If flinging turds at island invaders hasn’t helped you get out your pent up aggressions, help is on the way. Soon you will be able to use a spiky catapult to fling cows at angry Englishmen in flimsy wooden huts, all on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. This is thanks to the popular physics puzzler, Monty Python Cow Tossing.
The game seems to be loosely based on the popular Angry Birds, but it has several additional features. For example, there are Holy Grail and other power-ups on each of the 80 levels of the game. You can also purchase upgrades for your catapult and use different types of animals for throwing, including the African swallow.
Monty Python Cow Tossing will be available for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and select mobile handsets in the next few weeks. No price has yet been released.
Today Apple released the third beta of iOS 4.3, called 8F5166b, to developers for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. This is the third beta release from Apple in three weeks. Details were not immediately available as to what is included in the release.
The first release on January 12th featured the new Personal Hotspot feature which allows an iPhone to share its 3G Internet connection with up to 5 devices over WiFi, and allowed third party applications to use AirPlay for streaming video. It also included a software option to change the iPad hardware switch between mute and orientation lock.
The second beta issued on Jan. 19 was a preview of the new iPad multi-touch gestures, which included four-finger gestures to switch between multitasking operations or return to the home screen. This feature will not be enabled in the final release, but is planned for the future.
When you go into cardiac arrest, you’ve got about ten minutes to live if you don’t receive medical attention, and the average emergency response time is seven minutes after you dial 911. In an effort to get folks help more quickly and leverage the iPhone’s life saving abilities, the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District in California has created the FireDepartment app to enlist the help of the citizenry in fighting the (unfortunate) results of a lifetime of eating tacos. The iPhone app — Android and BlackBerry versions are currently in the works — allows emergency dispatchers to notify users via text of a nearby crisis. For those feeling heroic, the app displays a map with the victim’s location and any nearby automatic electronic defibrillators, and provides “resuscitation reminders” in case you’re the CPR teddy-toting type. For now, the service only works in San Ramon but there are plans to port it for use elsewhere. That means we can look forward to a nation of amateur EMTs, which makes us thankful that mouth-to-mouth is no longer a part of CPR. Check the video after the break to see the app in action.
With the iPhone, now hitting Verizon with CDMA support and the device being on 3G networks around the world there are other carriers using different standards that want the iPhone too. In China, the iPhone has been offered for a while now on China Unicom.
Unicom runs on the 3G global standard and is not the largest carrier in the country. The largest carrier is China Mobile, which uses a different standard called TD-SCDMA and will use TD-LTE for its next gen standard. According to China Mobile chairman Wang Jianzhou Apple has committed to supporting TD-LTE.
China Mobile has been working with Apple for years trying to get Cupertino to build an iPhone supporting TD-SCDMA. The pledge for support of the next generation TD-LTE format brings new expectations of Apple perhaps offering an iPhone for the Chinese carrier that will support the current 3G network.
We’ve been hearing a ton of rumors about what direction Apple’s next set of products will take and when they’ll be available — but now we’ve got some concrete information from reliable sources which should make the path a little clearer. And that includes info on the next iPad, the iPhone 5, the second iteration of the new Apple TV, and a big change coming for all of the company’s mobile products. Want to know the scoop? Read along after the break to get the goods.
Millennial Media tracks the mobile market to offer us all sorts of little details on the most popular devices, makers, and operating systems and the details are based on impressions for mobile ads generated online. The latest details offered from the metrics firm are for December 2010.
Apple continued to be the most popular device maker with 21% of the impressions on its devices for the month. Samsung was in the second spot, and HTC was in third place. One interesting fact was that on an individual device basis, Android devices held 16 of the top mobile device spots. The iPhone was number one, the Blackberry Curve was in the second spot, the iPod touch was third, HTC Nexus One was fourth and the Motorola Droid took fifth.
The OS mix showed that Android was tops with 46% of the impressions, iOS was second with 32% of all impressions, and RIM had third with 16% of all impressions. The Windows OS share of all impression was only 1%. Android surpassed iOS as the largest smartphone OS on the network for the first time in December with its 46%.
Hey, a phone that Apple introduced back in 2009 (that’d be the iPhone 3GS) is now selling — brand new with a two-year voice / data agreement — for $49, both at AT&T and through Apple directly. Of course, you could get the far more capable iPhone 4 for a fair amount more, or you could wait until tomorrow so you’d actually have an option when it comes to carriers. Your call, obviously.
The Zeppelin is the first wireless speaker dock that will stream your music through Apple AirPlay. AirPlay will allow your computer to stream music and even control every aspect of volume leveling/equalizer settings directly from your PC or Mac.
This version of the Zeppelin not only differs with wireless funtionality, but with sound quality as well. The improved amplifiers and bass will prove to be an excellent upgrade from the previous Zeppelin purchased three years ago. An interesting design implemented is the ability to actually grasp your iPod as it is docked into place making iPod selection more user-friendly.
Hey, you — it’s January 3rd. You know, the day you’re supposed to return to work / school / life. And the day you’re supposed to catch a flight you’ve had booked for three months. And probably a day that you’re supposed to accomplish lots of other tasks. Unfortunately for you, you actually believed that your iPhone alarm would fix itself when today rolled around, but based on hordes of complaints seen on Twitter and Facebook, said fix is still hibernating. And thus, you’re still sleeping. Even here at Engadget HQ, we’ve seen iPhone 4 handsets not wake us as promised (on non-recurring alarms), so who knows when Apple will step up to the plate and address the issue. In the meantime, go ahead and set up a recurring alarm while gently crossing your fingers and toes. Or, you know, buy a battery-powered alarm clock off of your grandmother.
We’re not exactly sure of the cause of this fancy new issue affecting Apple’s super cool iPhone line of cellphones, but apparently you’ve got trouble come 1/1/2011. According to an explosive stream of frustration-filled tweets on the Twitter microblogging service, when the clock strikes midnight, one off alarms will cease to sing out. The issue sounds eerily similar to recent Daylight Savings Time trouble we witnessed back in November, although we saw both repeating alarm and single alarm failures.
So how can you fix this potentially life-ruining problem? Well until Apple patches its OS — and it’s currently unclear if this is just iOS 4.2.1 or earlier versions as well — you can simply create a recurring alarm at the time you need to be woken up, and then disable it once your dreams are completely ruined. We’re taking a deeper look into the issue and have contacted Apple — if we get more news, you guys will be the first to know. In the meantime, feel free to commiserate in comments, and… happy new year?
Update:9to5 Mac says that the bug will get fixed all by itself once the calendar hits January 3rd. We haven’t confirmed this, but if it turns out to be the case, that’s pretty good news. In less good news, the issue seems to be affecting iOS 4.1 and 4.0.2 as well.
Update 2: Apple responded to us on the issue, though they didn’t offer any surprises:
We’re aware of an issue related to non repeating alarms set for January 1 or 2. Customers can set recurring alarms for those dates and all alarms will work properly beginning January 3.
