Innehållsförteckning för Jul-13 från MacLife

The Hottest Articles on MacLife.com Victory Through Defeat When Craig Stern, the singular force behind developer Sinister Design, unsuccessfully tried to fund his Mac game Telepath Tactics on Kickstarter at the tail end of 2012, he saw the result not as a closed door, but as an opportunity to refocus both the campaign and the game itself to better execute his battle plan. http://bit.ly/ML_TelepathTactics 8 Apps That Help Relieve Stress You might not be able to eliminate every stressful moment, but you can learn how to handle them. We’ve collected eight apps that will teach you how to best manage stress in an effort to make your life more relaxing. http://bit.ly/ML_StressRelief XCOM: Enemy Unknown— Elite Edition Review Marking the strategy franchise’s first appearance on Mac, XCOM: Enemy Unknown tasks players…

YOUR OPINIONS, RANTS & RAVES A Slight to Sore Eyes Judging by the suggested “ideal” placement of a monitor in your ergonomics feature [“Set Up Your Mac the Right Way,” May 2013], it is obvious that you have not heard of bifocals. Many of my clients, as well as myself, require them, having passed the “cheater” stage where we can get by with just reading glasses. At your listed ideal height for a monitor, those of us with bifocals would constantly have to tilt our head back so we can look through the lower portion of the lenses. That results are a real pain in the neck!—John Streun Anything that causes a pain in the neck is definitely not good ergonomics, so I would definitely agree that in your situation,…

FEED YOUR MIND. FEAST YOUR EYES. Anyone paying attention to Apple’s performance on Wall Street over the past year or so has seen it all. Astonishing highs. Embarrassing lows. Lawsuits brought by high-profile hedge-fund managers demanding that Apple disburse more cash to investors. Disgruntled shareholders calling for the resignation of CEO Tim Cook. To call it a roller coaster ride wouldn’t be an understatement, despite the fact that Apple, by most standards, remains on top of the technological world. In April, Apple released its fiscal earnings for the second quarter of 2013. Once again, Apple met or exceeded its own projections, announcing revenues that were better than predicted and significant increases in iPhone and iPad sales. Usually, this type of success would earn a company an A+; Wall Street, however,…

SUSIE CALIBRE 788 www.bissol.com $460 »I pretty much stopped wearing watches when I got my first cell phone, but I was never really a watch person. However, Bissol’s beautiful new timepiece combines Swiss-made quartz movement with the same materials as the iPhone 5, and I’m just so enchanted with the idea of blending a traditional watch with a high-tech, minimal design like the iPhone 5. Then again, it covers the headphone jack and costs nearly as much as an iPad. But isn’t it pretty? (Hat tip to aspotter.com.) CHRIS S. TRUGLIDE PRO PRECISION STYLUS www.lynktec.com $29.95 »I use the iPad at work every day, and while I don’t always need a stylus, they’re nice to have when sketching out ideas. The TruGlide Pro feels great to hold and looks professional,…

It’s easy to forget the iPad’s been around for only three years, since it’s made such a big footprint in our day-to-day lives. It’s great for lean-back, leisurely weekend activities like watching a movie, video chatting with faraway relatives, and playing a few rounds of Words with Friends. But don’t leave it behind when it’s time to return to the salt mines Monday morning—turns out, the iPad works at the office almost as hard as you do. Obviously, there’s an app for anything you need to do, and we’ll cover some of our favorites here. The iPad actually does some things better than your computer or smartphone: mind mapping, sketching plans on a virtual whiteboard with colleagues miles away, planning out projects, keeping your team connected. It can make dealing…

