MacRumors and Aspyr Giveaway: Get a Free Copy of ‘Civilization V: Campaign Edition’ for Mac
Most of our giveaways have focused on hardware products, but this week, we’ve partnered with Aspyr to set up a special one-of-a-kind giveaway. We’ve teamed up to offer our MacRumors readers a free copy of the ultra popular game Civilization V: Campaign Edition, which normally retails for $29.
We’ve created a dedicated page for the giveaway. Head over there to get a promotion code for Civilization V: Campaign Edition that can then be redeemed within the Mac App Store. The promotion is open to readers worldwide.
For those of you unfamiliar with Civilization V, it’s a turn-based strategy game that lets players lead a civilization to world domination through time, waging wars, discovering technologies, trading with friendly nations, and interacting with some of the world’s most powerful historical leaders. Civilization V: Campaign Edition includes the base game, the Babylon Civilization Pack with Nebuchadnezzar II, plus the Mongols Civilization and Scenario Pack.
We’re providing each of our readers with one promo code apiece, and codes will be available through July 31 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time or until all codes have been claimed. Codes will expire on August 4, so make sure to enter your promo code in the Mac App Store before then. Visit the giveaway page.
Apple Watch Captured Estimated 75% Smartwatch Market Share in Launch Quarter
The latest data from research firm Strategy Analytics estimates that the Apple Watch captured 75.5% global smartwatch market share during its launch quarter, trailed by Samsung’s estimated 7.5% market share.
Strategy Analytics estimates that Apple sold 4 million Apple Watches in the second quarter of 2015, while runner-up Samsung sold an estimated 400,000 smartwatches during the three-month period ending June 30.
Many analysts have adjusted their Apple Watch sales estimates following the company’s earnings report on Tuesday, with the consensus now ranging between 2.2 million and 3 million units sold, so Strategy Analytics’s 4 million estimate seems overly high. Nevertheless, it is clear that the Apple Watch has become the best-selling smartwatch since its release.
Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, added, “We estimate Apple Watch shipped 4.0 million units and captured a dominant 75 percent smartwatch marketshare worldwide in Q2 2015. Apple Watch launched in sixteen major countries and saw decent take-up from iPhone loyalists in the United States and elsewhere. Apple Watch has clearly raised the bar for the global smartwatch industry. The ball is now in the court of rivals, like Samsung, to respond.”
The launch of the Apple Watch helped the overall smartwatch market grow an estimated 457% annually to reach a record 5.3 million units in the second quarter of 2015. Strategy Analytics reports that smartwatch shipments were higher in this quarter than throughout all of 2014, when Samsung led the market and an estimated 4.6 million smartwatches were shipped globally.
Samsung held a commanding 73.6% global market share in the smartwatch market in the year-ago quarter, but the South Korean electronics maker now trails the Apple Watch by a significant margin. Apple Watch is currently available in the United States and eighteen other countries, and the wrist-worn device is set to launch in New Zealand, Russia and Turkey on July 31.
Apple and Samsung together accounted for 8 in 10 smartwatches sold, similar to the two-horse race between the rival tech companies in the smartphone market. Strategy Analytics estimates that other manufacturers shipped a combined 900,000 smartwatches during the second quarter of 2015 for 17% market share, down from 26.4% market share in the year-ago quarter despite selling 600,000 more smartwatches.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Apple Watch sales “exceeded expectations” during the company’s third quarter earnings report on Tuesday, but stopped short of providing any specific sales figures. Cook’s only comment was that Apple Watch sales during its first nine weeks of availability were higher than sales of the original iPad and iPhone when those devices first became available for sale.
Microsoft Introduces ‘Send’ iOS App for Quick, ‘In-and-Out Email’
Microsoft today announced “Send,” a new app premiering exclusively on iOS that aims to give customers the simplicity of a text-message conversation in the guise of a professional e-mail experience. Specifically, the app will let users send quick, snappy responses to co-workers “without a subject line or formal email constructs.”
Microsoft hopes that the app acts as a bridge between the texting and e-mail culture that can become murky when needing to reach someone quickly, but are lacking the person’s phone number and wanting to avoid filtering through an e-mail app for an old thread. Send isn’t for in-depth dives into an inbox, either, the app choosing to show only the messages created and sent within the app itself, sticking to its mission statement of a more threaded, iMessage-like experience.
While tools like text messaging and IM are great for short messages, you often don’t have your co-worker’s cell phone number or an IM app on your work phone. And we’ve heard loud and clear from people at work, they want all their communications available in Outlook—even if they send them from other apps. This is where Send comes in! Send gives you the simple, quick text message-like experience while allowing you to reach all co-workers and have all of your communications in Outlook for reference later.
