Chris Kohler, Wired, got the chance to ask Shigeru Miyamoto about Super Mario Run.
One highlight, talking about simply porting Super Mario to iOS:
“I don’t want to do anything that boring. We’ve been making Mario games for a long time, and Mario’s evolved with every new platform.
“For me, it wouldn’t be interesting work to just take the existing Super Mario Bros. game, put it on an iPhone, (and) emulate a plus control pad. That’s not very fun creatively. We’re more interested in looking at how we can be creative with Mario, and design for iPhone in a way that takes advantage of the uniquenesses of that device and the uniquenesses of that input and the features that that device has. For us, that is much more rewarding creative work.”
Super Mario Run is a fantastic game. In my opinion, it is well worth the $10. I hope it reverses the “race to the bottom” iOS game pricing trend, helps make it easier for developers to make a living creating great apps.
Federico Viticci, MacStories, on the new Astra app:
Astra is, effectively, just a large microphone in the middle of the screen. You can sign into your Amazon account, give the app permission to record audio, and start sending messages to Alexa. To record a command, you hold down a Siri-like microphone button and then lift your finger to send a request to Alexa. When Astra displays a ‘Thinking…’ message it is not, in fact, processing your request on its own – the Alexa Voice Service is; Astra is just waiting for a response to speak back to you. Astra is a bridge to Alexa’s cloud brain: there are no visual messages and no interface elements built around Amazon’s assistant. Even the audio responses use Alexa’s standard voice.
This is a breach in Apple’s ecosystem, a way for a competing (and some would say, superior) service to live within the confines of the iOS walled garden. Google Maps is another example.
While Alexa and Astra might leach users away from Siri, Amazon is not a threat to steal users from iOS. But add in Amazon’s Fire TV Stick, which gives users access to Netflix, Amazon Video, etc., at a $40 price point, much, much cheaper than Apple TV’s entry point, and there’s the beginning of a slow erosion.
This is a creepy story, and a troubling result. Bottom line, the court likened a passcode to a strongbox key. Reasoning, if you can be compelled by a court to turn over a strongbox key, you can be compelled to turn over your passcode.
I feel a tide turning here. This case will likely end up in front of the Supreme Court.
Oh, Yahoo. It was bad enough that the company already announced a breach exposing 500 million user accounts two years after it happened. Then late last night Yahoo revealed that it had uncovered another unrelated hack exposing the account details of one billion users. It’s not clear how much of that is overlap, but at this point does it really matter?
I don’t know about you, but I’m done. I wasn’t much of a Yahoo user to begin with but the uses I do have for the company are over.
I know that’s easy for me to say. I have a single account that I only use to play fantasy football. But what about those of you who are more fully invested in Yahoo? Here’s a guide to replacing Yahoo’s major services with alternative options, then deleting your Yahoo account.
I got the notice from Yahoo yesterday. I didn’t even know I still had Yahoo email addresses. I’m now down to just using Flickr and even those days may be numbered.
A new kind of Mario game that you can play with one hand. In this game, Mario constantly moves forward through the courses while you use a variety of jumps to navigate. Mario will behave differently depending on the timing of your taps, so it’s up to you to show off particularly smooth moves, gather coins, and reach the goal.
Most guitar players are blissfully unaware of the details of the speakers they’re playing through. Sure, they may know what size the speakers are and how many are in the cabinet, but other than that, they have no idea about how much of an effect the make of the speaker can have on the sound.
It’s always good to know at least some details about you’re playing through.
Yahoo Inc warned on Wednesday that it had uncovered yet another massive cyber attack, saying data from more than 1 billion user accounts was compromised in August 2013, making it the largest breach in history.
President-elect Donald Trump and some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful executives met at his Manhattan tower on Wednesday, a summit convened to smooth over frictions after both sides made no secret of their disdain for each other during the election campaign.
I find it very odd that Trump’s three kids were at the head of the table.
In what is likely the largest data breach ever, Yahoo is reporting that data associated with more than 1 billion user accounts was stolen in August 2013.
The incident is separate from a breach Yahoo reported in September involving at least 500 million users that originally occurred in late 2014 and shook public trust in the company.
Stolen user data from this new breach involves names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, and hashed passwords using an aging algorithm known as MD5 that can be cracked.
If you don’t absolutely need it, you really should delete your Yahoo account.
Uber has rolled out its self-driving car fleet in its hometown of San Francisco, despite lacking the proper permit that state regulators say is required.
