Square-Enix Releases Original Tomb Raider for iOS Devices [iOS Blog]

Video game developer Square-Enix has released Tomb Raider I on iOS, bringing the popular 1996 action-adventure game to mobile devices for the first time. The latest adaptation of the title features touch-optimized controls with all of the levels from the original, along with gameplay that mixes gunfights and puzzle-solving adventure elements. Tomb Raider I on iOS also supports game controllers such as the MOGA Ace Power and the Logitech PowerShell.

Adventurer Lara Croft has been hired to recover the pieces of an ancient artefact known as the Scion. With her fearless acrobatic style she runs, jumps, swims and climbs her way towards the truth of its origin and powers – leaving only a trail of empty tombs and gun-cartridges in her wake. On this trail are breath-taking 3D worlds where exploration, puzzle and platform elements blend in a seamless real-time environment. A perfect chance for newcomers and diehards alike to jump back into the series’ seminal single-player action.

Tomb Raider I is a $0.99 download for the iPhone and iPad. [Direct Link]

Apple’s Best of the iTunes Store 2013: ‘Duolingo’ and ‘Disney Animated’ Win Top App Honors

Apple has released the 2013 version of its annual iTunes Store awards, which showcases the best music, movies, TV shows, apps, books and podcasts of the year.

Here are some of the noteworthy winners for 2013:

Apps:
-iPhone App of the Year: Duolingo – Learn Languages for Free
-iPhone Game of the Year: Ridiculous Fishing – A Tale of Redemption
-iPad App of the Year: Disney Animated
-iPad Game of the Year: Badland

Music:
-Best Artist: The 20/20 Experience – The Complete Experience by Justin Timberlake
-Best Album: The Heist by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
-Best Song: Royals by Lorde
-Breakthrough Album: Good Kid, M.A.A.D City by Kendrick Lamar

Books:
-Best Fiction: Tenth of December by George Saunders
-Best Nonfiction: One Summer by Bill Bryson
-Best Teen Novel: The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson and Ben McSweeney
-Best Multi-Touch Book: Breaking Bad: Alchemy by Sony Pictures Television

This marks the first year that a language app has won App of the Year, and also marks the first time that an app from Disney has appeared on the annual list. As customary for its end of the year listings, Apple highlights various games and apps from a wide variety of categories, so it’s well worth skimming the full list for hidden gems.

Beyond the top-level awards for music, movies, TV shows, apps, books, and podcasts, Apple is featuring a number of other awards and Editors’ Choice selections across various genres and categories for the content types.

A list of previous winners are also available here: 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009

Apple Launches New Holiday-Themed iPhone 5s Commercial

Apple today released a new television ad for the holidays, featuring the company’s flagship iPhone 5s capturing and sharing holiday memories in the form of a video shared over Apple’s AirPlay.

The song “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” plays in the background as the iPhone 5s is used to capture video of a family engaging in holiday activities like decorating Christmas cookies, participating in a snowball fight, and decorating a Christmas tree. Later in the commercial, the video footage is played back to the family over AirPlay.

Apple has not yet released an official version of the holiday ad on its YouTube channel, but the commercial can be seen in a video captured by a user and shared by 9to5Mac.

Apple historically releases a new video during each holiday season and in 2012, the company focused on the iPad and FaceTime. In 2011, the holiday commercial featured Santa using Siri on an iPhone 4s. While those previous videos were more product focused, the newest holiday ad focuses on iPhone users and the way their devices enhance their lives.

Qualcomm Employee: 64-Bit A7 Chip ‘Hit Us In The Gut’

Earlier this year, after Apple released the first 64-bit chip for smartphones, a Qualcomm spokesperson claimed the A7 processor was a “marketing gimmick” and that there is “zero benefit” to the consumer from the chip. Those comments were later walked back before the executive who made them was reassigned.

Now, Dan Lyons — the former Fake Steve Jobs and tech columnist — writes at HubSpot that the A7 chip “hit [Qualcomm] in the gut”, according to an unnamed Quallcomm employee.

“The 64-bit Apple chip hit us in the gut,” says the Qualcomm employee. “Not just us, but everyone, really. We were slack-jawed, and stunned, and unprepared. It’s not that big a performance difference right now, since most current software won’t benefit. But in Spinal Tap terms it’s like, 32 more, and now everyone wants it.”

