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Final Fantasy XIV has 2.5 million registered accounts
At the very end of Final Fantasy XIV's Eternal Bond trailer on Tuesday, there's a small line imploring watchers to join 2.5 million adventurers worldwide. The last official word from the game on numbers was two million registrations back in April. It was easy to miss that line at the end, but it was caught by blogger Syncaine, and we reached out to Square-Enix to confirm that the game has indeed passed the 2.5 million mark in registrations. Registered accounts is obviously not the same thing as active subscriptions, but it's still a milestone for the game, especially with an expansion on the way in spring of next year. That's good news for both the Final Fantasy XIV team and the players who will have plenty of other people to adventure with.
Aim to add up number tiles perfectly with Funb3rs
Hey, look! It's a game with numbers that doesn't build off of the same concepts as Threes and 2048. Funb3rs is a multiplayer title with the objective being to gather all the numbers on the grid that add up to equal the number at the top. Glide your finger along the randomized number tiles to add them together, then use those arithmetic skills you suppressed from elementary school to match the number exactly. Oh, and hurry up, because you're on a time limit. The game is free for iPhone and iPad with in-app purchases. Funb3rs features a square grid of 16 numbers ranging from 1 to 9 in random order. Above that are three important indicators: the time, the goal and your current score. The game gives you two minutes to run through as many number matches as possible to get a high score or beat your opponent. The middle number is the one you're looking to match. For example, if the number is 27, you have to drag your finger across number tiles with a sum of 27. The game isn't picky about how you get there, just as long as you get there. Move your finger up, down, left, right, even diagonally, it doesn't matter. The numbers add up. Just no skipping over any numbers and picking them at random points on the grid. It's in your best interest to sign in with Facebook since this is mainly a multiplayer game. If you have Facebook friends, it's easy to challenge them to a game. Otherwise, select a Funb3rs player at random to play against. The multiplayer mode is asynchronous, so it's one player's two-minute shot at scoring big then the other's, not simultaneous gameplay. I didn't have any friends with this game so I was forced to choose one at random. Unfortunately, after multiple attempts I couldn't get an opponent that was actually playing the game. Every time I matched up with a player, they stayed under the "Waiting" status until I gave up and ditched them. I'm not sure if this is a problem with the game itself or if all the players are just lazy, but something to look into for now. I'm not sure why, but the Funb3rs doesn't choose to advertise the single player mode very much. It does exist and it's rather fun on its own because beating your own high score every time is gratifying enough. This is just called "Training" mode, but the developers should really consider just making this a full-fledged single player option. It's an attractive mode. There's also pass-and-play for playing with friends physically in your presence. That mode, though, is available as an in-app purchase as are many other features. The game includes a few power-ups for doubling your score once during a round and freezing time for a few seconds, but other power-ups come in packs for US$0.99. Pass-and-play, unlimited chatting with friends, ad removal and more are also upgrades for $0.99 each, just to name a few. Looking past the slightly cringeworthy name, Funb3rs is some pretty decent fun with math and numbers. It's not shoving math down your throat but rather embracing it in an entertaining manner. There are some kinks that need working out with multiplayer mode for the time being though. Grab the game free with in-app purchases in the iOS App Store.
Shroud of the Avatar preps for Steam launch
On November 24th, Shroud of the Avatar will be launching on Steam's Early Access service. Backers of the game should already have their Steam keys. Once the game is launched, the development team wants to keep the game's servers on at all times, leading to the current state of the game. In this round of testing, contrary to past tests, players can this time access the game servers according to the game's most recent development update. The newsletter also highlights the ominous Tower of the Shuttered Eye, a rather unpleasant place that will be added to the game with the next major patch scheduled for release on November 20th. There's also a post-mortem on the launch of the game's most recent test patch, which saw a big increase in numbers over previous events. Take a look at the full update for a clearer picture of how the game is doing and what's just around the corner.