Starting Wednesday, riders who request an UberX, one of the company’s budget ride options, may be matched with a self-driving Uber. It is unclear how many of these cars Uber has in San Francisco.
There will be people in the car for now, but I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what I’d do if one of these pulled up to give me a ride when the people are gone.
Nintendo Co will make a big push into mobile gaming on Thursday with the launch of the popular Super Mario Bros franchise on the iPhone, a risky bet because users will need to pay upfront, at a time when the gaming market is getting crowded.
While investors are hoping Super Mario Run will be a hit for Nintendo, its decision to charge $9.99 for full access to the game may limit revenues and put its fate at the mercy of loyal Nintendo console-game fans.
I’m betting it will be a huge success. Let’s face it, that’s not much money for a game that so many people enjoy.
Thanks to a virtual tour created by Google, you can revel in the best of Fifth Avenue’s festive store displays without even leaving your couch, courtesy of its ‘Window Wonderland’ experience.
The tradition of New York’s department stores competing for the best Christmas windows goes back some 150 years, with Macy’s kicking it all off when it realized that it could lure in more customers with an extravagant display. Naturally, other establishments quickly followed suit, and nowadays, every brand from Ralph Lauren to Barney’s decks out their halls (er, windows), with millions of tourists flocking to New York each year to admire the scenes. In a very 2016 spin on the annual festivities, Google has stitched together hundreds upon hundreds of images that capture 18 of Manhattan’s best decorated storefronts, in turn creating a panoramic experience (consider it a more sophisticated version of its street view feature) that can be viewed via your phone, tablet, computer or even virtual reality headset by simply going to the website.
I’ve known about these Christmas windows since I was a kid in Nova Scotia so I loved going to them when I lived near New York City. There’s nothing like seeing them in person but this site is the next best thing.
A California court has ruled in favor of Apple Store workers who accused the iPhone giant of trampling over their employment rights. It is a bittersweet victory.
The trial jury yesterday awarded store staff $2m after Apple was found to have illegally denied them meal and rest breaks, and was late giving departing workers their final paychecks.
Apple had been accused of a half-dozen violations of state labor laws, including California laws forbidding the failure to provide meal and rest breaks, full pay upon termination, and unfair business practices.
When I first heard of this lawsuit, I knew Apple was likely to lose it. But a $2 million settlement among 21,000 current and former workers is getting off really easy for the company.
Apple took away the time remaining estimate from its Battery menu bar widget in macOS 10.12.2 presumably because it was inaccurate and confusing. That’s a problem because a lot of MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and MacBook users rely on the time estimate to get an idea of how long they can go before they have to find a power outlet. Even though Apple deemed the time remaining estimate unnecessary, other developers get that it’s an important feature. Read on to see three of TMO’s favorite battery monitoring apps.
Apple taking the estimate away, even if wildly inaccurate, is silly. Not fixing it, even more so. These apps aren’t necessarily any more accurate (testing will be required) but at least you’ll have some indication as to how much battery life you (might) have left.
Apple has pulled the latest watchOS 3.1.1 update after some users reported that it bricked their Apple Watch.
Unfortunate users that installed the update—which launched on Monday and promised various bug fixes—were left with watches displaying a red exclamation mark on the screen and a link to www.apple.com/help/watch. The issue appears to mostly affect the Apple Watch Series 2, although not every user has experienced problems with the update.
While not a widespread problem, it doesn’t matter if your Watch has been bricked. Apple says, “We are working on a fix for an upcoming software update” but no word on when that will be available.
“Adventuresome” is perhaps a kind way of describing Pebble’s year: 2016 started in crisis. The year before, the once-profitable company dropped into the red, and hit the second half 2015 by not meeting its sales goals. Pebble would never be profitable again. In March of 2016, Migicovsky laid off a quarter of his staff of 160, just as the company moved from its cramped, loft-like Palo Alto headquarters into a gleaming, spacious new office tower in downtown Redwood City. In its optimism, the company had rented two floors; now it fit on just one.
It turned out that both Pebble — and, incidentally, Apple —had misjudged the wearables market.
I think it remains to be seen if Apple has “misjudged” the market.
With both the RAM limitation and “donglegate” we see self-inflicted wounds, a puzzling lack of storytelling by a company that has a long history of controlling the narrative. Apple was forced to react with labored explanations and admission-of-guilt price cuts days after the late October launch. Experienced Apple executives violated a cardinal rule of selling: Don’t let the customer discover the problem. No product is perfect, so tell it all, tell it now, and tell it yourself. If you don’t, your customers — and your competition — will tell it for you.