We love Dashboard on our Macs. It feels like a bit of iOS on OS X, with tiny apps that look pretty and perform simple functions amazingly well. With a beautiful interface and a dynamic set of customizable widgets, Panic’s ambitious Status Board attempts to bring that experience to our iPads, with at-a-glance access to your most important data and a fantastic new playground for coders. Status Board is not without a learning curve, so a clever foldout manual will quickly set up your personal widgets. But even with that bit of useful instruction, you may still be slightly overwhelmed when you first meet Status Board’s system of information modules. This isn’t a criticism. What Panic has built is so unique that you’ll need to spend a little time exploring…

Helpful apps have taken some of the unpleasantness out of grocery shopping, but Shopster aims to make the whole process easier than ever by focusing on what’s most important: What you need to buy and where you need to buy it. The clean, tealand- white interface allows you to build a list of your shopping needs, and then utilizes geofencing to tell you where to go. If you buy milk this week, for example, the app will remember the location of the store and remind you when you’re nearby the next time it’s on your list. For shoppers who follow sales, however, it won’t be very useful. If only it could find the best prices, too! The bottom line. Shopster may be the shopping tool of the future, but at…

Looking for the next great iOS brawler? You won’t find it here, but the free Injustice: Gods Among Us is still well worth downloading, especially for comic book fans. Playing as 18 of the DC Universe’s most popular heroes and villains, you’ll battle Flash, The Joker, and company in frantic, surprisingly addictive 2D-style bouts. Injustice is a tag-team fighter in which your three-character squad slugs it out against one controlled by the game’s A.I. (there’s no multiplayer), though collectible cards come into play as each fighter is represented by one indicating their steadily rising player level, health, damage, and so on. You’ll start the game with three cards and can snag more with slowly accrued in-game currency or real-world cash. Combat’s about as basic as Doomsday’s vocabulary: Tap for a…

When you’re throwing a dinner party, everything needs to be perfect. From the flatware to the fricassee, every little detail matters, and the wrong seating choice or ingredient can quickly turn things sour. But with your iPhone as your sous chef, you’ll make sure that your evening is elegant and your friends are well fed. The first thing you need to get organized is your guest list, and there’s no better way than the appropriately titled Guest List Organizer ($4.99/iPhone, $6.99/iPad). Wrapped in rich leather like a high-end portfolio, the app makes coordinating any bash a breeze, whether you’re throwing a large gathering or hosting an intimate affair. iCloud syncing keeps track of every RSVP, and detailed fields help you stay on top of all of your plus-ones. Before the…

When you picture an audio interface, it’s usually a box connected to your computer, with inputs for your audio gear, right? Do you ever imagine yourself standing on it? Probably not. IK Multimedia’s StealthPedal CS is a USB audio interface and controller for the company’s AmpliTube software, with a cool wah-pedal form factor. At first, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, and wondered if I could use it in my main pedalboard. The answer is no; it can only be used connected to a computer with an amp-modeling app. I did get it to work with Native Instruments Guitar Rig, but it’s best paired with IK’s own AmpliTube software—the package even includes 100 credits to purchase more virtual amps and pedals in the AmpliTube Custom Shop. You…

We’d have a hard time getting through the day without Google Drive. Part Dropbox, part office suite, it keeps our files in sync across Macs, with easy access via the menu bar applet and all of our browsers. But RocketDocs thinks it can do one better, by taking Google Drive out of the browser. Right off the bat, RocketDocs has a leg up on Google Drive’s web portal by allowing fast switching between accounts, a welcome improvement over the usual sign-out-and-sign-in method. But after that, RocketDocs’ usefulness becomes less apparent. Its interface feels like working in Chrome; in fact, we continuously got warnings about upgrading our “unsupported browser.” Setting your home screen to Google Drive would accomplish the same thing, despite RocketDocs claim that the inability to surf to another…

Get your head out of the iCloud iCloud has changed the way we work: no more worries about forgetting to save, and our files are instantly synced across all of our devices. But that convenience comes with a catch. In order to make sure everything stays seamless and magical, Apple keeps iCloud locked away—in hidden folders on our Macs and completely inaccessible on our iPads and iPhones—forcing us to deep corners of our hard drives if we need to access any of them outside of their associated apps. With a Finder-like interface, drag-and-drop functionality, and Notification Center alerts, Cloud Mate gives you the keys to unlock iCloud’s vault and puts all of your documents at your fingertips—in some cases even more than we’d like to see. Cloud Mate can either…

