Category Archives: Apple

iOS 7 update on Game Controller Support

iOS 7 provided support for a new third-party accessory, game controllers. To use this feature, you need to both own an Apple-approved gamepad accessory and a compatible game from the App Store. There have been leaks of MFI hardware from Logitech and other manufacturers, but nothing has yet hit the market. Maybe more news will be revealed on October 22nd.

Some good news now. The Unity framework announced on its blog that the newest version of its game engine surfaces inputs from these controllers natively in the SDK. Basically, Unity is offering a wrapper between Apple’s Objective-C API and Unity’s own game logic code. The Unity framework powers thousands of games in the App Store. This will mean we will suddenly see an explosion of games supporting game controllers.

This will also spark the death of the Ninetendo DS and Sony PS Vita.

How have your phone habits changed?

If I look back at my years in gadgets and tech, I had a crazy variety of tech and gadgets.

The tech of 10 years ago was buggy, but at the same time great to tweak and try to get it to do things it wasn’t meant to.

I used to think nothing of flashing a custom firmware on my HTC HD2 or future android devices. Sometimes several times a week. All in the pursuit of the latest and greatest performance. I even jail broke my iPhone 5 to get the bespoke custom tweaks on but reverted back after it crashed more often.

Move forward to 2013. Google is releasing android 4.4 and Apple has released iOS 7. Both are mature operating systems. And both offer a superb user experience. Which is good since now I just want my phone to work. I don’t except that if I spend £500 on a phone, even if it’s free on a contract, that it is acceptable to have a buggy phone that has many faults. I don’t want to start spending hours replacing software included by the manufacturers. I just want and now expect it too work. I also expect timely updates to fix any small issues. And I expect good after sales support.

So have you found your phone habits changing ? If so, how have they changed?

Apple are great Marketeers and the iPhone 5C is a perfect example

Apple make great products. But they make great products seem even better through great advertising and marketing.

The iPhone 5C is in my honest opinion is pure genius at highlighting this point. If Apple had simply kept the 5 unchanged and released the 5S, the difference between the 2 lines would be hardly recognisable. It would also not create a reason to move up the line to the 5S.

But my having last years phone, manufactured in coloured plastic bodies with a few tweaks to the battery and LTE bands, Apple managed to manufacture the iPhone 5 as the iPhone 5C for less money, but still charge a premium price. In the same light, this created a definite wedge between the design of the 5S. And then the 5S had a new colour and slightly different finish on all 3 finishes to further differentiate. For some reason and somehow, Apple made the 5S in Gold seem special.

But going back to the 5C, people are now buying last years model, in far greater numbers than they would have been if it had just been a 5 with £100 off the selling price.

The 5C will also sell well over Xmas and throughout the year. It is not meant to outsell the 5S, but in the course of time it might get close or even surpass it. Stories about low sales of the 5C are just hype without fact. It is last years phone so initial sales will always be stacked towards the Apple fans buying the latest.

I also know of many Apple fans who prefer the curved feel of the 5C over the 5S. Specs are so good now, colour might just be more important.

My final thought is that Apple have managed to take a 1 year old phone, give it a new colourful body, in a cheaper to manufacture finish and therefore sell for less without impacting profit margins, and sell it more of them than all the others companies except for Apple’s iPhone 5S. Genius if you ask me!

Nike new Nike+ FuelBand SE – details

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Nike has announced an update to their FuelBand, the Nike+ FuelBand SE, with enhanced connectivity, durability and Bluetooth 4.0. The black band has the options for a few accent colors that wrap around the inside of the band, which Nike calls Volt, Pink Foil, and Total Crimson.

The FuelBand SE uses new software in the device as well as Nike’s updated apps to refine the user experience. Available to pre order for $149.

And sorry, it is not available on android or Windows Phone. It is firmly an iOS Apple exclusive.

New iPhones now cost more in France

Apple has quietly bumped up its iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c prices in France less than four weeks after they first went on sale. Customers will now have to pay $10 more for the 16GB devices, and $12 more for the 32GB and 64GB devices.

Here’s how the prices have changed for each device:

iPhone 5c (16GB) — €599 → €609
iPhone 5c (32GB) — €699 → €711
iPhone 5s (16GB) — €699 → €709
iPhone 5s (32GB) — €799 → €811
iPhone 5s (64GB) — €899 → €911

Be warned. If your country has a weak exchange or currency you could see the same. So if you were thinking of getting one maybe time to act now.

According to Which UK the iPhone 5S is the fastest phone

Which recently conducted tests with a number of smartphones made by Apple, Samsung, HTC and LG.

Apple’s iPhone 5S came out on top while the HTC One Mini took last place. The
Samsung Galaxy S4 dropped from first to third behind the LG G2. The iPhone 5S was twice as fast as Samsung’s Galaxy S4 in certain tests. Apple’s new high-end handset was around 50 per cent faster overall.

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As you can see the iPhone 5C didn’t feature as well.

The latest news regarding the iOS 7 update for Tweetbot

Tweetbot for iOS is one of the best twitter clients, along with the official Twitter app and Twitterific. Except that Tweetbot has still not been updated for iOS 7. Well good news. It has been submitted to Apple for approval.

Below is transcript from Tweetbot’s blog as why it has taken so long and the latest position –

“When the iPhone 5 was released a little over a year ago, our apps began to look a little…short. Most of our apps are designed specifically for the original iPhone size. Apps like Weightbot, Convertbot, and Calcbot needed to be completely re-thought and redesigned for the new aspect ratio. Pastebot is full of custom UI so while it would be easier to convert to the 4″ screen size than our other apps, it still needed lots of work. We made the smart business decision to keep our focus on Tweetbot for Mac. We haven’t abandoned our older apps, but we have to make tough decisions that keep our business running. We already have many great ideas for the updates to our older apps and are just waiting for the right time to implement.

Seven months ago, we started working on a big update for Calcbot. We were hoping to release it sometime in the summer. Two months in, Apple announced iOS7 at WWDC. We knew this was a huge change. It would make every single one of our apps look dated so we had to make sure our flagship app was ready for it. All of the design work that went into the Calcbot update was rendered obsolete in one keynote and so we focused our energy on updating Tweetbot for iPhone. Playing with the beta of iOS7 over the next few weeks brought us to the realization that this would not just be a “re-skin”. We really had to just start over with the new foundation and concepts of iOS7.

We were aiming for the iOS7 launch date, but unfortunately we didn’t make it. We’ve been working night and day for the last 4 months to re-design and develop an app that took over a year to build. The good news is that we are extremely happy with the results and can’t wait to share it with everyone.

Now that you know what we have been up to over the past months, here’s where we are today. We’ve just submitted Tweetbot for iPhone to the app store and are waiting for approval. We do not have a launch date yet because there are many other things that need to be in place and ready before we launch, but it will be soon. That is all that we can say at this point. We truly appreciate your patience and support on this and know that it will be worth the wait!”