Great in-depth review of the new Telltale Games Minecraft adventure from our friends over at MFi4Gamerz.
One word of caution: Telltale Games recently pulled the vast majority of their iOS catalog from the App Store. No clue if these games will eventually return to the store, but it’s something to keep in mind before spending any time or money on this company’s products.
After spending the past 6 months or so in a semi-public beta test in Australia, the military-themed deathmatch shooter Afterpulse is now available worldwide!
There are a few caveats, however. Controller support is here, but poorly implemented. The R1 shoulder bumper is used to shoot, rather than the R2 trigger. And unless I’m missing something, switching weapons doesn’t seem possible without using the touchscreen.
Also notable: Afterpulse is a VERY freemium game. I try not to bash freemium models on this site. Mostly because I think the model makes as much sense on iOS as any other, in light of Apple’s terrible management of premium content on the App Store. But if you’re allergic to freemium, Afterpulse won’t change your mind. Dual currencies, timers, daily challenges, always online requirements, pop-up ads, push notifications, account requirements for cloud saves – the developers put a million annoyances in front of you before you can just enjoy the game.
They did not, however, put a price tag. Afterpulse is free to download and free to play. So really, you’re out nothing giving it a shot.
I like to divide the world of MFi controllers into three generations. The first generation was full of deeply flawed controllers, with limited markets, sold at insane prices. The second generation, beginning with the C.T.R.L.i, represented a huge improvement over the first generation in both pricing and quality, but is still lacking the quality and value of first-party console controllers. The third generation, beginning with the Horipad or Gamevice, is exemplified by high-quality products that aim to be taken seriously alongside the best of the first-party controllers, and mostly succeed in this goal.
The Contour does, however, have one advantage over every other controller – it’s grip. And this advantage is so significant, and so important to a lot of gamers, that it might be enough to warrant overlooking the Contour’s other issues.
Let’s start this review with the thing that matters the most. The most important part of the Contour – by far – is it’s iPhone grip. This is the one clear advantage the Contour has over every other MFi controller.
Among the few other controllers that do have clips, the Contour bright red fold-up grip is easily the best. The Mad Catz clips require you to screw and unscrew them between uses, making them less portable. The Moga Rebel has a similar clip, but the controller is garbage in every other way.
I’m not overstating it when I say that the clip is the most important part of the Contour. As I’ll cover throughout this review, there are many flaws and design issues with this controller. Just about every aspect of the Contour is inferior in some way to various other MFi controllers out there. Every aspect except the grip, that is.
The only issue with the Contour’s grip is that it can be difficult to actually pry it open from the controller. You’ll need to stick a fingernail in there and really pry it loose. Its tricky at first, but you’ll get the hang of it after practicing it a few times.
How much you should overlook this controllers various flaws should come to how important the iPhone grip is to you. The grip is the Contour’s biggest saving grace.
The Contour… casts a distinctive figure. Most modern controllers strive to be at least somewhat ergonomically designed. Even Sony finally abandoned the angular shape of the Dualshock 3 for a more comfortable Dualshock 4.
The Contour, on the other hand, is not particularly comfortable. Its face is embellished with superfluous indentations on the front of the handles, which dig into your hands a bit while you play. To the best of my knowledge, there is absolutely no reason for these indentations – its a purely aesthetic choice. Even as an aesthetic choice, it doesn’t appeal to me, but your tastes may vary.
The weight is another area where TteSPORTS nailed it with the Contour. Similar to the C.T.R.L.i and Stratus XL, there are extra weights inside the body of the Contour, making the entire thing feel pleasantly hefty and appropriately “premium”. Comparing the feel of a weighted controller to a light one like the Moga Rebel is a night-and-day difference – when it comes to controllers, heavy is better.
The d-pad has consistently proven to be the most difficult thing for MFi controller makers to get right. There are only 2 MFi controllers with good d-pads: the Gamevice and the Horipad. Every other MFi controller d-pad is terrible.
The Contour’s d-pad is adequate. It isn’t a train wreck like that of the C.T.R.L.i and Stratus controllers, but it is many levels below the d-pads of the Horipad and Gamevice. Although the d-pad itself is circular, there is a plus-shaped design raised out from the circular base. This elevation has a matte texture and indentations for each of the directions.
The Contour’s analog sticks were my biggest worry since I first saw them last year. The single ridged edge and lack of texturing seemed like it would make these sticks too slippery to use comfortably. We’ve seen this design used before, and the results weren’t so good.