[…]

“The roadmap for 64-bit was nowhere close to Apple’s, since no one thought it was that essential,” the Qualcomm insider says. “The evolution was going to be steady. Sure, it’s neat, it’s the future, but it’s not really essential for conditions now.”

But once Apple introduced a 64-bit processor, all the other phone-makers wanted one too. “Apple kicked everybody in the balls with this. It’s being downplayed, but it set off panic in the industry.”

Since the launch of the iPhone 5s, Apple has gone on to put its flagship A7 64-bit processor in the latest iPad and iPad mini models, in addition to the iPhone 5s.

Both Samsung and Qualcomm have announced that their future smartphone processors will be 64-bit. For Apple, though many apps will not take advantage of the increased speed of the A7 processor, some apps — Djay and Vjay for example — do see significant speed improvements with the new processor.

Photo: New Mac Pro Arriving at Apple Retail Stores [Fake] [Mac Blog]

With Apple’s new Mac Pro scheduled to launch this month but no exact availability date having been disclosed by Apple, many customers have been anxiously awaiting word on when the machines will be available for ordering. It now appears, however, that units are starting to make their way to Apple’s retail stores, suggesting that a launch may be imminent.

One Twitter user has posted a photo of the new Mac Pro on display today at the Bromley store in the United Kingdom. The Tweet has apparently since been deleted, but has remained viewable to some users due to caching.

A follow-up Tweet indicates the store has received just three units so far, with more due later this week.

Apple frequently releases new products on Tuesdays, and thus the delivery of new Mac Pro units to Apple’s retail stores could point to a release tomorrow, although there have been no specific claims of a Tuesday launch.

Update: It appears that this image may be from Apple’s October 22 event that gave press a chance to look at the Mac Pro.

Mac Pro Build-to-Order Upgrade Pricing Revealed

Late last week, we noted that Apple’s business sales staff have been offering customers price quotes for build-to-order configurations of the new Mac Pro, providing the first glimpse at what these machines will cost beyond the $2999/$3999 base configurations shown on Apple’s site.

Since our initial report, we’ve heard from a few other business customers who received price quotes, and that information has helped us to piece together what we expect retail pricing to be for the various upgrades. Due to varying discounts for business customers included in the quotes and in some cases currency conversions that we have attempted to take into account, we consider our listed prices to be estimates, but they should be very close to Apple’s retail pricing for U.S. customers.

For upgrades beyond the $3999 high-end stock configuration, here is our estimated pricing (all prices relative to the stock model):

CPU (Stock: 3.5GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5)
– 3.0GHz 8-core: +$1500
– 2.7GHz 12-core: +$3000

Graphics (Stock: Dual AMD FirePro D500 with 3GB GDDR5)
– Dual AMD FirePro D700 with 6 GB GDDR5: +$600

RAM (Stock: 16GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC – 4x4GB)
– 32GB (4x8GB): +$400
– 64GB (4x16GB): +$1600

Flash Storage (Stock: 256GB PCIe-based)
– 512GB: +$300
– 1TB: +$800

As an example, for a customer looking to buy an 8-core Mac Pro with 32GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, the machine would cost $3999 base + $1500 processor upgrade + $400 RAM upgrade + $300 storage upgrade, yielding a total price of $6199.

At the lower end, Apple’s $2999 base Mac Pro model carries a quad-core Intel Xeon processor, 12 GB of RAM, and dual AMD FireCore D300 graphics, compared to the $3999 high-end stock configuration with 6-core processor, 16 GB of RAM, and D500 graphics.

We have not seen any exact breakdowns of how much each of those changes contributes to the overall $1000 price difference between stock configurations, but expect roughly half of the price difference to be represented by the processor upgrade, a somewhat smaller amount for the graphics upgrade, and a relatively nominal amount in the range of $100 for the bump in RAM.

The new Mac Pro remains scheduled to launch sometime this month, but Apple has yet to announce an exact date for either initial orders or availability.

Tim Cook and Other Tech Executive to Meet With President Obama Again to Discuss NSA Surveillance and Health Care Website

Tim Cook and other tech executives will meet with President Obama tomorrow to discuss the Healthcare.gov website, as well as “national security and the economic impacts of unauthorized intelligence disclosures”. In addition, the group will discuss ways the Obama administration can partner with the tech sector to grow the economy and create new jobs.

