato have previously announced plans for HomeKit-compatible products, but until today, no products were ready to launch.
The first three companies to announce completed HomeKit-compatible products that will be available for purchase shortly are Lutron, iHome, and Elgato. Lutron is debuting its Caséta Wireless Lighting Starter Kit with Smart Bridge, while iHome is announcing its iSP5 SmartPlug, and Elgato is launching its “Eve” connected home sensors. Ecobee and Insteon also announced new HomeKit-compatible products today.
Lutron’s Smart Bridge, part of the Lighting Starter Kit, supports HomeKit and is designed to let users control their Lutron Caséta Wireless dimmers using Siri on an iPhone or iPad. The kit includes one Smart Bridge, two Caséta Wireless dimmers (which support dimmable LED, halogen, and incandescent bulbs), two remotes, and two pedestals.
The Caséta Wireless Smart Bridge with HomeKit support allows homeowners to control lights in specific rooms or areas. For example, just before bed, tell Siri “turn the lights off” and the Caséta Wireless Smart Bridge will turn off lights throughout the house. Unsure if the basement light is still on? Ask Siri to check and if so, turn it off.
iHome’s iSP5 SmartPlug fits into a standard wall socket and can use Siri or the iHome Control app to control lamps, fans, and other devices that are plugged in to the SmartPlug. The SmartPlugs support different “scenes” to control multiple connected devices within the home, and the app will allow multiple SmartPlugs to be grouped and controlled with a single command.
Up to two SmartPlugs are able to fit into a single wall socket and a Wi-Fi connection is required for the plugs to communicate with iOS devices. According to iHome, today’s iSP5 SmartPlug is just one of several products that will include HomeKit support, with other accessories in the iHome Control line coming in the future.
The Eve brand of connected home sensors by Elgato, which the company announced last Fall, allow users to monitor air quality, smoke, humidity, air pressure, energy, and water consumption all with the ease of a synced iOS app. The line-up of different sensors each focus on a specific aspect of home detection: the Eve Room for indoor air quality, Eve Weather for outdoor temperature and humidity, Eve Door & Window for security notifications of open and closed points of entry into a house, and Eve Energy for basic energy consumption data and the control of electronic devices.
Some of the devices in the line aren’t just simple sensors, either, with Eve Energy acting as a go-between for electrical-based devices and a wall outlet (although it’s currently only available for European sockets). The product subsequently can monitor energy consumption of a device and can turn the product connected to it on and off at the touch of a button within the iOS app. Each of the products in the Eve family of home sensors are fully functional with Siri, allowing users to speak to their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to ask about temperature, the security of doors and windows, and control devices connected to Eve Energy.
The Caséta Wireless Lighting Starter Kit is available for $229.95 at Apple Stores beginning today. iHome’s iSP5 SmartPlug will be available for pre-order from the iHome website beginning June 15. Elgato’s Eve sensors are up for pre-order starting today, ranging in price from $39.95 to $79.95.
Ecobee and Insteon also announced a new HomeKit-compatible smart thermostat and Insteon Hub for controlling a range of switches, outlets, thermostats, and lightbulbs respectively. In the coming weeks, there will be even more announcements as companies producing smart home products finish their work on HomeKit.
Mitchel Broussard contributed to this report.
Ecobee and Insteon Announce New HomeKit-Compatible Products [iOS Blog]
Following in the footsteps of iHome, Lutron and Elgato, Ecobee and Insteon, two of Apple’s other HomeKit partners, are also announcing new HomeKit-compatible products today. Ecobee is announcing a new smart thermostat, while Insteon is introducing the Insteon Hub for adding HomeKit compatibility to Insteon’s range of switches, outlets, thermostats, and lightbulbs.
Ecobee’s existing thermostat is already sold in Apple’s retail stores, and as of July, the company is launching a new version that’s compatible with HomeKit. The new WiFi-connected ecobee3 will be one of the first HomeKit-supported thermostat available to consumers, letting temperature be controlled through Siri commands on the iPhone and iPad.
“As the first HomeKit-enabled smart thermostat, we couldn’t be happier to bring this revolutionary technology to customers,” said Stuart Lombard, president and CEO of ecobee. “The new ecobee3 uses wireless remote sensors to deliver the right temperature to the rooms that matter most, and now customers can conveniently control their temperature using Siri on their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, or the ecobee app.”
The ecobee3 uses several remote sensors to measure temperature and occupancy in multiple rooms of the house to adjust cooling and heating when a person is home and when away. Like other HomeKit-compatible devices, the ecobee3 can be grouped with other connected-home devices to enable commands like “Siri, I’m going to bed” which will turn down the temperature and turn off the lights.
Insteon’s HomeKit-enabled Insteon Hub, first announced at CES, pairs with the new Insteon+ app and connects to Insteon’s range of smart home products, from LED bulbs and cameras to wall outlets, keypads, switches, sensors, and more. Insteon has a wide assortment of connected-home products that pair with its Hub, bringing HomeKit compatibility to a wide selection of accessories. Like the company’s existing hub, the new hub pairs with almost all of Insteon’s products and a few additional products, like the Nest thermostat.