In practice, the analog sticks hold up better than I feared. The surface of the sticks is rubberized and slightly concave, the ridge is elevated higher than usual for this design, and the sticks themselves are among the largest on any MFi controller. The result: my thumbs rarely slipped. The full-size C.T.R.L.i, Gamevice, and Horipad’s sticks are a bit better for long sessions, but the Contour’s sticks hold their own.
The face buttons on the Contour are pleasantly sized, glossy textured, well-spaced from one another, and adequately springy. If I had to nitpick, I’d say they’re a bit too shallow to the surface of the controller, leading to my thumb to occasionally touch the face of the controller when bottoming out a button. Still, job well done here – I’ve used far worse face buttons than these.
The triggers… sigh… here we go again. If you’ve read my SteelSeries Stratus XL review, you know where I’m going with this.
The triggers on the Contour are too sensitive. FAR too sensitive. Sensitive to the point that merely resting your fingers on the triggers is enough to cause them to register inputs.
This will come up during gameplay. You’ll accidentally shoot people in Call of Duty. Youâll accidentally spin in Tony Hawk. Youâll accidentally shield in Smash Bros. Picture anything that requires input from the shoulder buttons, and imagine the potential bad sides of accidentally triggering this input. This is the experience of using the Contour.
As for the shoulder buttons, they sometimes exhibit the opposite problem. If you try to hit them from an off angle, they sometimes won’t register the input. They require dead-on presses to reliably activate. I generally have a habit of hitting shoulder bumpers from the side, using the middle sections of my pointer fingers. Somewhat frustratingly, the Contour doesn’t lend itself well to that play style.
Like every other MFi controller of this style, the Contour connects to your iOS device using Bluetooth. This provides for the highest degree of compatibility – the Contour works with all MFi-compatible iPhones and iPads, and presumably works with the upcoming Apple TV as well.
The Bluetooth connection used by the Contour is surprisingly high quality. It has a low input lag, meaning button presses register almost immediately. The polling rate seems higher than most other bluetooth controllers, meaning fine details are registered smoothly – there is no jerkiness to analog inputs or pressure sensitivity.
I occasionally experienced disconnects when using the Contour with certain games, namely Grand Theft Auto. However, these were very rare, and difficult to reproduce. I have no idea if they were caused by the controller, game, or iOS firmware. Something I’ll keep my eye on, but don’t let it scare you away.
The Contour features an integrated rechargeable battery. TteSPORTS says it lasts for 10 hours, but in my experience, it seems to last a lot longer than that – I’ve only charged it once in the several weeks I’ve owned it. When you do need it, charging is handled with a standard Micro USB cable, included in the box.
This is exactly what I want from an MFi controller. No non-standard USB cable, no need to carry around extra batteries. The only thing that would make this better would be if it charged with a Lightning cable, but presumably this controller was designed before Apple allowed controllers to do this.
Unlike some other MFi controllers, TteSPORTS does not have a companion app for the Contour.
The good news: if you want to see a list of available games for the Contour, TteSPORTS has a complete list of all compatible games, live-updated, directly on their site. How complete is it? Well, it’s powered by my very own AfterPad MFi Game Database, so very complete!
The MFi controller spec requires each controller to be capable of receiving firmware updates, so presumably TteSPORTS has the ability to release a PC program for this purpose. But alas, there doesn’t appear to be a way to do this directly on iOS.
The Contour is not the best MFi controller. Almost every aspect of this controller – overall feel, d-pad, analog sticks, buttons, triggers – everything has been done better by other controllers.
Every aspect but one: the iPhone grip. The Contour’s iPhone grip is by far the best of any MFi controller. It’s solidly built, it doesn’t cover up any buttons, it’s big enough to support an iPhone 6S Plus in a case, and it folds up right into the controller when not in use.
This is not a small advantage. This is not a minor thing. If you’re an iPhone gamer who wants to grip your phone into a controller, the lack of such a grip is a deal killer. It simply doesn’t matter how good other controllers might be – they aren’t even relevant to you.
Among controllers with grips, the Contour has only one peer: the Mad Catz C.T.R.L.i – everything else can be ignored. Against the C.T.R.L.i, it’s a tough call.