Whether your next great adventure is climbing mountains, riding jet skis, or even skydiving, the Contour+2 captures the fun. Priced at $399.99, the Contour+2 is comparable to the highest-end GoPro HERO3, but offers unique features in a sleeker, barrel-shaped package. Thanks to Bluetooth, for example, you can use your iPhone (or Android phone) to adjust camera settings, preview shots, and start and stop recording. Like most action-oriented camcorders, the palmsized Contour+2 has no viewfinder and only a few buttons. The “Instant-On” slider at top is used to start or stop recording without wasting battery life on standby, while plastic caps on the back cover the Micro-USB port (for charging and offloading footage) and mini-HDMI. The removable 1050mAh lithium-ion battery is good for up to 2.5 hours of recording to the…

This drive marries five hard disks in a 20TB volume, which, thanks to the capabilities of Thunderbolt, work together at wildly fast speeds. In tests with very small files, the drive performs about as well as Western Digital’s two-disk, 10,000rpm My Book Velociraptor Duo (4 stars, Jan/13, p64). With larger data, the 5big streaks ahead to peaks of 777.7MB and 634.9MB per second in sequentialread and -write tests. The first figure is near LaCie’s quoted 785MB/s, although the second is further below the expected 695MB/s. Hard disk performances fluctuate, but the 5big’s average read and write speeds of 569.1MB/s and 490.1MB/s remain respectable. In the tougher random-read and -write tests, we observed average read and write speeds of 367.8MB/s and 348.9MB/s, respectively. These are within 20MB/s of the peak in…

Use Alfred to speed up search, actions, and common workflow tasks »Create How to do anything on your Mac, iPhone & iPad When it was first introduced to the Mac, Spotlight was revolutionary. Here was a technology that enabled you, from a single, easily accessible input field, to search your entire Mac, updating and tweaking your search terms along the way. It enabled you to easily find files by name, but also through the content within them; never again would an important but misfiled document remain lost in the darker recesses of your Mac’s innards. But beyond this focused workflow, Spotlight has barely evolved. In its most recent incarnation, you can open an item in the results list by selecting it, hover over it for a Quick Look preview, and…

It isn’t obvious how to save a draft of an email on your iPhone or iPad, but it’s easy We’ve all been there: You need to write an email, but you don’t have the time right now to devote your full attention to it. If only iOS had a feature that would let you save new messages you’re composing, then finish writing them later. Luckily, it does, and we’ll show you the somewhat hidden feature in the iOS Mail app that lets you easily start a new email, save it, and then revisit and finish writing it later. BY CORY BOHON »WHAT YOU NEED » An iOS device » People to correspond with 1 Creating a Draft Message To create a draft message, simply tap on the Compose message button…

STAY IN TOUCH WITH US ON TWITTER: @MACLIFE 200 DAYS AND COUNTING As of the day I’m writing this—May 10—it has been exactly 200 days since Tim Cook and company last stood upon a stage to introduce a new Apple product. If that sounds like an especially long stretch, that’s because it is—historically so. Gene Munster, an analyst at investor research firm Piper Jaffray, took a look at the 11 events Apple has put on since the 2009 introduction of the iPhone 3G and found that the average time between them was 123 days, with the longest wait being the 216-day stretch between the March 2011 iPad 2 debut and the October 2011 launch of the iPhone 4S. By the time we reach Apple’s next scheduled event at the opening…