The Insteon+ app is also able to interface with other HomeKit-enabled products, so the Insteon system can potentially be used to control an entire connected home. The app allows users to set up “rooms” and “zones,” schedule scenes, and adjust multiple devices at once.
“We’re excited to be shipping our HomeKit-enabled Insteon Hub and releasing the Insteon+ mobile app, enabling the mass consumer market to live in a world where all of their connected devices work together in perfect harmony,” said Joe Dada, CEO, Insteon. “HomeKit streamlines home automation for consumers, brings together multiple manufacturers and offers advanced features like remote control and voice control through integrations with Siri.”
The HomeKit-compatible ecobee3, which includes a thermostat and one sensor, will be available for purchase in Apple retail stores in July for $249. The Insteon Hub will be available for purchase through Amazon.com and Smarthome.com in early July for $149.99.
Apple Pay Gains 12 New Participating Issuers in United States [iOS Blog]
Apple updated its Apple Pay participating issuers list today with 12 additional banks, credit unions and financial institutions supporting the contactless payment service in the United States. Apple Pay now has over 300 participating issuers nationwide, and several hundred more plan to support the NFC-based mobile payment service in the future.
The full list of new Apple Pay participating issuers is reflected below, although it’s worth noting that some banks, credit unions and financial institutions listed may have already had support for the contactless payments service and are only now being reflected on Apple’s website.
The full list of new Apple Pay participating issuers:
- Banner Bank
- BayPort Credit Union
- California Coast Credit Union
- Centier Bank
- Community First Credit Union (CFCU)
- Glenview State Bank
- HAPO Community Credit Union
- Prestige Community Credit Union
- Provident Credit Union
- Staley Credit Union
- Synovus Bank
- Wood & Huston Bank
Apple Pay remains available in the United States only, although Apple is committed to an international rollout of the mobile payments service in additional countries such as Canada, China and the United Kingdom. Canada, a well-prepared candidate for Apple Pay, could be the first country to embrace the service outside of the United States in iOS 9.
Apple Pay gained 24 new participating issuers in early May and another 35 participating issuers in late May.
More than half of Android devices use Jelly Bean or KitKat
Google’s big developer conference is done for another year, which means that the company is ready to dish out some hot statistics regarding the state of Android’s union. Thankfully, the search engine can boast that Gingerbread no longer runs on a substantial portion of its devices, since it’s only running on 5.6 percent of all hardware. In fact, more than half of the ecosystem now runs Jelly Bean or KitKat, with Ice Cream Sandwich similarly dumped into the footnotes. The company also dug into the figures to reveal that almost half of all Android devices have a screen with a resolution of 240dpi, with only 20 percent of users rocking a weaker display. The TL;DR version of all that is simple: Google’s finally escaping its past, and almost everyone is rocking a device that won’t embarrass you in the playground/office/golf club.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Internet, Google
Source: Google
‘Lego Dimensions’ has the toys, but ‘Disney Infinity’ is a better game
The toys came to life, and it was cool when they did. Almost four years after Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure let kids place action figures on an NFC device to make them playable in a grand adventure game, what seemed like a goofy idea turned out to be a great one. There’s something undeniably wonderful about seeing your toy come alive. That idea is also an absolute gold mine. The Skylanders series broke $2 billion in 2014, just weeks after Disney Infinity became its first major competitor. Now Warner Bros. is releasing Lego Dimensions, a massive mash-up of different pop culture icons rendered as little toys to use in one of Traveller’s Tales popular Lego game series.
That’s a lot of toys vying for space and attention. After playing both the new Disney Infinity game, Star Wars: Twilight of the Republic, and Lego Dimensions, one thing is abundantly clear: The toys-to-life competition is now rooted in who can make the best game because the toys aren’t changing. By that measure, Disney is doing impressive work while Lego Dimensions demonstrates just how limiting the toys-to-life tech can be.
Lego Dimensions nails the feel of its characters’ worlds.
Consider Lego Dimensions. Particularly since this will be the first toys-to-life game with figures and vehicles that can literally be pulled apart and reassembled, it should be a fundamentally different beast than its competitors. Speaking at a pre-E3 event, Traveller’s Tales co-founder Jon Burton said that this was the game his studio had been building toward for 10 years, ever since it made the hit Lego Star Wars. Just like The Lego Movie — whose co-starring couple Batman and Wyldstyle join Lord of the Rings‘ Gandaflf as the game’s pack-in figures — Dimensions is a grand mix of pop icons. The Doctor from Doctor Who mingles with Marty McFly and Homer Simpson. Provided you have the toys, you can make Ghostbuster Peter Venkman drive Doc Emmett Brown’s DeLorean alongside Scooby-Doo and the robots from Portal.
Lego Dimensions still feels like a game from eight years ago when you actually play it.