In its favor, the C.T.R.L.i has a better overall shape, multiple colors, better analog sticks and shoulder buttons, much better triggers, and a $20-$30 lower price tag. The Contour counters with a superior fold-up iPhone grip, an integrated battery instead of requiring AAAs, and a significantly better d-pad.
Do you play a lot of games requiring the d-pad? The Contour is worth the extra money. Do you play a lot of shooters requiring great triggers? The Contour’s have issues. Do you want to be able to throw your controller into a backpack without needing to screw and unscrew a separate iPhone grip? The Contour is the way to go.
Whether or not you should buy the Contour over the other options comes down to personal preference after weighing its advantages and disadvantages. The Contour isn’t for everyone, but that’s okay. The Contour is exactly the controller a certain subset of iOS gamers has been waiting for, and its going to make its audience very happy.
Ben Brooks over at Brooks Review has been testing all available content blockers for speed and data usage.
The fastest options (aside from the virtually-unusable Script Scrap) seem to be 1Blocker and Adamant. 1Blocker has continually been the fastest since iOS 9 launched, but Adamant is a new addition to the list. Purify also makes a strong showing.
It’s only been a few short weeks since content blockers hit the scenes, but we’ve already seen a great deal of shifting in the popularity and quality of the available options. Number 1 ad blocker Peace, the Ghostery-backed blocker from Tumblr / Instapaper / Overcast developer Marco Arment, was pulled when Marco decided he didn’t want to be in the ad blocker business. Crystal, the runner-up choice, plummetted in popularity when its developer announced that he was going to start accepting money to allow advertisers to keep tracking users as long as their ads weren’t too garish.
I’ve been using 1Blocker on iOS 9. The only issue I’ve experienced so far is the need to reload TouchArcade forum pages, and the developer is looking into fixing that. On my Mac, I’m running Adamant, since it’s one of the few El Capitan optimized ad blockers out there.
If you have a Twitter account and use it regularly, stop reading this article. Go to the App Store, spend the $4.99, and download Tweetbot 4. Don’t ask questions, don’t comparison shop, don’t grumble that it’s a paid update. Today’s Tweetbot 4 release is possibly the single greatest thing to ever happen to Twitter.
I’m serious. Tweetbot has long been one of my favorite apps, and its lack of an iPad version was simply criminal – I’ve been using the iPhone version of Tweetbot 3 in 2X mode for the past 2 years. If this new release was just an iPad optimized layout, it would be a bargain at twice the price.
Thankfully, it’s so, so much more. Just like Twitter’s official app, Tweetbot now has a consolidated view of all recent activity. You can see who favorited you, who retweeted you, replies, quotes, all that fun stuff. In the iPad layout, all of this information is docked to the right side of the screen, so you can keep track of what’s going on while you’re browsing your stream.
Speaking of things docked to the right of the screen, Tweetbot 4 fully supports the new iPad multitasking. Swipe in from the right, and add the equivalent of the iPhone version of Tweetbot to your Safari window!
The new Stats View pulls in an overview of recent favorites, followers and more. It works just like Twitter has been rolling out in their official app, but with a much nicer interface and live updating.
The $4.99 price tag is high for an iPhone app, but objectively low in the grand scheme of things. Your money gets you a premium app, brilliantly designed, and free of all ads and promoted tweets that Twitter insists on inserting into their stream.
Honestly, I could go on and on listing new features and gushing about implementations of old ones. But please, please take my word on this one. If you’re a regular Twitter user, this is an essential app. Tapbots outdid themselves on this one. If Twitter blocked off access to clients like Tweetbot 4, I would probably quit Twitter.
In a few short weeks, the TteSPORTS Contour MFi controller should be on sale and available for everyone.
I received a review copy a few days ago, and I’ve been steadily putting it through its paces with a variety of different game types. Full impressions will have to wait for my upcoming review, but I wanted to post a few photographs of the controller, as well as some initial thoughts.
As for what is lurking beneath the blue cloth… well, there’s another controller with a grip coming soon. Can’t talk about that one yet, though!
The Contour is available for preorder right now on Amazon.
For a heck of a lot more information on this controller, stay tuned for my in-depth review, which will be posted when the Contour officially goes on sale.
We passed quite a milestone tonight: there are officially 800 games in the MFi game database with MFi controller support!
This seems like a fitting time to celebrate such a milestone. We've come so, so far from where we were when the MFi controller program first launched.