I just read your response to Art Ross [in the May 2013 issue] and felt that your response that you “dig” Mail was woefully inadequate! At first, I, too, found Mail maddeningly frustrating. I couldn’t find anything. My bet is that Art, like myself, is not an iPhone or iPad user (yet!), or doesn’t use the web-based email, in which case the “nesting” of the emails can confuse the ever-livin’ crap out of a person. So, please pass this on to Art: In Mail, go to View and uncheck Organize by Conversation. In Mail preferences, go to Viewing and check Use Classic Layout. This should make Mail behave like the old, reliable client we are used to. As for iTunes, I was at first dismayed until I understood the new…

Some iOS gaming apps are about more than having fun When it comes to promoting a cause or spreading a message about positive social change, there are a lot of ways to do it, but these days, it’s becoming more common for those messages to be spread via gaming apps you can play on your iOS device. One case in point is Graffiti Collective, published by Truth—you know, the antismoking group that sponsored those TV ads featuring dozens of people in body bags as a way to illustrate the dangers of tobacco? Though Graffiti Collective is ostensibly a street-art game in which you create graffiti and tag locations to reclaim them from an evil conglomerate, the anti-teen-smoking message behind it is subtly written into the narrative. For the folks at…

Paranoia is when you imagine people are out to get you. Awareness is when you have evidence that they really are. Be aware, Mac|Life readers: online advertisers are preparing to grab your individual eyeballs and invade your individual mind—and you can blame our brave new digital wonderland for that eventuality. When it’s upright and forthright, advertising is good thing. What’s the ad on the back cover this month’s issue? (You’ll have to tell me—I’m writing this well before that prime real estate was rented out.) Odds are it’s a reputable peripheral or software vendor who wants to honestly get your attention and induce you to consider buying their product. All well and good, mom and apple pie, baseball, hot dogs and Chevrolet, and so on. But when advertising sneakily and…

Your Mac is one of the most fully featured and powerful imageediting machines on the planet, and Macs are used by photographic professionals the world over. Our guide to using your Mac for photography isn’t aimed at professionals, however, but rather at enthusiastic amateurs with a camera and a Mac who are wondering how to make the two work together more smoothly. With its many gigabytes of storage and powerful processors, a Mac can chew through as many digital images as you can throw at it. It can make a catalogue of your photographs, tell you who’s in them, and allow you to search for specific photos taken on specific days in specific places. It can make your color images black and white, bring out the fine details in the…

Sparrow may have blazed a trail for acceptance of third-party iOS email clients, but there’s a new kid on the block: Mail Pilot, a universal app that attempts to infuse slick organizational talents into traditional IMAP email. Mail Pilot’s creators should be applauded for native iPad support out of the gate, a feature still missing from popular alternatives like Mailbox. This advantage only goes so far, however. Mail Pilot’s description clearly states that it “works seamlessly with all IMAP email service providers,” a claim we found to be more fiction than fact as it refused to add accounts from certain domains. Because Mail Pilot creates custom IMAP folders for its productivity features, email providers that don’t follow “universal IMAP specifications” won’t work. A fix is supposedly incoming, but this is…

Developer EA may be best known for games, but Yogify is a serious contender for the best yoga app around. It’s a free download for iPhone, though most of the content can be accessed only via inapp purchases ($9.99 unlocks everything). Organization is Yogify’s biggest asset, as the different focuses— strength, balance, and flexibility—and skill levels make it easy to target what you want to work on. It’s the first yoga app we’ve used that comes close to feeling like a real studio workout, and power yoga practitioners in particular will love it. We only wish it had a native iPad version, and hope it continues to add content. The bottom line. Want an app that might actually keep you away from the yoga studio for a while? Look no…

Ferrying a flock of afro-adorned critters through a ghastly gauntlet of increasingly menacing shadow machines is a challenging, sometimes messy affair in Badland. It’s easy to get swept away by the gorgeous scenery cycling in the background of each doom-filled stage, but failing to focus on the dark traps springing to life in the foreground does not bode well for your gaggle. This interesting and visually distinct one-button game layers unique mechanics around its simple premise to keep you tapping along even when your cute crew gets shredded to pieces over and over again. Navigating stages quickly becomes an exercise in fast-paced puzzle solving, as different power-ups and obstacles are thrown into your path. It’s simple, gorgeous, and brutal. The bottom line. Badland is a real treat for the senses…