World of Warcraft bounces back to 7.4 million subscribers
The launch of Warlords of Draenor is still a month away, but just the approach is enough to bump the numbers for World of Warcraft. Blizzard Entertainment announced that the game is at 7.4 million subscribers as of the end of September, a bump of 600,000 over the previous announcement of 6.8 million subscribers. As this is a statement from Blizzard rather than the usual earnings calls with subscriber numbers, no reasons are given for the upswing; since the subscriber numbers were listed as of September 30th, the jump occurred before the pre-expansion patch. Regardless, it's another point of data for those who are tracking these things with a chart.
iPhone 6 Plus + cheap folding Bluetooth keyboard = little laptop
I love the combination of small computers and Bluetooth keyboards. Back in the day when I was using a Palm IIIc, I remember using a Stowaway keyboard (non-Bluetooth) to make my device into a really small "laptop". It was great for taking meeting notes and writing stories, even with the primitive productivity apps the Palm ran. Well, the other day while recording an episode of The British Tech Network's Mac Show, fellow guest Andy Ihnatko talked about using an inexpensive keyboard with his iPhone 6 Plus and my immediate reaction was to interrupt him to find out who the manufacturer was. Andy had picked up a US$35 keyboard from iWerkz that has all of the right features: it folds in half for compactness, it has a hard case that also props the iPhone for hands-off use, and yep, it's cheap. I ordered one immediately from Amazon (note, your price may vary). The little keyboard showed up in an envelope this morning, so I wasted no time in popping it out, charging it, and putting it to the test. So, how does the iWerkz Universal Foldable Bluetooth Keyboard work with the iPhone 6 Plus to make it a (relatively) pocketable productivity machine? Setting up the iWerkz keyboard was a no-brainer. I turned it on -- there's a big OFF/ON switch on the left side of the keyboard -- pressed the big Connect button, and then got into the Bluetooth settings on my iPhone. I saw the keyboard appear, tapped on it to connect, and was then asked to type a four-digit code to pair the devices. Boom, I was up and running. For my test, I used that productivity trio that Apple throws in free of charge on every new device -- Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Pages is all about creating text documents, although you can throw in the occasional image and do page layout. In this use case, the iWerkz keyboard worked well. I had the iPhone 6 Plus in landscape orientation, scaled down the size of the page so that I had a small margin on each side, and it was fine for writing. I was surprised with this keyboard. There's about a 3/4-inch hinge line in the center of the keyboard where it folds, and my fingers got used to the gap very quickly. The keys have an amazing good feel, and all of the keys are in the standard positions where you'd expect them. How about Numbers? On spreadsheets, you're often pressing the tab key to move between cells. Would that work here? Absolutely -- and I was once again pleased with the way the little keyboard worked for entering data. Keynote also worked fine, although you find yourself tapping on the iPhone's screen a lot more to place your cursor in the right place. I also do a lot of work in Byword when I'm away from my Macs, and I found that it was perfectly suited to work with the itsy-bitsy keyboard. The little slide-out stand makes a lot of ratcheting noise when you're pushing it in or sliding it out, but it has a nice "lip" on it to hold your iPhone in place whether it's in portrait or landscape orientation. Since the two devices -- keyboard and stand/iPhone -- are separated, this works best on a flat hard surface and not on a lap. Will it replace a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro for everyday work? Heck no. Does it beat one of the nice keyboard cases for iPad Air? Not really. But if you really want to go minimal and still get some work done, an iPhone 6 Plus and this little keyboard can help you accomplish your goal with a minimum of pain. The screen on the plus is big enough that you can see your work without squinting, and the keyboard makes data entry a dream. Anyone else out there thinking of using an iPhone 6 Plus as a productivity tool? Let us know in the comments.
PC shipments appear to flatten out after two years of steep decline
Both Gartner and IDC appear to have some good news for the PC industry -- the seemingly never-ending death spiral may have come to an end. While the two research groups don't agree completely on the numbers, it does appear that after two years of stead and sizable declines, the PC industry is seeing shipments flatten out. In total, according to Gartner, 75.8 million computers were shipped in the second quarter of 2014, a negligible 0.1 percent drop from the same quarter a year ago. While IDC saw a much more sizable 1.7 percent fall in PC shipments, that's still a far cry from the 7.1 percent decline it anticipated and the smallest it's measured in two years.
