Swipe Issue 34 Sampler

NEWS

4

Apps

12

Features

25

How-To

27

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PLUS

iBOOKS TIPS • HOW TO USE PAGES

iPhone SWIPE

NEWS • REVIEWS • TIPS

mag

HELLO! Welcome to this sample of Swipe: the iPhone magazine. We’ve put together a taster of what each edition offers, with all the hottest iOS news, reviews of the latest apps and accessories, plus expert advice from the people that bring you Tips & Tricks – iPhone Secrets. We hope you enjoy this small slice of what Swipe has to offer, and don’t forget to check out the full free trial on the App Store. Happy reading!

THE SWIPE TEAM

NEWS

The iCard A cardless future?

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t has long been rumored that Apple may be planning a way to use the iPhone as a wireless payment system.

A recent job listing seems to make this even more likely. Apple are looking for a Payments Software Engineer that will “help build a next generation payment platform.” Accessories such as Square – shown above – already allow payments to be processed through an iPhone.

The scenario could be that you walk into a store, pick up what you want and walk out, all without having to see a store assistant. The iPhone would know what you bought, with the use of Bluetooth perhaps, and charge the items to your iTunes account.

Apple already allows you to buy items with your iPhone through the Apple Store app by scanning them with your camera and this new “payment platform” could be an extension of this. We’ll have to wait and see!

0% finance offer A Christmas gift from Apple

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f you’re planning to buy a new Apple device this Christmas and live in Europe then Apple has unveiled a new scheme to help you spread the cost. On purchases over the value of £449/€400 you can now receive 0% financing, as long as you pay it off within 10 months if you’re in the UK, or over 12 months if you’re in central Europe. This could see a new 32GB iPad Air costing as little as £47.90 per month or a 16GB option in Europe costing 40,75 € per month depending on location. Be quick though as you must make the purchase before January 10, 2014.

Apple has also revealed the last days you must place an order by to receive your shiny new product in time for Christmas. If you want a new iPad mini with Retina Display, which we review in the Features section of this issue, then you’ll need to get your order in by December 5. If it’s an iPad Air you’re looking for then purchase

by December 9, with the iPhone 5s needing to be ordered by December 12, and the 5c by December 22. Find the full list of deadlines on Apple’s website including Macs and iPods.

APPS

Blocky Roads Dogbyte Games Kft.

Oddly, the only thing that isn’t blocky in this game is the roads!

B

locky Roads is ‘trials game meets Minecraft meets videogame logic’.

It’s a trials game in the sense you coax a vehicle to the end of arduous sideon stages comprising giant hills and vertigo-inducing drops, which are subsequently joined in later tracks by daring leaps, fragile rock bridges, and deadly hazards such as lava and twitchy, explosive TNT. The Minecraft angle comes from the visuals, with most of the backgrounds and vehicles composed of blocks. And videogame logic? Well, we’ve never seen octagonal tires on a vehicle before.

There’s also plenty of videogame logic in the plot, which explains that the protagonist is a farmer whose home has been scattered around the globe by what must be the most ferocious tornado in history. Suspiciously, the various missing parts are housed in treasure chests strategically placed within the game’s dozen tracks.

We’re not sure how you fit several cows or a farm’s roof into a chest the size of a car engine, but just go with it, because the game’s a lot of fun. The controls are simple – press the right of the screen to accelerate and the left to brake. In the air, holding right lifts the front of the car and holding left raises the back, which at first feels wrong, but you soon get used to it.

Traction engine Initially, you won’t get very far, though, because your first car is very underpowered, but this merely serves to introduce you to the car upgrade mechanism. You use coins collected in-game to buy more traction, extra stability or a lighter chassis to spend more time soaring through the air after launching yourself off of a particularly inviting hill.

For many developers, this would have been an opportunity to visit gouge central, gleefully charging you insane amounts of real money for in-game cash. Dogbyte has instead been very generous: every attempt at a level rewards you with coins, and you can get more for ‘air time’ and good landings while racing. In other words, you’re rewarded for mastering the game rather than opening your wallet. In fact, the only IAP offered is for instantly unlocking all the cars, but you won’t need it. Instead, you’re better off completing each track in turn, experimenting with new vehicles as they’re unlocked (each handles differently and has unique characteristics), only skipping to the next track if you get stuck.

Even when the dozen tracks are beaten and the farm’s back to its pretornado state, the game’s not quite done. There are four challenge tracks that have you dispense with caution, through tasking you with finishing as quickly as possible. You’ll need a pretty heavily pimped-out car to get three stars.

Additionally, after the third of the original dozen tracks, a vehicle editor becomes available, enabling you to build a car of your own, block-byblock. You’ll need plenty of patience when doing so, because the editor’s a touch clunky, and it’s a pity you cannot share your creations (only photos of them). Still, the editor adds further longevity to what’s a very playable physics-based racer that kept us enthralled until we’d finished the entire game.

