30
Jun
Posted on 2009 under iPhone Development |
...Michael Bay's Transformers 2 Sneak Peek...Kindle DX Pisses Off Blind Students...Sony Can Give All PS3s PS2 Emulation—But Probably Won't...Band Uses iPhone Gimmick to Get Attention (and Succeeds)...

Anyone who still hasn't seen the movie might want to skip this spoiler-riddled "preview" presented by the master of explosions, crashes, booms and more explosions himself, but it's a must see for everyone else. We didn't post it because we didn't want to give anything away. [YouTube]

Students at Arizona State University know that the college-bound Kindle DX can read texts aloud. Only trouble is, it won't read menus out loud. Good goin' there, Beez. Bottom line: Until the menus are covered by text-to-speech, the blind students are going to fight it. We'll cover it if it becomes a federal case, or if Amazon caves and hires some accessibility programmers. [ASU - The State Press]

A recently discovered Sony patent from late last year shows how the Cell processor found in all PS3s can fully emulate the Emotion Engine required to run PS2 games, so no matter what model you have, you'd be able to play any game you owned. But don't dust off your old God of War disc just yet—why would Sony wait this long to get you this particular feature, and to get you jazzed about games that by definition they can't profit from? Our verdict: Ain't gonna happen. [Siliconera via CrunchGear]

A band I've never heard of (The 88... anyone? anyone? Maybe I'm just old) decided to record an entire song using a $10 four-track iPhone recording app called Four Track. Although technically you could probably line in a decent mic, they even used the iPhone's microphone. Studio engineers will tell you that that's not the best way to get a top-40 sound. But hell, it got them a USA Today story with photo, so bully on studio engineers. The song isn't even that bad—course, I'm listening to it on laptop speakers. [USA Today; iTunes Store link]


30
Jun
Posted on 2009 under iPhone Development |
If you're familiar with the emulation scene (and let's be honest, you
are reading Engadget), then you know the name
ZodTTD -- the brain behind some of the best jailbroken emus for the iPhone, including variations on the PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, and most importantly... the TurboGrafx-16. Now the master-hacker has brought his goods to the Pre, cooking up a version of psx4all on the Palm device, with the aforementioned GBA and TG16 ports on the way! Interestingly, he reports that the performance on the Pre is actually better than that of the iPhone 3GS, and of course he's hacked access to the keyboard, allowing for (more) proper control of games. There are still kinks that are being worked out (sound emulation, screen scaling, etc.), but it looks like we can expect big things in the near future. We at Engadget know everyone will rest a bit easier tonight knowing that real gaming on the Pre is at hand. We'll hopefully be getting our hands on a version soon, but for now hit the read link for more info, and check out the full video after the break!
Continue reading The Pre gets PlayStation gaming and more thanks to ZodTTD (video)
Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming
The Pre gets PlayStation gaming and more thanks to ZodTTD (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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30
Jun
Posted on 2009 under iPhone Development |
Jailbreaking emulation legend ZodTTD has started the ball rolling on Pre gaming by installing his PlayStation emulator, psx4all, on the smartphone—and while there are kinks to be worked out, he says it runs even faster than on iPhone.
There's no denying the Pre has several huge advantages over the iPhone family when it comes to gaming, especially the hardware keyboard, and it looks like it won't be lacking in the graphical department, either. The emulation is still in the early stages; there's no sound and he hasn't figured out the screen scaling yet, but this little demo of Wipeout XL looks incredibly smooth.
ZodTTD says a fuller, more polished version of psx4all for the Pre should be coming soon, and with any luck, this'll be the first hurdle on the way to a substantial gaming community for the Pre. [ZodTTD via Engadget]


30
Jun
Posted on 2009 under iPhone News |
Filed under: Gaming, WWDC, iPhone, iPod touch
Master Jumperton is a simple game where you swipe to create platforms for Master Jumperton to continually jump higher and higher. There are some similar games on the store, but Jumperton is well-crafted and features a high scores board and basic options. Master Jumperton isn't yet available on the store.
The Battle of Pirate Bay will be available July 1, we are told, and it's a more involved game. That isn't to say it is complicated, as anyone familiar with
Flight Control or
Harbor Master's game mechanic will understand what to do. Battle goes one step beyond time and path management to add the element of battle with waves of enemies. You have to balance ammo and the health of your base in the bay plus the routing of faster or slower ships with different capabilities all while moving your finger around to direct traffic, as it were. Very fast-paced, and it looks like a lot of fun. We'll tweet when it lands in the store this week.
Both games are from veteran mobile developers Muteki, who developed Maze Finger and Topple 2 for ngmoco.
Topple 2 won an Apple design award at this year's WWDC.
TUAWWWDC Demo: Master Jumperton and Battle of Pirate Bay (preview) originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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30
Jun
Posted on 2009 under iPhone News |
Filed under: iPod Family, Developer, iPhone, SDK

Apple has released a 3.1 beta for the
iPhone SDK. Both the SDK beta and firmware are available for testing and development to paid members of the iPhone developer program. As pre-release software, any details about this new release remain under NDA.
A pre-installation advisory and beta release notes are available as per Apple's usual release strategy. As before, you cannot use the 3.1 SDK to create applications for submitting to the App Store, so if you plan to download it be prepared to create a separate installation directory.
The new release comes just on the heels of the public 3.0 firmware. Its full-dot-number indicates that it contains more than just minor bug fixes (a relatively minor revision would probably be listed as 3.0.1).
Thanks to everyone who sent this in.TUAWApple releases 3.1 beta for iPhone SDK originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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