Android still the dominant mobile OS with 1 billion active users
Free-falling product demos and Rube Goldberg multimedia installations aside, there's always a level of predictability to an opening day keynote. And Google I/O 2014 is no exception. Like clockwork, SVP Sundar Pichai took to the stage in San Francisco this morning to tick off the company's latest accomplishments. He started off by touting one of the company's biggest strengths: Android. According to Pichai, Google now has over 1 billion active users (that's as of the last 30 days) on the OS.
iWork for iCloud now picks up exactly where you left off
Web-based apps are supposed to let you easily hop between devices without missing a beat, but that hasn't been the case with iWork for iCloud -- you've had to tweak settings and otherwise break your flow. The experience should be much smoother after today, though. Apple has updated the online versions of Keynote, Numbers and Pages so that they remember your settings, such as the last page you were on and the zoom level. You won't have to spend a few minutes getting everything just so simply because you've moved to your laptop, in other words. Although it's a seemingly small change, it could matter a lot if you'd rather get things done instead of getting fussy.
Apple's WWDC 2014 in numbers: 40 million on Mavericks, 800 million iOS devices and billions of apps
Charts, graphs and stats: These are the things Apple keynotes are made of, and today's WWDC 2014 kickoff was no different. CEO Tim Cook took to the stage this morning at the Moscone Center in San Francisco armed with enough numerical ammunition to put your best boardroom PowerPoint Keynote to shame. Cook kicked things off boasting that over 40 million copies of OS X Mavericks have been installed and more than 50 percent of the install base is working on its latest OS. He went on to point out that while PC sales continued to slip (down 5 percent, according to Cook), Apple's computer sales are growing.
Apple's iWork for iCloud now lets you collaborate on projects with 100 friends
If you're using Apple's iWork for iCloud to get stuff done, now you can collaborate on projects with even more people. Before if you wanted to get your co-workers input on your big plans for the company retreat (Laser Tag definitely promotes synergy) you could only have 50 contributors. Now 100 people can work on the same Keynote, Numbers or Pages file at once, and those projects can also be a lot larger. Previously you were limited to 200MB per file, with a 5MB cap for included images. Now there's 1GB of space to fill with details about your group-cooking class plans, complete with images of up to 10MB each -- that's a lot more fancy dessert photos
Google Docs and Sheets: A first look at the underpowered iOS apps
Two new competitors in the realm of productivity apps for iOS showed up on Wednesday in the form of Google Docs and Google Sheets. Docs is, of course, a word processing/page layout application that works like the web-based Google Docs, and Sheets is the equivalent of its web-based sibling. Both of the apps work both in sync with their online counterparts and offline, and Google's blog says that a presentation app -- Slides -- is on the way. Let's take a quick first look at both of the current apps: Google Docs Launching the Google Docs app, you're greeted with a login for your Google Drive account. Sign in, and a list of all current docs you have online appears. Either tap one of those existing docs to open it, or tap a plus sign button for a blank document. And blank is what you get. A white page with no ruler (not that it's needed in this day and age), and a toolbar with some standard mundane formatting commands: fonts, bold, italics, underline, justification (left, center, right and fully justified), numbered/unnumbered lists, and indent/outdent. If you're looking for full page layout capabilities as you see in Apple's own Pages or on the Web version of Docs, you're going to be disappointed because they're not here. On the other hand, if you're working on simple memos, letters, or notes, then Google Docs is probably up your alley. What's even better is that the app is targeted to those who want to collaborate on documents -- there's a comments button on the right side of the toolbar, along with a button showing who else is viewing the document. To share your Google Doc, just save it with a tap on the "checkmark" button, and then tap the information icon to bring up a Details pane. From that pane, you can share the document, rename it, even get a link to send to others who you'd like to have download the document. Unlike Microsoft Office for iPad, Google Docs supported printing from day one. There's a toggle on the Details pane for keeping a local copy of the document, and a graphical indication of who is currently sharing the doc. At least at this point, there's no way I could find to actually drop an image into a document -- c'mon, Google! Even the original MacWrite back in 1984 could handle copying an image and pasting it into a doc. In many iOS document apps, a tap-and-hold in a document brings up "paste" in a pop-up, or you can add an image directly by tapping a plus sign button and searching for an photo to paste in. Here? Nothing. Google Docs is also missing most of the features I've come to know and love in Pages. Things like real-time spell checking, the ability to do actual page layouts? Not there. If you're planning on writing