Magnetic charging: how attractive For years, gadget-makers have been hailing wireless charging. But there’s a dirty little secret: they not really wireless. Since we can’t yet efficiently transmit power through thin air, there are still wires involved in all those “wireless” charging devices. To BuQu Tech’s credit, Magnetyze doesn’t actually claim to be a wireless charging system, and the case/charger combo has its own attractive qualities. Magnetyze is a system consisting of a two-part case, a USB-connected charging dock, plus an extra charging cable. The case features a back not unlike a slim battery case, which snaps into your iPhone 4/4S’s dock connector. In fact, there’s a second Magnetyze model that incorporates a rechargeable battery ($99.99). A bumper protects your phone’s edges and keeps the back in place. As a…

As much as we love our mice and trackpads, Apple’s marketing has made us a bit jaded about anything with “magic” in its name. So, when Mimo Monitors’ Magic Touch landed on our doorstep, we were appropriately skeptical. Out of the box, the 10-inch touchscreen display doesn’t feel very magical. While absurdly light (about a pound without the base, and a little over 2 pounds with it), it looks like a cheap tablet. It might not be a fair comparison, but for a 10-inch touchscreen that costs almost as much as an iPad mini, it’s impossible not to focus on how outdated it looks, from the thick plastic enclosure to the raised bezel. You can opt to use the Magic Touch with or without its adjustable stand, but it always…

GPS for your iPod touch or iPad mini After the Apple Maps debacle (which still hasn’t been totally fixed), many iOS users sought alternatives to Apple’s flawed mapping and navigation app. Garmin is a wellknown player in this space, with a plethora of GPSenabled mapping apps for all sorts of uses—which is great if your device has a GPS receiver. But what about owners of the iPad mini, or iPod touch? Garmin’s GLO is a stand-alone GPS receiver that connects to your iOS device via Bluetooth, giving your GPS-less iPad or iPod navigational capabilities. At just over 6 ounces, and half the size of a deck of cards, the GLO is easy to carry, and the rechargeable battery packs about 12 hours of juice, which you can top off via…

It’s taken 22 years for a Sonic the Hedgehog game to reach the Mac, but while the first Apple outing isn’t one of the hero’s traditional on-foot adventures, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing isn’t lacking in speed—or fun, for that matter. Using the tried-andtrue Mario Kart template, All-Stars Racing packs in a bevy of familiar characters and locations from Sega’s beloved properties, letting users command a driver through vibrantly colored worlds in rollicking circuit races that put an emphasis on drifting around turns and utilizing cartoonish weapons. While Sonic expectedly takes the starring role, with a few of his companions and several courses inspired by his past entries in tow, the game on the whole feels like a love letter to Sega’s glory days. Creative track designs pull elements from…

Only three things really matter in Hotline Miami: speed, surprise, and savagery. Highly stylized and yet shockingly realistic in its depiction of violence, the game pits a seemingly mute, possibly psychotic vigilante against buildings full of heavily armed Russian gangsters, and gives him just one goal: kill everything that moves. True, that description could apply to any number of other barebones video game plotlines, but Hotline Miami’s mix of taut top-down strategy, hair-trigger ultra-violence, and neon-drenched ’80s style makes it utterly unique. Your enemies mostly consist of identical white-suited baddies, and while plenty of them are armed to the teeth, most can be killed in one hit. You can too, though, and that means rushing headlong into danger is a surefire way to get your 8-bit brains splattered all over…