If a user connects the app to an Office 365 School or Business account, they’ll be able to pick up conversations anywhere thanks to cloud sync and Outlook. All emails sent and received within Send are also promised to comply with the various email compliance policies of companies around the country, with Microsoft promising that the messages “are treated like any other work email.”
The app is available today in the United States and Canada, but only for iOS. Microsoft promises the text-message-meets-email experience of Send is “coming soon” to Windows Phone and Android phones. The company also encourages people to provide feedback on the app during YamJam on Tuesday July 28 from 9 AM to 10 AM PDT, by following the instructions at the bottom of the Send blog post.
Send [Direct Link] is available to download for free in the App Store today.
This is the ASUS ZenFone 2E, AT&T’s latest GoPhone device
AT&T has revealed that the ASUS ZenFone 2E will be joining GoPhone, its line up of prepaid smartphones. The device has a price point of $119, with AT&T’s prepaid plans starting at $45 per month for unlimited talk, text, and 1.5GB of data.
The ASUS ZenFone 2E features a 5-inch IPS HD display, a dual-core Intel Atom CPU, an 8-megapixel rear camera, a 2-megapixel front camera, and a 2,500mAh battery. AT&T says users should be able to get 20 hours of talk time and up to 8 hours of stand by time out of this device.
The device can be purchased at brick-and-mortar stores Walmart and Target for $119. It should arrive at AT&T locations on July 24, with availability at Best Buy starting on August 2.
Prepaid devices have been in the spotlight lately, with the LG Tribute 2 and Tribute Duo landing on Sprint Prepaid and Virgin Mobile earlier this week. The LG G Stylo, LG Tribute 2, and Volt 2 also recently landed on another Sprint subsidiary, Boost Mobile.
Prepaid phones are an economical option for those that can’t afford the higher rates that come with flagship devices and full-fledged data plans. However, prepaid devices have never been that great in terms of hardware, but the selection is slowly getting better with more impressive devices on the horizon.
source: Asus
Come comment on this article: This is the ASUS ZenFone 2E, AT&T’s latest GoPhone device
Enterprise Edition of Google Glass beefing up for the workplace
As Google moves to reposition they next version of Google Glass to be primarily used for business and enterprise purposes, reports indicate the Glass team is beefing up the device to be a little more business friendly and more rugged to handle the stress of a workplace environment. Despite some of these changes, the overall form factor will stay much the same as the Explorer Edition with a prism located above the right eye and the electronics hanging on the right temple.
New to the next “Enterprise Edition” will be hinges for the temples so the device can be folded up like normal eyewear. This includes both the plain left temple as well as the right temple and all of the electronics located there. This should make it a little easier to keep the device close to a worker who could more easily stow it in a case, including a hard case, when not immediately needed.
Overall the materials and fit are getting beefed up. This should help protect it from bumps and drops that may occur in the workplace. Google appears to have worked on addressing some of the openings that existed in the first version of Glass, making them smaller or sealing them up altogether to improve water resistance.
Reports also indicate Google plans to ship the device with a larger prism to make it a little easier for users to view the screen. The new version is also expected to come with an Intel Atom processor providing better performance, possibly better battery life, and better heat management. An improvement in any of these areas would address some of the shortcomings of the original Glass devices.
The new Enterprise Edition of Google Glass is expected to only be available through Glass for Work partners with no retail option being available for general consumers. A device from Google recently passed through the FCC which many think was the new version of Glass, so it may not be much longer before we see reports of the next generation of Glass starting to show up.
source: 9to5Google
Come comment on this article: Enterprise Edition of Google Glass beefing up for the workplace
Google clarifies the changes to Google+ Photos
You have probably had to download the new Photos application recently if you’ve fancied browsing through your backed up pictures, but it seems that the change over from the old Google+ Photos system has caused a little confusion. Anil Sabharwal, the head of Google Photos, has taken to Google+ to clear up any misconceptions.
Although Google will be shutting down Google+ Photos, the features that users are familiar with in Google+ will continue to function as before. Users will still be able to share, comment on, and +1 photos and video. Media already backed up with the service will also remain unaffected by the change, and can be found in the Photo’s tab on your Profile page.
“The private photo management component of Google+, which includes backup, editing, creations, private album management (album management for shared content is still available on Google+), and sharing to other apps, is being replaced by Google Photos”
Most of the changes are being made to the back end, in a move which is designed to consolidate photo backups into a single system on Google’s end, rather than having two features that perform virtually the same functions. Essentially, backups, editing, and album management will be replaced by Google Photos, but shared content will still be available through Google+.
This is good news for Google+ Photo users who want to continue to use the features that they are familiar with, but will allow Google to make the necessary changes to improve and maintain its photo backup system.
