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Posts tagged with "iOS"

AirPlay Video From iOS To Mac With AirPlayer

If you’re familiar with AirPlay, you know that it’s a pretty sweet technology that allows you to stream audio and video from any Mac or iOS device to an Apple TV, AirPort Express Station (audio-only) and AirPlay-compatible speakers. That’s the way it works. You can’t stream from Mac to Mac, iOS to iOS, or Mac to iPhone and iPad – although there’s a way to do that via jailbreak.

AirPlay’s streaming is great and almost “magical”, but it has its limitations, possibly due to the fact that Apple introduced it less than a month ago with the release of iOS 4.2. Ever since AirPlay hit the internet with the final public build of 4.2, hackers started working on mods to make it work in any app (video streaming from iOS apps is limited to Apple’s applications), on any device. TUAW’s Erica Sadun, for instance, has been busy working on a solution to make AirPlay work backwards, from iOS to the Mac.

The result is AirPlayer, “a custom Bonjour AirPlay service that pretends to be an Apple TV” that runs on your Mac. It’s a Mac app that can accept  incoming AirPlay video streaming from iOS – very simple. Read more

#MacStoriesDeals - Tuesday

In case you missed our announcement yesterday, we started another new feature, and it’s called #MacStoriesDeals. We’ll try our best to update the list throughout each day.

Here’s some great deals for today on iOS & Mac apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot!

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Unreal Development Kit For iOS Coming This Week→

Unreal Development Kit For iOS Coming This Week

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the UDK for iOS will be released for free on Thursday:

Epic Games is planning to release an updated version of its game-development tools, known as the Unreal Development Kit, to the public Thursday. The kit, which is free to download, will include new tools to create high-quality graphics and animations on iOS, effectively simplifying and speeding up the development processes for games. Epic doesn’t charge license fees to tinker with the kit nor to make free games. But, if developers want to sell their apps, they have to pay a $99 licensing fee and 25% royalties after the first $5,000 in sales.

“Apple’s App Store is the most vibrant market for mobile gaming,” said Epic co-founder Mark Rein. “If you’re going to make a game for a mobile device, and you want to make the most money, you’re nuts not to make it for iOS.

Rein also expressed his concerns about the Android platform, which doesn’t allow for apps larger than 50MB to be sold in the Marketplace and it’s too “fragmented” for game developers.

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#MacStoriesDeals - Monday

In case you missed our announcement earlier today, we’re starting another new feature, this one being a daily occurrence. We’re calling it #MacStoriesDeals. If anymore show up during the day, we’ll be sure to update this list!

Here’s some great deals for today on iOS apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot!

Read more

Infinity Blade: $1.6 Million In 5 Days→

Infinity Blade: $1.6 Million In 5 Days

Great results for the first game based on the Unreal Engine for iOS:

The first Unreal Engine-powered game for iOS, Infinity Blade, has sold at least 274,000 copies in its first five days on sale, according to recent player counts on Game Center. At $6 a copy that’s a $1.64 net for the publisher, and a new record, according to Gamesindustry.biz.

Take away Apple’s revenue and it’s over 1 million for the developers. Not a bad start, right? Now we’re waiting for multiplayer to be activated in a next update, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for “free roaming” to find its way in Infinity Blade. At least not in this first version.

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Almost 2,000 Game Center Games Available In The App Store

Game Center, the social gaming network Apple introduced with iOS 4.1 in September and iOS 4.2 for iPad a few weeks ago, is not doing bad. After a quick search in the App Store, I noticed that Apple has almost 2,000 games ready for Game Center – 1917 to be exact.

In fact, the App Store contains two specific sections to showcase Game Center games for iPad and iPhone: 517 apps are available for iPad, 1400 for iPhone. That’s not too bad, considering that Game Center has been around for a few months. Read more

Angry Birds Developers Launching Their Own Pig-Based Payment System

Rovio, the crazy folks who developed Angry Birds, are planning to launch their own mobile payment system.

Wait, what?

Not only did they sell more than 12 million copies on their iOS and Android game, now they want more money, too? Easy, nerds. The system they have set up, properly named “Bad Piggy Bank”, will be initially rolled out in Finland (Rovio is based in Helsinki) through the nation’s biggest mobile carrier, Elisa. The Angry Birds-themed system will let you easily pay for Rovio’s apps, games and bonus stuff by taking money from your monthly cellular bill. Sounds simple. Read more

HP Believes In AirPrint: 6 More Printers Now iOS-Ready

As noted by MacRumors, HP issued a firmware update last night to extend AirPrint support (which as you may remember, used to work only on certain HP printers still listed on Apple’s website) to 6 more of its Officejet printers.

Thus, AirPrint is now compatible out of the box with the following models:

  • Officejet 6500A e-AiO5
  • Officejet 6500A Plus e-AiO5
  • Officejet 7500A Wide Format e-AiO5
  • Officejet Pro 8500A e-AiO5
  • Officejet Pro 8500A Plus e-AiO5
  • Officejet Pro 8500A Premium e-AiO5

AirPrint used to work on any printer shared through a Mac or PC in a local network in the first OS X 10.6.6 developer betas. As 10.6.6 went public, Apple pulled the feature and made AirPrint compatible only with selected HP printers.

A few hacks have surfaced to bring the functionality back, but Steve Jobs promised Apple’s working on making AirPrint better, although they need more time to achieve stable and fast driverless printing.

MacStories’ 2010 Roundup: Top 5 iOS Music Apps

Welcome to MacStories’ 2010 Roundup! In this new series, we collect the best apps released in 2010 for the Mac, iPhone and iPad – apps we have probably already featured here on MacStories. Only the best apps, both free and paid. Apps you shouldn’t miss.

Apple’s iPod app for the iPhone and iPad is simple, effective and pretty to look at, but sometimes I want more from my music. I want up-to-date information about the artists I’m listening to, I want to discover new songs without having to search Google – I want something different than a list of music synced from my hard drive. If music’s an experience, than I want a digital music experience on iOS.

In this post, first of the MacStories 2010 Roundup series, we have collected the top 5 apps to listen to music released this year. We think they are great apps you should go install right now. We could have included more, but we wanted to bring the best of the best to your attention, not just the “pretty good” ones.

So jump after the break, and check our Top 5 list of music apps for iOS. We heard it’s also possible to listen to The Beatles with them. Read more