a simple document and need to have others check or comment on your writing, then Google Docs is a workable alternative. Offline work can be immediately synced upon connecting to a network, and you can polish things drafted on an iPad or iPhone once you're using the online version of the app. The Web app is at least fully-functional and also has a variety of add-ons that you can use to make your document look beautiful and professional. The bottom line: Google Docs for iOS is an excellent bare-bones text editor that syncs with the Web-based version and can be used to create rough drafts of work that will be finished in the online version. Google Sheets For spreadsheets, Google Sheets provides an on-device-synced-to-Google-Drive solution similar to Google Docs. And by that, I mean that it's a faint replica of the Google Sheets found online. In fact, Google Sheets is only usable for portable data entry. You can't do anything even remotely spreadsheet-like with the app except for entering numbers or text into cells. Want to add a formula to a spreadsheet? You'd better know what the exact format for each function is, since Google Sheets for iOS has no way of inserting those formulas from a pop-up, nor does it give you hints when you're starting to enter a formula. At least Google Sheets has some of the collaborative tools of its Web-based sibling, so you can share documents with other or open and edit spreadsheets created online by others. But there's no way to leave a note for one of your collaborators as there is with Google Docs. You can change the font, borders, and formatting of cells, but that's about it other than just entering data or hand-typing formulae into cells. The bottom line: Google Sheets for iOS is a only good for doing basic data entry into existing spreadsheets that are created online with the Web-based version. Conclusion Both Google Sheets and Google Docs are very bare-bones and basic versions of what's available online. Rather than useful tools, both apps appear to be rushed-to-market responses to Microsoft Word and Excel for iOS. While Google Docs can at least be used to do drafts of documents and share them with other individuals while mobile, Google Sheets has nothing to commend it as a true spreadsheet other than the fact that it presents cells on a page. Anyone who is looking at getting real work done on an iOS device at this point will be better served by Apple's Pages and Numbers (US$9.99 each, free to owners of new iOS devices) or Microsoft Word for iPad and Microsoft Excel for iPad (free, but requires an annual subscription to Office 365 at $75+ per year).
iWork upgrade lets you share read-only documents
Apple isn't letting the launch of Office for iPad go completely unanswered. It's pushing out a slew of iWork updates that might not keep Microsoft awake at night, but should fill in a few conspicuous feature gaps. You can now share read-only documents, for one thing -- you no longer have to worry that others will mess with a Pages report. You can also open iWork documents from iCloud webmail, and there's a host of cross-app improvements that include a new editor tab and the option of modifying imported charts. All the upgrades are available on iCloud, iOS and the Mac, so you can check out the many, many tweaks for yourself.
Neverwinter releases post-Shadowmantle infographic
So how is Neverwinter doing these days? The game's been a little quiet since the launch of Shadowmantle. But it looks as if it's doing fairly well, judging by a brand-new infographic, which is embedded just past the cut. More than 2 million new characters have been created since the launch of Shadowmantle, with Hunter Rangers turning up as the most popular new character and Devoted Clerics as the least. Beyond that, over 3 million characters have died in PvP matches and a combined total of 405 years' worth of experience has been gained. If you can't get enough of numbers about games, go ahead and jump past the cut to see exactly how the game has been doing since its last update. On a numerical level, it seems pretty solid. [Source: Perfect World Entertainment press release]
Star Trek Online posts a four-year infographic
Space -- it's not really much of a frontier any longer. These are the voyages of a large number of different ships in Star Trek Online. Their continuing missions: To complete reputation projects. To seek out new ships and new duty officers. To boldly go where a lot of people have gone over the past four years -- specifically, 3.2 million captains -- but it's still worth exploring just the same! With the official four-year mark for the game just around the corner, Cryptic Studios has put out a new infographic detailing stuff like exactly how many captains are currently exploring the final not-so-much-a-frontier. It also contains a handy timeline of the game's major content releases over the past four years and all of the former Trek actors now providing voices to iconic characters in the game. If you want a quick look at the game's history for yourself, check out the infographic on the official site.
Daily Update for January 29, 2014
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get some the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the player at the top of the page. The Daily Update has been moved to a new podcast host in the past few days. Current listeners should delete the old podcast subscription and subscribe to the new feed in the iTunes Store here.
