‘Super Mario Run’ arrives on iPhone and iPad December 15th
At the iPhone 7 event, Apple and Nintendo revealed that Mario would make his way to iOS devices this December. Well, today Nintendo revealed the exact date: December 15th. That’s the day Super Mario Run will be available to play on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. The app can be downloaded for free, but you’ll only be able to play parts of the game’s three modes without handing over additional funds. To unlock the full game, you’ll have to pay $10.
When the time comes, Super Mario Run will be available in 151 countries (full list here) and 10 languages including English, Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Russian and traditional Chinese. If you happen to live in one of those locales, you’ll just need to make sure you have a device that runs iOS 8.0 or later in order to leap over obstacles, take on enemies and collect coins in a few weeks.
Don’t worry, Android faithful: Nintendo says you’ll get a chance to play the mobile game as well. Unfortunately, the company hasn’t announced when, just the vague “at some point in the future.”
Source: Nintendo (Business Wire)
Vudu’s upgraded mobile app brings offline rental viewing
Unlike some big streaming video services, Vudu isn’t sitting on the fence when it comes to offline playback. The Walmart-owned provider has revamped its Android and iOS apps with several big features, most notably an option to download your rentals — you can watch that movie in mid-flight even when the in-air WiFi is lousy. You’ll also have access to movie extras for supporting titles, and iOS users now get both higher-quality 1080p HDX streaming as well as AirPlay. And if you’re still attached to hard copies, you can buy discs inside the app instead of heading to the web. So long as you live in the US and like Vudu’s à la carte approach to movies and TV, you can check out the upgrade right now.
Source: Vudu Blog, App Store, Google Play
Apple Drops Prices on USB-C Adapters
To make it easier for customers who purchased a new MacBook Pro to make the transition to USB-C, Apple has dropped the prices on all of its USB-C adapters by $6 to $20.
The simple USB-C to USB Adapter, formerly priced at $19, is now $9, while the more expensive USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter, formerly $49, is now available for $29. Even Apple’s newly released Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter has seen a price drop from $49 to $29.
A full list of prices on the adapters in the United States is below:
– USB-C to USB Adapter – Was $19, now $9
– Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter – Was $49, now $29
– USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter – Was $69, now $49
– USB-C VGA Multiport Adapter – Was $69, now $49
– USB-C to Lightning Cable (1m) – Was $25, now $19
– USB-C to Lightning Cable (2m) – Was $35, now $29
Apple is also dropping the prices on all third-party USB-C peripherals available from Apple,com and Apple retail stores. USB-C accessories will be discounted by about 25 percent, with some accessories, such as SanDisk’s USB-C SD card reader, seeing a steeper $20 discount, dropping the price from $49 to $29.
Apple’s price cut on USB-C adapters and accessories may assuage customers who have been dissatisfied with the high price of the MacBook Pro coupled with the need to buy a wide range of adapters to use the new notebook with older peripherals. Apple’s lower prices also make its adapters more competitive with the wide range of third-party adapters available on the market. Apple explained the pricing cut in a statement that was given to The Verge:
“We recognize that many users, especially pros, rely on legacy connectors to get work done today and they face a transition. We want to help them move to the latest technology and peripherals, as well as accelerate the growth of this new ecosystem. Through the end of the year, we are reducing prices on all USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 peripherals we sell, as well as the prices on Apple’s USB-C adapters and cables.”
Apple did not mention a solution for customers who have already purchased adapters to use alongside their new MacBook Pros, but recent purchases can still be returned to the Apple Store and repurchased at the new lower price.
Update: According to MacRumors reader Philip, Apple will refund the price difference for customers who have already purchased adapters for their MacBook Pros. Customers who still have orders pending will also automatically see a price drop.
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Single Sign-On Now Available in tvOS 10.1 and iOS 10.2
Sometime over the course of the last few hours, Apple appears to have quietly activated the much-promised Single Sign-On feature for the Apple TV and iOS devices, making it available to developers running the tvOS 10.1 and iOS 10.2 betas.
Single Sign-On, as rumored, appears to support only a limited number of cable services, including Dish, GVTC Communications, Hotwire, and Sling TV.
On the fourth-generation Apple TV, Single Sign-On settings can be accessed by opening the Settings app and navigating to accounts, where a TV Provider section is now available alongside Home Sharing. Customers can sign in to a service at this menu and will presumably be able to access all content associated with that subscription.
On the iPad and the iPhone, the same TV Provider section is available in the Settings app, located below the section for signing into social networks.
