App of the Day: Sun Stones

CNET Editor

When Michelle isn't saving the world from Galactus' insatiable appetite, she likes to while away the hours writing about e-readers, video games, apps and films for CNET Australia.

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Welcome to CNET Australia's App of the Day, where you can see some of the coolest, silliest and most useful apps in action.
I play games to relax, so sometimes a fast-paced game just doesn't cut it. So when I found Sun Stones, I knew I'd found a game that couldn't be more perfect, from the visual design to the ambient flute music to the relaxing, yet puzzling, gameplay. Inspired by traditional Hopi imagery, the idea is to place stones on a board to create an image in as few moves as possible. There is no penalty for taking lots of moves, so you can trial and error as much as you like and figure out how to win those three stars. You get a nice little selection of puzzles with the free trial, too — enough to know that the full unlock is definitely worth it.
Sun Stones for Android (AU$2.80)
Sun Stones for iOS (Free — full unlock AU$2.99)

Friday App Wrap

Welcome to the Friday App Wrap, the place where we share with you some of the standouts from the new mobile phone apps we find each week. You'll find a variety of apps below, plus you can scroll back via the page navigation at the bottom after the last app listed to see the applications highlighted in previous weeks.

Friday, 30 March 2012

• Paper

  
  Because we're slightly stationery-crazy, new notebook apps always catch our attention. Paper is one of the most elegant we've seen. The app itself is free to download, and includes the pen tool and an array of colours to get you started — we love how smooth it is to draw, and the touch controls are genuinely clever.
  Additional tools are purchasable for AU$1.99 each, and you can get pencil, pen, texta and watercolour tools. They all look gorgeous. One minor niggle is that the colour palette is quite small — we're hoping to see an expansion in the future, but in the meantime, it's one of the most stylish notebook apps we've seen.
  
  
  Platform: iPad
  Price: Free

• Sydney Royal Easter Show 2012

  
  The Sydney Royal Easter Show is starting real soon. It's such a massive event that a guide is, well, essential. This free app for iPhone is it. It gives you a comprehensive set of tools for exploring the show, including a full program so you can figure out when to go; an interactive showground map (seriously, that place is nuts to navigate); lists of carnival attractions, food and shopping; special bargains and offers; and the ability to share what catches your attention via Twitter, email and Facebook.
  
  Platform: iPhone
  Price: Free

• Rinth Island

  
  Rinth Island (a play on "labyrinth", we assume) is a 3D puzzler. You're a little dude (or dudette — hooray for options!) who has to find your way to the exit point on each of over 60 island levels. They are circular towers that you have to climb, solving as you go. It looks stunning and is fun to play in its own right, but its bonus content is what makes it extraordinary. As well as the ability to customise your avatar with costumes, tools and even pets, you can build and share your own levels — and play levels others have created, which makes gameplay pretty much infinite.
  
  Platform: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad
  Price: AU$0.99

• Swordigo

  
  When we saw our character given a sword and told "Take this. It's dangerous to go unarmed", we knew that we'd find something to love in Swordigo. And there is. A side-scrolling action adventure, it sees you fighting to save the world with your trusty sword and magic spells, solving puzzles and defeating foes. Sure, it's not exactly something new — but it's so smoothly executed, and built with such affection — that it really is a standout in the genre.
  

Android, iOS devices to take market share from Windows PCs

Windows is going to be eclipsed by Android in 2016, according to market researcher IDC. Expect Apple's iOS to see an uptick too.

(Credit: IDC)

The venerable Windows-Intel PC will see a sharp decline by 2016 while devices running Android and Apple's iOS are on the rise, market researcher IDC said.
There will be a "dramatic shift" between 2011 and 2016, with the "once-dominant" Windows-Intel PCs dropping from a market-dominating 35.9 per cent share in 2011 to 25.1 per cent in 2016, IDC said.
Mobile devices like Android phones and tablets, and Apple iPhones and iPads will step into the void and begin to dominate. Android devices (using ARM chips) will grow from 29.4 per cent share in 2011 to a leading 31.1 per cent share in 2016. And Apple's iOS-based devices will grow from a 14.6 per cent share in 2011 to 17.3 per cent in 2016.
"Smart, connected, compute-capable [phones and tablets] are playing an increasingly important role in nearly every individual's life," said Bob O'Donnell, vice president of clients and displays at IDC.
This year, unit shipments for smart connected devices should top 1.1 billion worldwide, IDC said. By 2016, IDC predicts shipments will jump to 1.84 billion units, more than double the 2011 figure.
This works out to a compound annual growth rate of 15.4 per cent for the five-year forecast period, IDC said.
Android: but it's not all good news for all players in the Android market. "Android's growth is tied directly to the propagation of lower-priced devices," Tom Mainelli, research director of mobile connected devices at IDC, said. "So, while we expect dozens of hardware vendors to own some share in the Android market, many will find profitability difficult to sustain."
iOS: and IDC expects a large percentage of application developers to focus their efforts on iOS, because iOS users are willing to pay for high-quality apps.

