Swiping
Latest
Apple is finally adding swipe typing to its iOS keyboard
Apple is adding the ability to type by swiping across keys on the keyboard in iOS 13. The new feature, called QuickPath, was announced at the company's annual Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC) on Monday. The style of typing was previously only available through third-party keyboards but will be available through Apple's native keyboard in the upcoming version of iOS.
There's an app for saying 'I told you so'
If you're the sort of person who relishes bellowing "I told you so!" into other people's faces then, congratulations, you're an asshole. You're also the prime target for an app called IKI (I Knew It) that aims to take the lowest form of douchebaggery into the 21st century. Essentially, IKI is a digital, gamified record of things that you knew, or could guess, were likely to happen at some point in the future. If your prediction comes true, you'll earn points that'll keep you smugly warm while your former friends go hang out together.
Microsoft will borrow Mac-like trackpad gestures for Windows 10
Those of us who try to bring the handy two- and three-finger trackpad gestures from a MacBook over to a PC laptop are usually treated to digitus interruptus. But during TechEd, Microsoft's Joe Belfiore said that Windows 10 will have new three finger gestures (not to be confused with salutes) for PC trackpads. Swiping up and down will bring up the "Task View" to minimize and restore active windows, while left and right gestures will switch between apps. Sound vaguely familiar? On a MacBook, three-fingered left and right swipes let you change virtual desktops and apps, while up and down gestures reveal OSX's Mission Control -- a decidedly similar feature to Task View.
Daily iPhone App: Combo Crew does beat-em-up on a touchscreen
Combo Crew is an interesting experiment that just showed up this week on iOS. Beat-em-ups and fighting games are great on consoles, where you've got plenty of buttons and d-pads to pull off various moves with. But while they've appeared on iOS a few times (Capcom's Street Fighter IV has done fairly well on the App Store), usually these games on a touchscreen tend to just fall back on virtual buttons, which are generally way more clunky and less precise than physical moving parts. Combo Crew, however, is an attempt to make a beat-em-up redesigned from scratch for the iOS touchscreen. It's a game made by the Game Bakers, a really excellent team based in France that's done a great job with the Squids turn-based combat series. Combo Crew has everything you'd want a beat-em-up game to have, including multiple characters, combination-based and counter attacks, and lots of cool super moves and punches. But the difference here is in the controls. Instead of pressing buttons, you swipe across the screen to perform your moves in sequence: Swipe once to attack, swipe and hold to charge up, swipe two fingers for a combo attack or tap the screen for a counter. It works -- mostly. Just like a traditional beat-em-up game, Combo Crew's moveset gets more complicated over time, so that once mastered, you're able to keep combos going for a long time, scoring tons of points and taking down the bad guys with ease. Unfortunately, the biggest issue is that you're swiping right across the screen you're playing on, so sometimes it can be hard to see where you need to go. Thus, precision isn't always exactly where you want it to be. If you swipe the screen, you will do an attack, but there's no way to move around the screen independently, and as a result, you don't always attack the exact enemy you want, which can be a problem at higher levels. Combo Crew is still a lot of fun, however, and The Game Bakers deserve a lot of credit for taking on such a tough genre to do on a touchscreen in such a creative way. There's even a co-op mode, and an endless-scoring game with plenty of various progression items to unlock and earn. If you like beat-em-ups and want something to enjoy on your iPhone, this one is a must-play for sure, just to see how it all works. The game is currently just $1.99, too, so if you're interested at all, give this one a download.
Daily iPhone App: Micro Miners combines Lemmings and mining in a cute brew
Back before he invented Minecraft, developer Notch made a little Java game called Miners 4K, which had you digging tunnels on a 2D playing field for little miners to find minerals and other goodies below the dirt. Another developer named Jean-Philippe Sarda later decided to take that idea and run with it on Apple's iOS platform, and the result is this game, Micro Miners, out this week on the App Store. You can see the basic gameplay idea in the video below: The game's sort of like Lemmings, in that you guide the path of a bunch of little creatures without actually controlling them. Instead, like Where's My Water, you swipe across the screen to dig down into dirt, trying to guide them around obstacles to various deposits and other goodies. The action can be relaxing or frantic, depending on where you are in each level, and while the graphics are definitely not extremely polished, they're well-designed in that it's always very clear what's happening in the game. Micro Miners is a smart and fun take on Notch's original title, and for just US$0.99 in the App Store, it's definitely worth playing. Give it a look if the video below interests you.