Single Sign-On is designed to allow users to sign in once with their cable credentials to access all live cable content available through their cable subscription, even when it’s spread across multiple apps. Apple’s aim with Single Sign-On is to simplify and streamline the television-watching experience on the Apple TV.
Dish and Sling TV are well-known television providers, while GVTC and Hotwire are smaller regional services. Hotwire is available in Florida, South Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, while GVTC is only available in a small part of Texas, including north of San Antonio and the Gonzales area.
With the limited availability of Single Sign-On, it will only be available to a small number of Apple customers to begin with, but Apple is undoubtedly working to get more providers on board.
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Vine Creators Announce Live Video Streaming App ‘Hype’
The creators of discontinued short-form video service Vine have announced a new live streaming app for iOS called Hype.
Hype will have to compete with existing live video streaming platforms including Periscope and Facebook Live, but its creators Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov are betting on its success because it offers some additional features that the others don’t have.
Going in its favor, Hype lets users add media to their live video streams, such as photos, music, and animated GIFs. Users can also play music from their iTunes library and choose themed backgrounds for their streams where text and emojis can be added.
Viewers meanwhile can comment on streams and participate in polls, while broadcasters can favorite comments, offering more interaction than Hype’s rival live streaming platforms.
Twitter announced plans to shut down Vine last week. The social media company plans to discontinue the mobile app in the coming months, but did not give a specific timeline.
Hype is a free download for iPhone and iPad from the App Store. [Direct Link]
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Play-Doh’s new toy-to-life app is pointless, but fun
If you had a decent childhood, you probably crafted some Play-Doh masterpieces back in the day. Today, however, kids are less likely to play with the modeling compound and more likely to spend time on an iPad. As such, Hasbro is taking a stab at making the 60-year-old brand relevant to modern kids with its new “Touch” app for iPads and iPhones. The game scans your creations and animates them in a virtual world that’s as immersive as it is entertaining, even if you’re nearly 30 years old (ahem).
You can play the game for free with any can of Play-Doh you already have, or buy the $40 Shape to Life Studio set, which includes cutters, character and action stampers, along with seven cans of modeling compound. The set expands the environments and characters you can interact with, and makes the game a lot more fun.
When you first launch the app, you’ll enter a mostly blank world, where your soon-to-be-created main character will live. You’ll then see a virtual can of Play-Doh with a cloud hovering above it; you will need to tap on that before progressing further. This launches your camera, which will scan whatever masterpiece you’ve crafted, and bring it into the app. In my experience, this typically took about 10 seconds, including lining up the image and processing it. This might take longer if you don’t have the right lighting (white light from top) and a white platform to match. The latter is provided with the Studio set; if you don’t buy that, though, any white surface should do.
This is where the fun starts. Once the app has loaded your character, Touch animates your new pal, very accurately identifying limbs and faces. My odd-looking blob (which I shall name Blobby) with three feeble, deformed legs (I’m really not very good at crafts) transformed into a squealing, energetic creature. Of course, over time the noises got a bit annoying, especially when I was trying to make another model and Blobby just wouldn’t shut up. For the most part, though, the app’s background music and sounds were enjoyable.
Your initial creation is just the first of dozens of components you can add to the environment. Each world has five character cans (for adding new creatures) and 10 environment cans. The latter let you add whimsical trees or cannons or waterfalls to the background, and these can even interact with your virtual friends. A cannon can blast your pal onto a higher platform, while a bouncy drum on the ground propels him upward. I was impressed not only by how accurately the app scanned my lumps of clay, but also how well it integrated those misshapen, colorful blobs into the background of whatever world I was in.
Those using the Studio set can also use stamps to create balloons, wings, musical notes and potions to make the characters fly, dance and multiply. These differ in style based on the color of Play-Doh you chose. For instance, using different hues for the music note changes the background song to which your creature dances.
For an app that’s designed for kids four and older, Touch is a tad confusing. During a demo, scanning and dragging a musical note over my character made him groove, but I couldn’t recall how to do that during my own playtime. After looking at the in-app tutorial and the included instruction sheet, I still couldn’t figure out how to do so and had to ask a Hasbro rep to clarify. That’s not a luxury most kids have.
Speaking of luxuries, while it’s nice that you don’t have to invest in the Studio set to enjoy the game, there are benefits to getting it. You can use the included character stamps to unlock five more worlds, bringing the total to six. Each world houses 15 more cans so you can add more characters and wacky backgrounds. That’s a lot of combinations with which to explore and personalize the Play-Doh Touch universe.