William Cook, a professor at the University of Waterloo, led a team of researchers in a two-year project to find the shortest-possible route for visiting 49,603 historical U.S. sights pulled from the National Register of Historic Places.
The researchers used Google Maps’ walking distance data between points to show the quickest possible tour for visiting all of the sights.
The route, which covers 217,605 miles, passes through archeological sights, historic homes, parks, and more landmarks across America’s cities and towns, providing history fans with quite the itinerary.
I have what is known as “Brown Sign Disease” (named after the color of historic markers in New England). It’s characterized by an inability to pass any historical marker or sign without stopping to read it. I would definitely take this trip and then follow it up with the “shortest journey to visit close to 25,000 pubs in the U.K.” trip.
Life as we know may end, but the Williams-Sonoma catalog, and the army of little Ina Gartens who have seemingly unlimited cash to spend on its wares, will endure. They shall adorn their houses in the finest garlands and pass around only the choicest amuse bouches, and everything will be PERFECT even as the world burns a mile away. OH, IT’LL BE SO GRAND THAT YOU’LL WANNA PUKE.
I admit to loving Williams-Sonoma stores, primarily for the gadgets, but this rant about the catalog is hilarious and definitely NSFW.
Apple on Tuesday released a significant update for macOS Sierra, fixing a number of issues users had with the Mac operating system.
One concern for all users of portable computers is battery life. Some users have reported problems with battery life, but Apple told me that after a lot of testing they stand behind the 10 hour battery life with the new MacBook Pro.
However, to help users better determine the battery life, Apple has removed the “time remaining” indicator from the battery icon in the menu bar with the latest update. You can still see the image on the top of the screen, and you can see the percentage, but you will no longer be able to see how much time is remaining before your battery dies.
The reason for removing it is very simple: it wasn’t accurate.
Apple said the percentage is accurate, but because of the dynamic ways we use the computer, the time remaining indicator couldn’t accurately keep up with what users were doing. Everything we do on the MacBook affects battery life in different ways and not having an accurate indicator is confusing.
Besides the apps we are working on all the time, there are a lot of things that are happening in the background that users may not be aware of that affects battery life. For instance, when setting up a new Mac, syncing iCloud photo libraries can take quite a bit of time. Add facial recognition to that, and battery life is affected even more. Many times, because it’s happening in the background, users may not be aware of what’s draining their battery.
Other tasks like Spotlight indexing can also affect battery life with its background work. If you add a large number of files, indexing can sometimes take days to complete.
There are other changes in the latest update too.
One of the things users love about Apple is their ability to implement cool features into its operating systems, and integrate those features with its other products. One example is Auto-Unlock, which allows users to automatically unlock their Mac using an authenticated Apple Watch. Some users found the process of setting up that feature a bit time consuming, and maybe even confusing. The new version of macOS Sierra cleans up that process and makes the setup easier than it was before.
Apple also made the alerts and instructions for iCloud storage and Optimized storage easier—the language for setting up and using these features is now more helpful.
While I didn’t have any graphics issues with the Touch Bar on my Mac, some users reported issues with the new feature. Apple said those have been fixed with the latest update.
Users can also now add a Chinese Trackpad Handwriting button to the Touch Bar Control Strip.
The update also improves audio quality when using Siri and FaceTime with Bluetooth headphones, and an issue where incoming Mail messages did not appear when using a Microsoft Exchange account has been fixed.
There are a number of other changes in the macOS Sierra 10.12.2 update, as well. If you have macOS Sierra installed, you can open App Store and click on the Updates tab to download the latest version.
Apple has updated its website to indicate its all-new BeatsX wireless earphones will be available in February in the United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, and several other countries, after originally saying they would launch in the Fall. Online pre-orders can still not be placed at this time.
BeatsX earphones feature Bluetooth and the same Apple W1 chip used by AirPods, which launched today, enabling users to pair them by simply powering them on and holding them near an iPhone. Unlike the truly wireless AirPods, the BeatsX have a Flex-Form cable that keeps the earpieces tethered to each other.
The rumor mill is going crazy with the reasons behind these issues but the bottom line is Apple is having a hard time with its earphone products and it’s getting a little embarrassing for them.
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Apple today announced AirPods are available to order online now from Apple.com and will start delivering to customers and arriving at Apple Stores, Apple Authorized Resellers and select carriers next week.
This is great news. I’ve been using these since they were announced in September and you will love them.