TECH SUPPORT & TECHSPLANATIONS »A TALE OF TWO ROUTERS I have two Linksys wireless routers: one connected to my cable modem, and one on the other side of the house connected to my printer. How can I set them up so that I don’t have to switch between them to print and get online? Usually when I need to print (which isn’t often), I will switch to the second router with the printer connected to do so. Many Linksys routers (and other brands) offer the ability to be placed in a “wireless repeater” or “wireless bridge” mode that allows for the second router to connect to the first to either share services or extend the range of your wireless network. In wireless repeater mode, your main router will broadcast the…

Modern editing and moviemaking are underscored by amazing technology. These days, you have many more options at your disposal than just adding the best parts of clips together and separating them with a simple cross-dissolve. iMovie comes with myriad transitions and titles you can choose from, to add more originality to your project. However, you can go one step further and apply a theme to your movie. A theme is a collection of titles and transitions that gives your work a unified feel. Apple’s designers have created a series of seven for you to choose from, and you can do this either when you first create a project, or at any time while you’re working on it. You’re obviously not limited to use those theme’s titles and transitions—you can mix…

On April 28, 2003 Apple introduced the iTunes Store as part of iTunes 4.0—and the world of entertainment changed forever. In the decade since then, the iTunes Store has allowed users to download more than 25 billion music tracks, 40 billion apps, and countless videos, and since 2010, has laid claim to being the biggest music vendor in the world. Here are a few reasons why the iTunes Store has been so revolutionary. 1. Legal Digital Music Distribution Before the iTunes Store came along, the music industry was ready to collapse under the weight of an MP3-fueled era of rampant piracy and file-sharing. But when Apple’s digital store went live, there was suddenly a quick, easy, legal, and affordable alternative to shady illicit downloads. Not only did it change the…

“What about online shopping, Facebook, and falling down a YouTube hole of puppy videos?” —Susie, trying to work the really important work-related things into this month’s cover story “Anything that doesn’t have animated singing cats.”—John, when asked which movie he and his wife planned to see on a long-overdue date night. “Every time a new hidden-object game comes out for iOS, a kitten dies.” —Chris H., discussing the true tragedy of metoo app design “Have you ever seen a bean this big? It’s Gimungus!” —Robin, preparing her salad for lunch “Yes, and now it’s a has-bean.” —Mark, contemplating the bean’s demise.…

YOU RISE TO THE CHALLENGE. WE REWARD YOU WITH COOL PRIZES. Win: An Ultra Fast USB 3.0 hard drive!» SSDs are fast but expensive. Hard drives are slower but cheaper, and with much greater storage capacities. Wouldn’t it be great to get the best of both worlds? You can: Buffalo Technology’s Ultra Fast USB 3.0 Hard Drive is a 2TB external hard drive with a 1GB DRAM cache—by caching your reads and writes on that DRAM, overall transfer speeds can best a regular USB 3 hard drive, up to 2.3 times faster. We’ll have a full review in our next issue, but you can enter to win our review unit right…now. Who’s a Winner? In our April issue, we gave away a HiddenRadio, which is a portable Bluetooth speaker and…

In March, Google quietly announced the impending demise of Google Reader on July 1, 2013 by sandwiching it amidst other, less important springcleaning announcements. But as if hit by a massive thunderclap, Rich Site Summary (RSS) junkies everywhere immediately felt the shockwaves. As the fateful day approaches, it’s time to make peace with the past and establish a survival plan for the post–Google Reader wasteland to come—only, in this case, you won’t have to become Mad Max to find the right newsreader. KEEP IT BROWSER-BASED Before determining a survival strategy, take a long, hard look at how you actually use Google Reader. For example, do those RSS feeds ever leave Mountain View’s browser-based garden? Does your current approach involve syncing feeds to mobile or desktop apps? If the answer is…