Discovery and expression are going to have to be enough to maintain your child’s attention to Touch. There’s no real objective to the app, other than encouraging the player to be creative and artistic. No score is kept, nor are there levels to advance. You’ll only need to collect orbs of light to have enough energy to unlock new cans to add more to your world. And while that doesn’t provide a lot of motivation to keep returning to the game, it’s not a bad thing either. What Play-Doh’s Touch provides, just as its modeling compound has done for decades now, is a way for kids — or maybe even adults — to be imaginative for hours on end.
ROLI’s ‘BLOCKS’ Lego-Style Music Creation System Now Available at Apple Stores Worldwide
ROLI today introduced a fun new music creation system called BLOCKS, which is scalable, modular, and designed to give people a simple, visual way to create music. Each square-shaped Block has a different function, and multiple blocks can snap together so users can build the music system that’s best for them in terms of skill, price, and musical style.
ROLI is announcing three Blocks today, all of which will be available for purchase at Apple retail stores around the world. The Lightpad Block, a 5×5 grid that lights up, supports pressure-based multi-touch gestures, allowing people to use the colored surface for creating music through presses, glides, and other simple hand movements.
Varying pressure on the block changes the intensity of the sound, multiple fingers can be used at once, and multiple Lightpads can be linked together for a bigger surface to work with.
The Live Block and Loop Block both work alongside the Lightpad Block, which is the main block, offering controls to make it easier to perform and produce music in real time with physical playback and record buttons. All three of the Blocks are controlled via Bluetooth through NOISE, a new app that’s available from Apple’s App Store.
Roland Lamb, founder and CEO of ROLI, and inventor of BLOCKS, said, “Many areas of life have been transformed by the digital. Music, though, remains a universal language that everyone understands, but only a few can speak. BLOCKS will change that, and enable people around the world to experience the joy of music-making for the first time.”
ROLI Lightpad Blocks are priced at $179.95 each, while the Live and the Loop are priced at $79.95. BLOCKS are available at Roli.com starting today and should soon be available from Apple’s online store and in Apple retail locations.
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iOS update fixes your iPhone’s missing Health data
The iOS 10.1 update addressed a lot of initial gripes with Apple’s latest mobile operating system. However, it also introduced a glaring bug for some users: the Health app might not show your data, which is more than a little troublesome if you’re a fitness maven or need those stats for medical reasons. Don’t fret, though. Apple has released an iOS 10.1.1 update for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch that makes sure you can see Health info. This is a relatively tiny update (the over-the-air fix is well under 100MB for many iPhone users), but it’ll matter a lot if you’re tracking step counts or calories with your Apple gear.
Via: 9to5Mac
Source: Apple
iPad regains share in a shrinking mobile tablet market
Apple’s share of the tablet market has been sliding for a while, but it’s making a comeback… if not for the reasons the company might prefer. Strategy Analytics estimates that the iPad climbed from 19.1 percent of the market in the third quarter of 2015 to 19.9 percent a year later. However, that’s mainly because the market as a whole shrank 10 percent. The analysts believe that many tablet manufacturers’ shipments dropped year-to-year, and that Apple simply experienced a smaller decline than most. The one major exception is Amazon, whose $49 Fire tablet helped its shipments more than double.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that Apple is on the wrong track. Strategy Analytics argues that the iPad Pro line puts Apple “on the path to recovery” by giving the company a laptop-like tablet that wasn’t an option before. However, it does show that Apple is consciously veering away from the strategies of its peers. Many of its Android rivals are shifting attention to 2-in-1 Windows tablets, like Lenovo’s Yoga series or Samsung’s TabPro S. Researchers say that Windows hybrid and tablet shipments jumped 25 percent year-over-year in the third quarter — some of those are bound to be from companies no longer convinced they can sell Android tablets as full-on computer substitutes.
The data suggests that the tablet market isn’t so much dying as maturing. Basic mobile tablets will still have an audience among those who just want to read books or watch video, but higher-end slates are taking hold. People want “everyday computing devices” that really can fill in for a conventional PC, according to analysts, and they’re willing to pay more for these devices.
Source: Strategy Analytics
Developers Now Able to Offer Promo Codes for In-App Purchases
Apple today announced that it is now letting developers create promo codes for in-app purchases, giving developers a way to allow early testers, reviewers, and press to unlock content that would normally only be available through a purchase.
Developers have long been able to offer promo codes to download a paid app, but until today, there was no simple way to offer access to in-app purchases.
Developers are able to give away up to 100 promo codes for each in-app purchase item, up to a maximum of 1,000 codes per app every six months.
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