Apple's new iPhone 6S lineup, on sale tomorrow, represents a massive improvement over the best we had when the MFi controller program started. The iPhone 5 was cutting edge at the time, but the new devices have over 4X faster CPU performance and over 10X better GPU performance. The types of games today's iPhones can play would have been impossible when the MFi program launched.
MFi controllers themselves have come a long way. The first controllers were basically garbage, marked up to almost $100, and compatible only with iPhones. Today, we have a wealth of excellent controllers to choose from: the killer general-purpose Mad Catz pads, the retro-friendly Horipad with it's top-class d-pad, and the Gamevice, which turns the iPad into a stellar game console.
Even more important, we're on the cusp of the next major part of Apple's gaming journey. The new Apple TV, launching in a few short months, is poised to drastically expand the hardcore iOS gaming landscape. It's new companion "Nimbus" controller looks like one of the best MFi controllers yet. Hundreds of developers have their hands on preview units, and are busy porting their iOS games to work with the new hardware, adding MFi controller support in the process. The number of confirmed Apple TV games keeps growing every day.
We have Minecraft, one of the biggest games of all time, running on a Gamevice. We have the Grand Theft Auto series – one of the most important game series of all time, and one that drastically expanded what I game could do, in both storytelling and gameplay. We have Disney Infinity 3.0 launching on iOS within days of its console launch, and fully supporting all the latest iOS bells and whistles like Metal and iCloud. We have Final Fantasy III through Final Fantasy VII, hundreds of hours of some of the finest RPG storytelling ever, the best they've ever been, here on iOS.
The list of games is staggering. Bastion, Game of Thrones, KOTOR, Monster Hunter, Skylanders, Worms, the Sonic series, Call of Duty… whatever game you're in to, you'll find something to play with an MFi controller.
So yeah. 800 controller compatible games is a great milestone. It's one worth celebrating. It's more games than the Xbox One and PS4 have managed to achieve in their lifespans, combined. But make no mistake, this journey is far from over. The state of hardcore gaming on iOS is certainly not perfect, but it has a bright future.
The entire iOS Grand Theft Auto series (including the mobile-focused Chinatown Wars) is on sale right now. Each game is $2 off, for a grand total of $8 of savings on the whole series. Buy these immediately.
I'm assuming most MFi controller owners already own these games – they're some of the best examples on the App Store of how games can be enhanced with full console controls. But if you're missing a game or two, now is a great opportunity to round out your collection.
And if you somehow missed out on ever playing one of these games… well, I envy you. You have at least 3 classic pieces of videogame history that you get to experience for the first time. Vice City is probably the best place to start, but you can't go wrong with any of the trilogy.
Amazingly in-depth review of iOS 9 from Federico Viticci and the folks at MacStories.
I’ve read several reviews of iOS 9, and this one is the best I’ve seen. No matter how well you think you know iOS 9, you’ll find new things here.
I’ve been using my iPad as the primary computer behind AfterPad for several months now, and iOS 9 has been nothing short of a game changer. I prefer my iPad to my Mac for all but the most demanding coding. I expect this to only be more true after I get my hands on the iPad Pro.
DisplayMate tested the new iPad Mini 4’s display to see how much of an improvement Apple made.
First of all, the colors and color accuracy of the iPad mini 4 now match all of the recent full size iPads and also the recent iPhones (5 and 6 including S and Plus). So across the entire mobile iOS product line you’ll now see color matched photos and screen images. The mini 4 is an excellent super size upgrade to the iPhone 6(S) and Plus and now truly qualifies as a small version of the iPad Air 2.
But in terms of real-world viewing conditions, the record low 2.0% screen Reflectance actually makes a bigger visual difference for the image colors and image contrast that you actually see because ambient light washes out and degrades the displayed images and reduces screen readability – so its record low Reflectance actually makes a bigger difference!
This is excellent news for fans of the Mini form factor. All previous iPad Minis, including the Retina models, were hobbled by displays with far more muted colors than the iPad Air line. Apple has finally corrected this. I visited the Apple Store and tested out the new Mini myself, and the difference in display quality was immediately noticeable.
For gamers, the new iPad Mini still doesn’t quite have the muscles of the iPad Air 2. The Mini’s A8 feature a four-core GPU with noticeably less horsepower than the A8X’s eight-core model.
Personally, I never had performance issues with the previous iPad Mini. The main reason I switched to the Air was for the increased color gamut and doubled ram. If Apple had released this Mini last year, I might not have switched.