At its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Apple unveiled Metal, an API designed to improve game performance on iOS. Epic Games took the stage during the event to show off Epic Zen Garden, a game built using the Unreal 4 Engine and the Metal API.
The game, which was designed to show off the impressive graphic enhancement features possible with Metal, demonstrated an expansive world with a fully interactive environment. Users could touch a tree to send a cascade of leaves and cherry blossoms swirling to the ground or interact with a group of koi fish.
As of today, Epic Zen Garden is available for download, letting users see some of the things that will be possible in iOS games in the near future. The game supports a resolution of 1440 x 1080 at 30fps, and can display 3,500 butterflies at once. One of the major features of Metal is that it allows for more draw calls, letting a huge number of objects be displayed on the screen.
Epic Zen Garden is a beautiful graphical environment showcasing the power of iOS 8, developed by Epic Games with Unreal Engine 4. Tap to navigate this interactive oasis brimming unmatched detail on mobile. Swipe the Sakura tree to make thousands of cherry blossoms swirl in the air, graze the koi pond to summon leagues of fish, and rake the sand with your finger to create subtle designs. Touch the well to bring throngs of butterflies out of hiding.
More information on how Metal works, Epic Zen Garden and the Unreal Engine 4 can be seen in the video below.
Tuesday January 21, 2025 12:46 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
A leaker known as "Majin Bu" today shared an alleged image of a component for the rumored, ultra-thin "iPhone 17 Air" model.
The blurry, pixelated image shows a pair of rear iPhone shells with a pill-shaped, raised camera bar along the top. On the left side of the bar, there is a circular cutout that appears to be for a single rear camera. On the right side of the bar, there appears to be an ...
Friday January 17, 2025 2:42 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 19 is still around six months away from being announced, but a new leak has allegedly revealed a completely redesigned Camera app.
Based on footage it obtained, YouTube channel Front Page Tech shared a video showing what the new Camera app will apparently look like, with the key change being translucent menus for camera controls. Overall, the design of these menus looks similar to...
Tuesday January 21, 2025 4:31 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 18.3 today, and with it comes release notes confirming what's new. While we knew about several of the features that are in the update, there are some lesser known tweaks and bug fixes.
The update adds new Visual Intelligence features for iPhone 16 models, it tweaks Notification summaries on all...
Monday January 20, 2025 9:01 am PST by Joe Rossignol
A new iPhone SE is widely rumored to launch this year, and the device has potentially been confirmed today by known leaker Evan Blass.
In a private social media post, Blass shared an image of what appears to be source code mentioning an iPhone SE (4th Gen), which casts doubt on the alternative "iPhone 16E" name rumored for the device. However, the name in the source code could be a...
Sunday January 19, 2025 6:58 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple on late Saturday removed TikTok from the App Store in the U.S., and it has now explained why it was required to take this action.
Last year, the U.S. passed a law that required Chinese company ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok due to potential national security risks, or else the platform would be banned. That law went into effect today, and companies like Apple and Google...
Wednesday January 22, 2025 2:07 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Popular caller ID app Truecaller is rolling out an update that brings real-time caller ID support to its iOS subscribers.
Apple introduced Live Caller ID Lookup in iOS 18, allowing third-party caller ID apps to securely retrieve information about a caller from their servers, hence today's Truecaller update.
iPhone users can enable the Live Caller ID Lookup feature by going to Settings ➝ ...
Sunday January 19, 2025 8:11 am PST by Joe Rossignol
After a four-year wait, a new AirTag is finally expected to launch in 2025. Below, we recap rumored upgrades for the accessory.
A few months ago, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said Apple was aiming to release the AirTag 2 around the middle of 2025. While he did not offer a more specific timeframe, that means the AirTag 2 could be announced by the end of June.
The original AirTag was announced...
Tuesday January 21, 2025 6:40 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple plans to release at least one new iPad Pro model this year, according to a supplier-focused report today from Korean website The Elec. It is likely that the 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro models would be updated simultaneously.
After receiving an OLED display last year, the report said the iPad Pro will receive only "minor" changes this year. Overall, the next iPad Pro is expected to...
Saturday January 18, 2025 10:28 am PST by Joe Rossignol
iOS 19 will not drop support for any iPhone models, according to French website iPhoneSoft.fr.
The report cited a source who said iOS 19 will be compatible with any iPhone that can run iOS 18, which would mean the following models:
iPhone 16
iPhone 16 Plus
iPhone 16 Pro
iPhone 16 Pro Max
iPhone 15
iPhone 15 Plus
iPhone 15 Pro
iPhone 15 Pro Max
iPhone 14
iPhon...
Compatibility:
Requires iOS 8.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air, iPad Air Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad mini with Retina display, and iPad mini with Retina display Wi-Fi + Cellular. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.
so which is it?
It requires the A7, so it's iPhone 5s and up. "optimized for iPhone 5" was introduced to indicate that the App is optimized for a 4" screen during the iPhone 4s to 5 transition. I think this information will be removed soon, and the wording is really misleading.
I've love to know, just what spec of 'PC' this graphical power is equal to.
The PowerVR G6430 is shipping in the A7. It has a peak output of about 115 GFLOPS. For comparison, the original Xbox GPU is about 6 GFLOPS, the Xbox 360 GPU is about 240 GFLOPS, and the Xbox One is around 1300 GFLOPS. The A8 was stated to be 50% faster, so we're talking around 170 GFLOPS, which is about 70% the speed of an Xbox 360. This is why they still have to fake a lot to get things running up to par visually. That all being said, I hope they limit 3D games on the iPhone Plus to 720p and crank up other things like the lighting effects, etc. The iPhone has twice the RAM of the Xbox 360, so you might be able squeak out some last gen games that look decent running at 720p. A fast motion game isn't going to look vastly different in your hand at 720p vs. native 1080p. Those differences are more noticeable on a larger TV. What is really interesting is the 6S. Assuming a similar 50% bump in GPU performance, it will slightly surpass last-gen consoles and will likely ship with 2GB of ram (well we also said that about the 6 so who knows). But still, 3D gaming on the iPhone is really going to come into it's own. And with Metal, we might be able to get more performance out of them by comparison to consoles.