Just like in the movie, it’s fun just to see these faces mingle. It helps that the game itself oozes with high production values. A stage where Scooby-Doo’s meddling kid friends try to break into a haunted house is accompanied by scratchy jazz and audio hiss-soaked dialogue that sounds like it was ripped right from the show in 1969. Like Scoob’s perfectly animated floppy walk, though, the audio is all new, just like the rebuildable toys you can place on a glowing platform to make them appear in the game. The toys feel good too. Batman’s Batmobile and the DeLorean are stubby, but accurate recreations that have three alternate forms you have to use to solve puzzles in the game. The game even shows you how to change them with an on-screen manual that looks like it just fell out of a fresh box of the bricks.
For all the polish and charm of its icons, though, Lego Dimensions still feels like a game from eight years ago when you actually play it. In a demo stage like Oz’s Yellow Brick Road and a new world that acts as a hub between all these characters’ realms, Dimensions is indistinguishable from every other Traveller’s Tales Lego game. The characters still trundle along at a cozy pace, collecting bricks and putting things together on screen that you hold a button to assemble.
Dimensions’ vehicles have three shapes for you to build. Your original won’t appear in game.
They try to incorporate the physicality of the toys, but it ultimately just feels like the game is slowing down. If the Wicked Witch puts Batman in a tractor beam, you can free him by moving the figure on the platform sensor, but in a game like 2010’s Lego Harry Potter you could get the same effect by just switching to another character. When you need to break a special box to free an item inside, you have to rebuild the Batmobile into a noise-powered drill, but in Lego Batman 2, you could solve an identical puzzle by just switching to Robin in a quick menu and using his demolitions costume.
The toy platform can’t even sense when you rebuild the vehicles into your own creation. Unless it fits one of the preset modes, the blocks won’t register on the screen. What the game is actually detecting is the NFC base the figures and vehicles are plugged into. Lego Dimensions toys can be mixed and matched to your heart’s content, but the game isn’t built around that quality. If you or your family goes into the game wanting a new style of toys-to-life game based around the mutability of Lego, this isn’t that. It’s more like very expensive fan fiction built using a nearly decade-old video game.
Like them or not, the Star Wars prequels make for fun fights.
By contrast, Disney Infinity is doing something truly invigorating with its new game playsets coming out later this year. There are no efforts to spruce up the toys themselves with what it’s calling Disney Infinity 3.0; just adding more and more of the characters Disney has spent billions on acquiring or creating in the past decade. Most notable among the new crop are George Lucas’ endlessly warring space soldiers and wizards. The little plastic Yoda and Anakin Skywalker you can make fight through the Clone Wars in Star Wars: Twilight of the Republic are appealingly rounded and cartoony, as with all the Disney Infinity toys. They are not nearly as inherently fun as Lego Dimensions’ little yellow brick people, which feel wonderfully distinctive even if they aren’t used to great effect in the game.
Disney is building a video game Exquisite Corpse, finding multiple styles of play to suit its panoply of characters.
Forget the toys, though: Disney’s strength is the games themselves. Twilight of the Republic was very simple in the demo on hand at Disney’s pre-E3 event, but no less fun because of it. Running through fields of gun-toting droids on Geonosis — that’s the planet of bugs from Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones if you forgot — you slice them up with lightsabers and force powers. Obi-wan Kenobi feels smooth, favoring defensive posturing, while Anakin Skywalker attacks with heavy blows and his apprentice, Ahsoka, feels speedy. Making them pull off slick aerial attacks with a PS4 controller is easy to grasp while also looking extremely stylish.
That the sci-fi sword fighting feels and looks so good isn’t terribly surprising considering who made it. Ninja Theory, the same studio behind such excellent combat games as DmC: Devil May Cry, is the studio making Twilight of the Republic. Not all of it, though. The podracing sequence in there is actually made partly by Sumo Digital, the development house behind the mighty fine Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing. This is all using the core Disney Infinity 3.0 technology made by Avalanche Software, who created the original Infinity and makes the open-world Toy Box mode that lets you mix and match Disney characters in an original adventure.
Anakin Skywalker is still bitter about the nickname “Annie.”
What’s remarkable about Infinity is Disney’s recognition that no game development studio is a true jack-of-all-trades. The original Infinity‘s combat wasn’t so hot, so Disney brought in Ninja Theory to overhaul it in 2.0, which in turn led to its making Star Wars. And 3.0 needed racing in both Star Wars and the Toy Box, so it brought in another specialist with Sumo Digital. In order to make the best possible game it can, Disney is building a video game Exquisite Corpse, finding multiple styles of play to suit its panoply of characters.
The toys don’t need to change, and it would be difficult to force them to. Of course Lego Dimensions can’t just automatically sense the bizarre thing you’ve just made out of old Batmobile parts because it would require every little Lego piece to have an NFC chip in it. Is the game damned because it doesn’t harness the full creative opportunity of its new toys? Certainly not. What burns about Lego Dimensions is that beneath all the new toys and old faces is the same Lego fans have already played. Disney Infinity is exciting because the company has demonstrated that whether or not its latest game is full of brand-new or fondly remembered faces, it’s going to come up with a new way to play with them.
[Image credits: Disney (Star Wars); WBIE (Lego Dimensions)]
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