‘Monument Valley 2’ is now available on iOS

Monument Valley is one of the greatest mobile games ever released, a brilliant puzzle jaunt through an MC Escher landscape punctuated with lovely chimes and audio accents. Nobody expected a sequel to come around any time soon, so Apple nonchalantly announcing the game at WWDC today is a delightful surprise. Monument Valley 2 is officially live on the App Store for $5.

Per the game’s description, the sequel seems to follow a mother looking out for her child as they explore the titular valley. Get the game today so you can be in the know when you see it pop up in House of Cards next season.

Get all the latest news from WWDC 2017 here!

Source: Monument Valley 2 (App Store)

Apple unveils HomePod, its Siri smart speaker

Just as we expected, Apple unveiled its Siri speaker, Homepod, today during its WWDC keynote. It’s yet another category where Apple is a bit late to the party — Amazon’s Echo and Alexa ecosystem has grown steadily over the past few years, and Google has also gotten a start with its Home speaker and Assistant. Even Microsoft has a leg up with the Cortana-powered Harman Kardon Invoke speaker. Apple’s pitch, as usual, is that it’s delivering a more premium audio experience than the competition.

The HomePod’s small, vase-like case houses a four-inch woofer and seven tweeters. It’s powered by Apple’s A8 processor, just like the iPhone. HomePod features “real-time acoustic modeling,” which allows it to tweak music to suit its environment. Apple is also targeting Sonos as a competitor, which is a sign that the HomePod’s audio quality will be better than what we’ve seen from Amazon and Google.

Of course, you can use the HomePod to access Siri with voice commands. But on this device, Siri is more than just a virtual assistant — it’s a “musicologist” that will help you find new tunes on Apple Music. You can also tell Siri you like a certain song, and it’ll remember your tastes. What’s most unique is that you’ll be able to ask Siri specific questions like, “Who’s the guitarist on this song?”

HomePod is coming in December for $349, which is significantly more than the Amazon Echo, Google Home and Sonos’s $300 Play:3. It’ll be available in white and Apple’s usual space grey. We’re hoping to get some hands on time with it soon, so keep an eye out.

Get all the latest news from WWDC 2017 here!

Apple unveils HomePod, its Siri smart speaker

Just as we expected, Apple unveiled its Siri speaker, Homepod, today during its WWDC keynote. It’s yet another category where Apple is a bit late to the party — Amazon’s Echo and Alexa ecosystem has grown steadily over the past few years, and Google has also gotten a start with its Home speaker and Assistant. Even Microsoft has a leg up with the Cortana-powered Harman Kardon Invoke speaker. Apple’s pitch, as usual, is that it’s delivering a more premium audio experience than the competition.

The HomePod’s small, vase-like case houses a four-inch woofer and seven tweeters. It’s powered by Apple’s A8 processor, just like the iPhone. HomePod features “real-time acoustic modeling,” which allows it to tweak music to suit its environment. Apple is also targeting Sonos as a competitor, which is a sign that the HomePod’s audio quality will be better than what we’ve seen from Amazon and Google.

Of course, you can use the HomePod to access Siri with voice commands. But on this device, Siri is more than just a virtual assistant — it’s a “musicologist” that will help you find new tunes on Apple Music. You can also tell Siri you like a certain song, and it’ll remember your tastes. What’s most unique is that you’ll be able to ask Siri specific questions like, “Who’s the guitarist on this song?”

HomePod is coming in December for $349, which is significantly more than the Amazon Echo, Google Home and Sonos’s $300 Play:3. It’ll be available in white and Apple’s usual space grey. We’re hoping to get some hands on time with it soon, so keep an eye out.

Get all the latest news from WWDC 2017 here!

Apple’s iOS 11 upgrades for the iPad are all about productivity

With Apple’s new iOS 11, the company not only introduced a brand new mobile OS for iPhones, it completely revamped the experience for iPads as well. Indeed, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi said this is the “largest iOS release for iPad” yet.

