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Filed under: Gaming, Features, iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

Catan. If you've ever visited, there's a good chance you're passionate about it.

First unveiled as a traditional board game in 1995, the now-classic trading and settlement game has evolved over the years to include dozens of scenarios, expansions and reworkings, from limited edition game maps to browser-based Internet versions. Naturally, the Settlers of Catan is now also available for the iPhone [iTunes link], and it's a a damn good condensed version.

First things first. This is the full, but basic, game. The original ruleset isn't condensed at all, but none of the expansions are present in the current version. While long-time board gamers might scoff at simple "vanilla Settlers," the basic game as presented in Exozet's iPhone version acts just like the tabletop big brother. You can choose to play on the fixed beginner board or a random map, you can play with three or four people (or bots), you can trade, you can go for longest road, etc. All the things that make Catan such an enduring game are here, and that's great to have in your pocket.

Read on to find out more about Catan: the First Island on the iPhone (and iPod Touch).

Continue reading Catan: The First Island brings tabletop gaming glee to iPhone

Catan: The First Island brings tabletop gaming glee to iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Catan: The First Island brings tabletop gaming glee to iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you're still holding onto hope that the the iPad will have Flash, it's time to let the notion go. In response to Internet-wide confusion, the iPad intro video which initially prompted us to think that the wonder pad would have Flash has been updated to show a "missing plugin" icon in place of would-be Flash content. The original version showed a mocked-up version of the New York Times with all Flash content loaded in.

So now that Apple's gone out of their way to remove Flash from their promotional video, it's highly unlikely that we'll see Flash in the iPad any time in the near future.

Filed under: Gaming, Odds and ends, iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

I admit it. I am iPadded out. I am iTired. I am suffering from iBurnout. So it was with pleasure that I found an addicting little game for the iPhone and iPod touch called Crush the Castle [iTunes link]. It's a free medieval game where you use an ancient trebuchet to smash a variety of castles and the inhabitants standing nearby. Crush the Castle is physics based, so you have to swing a heavy projectile in the air and release at just the right point to flatten the castle off to the right of the trebuchet. After a few tries it gets damned addictive.

You have more than a dozen castles to crush in two different kingdoms. If you do well, you get some medals. If not, you are rebuked by the king. The animation is good, the physics seem accurate, and the sounds of castles coming down and soldiers screaming adds to the fun.

At each new level, the distance to the castles from your siege machine increases, so you really have to get the release point for the projectile just right.

Crush the Castle is a port of a Flash-based game which you can play for free online. If you really get into the mild mayhem, I'd suggest you look at the US$1.99 version [iTunes link] which has 90 levels, 10 types of ammo, and an editor so you can design your own castles before you knock them down.

Both versions get great reviews from users, and I'm in agreement. It's helping me forget all the endless iDebates over the iPad and work my iAggressions out on my iPhone.

The free version is no risk, except for the time you are sure to lose. Let me know if you get hooked too. Check out more screen shots below:

Got some time? Crush the Castle originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Got some time? Crush the Castle originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Virgin Mobile Canada lights up HSPA+ network, iPhone 3GS, Bold 9700 in tow originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 10:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At this particular point, 50-something days away from the earliest iPad deliveries, we doubt too many people are up in arms about the iPad's ability to act as a jumbo iPhone. On the other hand, if we told you you can take pretty much the entire iPad experience and distill it down to your iPhone OS device, well you'd probably care a lot more, wouldn't you? To get that extra 3D flavor to your UI, including the fetching iBooks shelf and other iPad-specific touches, you'll need a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch, access to the Cydia app store, and the manpower to click past the break for the full instructional video. Come on, you know you want to.

[Thanks, Taimur]

Continue reading iPad UI gets ported to the iPhone and iPod touch

iPad UI gets ported to the iPhone and iPod touch originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 04:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Apple Financial, Apple, iPhone

I thought Apple sounded a tad bit defensive about China on the conference call Monday, but Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty says there's nothing to worry about: she expects Apple to sell up to four or five million iPhones in China per year. Apple told us on Monday that they've activated about 200,000 iPhones in China so far, but Huberty claims that there's a market for maybe 50 million iPhones over there, and echoes Tim Cook's assertion that price is the main issue. "Hardware pricing, service plan pricing and the large up-front payment," she says in her report, "were cited by 85%, 66% and 56% of respondents respectively, as reasons they were not likely to purchase an iPhone."

Keep in mind that the four to five million figure is a top end -- in the first year, Apple has said that they're aiming for more like one or two million. But there is definitely a solid market to be found in China, and significant sales there could help buoy Apple earnings reports over here for sure.

Analyst: There's a market of four to five million iPhones a year in China originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Analyst: There's a market of four to five million iPhones a year in China originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After playing with the iPad, the one thing everyone agrees upon is that it's really fast. It's also extremely power-effiecient, sporting 10 hours of video playback and over a month of standby time. Now if you were paying attention during the keynote, you'll know that the iPad's speed and low power consumption comes from its use of Apple's custom-designed A4 system-on-a-chip. It opens apps faster, flips orientations faster, and even allows for some cool, new graphical effects. So if Apple has a super chip that runs the iPhone OS at super speeds, where will we see it next?

According to analysts (who totally have engineering degrees), we might see an iPhone with a scaled-down A4 chip as early as July. It likely won't be as fast in order to preserve battery life, but it should provide significant speed boosts as well as increased battery life. And because the A4 is believed to be based on a similar ARM-based architecture as the iPhone's current CPU, there's no reason why it shouldn't happen.

This week's apps include an elegant book-reading app and a funny survival shooter with a mission.

Originally posted at The Download Blog

MobileCrunch has a great piece outlining five super-cool things the iPhone could learn from its big brother, the iPad. But if you're not into reading long editorials, we'll try to sum it up for you.

First up is Bluetooth keyboard support. Not only does the iPad support that neato keyboard dock, you can simply pair a Bluetooth keyboard with it and go. Next is desktop file access, which lets you access files of any kind within any third-party app that supports it. Third-party apps can also support specific file types, which means that developers can broadcast their app's ability to read any file they want. The iPad can also create PDF documents, perfect for working with iWork apps, etc.

Filed under: Hardware, iPhone, iPod touch

Since the announcement that the iPad comes with a 1 GHz A4 chip developed and owned by Apple (thanks, no doubt, to their acquisition of chipmaker PA Semi), one thing's been on a lot of people's minds: when will this chip make it to the iPhone?

The iPhone 3GS runs on an 833 MHz Samsung chip, that, presumably to increase battery life, is underclocked to 600 MHz. While this is better than the original iPhone and iPhone 3G's 620 MHz CPU (underclocked to about 412 Mhz), there's still plenty of room for improvement. Analysts fully expect that improvement will come either from the A4 chip itself or a lower-powered variant of it designed for the iPhone's smaller screen and battery.

Early impressions of the iPad's speed from people who have actually handled one are that the device is far faster than any iPhone or iPod touch released so far, with applications opening "instantly," and provides far smoother graphics performance. With Apple now designing and implementing its own "system on a chip" CPU for the iPad, it seems very likely this will be one of many iPad features that will trickle down to Apple's smaller mobile devices. Once the iPad actually finds its way to consumers (and teardown sites), we'll have a much better idea of what Apple's A4 chip is capable of. As for the next-gen iPhone's CPU, I'm placing my bets on an A4 variant rather than the full iPad CPU, with an operational speed in the neighborhood of 800 - 850 MHz -- more than twice the speed of the iPhone 3G.

iPad CPU may find its way into next-gen iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iPad CPU may find its way into next-gen iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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