SAVE ROCK AND ROLL Fall Out Boy $9.99 I may no longer be the goofy teenager that fell hard for Fall Out Boy a decade ago, but I still love the Chicago band’s pop-punk anthems and snarky, self-aware lyrics. Putting an exclamation point on their recently ended hiatus, Save Rock and Roll may not accomplish its stated (tongue-in-cheek) task, but it does deliver 11 punched-up tracks with immaculate production, ludicrous cameos (Elton John?), and huge choruses that ricochet through my mind day and night. SCOTT PILGRIM VOL. 1: SCOTT PILGRIM’S PRECIOUS LITTLE LIFE—COLOR EDITION Bryan Lee O’Malley $9.99 The original black-and-white Scott Pilgrim graphic novels are fantastic reads, but even as someone who owns the original paperbacks, I’m still intrigued by the new hardcover editions, which are remastered in color.…

The interchangeable-lens camera market has never been so appealing. Mirrorless cameras offer top-quality images without costing you a fortune or lugging a huge DSLR around—and you can still be flexible with your photography with a range of lenses and accessories. For this month’s issue, we gathered six interchangeable-lens cameras. Each has a lens you can swap when the mood strikes, and they’ve all got manual modes, allowing you to grow your photography as you learn and gain experience. They range from tiny bodies such as the Panasonic Lumix GF5 to full-on DSLRs such as the Canon EOS Rebel T3, and with prices from $399.99 to $749.99, there’s some wiggle room to fit one into your budget. The only requirement for all the cameras we tested was an interchangeable-lens system. A…

There are more than a couple of competent iOS apps that use the built-in device microphone and/or incoming audio signal, sample it, and check to see if it is indeed in tune, but Tunable puts a truly new, innovative spin on the overall concept. In the process, it delivers on the promise of being a one-stop tuning shop. The graphic look of Tunable is a study in clear, cohesive interface design, with the main feature being a real-time pitch graph that displays the incoming signal as a white line plot running from the top of the screen down. As you play your instrument or sing into the microphone, the app plots the pitch and shows you exactly how much you’re straying from your desired note. This approach—which gives you a…

It’s time to feed Om Nom (and Om Nom) Little about the act of slicing strands seems terribly appealing in our everyday lives, but that simple premise is responsible for one of the App Store’s biggest sensations. Cut the Rope’s diverse and colorful physics-based puzzles have made green alien creature Om Nom a household name across two entries—the original smash and the evenmore- whimsical Cut the Rope: Experiments—and now Cut the Rope: Time Travel aims to push the formula further ahead by looking to the past for thematic inspiration. While not a significant departure from the swipe- and tap-centric approach of the earlier entries, Time Travel does have a very notable addition. There are now two Om Noms to feed: the regular one, as hungry as ever, and another pulled…

Despite its wide catalog of beloved characters, Disney’s mobile games have often introduced their own original leads, and such is the case with Mittens, a physics-based puzzleplatformer. Strung together by adorable animated cut-scenes, the game shows the irascible titular feline attempting to woo a prissy purple kitty with gifts, which you’ll aim to collect via the simple stages. Mittens himself is largely a spectator in the proceedings, as you’ll control his environments with swipes, taps, and drag maneuvers to push, fling, and bounce him towards his goal. The puzzles are never too taxing—though nailing a perfect line can get vexing in later stages—but the solutions feel frustratingly inflexible. We wish we had more say, rather than being guided along a set path. The bottom line. Mittens is a cute and…

Cardboard isn’t just for breakdancing Back in the early ’80s, boomboxes were king. You’d load up a cassette with your favorite jams, buy a ton of bulky, heavy D-cell batteries, and take the party to the park, or the beach, or wherever. Then Sony introduced the Walkman, and permanently changed how we listen to music on the go. The Berlin Boombox aims to bring back some of that old-school block-rocking, in the form of a DIY boombox made out of cardboard. It’s quite literally a box that booms. Assembling the Boombox is surprisingly easy. The multilingual instructions are accompanied by pictorial instructions several grades higher than the ones that came with your cheapo Swedish coffee table. Basically, assembling the Boombox amounts to connecting the speakers and battery to a small…