For one thing, the dock now holds way more apps than before, and you can hide and reveal it much like you can with the dock on macOS There’s even a little predictive area on the far right that guesses what app you’re likely to launch next. What’s more, you can pull an app from the dock directly to the screen to have it appear in a Slide Over split screen windowed view. This, Federighi said, could be useful for multitasking.

Another handy feature is a new app switcher, which lets you not only swap out apps faster and easier by dragging and dropping, but also lets you see previews of each app, much like you can on macOS. What’s more, you can also flick on keys to access number and punctuation for even faster typing.

Also, you know that rumored Files app for iOS? It’s live here, on the iPad. You can access all of your iPad’s files on here, including nested folders and tags. Oh, and it even supports third-party storage folders from the likes of Dropbox and Google Drive.

The drag-and-drop functionality is improved as well. Now you can drag and drop a URL from Safari right into an email, and images too. Indeed, you can actually drag and drop multiple images into a single selection, by using one finger to hold the lot and the other finger to add to it. Also of note: If you added a folder to the aforementioned dock, you can tap and hold it to get access to recent files within the folder.

Last but not least, Apple also added more functionality to Pencil. For example, now when you screenshot something, that image will appear in a little thumbnail on the bottom left. Tap it, and it’ll zoom open, letting you instantly mark it up with Pencil. This is handy especially if you need to make quick notes to a photo or a drawing.

Another cool feature is something called Instant Notes. All of your handwritten notes are now text searchable and you can also do inline drawings right in regular documents too. Notes also now has a built-in document scanner — simply take a picture of the document with your camera, and you can start marking it up right away with Pencil. You can also open Notes directly from the Lock Screen by tapping Pencil on the display.

Developing…

Get all the latest news from WWDC 2017 here!

Apple’s iOS 11 upgrades for the iPad are all about productivity

With Apple’s new iOS 11, the company not only introduced a brand new mobile OS for iPhones, it completely revamped the experience for iPads as well. Indeed, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi said this is the “largest iOS release for iPad” yet.

For one thing, the dock now holds way more apps than before, and you can hide and reveal it much like you can with the dock on macOS There’s even a little predictive area on the far right that guesses what app you’re likely to launch next. What’s more, you can pull an app from the dock directly to the screen to have it appear in a Slide Over split screen windowed view. This, Federighi said, could be useful for multitasking.

Another handy feature is a new app switcher, which lets you not only swap out apps faster and easier by dragging and dropping, but also lets you see previews of each app, much like you can on macOS. What’s more, you can also flick on keys to access number and punctuation for even faster typing.

Also, you know that rumored Files app for iOS? It’s live here, on the iPad. You can access all of your iPad’s files on here, including nested folders and tags. Oh, and it even supports third-party storage folders from the likes of Dropbox and Google Drive.

The drag-and-drop functionality is improved as well. Now you can drag and drop a URL from Safari right into an email, and images too. Indeed, you can actually drag and drop multiple images into a single selection, by using one finger to hold the lot and the other finger to add to it. Also of note: If you added a folder to the aforementioned dock, you can tap and hold it to get access to recent files within the folder.

Last but not least, Apple also added more functionality to Pencil. For example, now when you screenshot something, that image will appear in a little thumbnail on the bottom left. Tap it, and it’ll zoom open, letting you instantly mark it up with Pencil. This is handy especially if you need to make quick notes to a photo or a drawing.

Another cool feature is something called Instant Notes. All of your handwritten notes are now text searchable and you can also do inline drawings right in regular documents too. Notes also now has a built-in document scanner — simply take a picture of the document with your camera, and you can start marking it up right away with Pencil. You can also open Notes directly from the Lock Screen by tapping Pencil on the display.

Developing…

Get all the latest news from WWDC 2017 here!