World of Warcraft breaks out a decade in Azeroth by the numbers
World of Warcraft is hitting its 10-year anniversary this year, and the franchise as a whole is turning 20. So it's a find time to take a look at the numbers behind the game, something Blizzard Entertainment did today with a large and exhaustive infographic. That header up there? That's a count of how many worldwide accounts the game has had created, including trials. Yes, that's 100 million. That's a lot of people who have stepped into Azeroth (or Outland for a little while). There are a lot of interesting bits of information in there as well. As a whole, the game has seen more than 500 million characters created (more characters than there are people in the United States). Approximately 2.8 million auction house transactions take place every day, 11 million achievements have been earned per day since the launch of Mists of Pandaria, and the game currently sits on about 6 million words written for quest content. There's a lot more in the infographic; feel free to jump on over and take a look at it for more stats on the game's decade of history.
Daily Update for January 24, 2014
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get some the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the player at the top of the page. The Daily Update has been moved to a new podcast host in the past few days. Current listeners should delete the old podcast subscription and subscribe to the new feed in the iTunes Store here.
Blade & Soul tops 1.5M concurrent users in China
While we twiddle our thumbs in the West waiting for a game that might never come, Blade & Soul is stampeding across Asia and has the numbers to prove it. MMO Culture reports that Blade & Soul China has 1.5 million players (wait for it) online at the same time. As in concurrency, not total numbers. While that certainly smacks of popularity, what's even more astonishing is that some players in the region have to wait around six hours in a queue just to play. Other impressive statistics include the Blade & Soul beta trailer being viewed 30.4 million times, 450 million monsters killed on the first day of the game, and one player who's already sunk 1,345 hours into the title.
Microsoft: Over 50 million hours logged on Xbox Ones since launch
In the realm of esoteric statistics, Microsoft announced that over 50 million hours in "games and entertainment" have been logged on Xbox One systems since it launched on November 22. The console manufacturer added that over 415 million Gamerscore points were unlocked via achievements on the system. Microsoft also noted a few other in-game milestones achieved in individual Xbox One games, such as the number of miles driven in Forza 5 globally (90 million), zombies killed in Dead Rising 3 (three billion), combos achieved in Killer Instinct (150 million) and enemies defeated in Ryse: Son of Rome (186 million). By comparison, EA announced that over 140 million gameplay minutes were logged in its games on PS4 in the console's opening five days. To add to today's numbers, Sony announced that global PS4 sales exceed 2.1 million, though we're not certain how that translates to hours spent or zombies destroyed or how close that is to the moon when you stack them all, etc.
Authors rejoice! Pages for iOS now does a better job round-tripping to MS Word
One of the very few remaining reasons why I don't go all "Ticci" and do all of my writing on the iPad is that when I'm writing books for traditional publishers, they have a tendency to get queasy with anything that isn't written in Microsoft Word. Since they also like to keep an eye on what changes authors are making to documents, change tracking has to be turned on in Word all the time. So in the past, the vast majority of my offline writing has been done in Word on a Mac just to keep those publishers happy. Not any more. Through a happy experiment this morning, I found that Pages (for both Mac and iOS) now does a much better job of round-tripping with Word. That's the term for shifting a document back and forth between different applications on different platforms, hopefully without too many formatting changes happening in the process. So here's my workflow: Open Word document from editor in Pages (currently version 5.0.1) on the Mac Turn on change tracking in Pages (Edit > Turn On Tracking) Save Pages document to iCloud Open Pages document on the iPad or iPhone Make sure change tracking is turned on (tap the "Wrench" button, then make sure the change tracking button is green [on]) Work on the document anywhere at any time, and changes are auto-saved to iCloud Once back on the Mac, open the document in Pages on the Mac Export as Word .doc or .docx Sure, it would probably be a lot easier for me to just do the editing on my MacBook Pro, but it weighs more than my iPad Air or iPhone and it's owned by my employer, so it's probably not a good idea to work on a side project on it... Is this a perfect solution? No. My book editor came back almost immediately saying that the tables in one chapter weren't formatted properly, so I'll need to fix them in Word before shipping the files off. But other than that, it's comforting to know that I can now do this work on an iPad or even an iPhone (see title image) from basically anywhere. If you're doing any round-tripping between iWork for iOS or Mac and Microsoft Office, what problems are you running into? Do the current versions of Pages, Keynote and Numbers work better for you for round-tripping than they used to? Let us know in the comments.