Stand in the place where you live I will admit I wasn’t sold on Bluelounge’s Mika as just an iPad stand. Sure, it fits either an iPad or an iPad mini, in either portrait or landscape orientation, but shouldn’t most stands, especially simple ones like this? Mika is just a curved piece of solid aluminum with soft black rubber edges on the top part (which supports the back of your device) and the bottom lip (which hold your device in place). It doesn’t adjust to different angles or fold flat for travel. But then I slid aside my usual MacBook Pro stand and tried Mika instead. I primarily use a mid-2010 15-inch MacBook Pro, hooked up to a Cinema Display in lidclosed mode. And Mika, despite its footprint of less…

Drop-dead simple security cam The webcam on your Mac is great for FaceTime, but sometimes you need to keep tabs on something besides your desk. For keeping track of pets & babies, or that annoying kid down the street who keeps knocking over your garbage cans, Dropcam HD offers streaming video and sound to the Internet, or to your iPhone or iPad. Dropcam is easy to set up. To connect it to your Wi-Fi network, simply connect the camera to your Mac and follow the setup wizard. It worked the first time we tried it, and in only a few minutes, we had set up a live video feed from the kitchen. Keep in mind, however, that this isn’t a wireless camera. It transmits via Wi-Fi, but you’ll still need…

Technology is becoming absurd. Somewhere along the line we’ve reached into the world of science fiction and pulled the secrets of tomorrow into our present. It’s true: we haven’t yet divined time travel or even colonized Mars, but we can fit all of our audio needs inside a coffee cup. As evidence, let’s take a look at these two tiny, rechargeable Bluetooth speakers. It’s hard not to be skeptical when looking at Bivoom’s Bluetune-solo; it’s less than 3 inches tall and promises to play audio as well as act as a speakerphone. The output is limited by its form factor to only 6 watts, but a little goes a long way. While the speaker itself has no volume controls, even songs that emphasize bass are crisp and loud enough to…

There’s a point where an add-on becomes almost intrinsically linked to an operating system; you even get a little itchy when that add-on isn’t running. That’s pretty much how Alfred makes us feel whenever we restart a Mac and a little bowler hat isn’t present in the menu bar. On the surface, it’s admittedly hard to see what all the fuss is about. In its free incarnation, Alfred is essentially an alternative to Spotlight. You use Command-space to bring up a floating window, type a term, get a results list, and select an item to launch it. But almost immediately, you notice the add-on’s benefits over Apple’s tool. First, it’s a lot faster. Second, it doesn’t reorder the results list as you’re navigating it, thereby eradicating accidental launches. There are…

HOW TO DO ANYTHING ON YOUR MAC, iPhone & iPad Apple’s iTunes Match service lets you store all your music in the cloud, but some people prefer to have a local copy of all their music instead. It’s free, and doesn’t disappear if your Internet connection goes down. You might have thousands of tracks you’ve ripped from CD over the years, for example. This is the more conventional way to use iTunes and it’s great, until your library starts to get too big for your hard drive. And with more and more people using ultraportable MacBook Airs, storage capacity can be an issue. Luckily, iTunes makes it fairly easy to move your library to an external drive, even one connected to your Wi-Fi router. This can be a regular USB…

Radio’s resurgence online surprised some, but it probably shouldn’t have. One of the best things about the Internet is the way in which relatively niche interests can reach a broader audience. And so, while radio was somewhat stymied in the days of limited frequencies on the airwaves, that’s not the case now that there’s effectively limitless space available online. It might sound like hyperbole to claim there’s a station for everyone’s personal tastes, but we can’t be far off—there’s even a station devoted entirely to remixes of music originally composed for the Commodore 64 home computer! For playing back Internet radio, you don’t need much. Usually, a browser will do the job, although depending on the station involved, you might also require a plugin to be installed (most likely Flash).…