Apple, Samsung may find patent war truce

With lawsuits filed against each other in countries around the world, Apple and Samsung could be headed toward a truce with one another, according to a new report.
In a detailed history of Apple's legal battles with mobile-device competitors including the likes of HTC and Samsung, Bloomberg suggests that Apple and Samsung's top leadership could be looking to strike a settlement.
"People familiar with the situation, however, note that top-level executives at both Apple and Samsung have communicated lately about potential settlement options," the report said.
"Apple CEO Tim Cook does not seem to share his predecessor's passion about laying all foes to waste," it added. "Cook appears to view litigation as a necessary evil, not a vehicle of cosmic revenge."
In Walter Isaacson's authorised biography on Steve Jobs released last year, the late Apple co-founder viewed Google's Android operating system as a "stolen" product, making it a personal mission to wipe it out.
"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's [US]$40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong," Jobs told Isaacson. "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."
As Bloomberg points out in its story, the company began that odyssey indirectly, filing suit not at Google, but first at HTC, and later expanding its efforts to Samsung. The story focuses on the oddity of that effort given that Apple remains Samsung's biggest customer, and that its components have been the distinctive features of Apple's products, including the latest iPad.
Apple has struck cross-licensing agreements with foes in the past. That includes a patent deal with Microsoft as part of its investment in Apple in 1997, as well as one with Nokia in 2011 that gave both companies the option to license certain patents from one another.

CEO Cook visits Apple factory

Apple CEO Tim Cook has visited a Foxconn factory in China where iPhones are manufactured as the company grapples with criticism over its handling of working conditions in its supply chain.
Cook inspected a newly constructed facility in Zhengzhou, China, that employs 120,000 people, Apple spokesperson Carolyn Wu told Bloomberg. Wu declined to discuss what Cook has planned for the remainder of his visit or how much longer he's expected to be in the country.
Earlier this week, Apple's chief executive was spotted in the Joy City Apple Store in Beijing, looking over his company's products and talking with employees. Cook was mum about the purpose of his visit, but speculation has been rampant that he's in town to discuss the company's next-generation iPhone with China Telecom and China Unicom, two of that country's largest carriers.
Apple told Reuters yesterday that the purpose of the visit was to meet with government officials. "China is very important to us and we look forward to even greater investment and growth there," the company said. However, he was also reportedly seen at the Beijing offices of China Mobile — the world's largest mobile carrier with 650 million customers and considered a key to wider adoption of Apple's smartphone.
Cook's visit to Foxconn comes after a series of stories highlighted the working conditions at Foxconn — the world's largest component maker, which provides hardware to companies such as Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Sony. Apple asked the non-profit Fair Labor Association (FLA) to investigate conditions at Foxconn facilities in China following reports of unsafe working conditions and a significant uptick in worker suicides. The FLA expects to make its Foxconn audit results available on its website in the next few days.
Since The New York Times published a report that profiled hazardous factory conditions linked to scores of injuries and a handful of deaths, Cook has defended his company's track record on improving working conditions at the manufacturing facilities of its suppliers. He said, "We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain".

JMC Soundboard makes music out of wood

Good guitars tend to be made of good-quality wood, and JMC Lutherie, a Switzerland-based company, prides itself on handcrafting these instruments out of the finest trees. Straying away from its specialty, JMC's latest release is a loudspeaker.

But will it look as good without the lovely lady and the lakeside apartment?
(Credit: JMC Lutherie)

The Soundboard speaker is said to be made of 350-year-old spruce wood from the Swiss Risoud forest, and requires 80W to drive each of its two channels. Unlike regular loudspeakers, JMC's new, wall-mountable Soundboard uses the resonance of wood to create sound — a technology that seems similar to the Soundbug device that we saw many years ago.
When in use, the Soundboard looks like a wall decoration, and is available in four shades: natural (the colour shown in the picture), dark brown, black and white. Limited-edition versions that look like paintings are also available.
If you're interested in having an artsy high-end speaker installation in your Art Deco-styled apartment, a list of distributors is available here. High prices are to be expected with such niche products, and one Soundboard will set you back about US$6500.

Apple TV set said to be coming in 2013

The newest in the long line of Apple TV set rumours is that indeed the device is on the way but most likely not until 2013.

It'll look nothing like this, but we can speculate, right?
(Credit: Samsung/Apple/CBSi)

"We continue to view Apple TV hardware as a 2013 event," an Asian research group CLSA said in a note today, according to the news site Business Insider.
The note goes on to say that Foxconn, which manufactures Apple products, has decided to invest in Sharp electronics, giving more credibility to the notion that an Apple TV set is in the works. According to Business Insider, Sharp will provide the panels for Apple TVs.
Rumours have flown over the last couple of years that an Apple TV set will debut in the near future. At the beginning of January, sources were speculating a 50-inch screen, and at the end of January Apple was reportedly speaking to major TV component suppliers.
USA Today quoted Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak saying in January, "I do expect Apple to make an attempt [to get into the TV set business], since I expect the living room to remain a centre for family entertainment, and that touches on all areas of consumer products that Apple is already making."