Facebook is bringing gaming videos to the living room

Facebook is determined to become a destination for gaming videos, and that includes when you’re lounging on the couch. It’s adding a dedicated gaming tab to its TV app that will highlight videos from the games, developers, eSports teams and personalities you like on Facebook. If you want to catch a tournament highlight or a new game trailer, you won’t have to pull out your phone or leave the living room.

The social network tells us the gaming section will be available June 10th on Amazon’s Fire TV, Android TV, Apple TV and Samsung Smart TVs. This probably won’t be your first choice for gaming videos, but consider this: some platforms (most notably Apple TV) don’t have great choices for gaming-centric videos. Unless you’re content to search YouTube, this may be your best bet for gaming videos if you don’t have access to the likes of Twitch or Mixer.

Facebook is bringing gaming videos to the living room

Facebook is determined to become a destination for gaming videos, and that includes when you’re lounging on the couch. It’s adding a dedicated gaming tab to its TV app that will highlight videos from the games, developers, eSports teams and personalities you like on Facebook. If you want to catch a tournament highlight or a new game trailer, you won’t have to pull out your phone or leave the living room.

The social network tells us the gaming section will be available June 10th on Amazon’s Fire TV, Android TV, Apple TV and Samsung Smart TVs. This probably won’t be your first choice for gaming videos, but consider this: some platforms (most notably Apple TV) don’t have great choices for gaming-centric videos. Unless you’re content to search YouTube, this may be your best bet for gaming videos if you don’t have access to the likes of Twitch or Mixer.

NASA wants to make autonomous planes a reality

Self-driving cars are quickly becoming a reality, but self-flying planes? It might seem far off, but NASA wants to make them happen. Today, three different aeronautics teams received the go ahead to explore projects related to unmanned autonomous aircraft.

The first study explores “safe inclusion and certification of autonomous systems in aviation” — or, to the rest of us, self-flying aircraft. This project will focus on the algorithms necessary for machines to make safe decisions on their own, without human input. We need to have confidence that a self-flying plane will make prudent choices, after all.

NASA also green-lit a project that will autonomously verify that a drone is fit to fly before it takes off. If the program senses an anomaly (such as damage to a system or hacked software), the drone will ground itself. Finally, the third team will research advances in quantum computing in order to better regulate and monitor the many drones that fly each day.

While all of these advances are certainly interesting, the prospect of a self-flying plane is the most intriguing. Sure, we have a long way to go before they’re used commercially, but self-flying planes could make air travel cheaper (though not necessarily any less demeaning) for everyone.

Source: NASA

NASA wants to make autonomous planes a reality

Self-driving cars are quickly becoming a reality, but self-flying planes? It might seem far off, but NASA wants to make them happen. Today, three different aeronautics teams received the go ahead to explore projects related to unmanned autonomous aircraft.

The first study explores “safe inclusion and certification of autonomous systems in aviation” — or, to the rest of us, self-flying aircraft. This project will focus on the algorithms necessary for machines to make safe decisions on their own, without human input. We need to have confidence that a self-flying plane will make prudent choices, after all.

NASA also green-lit a project that will autonomously verify that a drone is fit to fly before it takes off. If the program senses an anomaly (such as damage to a system or hacked software), the drone will ground itself. Finally, the third team will research advances in quantum computing in order to better regulate and monitor the many drones that fly each day.

While all of these advances are certainly interesting, the prospect of a self-flying plane is the most intriguing. Sure, we have a long way to go before they’re used commercially, but self-flying planes could make air travel cheaper (though not necessarily any less demeaning) for everyone.

Source: NASA

Apple WWDC 2017: By the numbers

It was an enthralling, albeit bladder-bursting, 2.5 hours at Apple’s 2017 Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose on Monday. The company announced a slew of upgrades, redesigns, added features and new products during the widely-anticipated keynote address. Numbers, because how else does one keep a press conference from running long?

Get all the latest news from WWDC 2017 here!