Hasta La Gadget!

Slowly but surely Leap Motion is making its way toward a commercial release. Today, the company has announced it’s moving into the next phase of beta testing and that it will be opening up its developer portal to the public later in the week. While this still won’t get folks a Leap device any faster, it will let them dig into Leap’s tools and code base in preparation for when they finally get one. The move marks a shift from the company’s previous SDK-focused beta to a consumer-focused one that’ll serve to refine the UX in Windows and OSX. Within each operating system, there will be two levels of Leap control: basic, which essentially allows you to use Leap in place of a touchscreen, and advanced to allow for more 3D controls enabled by Leap’s ability to detect the pitch and yaw of hands in space.

CEO Michael Buckwald gave us this good news himself, and also gave us a preview of Airspace, Leap’s app store, and a few app demos for good measure. As it turns out, Airspace is a two-pronged affair — Airspace Store is showcase for all software utilizing the Leap API and Airspace Home is a launcher that keeps all the Leap apps that you own in one convenient place. There will be 50 apps in Airspace at the start of the beta, with offerings from pro tools and utility apps to casual games, and we got to see a few examples.

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The world is under attack once more, and it’s up to your squad of elite, turn-based soldiers to keep humanity safe. We’ve just gotten word that XCOM: Enemy Unknown is headed to a wide variety of iOS devices come this Thursday, June 20th. Everything from the iPad 2 to the fifth-gen iPod touch is getting a taste of Firaxis’ XCOM effort — should users choose to fork over the $19.99 asking price, that is.

Aside from multiplayer (which is coming via free update post-launch), the iOS version is just about the same as its console and PC counterpart — you build up resources and strike back against the alien menace threatening to tear apart Earth, with the occasional break to torturously study the enemy via “dissection.” Whether the enemy is still alive at that point, well, that’s a question for your science team. For a full list of supported iOS devices, head below the break. As for Android and Windows Phone 8 support? “We’ve only announced plans for iOS devices at this time,” was all a 2K Games rep would tell us. Not exactly a hard no, but not a confirmation either.

Filed under: Gaming, Software, Mobile, Apple

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While Apple recently boasted surpassing 50 billion app downloads, the Google Play store isn’t that far behind it seems, and at the rate that Google Play downloads are at, it’s said that Android app downloads will overtake iOS app downloads this year, possibly as soon as October, according to a report.

The Telegraph says that Google Play is currently seeing over 500 million more app downloads per month than the iTunes App Store, which means that total app downloads for Android could surpass iOS by October if the numbers continue at that rate, but it seems no matter when exactly the overtake will happen, 2013 will most likely be the year that Android apps surpass iOS apps.

Of course, this could have something to do with the larger number of Android devices that have been activated. Android is now at 900 million total devices that have been activated, while iOS is at 600 million. Even with a lower apps-per-device figure, Android still has the steam to overtake iOS app downloads at some point this year.

Based on recent numbers of both the iTunes App Store and Google Play store, Android is approximately two billion app downloads behind iTunes at 48 billion total app downloads since the Google Play store’s conception. It’s said that around two billion iOS apps are downloaded every months, while Android gets 2.5 billion app downloads per month.

Asymco analyst Horace Dediu says that “the total downloads/install base are currently 83 apps per iOS device sold and 53 apps per Android device activation,” meaning that “the sheer weight of Android units will generate more downloads, but on a per-device basis, the iOS devices do seem to consume more apps, and the gap is not narrowing.”

SOURCE: The Telegraph

Google Play app downloads to surpass iOS by October is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

You think 50 billion is a big number? It’s certainly a bit bigger than some other numbers that spring to mind, such as 48 billion, and that in itself gives Apple something to celebrate. As is customary with these App Store milestones, whichever lucky jackanape triggered their download at just the right millisecond will receive a gift — a $10,000 iTunes voucher, no less — while 50 runners-up will get $500-worth of credit each.

But none of that is the really big, big news. What matters here is the rate of growth, which seems to have accelerated during the course of this year. It took 14 weeks for the App Store to get from 40 billion to 45 billion downloads between January and April, but less than 4 weeks to get from 45 to 50 billion. Now, we’re totally dependent on Apple’s internal stock-takers, not to mention an erratic ticker (“for illustrative purposes only”), but if those numbers are even remotely accurate then they represent something of a popularity surge.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Software, Mobile

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Source: Apple

Along with its refresh of the Featured section in the iTunes App Store, Apple has added a section dedicated to educating people about in-app purchases and what they are exactly. This was most likely added to address the recent fiascos with users accidentally purchasing in-app content on their iOS device.

The user guide, called “Learn more about in-app purchases,” explains what in-app purchases are exactly, and how they work. Plus, it teaches users how to prevent their kids from gaining access to in-app purchases where they might spend a crazy amount of money on virtual goods otherwise.

While kids obviously don’t really know what in-app purchases are, a surprising number of parents are also ignorant on the subject, especially new owners of an iOS device. Of course, that’s not necessarily the parents’ fault, since Apple or other developers have never really explained what in-app purchases are in detail.

However, Apple’s new user guide aims to clear up any confusion on the subject, and it even teaches parents on how to add parental controls to various apps, including the ability to restrict kids from downloading additional content without the parents’ permission. We’re not sure how much of an effect this will have in the future, but at least the Cupertino-based company is doing their due diligence.

Apple educates users on in-app purchases with new user guide is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.