Frontier Developments has announced the release of a Mac beta of its hotly anticipated space adventure, trading and combat game Elite: Dangerous.
It's the latest iteration of a legendary game that traces its lineage back to the mid-1980s, on platforms like the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. After a mid-December release of the PC version, the Mac version is now in beta. What's more, you can download the original game for free!
Elite: Dangerous puts you in the pilot seat of an interstellar spaceship. You start with a small amount of funds and then find your way into an open world galaxy: 400 billion star systems, a digital recreation of the actual Milky Way.
You decide what you want to do to survive: take missions, trade, engage in combat, piracy and more. Unlike previous Elite games, this also features multiplayer mode.
Announced on the Frontier Developments forums, the Mac beta has pretty steep recommended system specs:
27-inch iMac (Purchased in 2015 - Current Line)
3.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i5
8GB memory
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M with 2GB video memory / AMD Radeon >R9 M290X with 2GB video memory
Mac OS 10.10.x (10.10.03 [sic] rec)
The developers note, however, that optimizations are planned and final system requirements are expected to drop.
By the way, Frontier makes available for free download the original 1984 version of Elite for the Macintosh. It's playable inside a BBC Micro emulator, also included.
In order to use the beta, you need to have an active Elite: Dangerous account — the game costs £39.99. You can get more information from the Frontier Developments store.
Adobe has launched a new app exclusively for the iPad called Slate, which will allow its users to make multimedia presentations quickly and then share them with others.
After users create a presentation with Slate, they can then upload that content to so it can be viewed as a website. Here are Slate's main features:
Stunning professionally designed themes allow users to simply tap to select from multiple font combinations, fun colors and motion to ensure stories stand out from the crowd.
Arresting photo layouts and covers deliver options that help photos pop, making them the highlight of the story, including grid or window view. Users can also add a caption overlay on images, ensuring photos are more integral to the narrative.
Adaptable design that looks great on any device, ranging from a phone to large desktop monitor.
Call-to-Action buttons link to online sites and other relevant information to encourage readers to take action, like: "Donate Now", "Volunteer" or "Learn More".
Sharing options automatically publish the finished content and help spread the word via a simple Web link that can be easily posted to social channels, sent via text message, email or embedded in personal blogs and websites. Readers can easily view the content in their PC, tablet or mobile phone browser.
Slate is completely free to use on the iPad and does not require a subscription to the company's Creative Cloud service. This is the second iPad-exclusive app Adobe has launched this week, following Monday's release of the Comp CC app for mobile application designers.
Source: Adobe
Regulators for the European Union are investigating Apple's deals with record labels and what impact those relationships might have on other parts of the music industry.
The commission seems primarily concerned with the potential impact of a new Apple streaming service on existing, ad-supported services like Spotify. They are worried that Apple could use its size to get labels to leave Spotify, according to the Financial Times:
The commission, which also has contacted Apple's music-streaming rivals, is said to be concerned that the company will use its size, relationships and influence to persuade labels to abandon free, ad-supported services such as Spotify, which depend on licenses with music companies for their catalogues.
Jimmy Iovine, a co-founder of the Apple-owned Beats Music service, has been talking to artists about bringing exclusive material to Apple's music services. Whether these deals would mean that they would leave other services behind is unknown, but nothing has emerged to indicate that they would do so. And while Apple's rumored service is said to lack a free tier, the free version of Apple's iTunes Radio is said to be sticking around.
Source: Financial Times
The HTC One M9 isn't even in the hands of most consumers yet, and already HTC is muddying the waters by releasing an updated version of last year's flagship phone in the HTC One M8s, which beefs up battery life and swaps in a 13-megapixel camera.
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President Barack Obama has signed an executive order that imposes sanctions on foreign hackers that engage in “destructive attacks or commercial espionage” against US targets.
The post US gov’t to impose sanctions on foreign hackers appeared first on Digital Trends.