VERDICT

ALL SQUARE “One of the best side-on car games for iOS, Blocky Roads looks great, handles well, and is a lot of fun”

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The Elements in Action TOUCH PRESS

Just because it’s elementary doesn’t mean it’s basic (although it is a bit)

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he title of this app pretty much says it all: you get to see a selection of entries from the Periodic Table doing their thing, from hydrogen bubbles popping on a flame, to Uranium fogging up a sheet of photographic paper. You simply tap on an element to watch a video, and swipe to see the next one in turn.

Tapping the video brings up a brief description of the element and its actions (which mainly revolve around being burnt or made to react with another material), and the video loops until you scroll to another entry, or tap to go back to the Peridoic Table.

And that’s basically it. There are only 79 videos because, presumably, a lot of the other elements are either inert or just too dangerous to handle – and those after Uranium (the transuranic elements) are largely man-made and therefore both incredibly dangerous and very expensive.

However, it is shame that there isn’t some entry for the missing entries, such as a caption describing each element and what it’s used for.

Touch Press suggests that the app is best partnered with its other title, The Elements: A Visual Exploration, which is a more academic look at the periodic table. When both apps are present, they link together and can be cross referenced. However, the Visual Exploration is only on iPad so that’s not much use to iPhone users without a tablet.

But whatever your take on the app itself, there’s no denying the wealth of fascinating info inside. Admittedly, it’s a little too bite-sized for our liking, but you can’t help but gaze in wonder at the bromine witch, sodium and potassium’s dislike of water, or boron’s colourful flame. For anyone interested in the world around them, this is a fun, if slightly brief, introduction to the world of chemistry.

VERDICT

ELEMENTARY “A fascinating exploration of (most of) the periodic table. A little light on substance perhaps, but still worth the asking price”

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FEATURES

iPad mini with Retina display PRICE $399/£319 TO $899/£659

FROM APPLE

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ne might argue that this new, high-definition tablet is what the iPad mini should have been from the start, but the updated model is finally here and is very impressive. The iPad mini with Retina display (let’s just call it iPad mini 2, eh?) features the long-awaited high-definition display and comes packing the 64-bit A7 processor found in the iPhone 5s and iPad air.

So in one fell swoop Apple solved the two biggest criticisms of its popular 7-inch tablet: screen resolution and power, delivering four times the CPU performance and eight times the graphical power of its predecessor, with a ten-hour battery life.

As you’d expect, the fit and finish off the unit is exemplary; no plastic parts here, just beautifully formed metal components manufactured to exacting standards. The rear has those nicely curved edges, which make it comfortable to hold, while the front is trimmed by a polished metal bezel, that glints expensively under bright lights. Even the metal volume buttons feel top quality.

The new 2048x1536 display, is a distinct upgrade from the original which by comparison looks slightly fuzzy and suffers from color fringing with black text on white. Now even the faintest iOS 7 text is clearly legible, and whites are much brighter and solid by comparison. Reading is definitely much improved, and the weight of the unit means you can hold it one-handed quite easily (it’s actually very slightly heavier than the first iPad mini, but it’s hard to gauge, even when holding one in each hand).

In truth, the iPad mini 2’s display isn’t best in breed – in testing, Anandtech found that the color gamut and accuracy fared poorly compared to the Kindle Fire HDX 7 and Google’s Nexus 7 (specifically, it’s not great at reds which tend towards orange).

Also, it’s been noticed that the iPad Mini 2’s screen is a little less vibrant than other Retina displays.

HOWTO

Get started with

Pages

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f you’re looking for a word processor on your iPhone then look no further than Apple’s own Pages app. With a total redesign for iOS 7 and iCloud support, there’s a lot to learn with this new version, so let’s get started.

Using iCloud When using Pages for the first time you’ll be asked if you’d like to use iCloud to save documents. Enabling this means that all documents will be stored in the cloud and will be accessible via iCloud.com as well as through the Pages app on Mac or iPad. With all the great features iCloud has to offer, we definitely recommend turning this on.

Choose your layout After setting up iCloud you can create a new document. Pages comes with plenty of default layouts such as for newsletters, posters, or business cards, that you can use and edit. If you just want a clean slate then opt for the Blank option.

Styling Pages lets you add styling to your text and paragraphs. Once you finish a line tap the paint brush icon and choose from the options. To edit a single word tap and hold it then tap the brush icon. Select more text to alter a larger passage of text.

iPhone SWIPE

NEWS • REVIEWS • TIPS

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In your next packed issue...

Home screen apps We complete our huge round-up series with more great suggestions

App reviews All the latest games, utilities, and creative apps tested and rated

Top expert advice We continue our guide to using Apple’s word processor, Pages

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