According to a report from Time:

“Tomorrow, President Obama will meet with executives from leading tech companies to discuss progress made in addressing performance and capacity issues with HealthCare.Gov and how government can better deliver IT to maximize innovation, efficiency and customer service,” a White House official said. “The meeting will also address national security and the economic impacts of unauthorized intelligence disclosures. Finally, the President will discuss ways his Administration can partner with the tech sector to further grow the economy, create jobs and address issues around income inequality and social mobility.”

According to the report, the following executives will attend:

– Tim Cook, CEO, Apple
– Dick Costolo, CEO, Twitter
– Chad Dickerson, CEO, Etsy
– Reed Hastings, Co-Founder & CEO, Netflix
– Drew Houston, Founder & CEO, Dropbox
– Marissa Mayer, President and CEO, Yahoo!
– Burke Norton, Chief Legal Officer, Salesforce
– Mark Pincus, Founder, Chief Product Officer & Chairman, Zynga
– Shervin Pishevar, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Sherpa Global
– Brian Roberts, Chairman & CEO, Comcast
– Erika Rottenberg, Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary, LinkedIn
– Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook
– Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google
– Brad Smith, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Microsoft
– Randall Stephenson, Chairman & CEO, AT&T

Earlier this month, Apple, Google and a number of other tech companies urged the President and Congress to reform government surveillance tactics.

Concerns about government use of user data collecting ramped up in June, when a U.S. government program named PRISM was revealed to be giving the U.S. National Security Agency direct access to user data on corporate servers across a wide spectrum of Internet companies including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple.

In response, Apple published a statement of “Commitment to Customer Privacy” denying its participation in the NSA’s program and teamed up with a number of tech companies to request greater NSA surveillance transparency, allowing it to provide customers with regular reports on security related requests. Last month, Apple published a report outlining statistics on government and law enforcement requests it received from January to the end of June.

Apple and other companies also met with President Obama in August to discuss privacy issues and government surveillance. Recently, Apple and 30 other technology corporations signed a letter urging the U.S. Congress to pass the Surveillance Order Reporting Act of 2013 and the Surveillance Transparency Act of 2013, which would result in increased surveillance disclosures and would give technology companies the right to publish detailed statistics on demands for user data.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the comment thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All MacRumors forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Apple’s iAd Focus Turns to iTunes Radio With New Real-Time Bidding Exchange

Apple’s iAd team will be focusing heavily on monetizing iTunes Radio through advertising sales in the new year, reports Adweek. Apple’s SVP of Internet software and services Eddy Cue reportedly told iAd staff that iTunes Radio ads, rather than app ads, are the new top priority.

Indeed, there is a new focus within the company’s advertising unit, and the mantra came direct from Eddy Cue, Apple’s head of software. In a staff meeting before the holidays, Cue indicated that iTunes Radio is the top priority, and app ads are not.

“The message that came across was basically if you’re not working on iTunes Radio, you’re irrelevant,” an Apple insider said.

To facilitate ad sales, Apple also plans to build a real-time bidding exchange to automate sales, selling individual ad impressions one at a time rather than in bulk. With such a system, which emulates a stock exchange, iAds could ultimately become more affordable and more widely available to various advertisers, and it also allows for very specific targeting.

A source familiar with iAds said Apple has kept its real-time initiative under close wraps and is “not casting a wide net.” That may be because the company is figuring out how to gradually transition from earlier aggressive sales efforts that had iAd prices starting at $1 million a pop. “It’s a rare advertiser that is going to be willing to pay those rates,” said the source.

iTunes Radio became a new focus for the iAd team ahead of the music service’s September launch, with iAd engineers and sales personnel working to secure deals with major advertisers to support iTunes Radio.

Prior to iTunes Radio, which represents a huge shift in focus for iAd, the service was designed to help developers earn money on the iOS platform. As a developer tool, iAd was historically unsuccessful in terms of attracting both developer interest and revenue. iTunes Radio is an important new endeavor as it represents a huge money-earning opportunity for the company. Apple is able to keep 90 percent of total revenue from its audio ads, sharing a mere 10 percent with music companies.

Ads on iTunes Radio are enhanced with Apple’s targeting tools that deliver both audio and video ads to specific users on iOS devices, PCs and Macs, and the Apple TV. iTunes Radio initially launched with a number of major ad partners already on board, including McDonald’s, Nissan, Pepsi, and Procter & Gamble.