XBMC’s Kodi media player officially hits the Play Store
Kodi’s media player got a name change last year and now it has something even better — official Android status. The app formerly known as XBMC is now available on the Google Play store for all takers. It actually arrived to the store last month in beta form, but prior to that could only be sideloaded on Android. Version 15 (codenamed Isengard) now supports Android 5-specific features like 4K and variable refresh rates on certain Android TV devices, like NVIDIA’s Shield. Another new trick on all platforms is “adaptive seeking” that lets you search material faster by tapping a key several times.
There’s also new audio and subtitle lists, an updated add-on manager, improved video queuing and better live TV closed-captioning. It has other minor tweaks and fixes (check the source), and the XBMC foundation said that the next release would support DirectX 11. You can grab the app now on Google Play, but just remember that Kodi is a deep app, so leave yourself some time (and possibly some help) to get it working.
Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment
Source: Kodi
Forever 21’s ‘Thread Screen’ displays Instagram pics using fabric
Most companies seek out the latest displays for high-tech billboards, but Forever 21 has decided to take a different route for this particular Instagram project. For the past year-and-a-half, the folks at connected hardware maker Breakfast New York have been building a “Thread Screen” for the company. It’s called that, because well, it’s literally a screen made of 6,400 mechanical spools of multicolored threaded fabric. Those spools have five-and-a-half feet of fabric each, divided into 36 colors that transition every inch-and-a-half. They move like a conveyor belt, stopping at the right hue based on what picture they’re displaying — an infrared even scans the finished product to make sure each spool is displaying the correct color.
According to Breakfast NY, which also created a smart street sign among other installations in the past, the machine weighs 2,000 pounds and has over 200,000 components. It’s a gargantuan display, and you’ll get the chance to control it from today, July 22nd, up until July 28th. When you post a photo on Instagram and use #F21ThreadScreen as a hashtag, the device’s accompanying software will take your image and optimize it for the screen’s 80×80 resolution. You’ll then get an edited video of your picture as the Thread Screen transformed to display it — check out this editor’s profile photo being ran through the system below to see an example of what you’re getting. If you’re curious about other people’s photos, though, you can also visit the project’s official website. F21 and Breakfast are live streaming the machine as it displays photo after photo for 24 hours from now until the project ends.
Filed under: Misc
Source: Breakfast New York, F21 Thread Screen
British pensioner’s central vision restored with Argus II ‘bionic eye’
Second Sight’s Argus II bionic eye has already helped hundreds of patients around the globe with a rare disease called retinitis pigmentosa (RP) to see again. And yes, that includes several Americans who’ve gotten the system after it was approved by the FDA in 2013. Now, doctors at the Manchester Royal Eye Hospital have proven that it also works on another kind of degenerative eye disease: age-related macular degeneration (AMD). They’ve recently attached an implant onto the retina of Ray Flynn, an 80-year-old retiree who had lost his central vision due to the condition. Unlike retinitis pigmentosa, which could occur in anyone regardless of age, macular degeneration is one of the most common causes of blindness in adults 30-years-old and above. Also, AMD takes away a person’s central vision, while those with RP usually lose their peripheral sight instead.
That implant, by the way, is but one part of the Argus II system. It works in conjunction with a tiny eyeglass-mounted camera that captures the surroundings. The footage the cam takes is converted into signals, which are wirelessly transmitted to the implant and stimulate a person’s remaining retinal cells. That causes the cells to send images to the brain. The doctor’s didn’t know if the system would work, as it had only been tested on RP patients up until that point. Thankfully, everything went well.
While the technology can’t bring back Flynn’s original high-def vision, he can now at least discern objects in front of him. Head doctor Paulo Stanga told the BBC that Flynn has been “seeing the outline of people and objects very effectively” ever since the implant was switched on back on July 1st. His brain will be even better at detecting and interpreting shapes and patterns in time, whereas prior to the operation, he couldn’t even see anything in front of him. “Before when I was looking at a plant in the garden it was like a honeycomb in the center of my eye,” he told The Telegraph. “That has now disappeared. I can now walk round the garden and see things.”
The Manchester Royal Eye team will outfit four more AMD patients with the system as part of its clinical trial. Sure, an even better bionic eye might emerge someday, but we’ll bet those other four testers would prefer seeing outlines and shapes right now than nothing at all.
[Image credit: Second Sight]
Filed under: Science
Source: BBC, The Guardian
6 shape-shifting homes that give new meaning to the word ‘transformer’
By Cat DiStasio
Some cars have removable rooftops; some computers turn into tablets; and some houses can transform into entirely different structures at the press of a button, the flip of a switch or the wave of a hand. From expanding apartments that maximize tiny footprints to robotic homes that double in size, read on for six unique dwellings that can change shape, size and function at a moment’s notice.
AIVAnet 