Ah, Flappy Bird. It’s been a long time since I last gave any thought to the game-turned-cultural-phenomenon that briefly had us all in a chokehold a decade ago. At least, that was the case until this morning, when I stumbled upon a Reddit post announcing a Flappy Bird tribute for the Playdate and, without a moment’s hesitation, sideloaded it onto my device. Now here I am, absolutely hooked on this maddening little game once again. And, using the crank to control that silly little bird, it's even harder this time around. FlappyBird by Chibisuke is free and available to download for Playdate on itch.io. You’re welcome... or, I’m sorry.

FlappyBird is just like the OG game, but in grayscale. You can play using the up button on the D-pad, the ‘A’ button or the crank to guide the bird between the pipes, but I’ve been going with the latter for the extra challenge it adds. It also just feels like a perfect use of the crank, and I like making the most of the Playdate’s funky design whenever I can. There are other games inspired by Flappy Bird that you can get for the Playdate, like Cranky Bird and Flappybalt, but Chibisuke’s FlappyBird is a direct clone of Dong Nguyen’s infamous side-scroller. 

It’s definitely one way to get your heart rate up on a Sunday afternoon. Just, please do not ask me about my high score, I… don’t want to talk about it.

Google's Password Manager now allows password sharing, albeit in a limited way with family members, Android Authority has reported. "With this new feature, you can now securely share your passwords with your family group in Google Password Manager. When you share a password, your family members will receive a copy of it in their Google Password Manager, ready to be used," Google wrote in a support document.

Google first announced the feature in February 2024 as part of Safer Internet Day, but it's finally rolling the feature out as part of its May 2024 Google Play Services update v24.20. Password sharing is strictly limited to members of a family group, so you'll need to create one and add any members to use it.

Android Authority

If you do have a family group, a "share" button should appear as an option in Google's Password Manager. However, Android Authority noted that the feature may not yet be enabled in the desktop version of Chrome. 

Earlier, Google wrote about potential examples of using it, like if "two members of a family are coordinating with daycare through a single account, or a child is letting a parent access their school assignments." 

Meta has updated its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses to give it more hands-free capabilities, starting with a new feature that lets you share images as Instagram Stories without having to take out your phone. You can just say "Hey Meta, share my last photo to Instagram," if you've already snapped the photo you want. But you can also say "Hey Meta, post a photo to Instagram" if you want to be more spontaneous and take a picture to upload as a Story on the spot. It's for those moments you don't mind sharing with your followers, unedited, in real time. 

In addition, you'll now be able to get your glasses to quickly play your tunes on Amazon Music. Just say "Hey Meta, play Amazon Music" to start listening through the smart glasses' open-ear audio system. And yes, you'll be able to control the audio with the device's touch controls or with your voice. If you have a Calm account and need to decompress, you can listen to guided meditation or mindfulness exercises on your smart glasses instead. To do so, just say "Hey Meta, play the Daily Calm." And if you don't have a Calm account, you can get a three-month subscription for free if you follow the on-screen prompts in the Meta View app. All these features are "rolling out gradually," so you'll eventually get access to them if you don't have them yet. 

Last month, Meta also rolled out multimodal AI for the Ray-Ban smart glasses after months of testing. It enables the smart glasses to act as a personal AI gadget outside of the smartphone, similar to the Rabbit R1 and the Humane AI Pin. Thanks to that update, you can now ask the smart glasses to describe objects in the environment, identify landmarks and read signs in different languages, which sounds especially useful for frequent travelers. Meta also gave the device the ability to make hands-free video calls with WhatsApp and Messenger.

We’ve all been there. You see something cool on Kickstarter. It’s reasonably priced and made by reputable folks. You fully intend on backing it, but life gets in the way and the campaign ends, leaving you out in the cold. Kickstarter just solved this very specific problem by continuing to allow financial backing after a campaign finishes.

The new tool is appropriately-named Late Pledge and will only be available to creators who hit their initial goal. It’s been in the testing phase since April and Kickstarters says it has allowed creators to raise an additional 35 percent over that initial goal, according to reporting by TechCrunch.

Late Pledge has exited the testing phase and is now available to all creators worldwide. This is good for creators, good for backers and, of course, good for Kickstarter, as users won’t have to head to a third-party payment platform when a campaign has ended.

The company has also announced a new in-house marketing unit to help creators promote their campaigns. Kickstarter says that this team “provides support every step of the way, from creative services and pre-launch marketing support to ad measurement and execution.” This service has been in the testing phase for a while and has helped creators raise around $1 million in additional pledges.

There’s more to come. Kickstarter unveiled a more robust survey tool for reward fulfillment purposes and announced the forthcoming ability to pay for shipping and tax via the mobile app.

Apple has formally challenged a €1.8 billion ($1.95 billion) antitrust fine issued by the European Union, according to a report. The bloc handed down the penalty in March after determining that Apple had constrained competing music streaming services on the App Store following a 2019 complaint from Spotify.

At the time, Apple pledged to appeal the decision, arguing that the EU failed to "uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm." Bloomberg reports that Apple has now filed a suit in an attempt to overturn the ruling.

Along with the fine, the EU instructed Apple to stop blocking rival music-streaming platforms from telling users that they could sign up for their services at a lower cost away from the App Store. Spotify claimed it had to increase subscription prices to cover costs related to how Apple runs the App Store. That's despite Spotify not making it possible to upgrade to Premium directly through its iOS app — doing so would mean having to fork over a commission to Apple. For its part, Apple maintains that Spotify doesn't pay it anything, even though the latter taps into its APIs, beta testing tools and more.

Spotify's complaint predated the Digital Markets Act coming into force. That law stops defined gatekeepers — including Apple and Play Store operator Google — banning developers from telling users about cheaper ways to pay for their products outside of their app marketplaces. The EU is currently investigating both companies over their compliance with that aspect of the law.

Google has updated some of its accessibility apps to add capabilities that will make them easier to use for people who need them. It has rolled out a new version of the Lookout app, which can read text and even lengthy documents out loud for people with low vision or blindness. The app can also read food labels, recognize currency and can tell users what it sees through the camera and in an image. Its latest version comes with a new "Find" mode that allows users to choose from seven item categories, including seating, tables, vehicles, utensils and bathrooms.

When users choose a category, the app will be able to recognize objects associated with them as the user moves their camera around a room. It will then tell them the direction or distance to the object, making it easier for users to interact with their surroundings. Google has also launched an in-app capture button, so they can take photos and quickly get AI-generated descriptions. 

Google

The company has updated its Look to Speak app, as well. Look to Speak enables users to communicate with other people by selecting from a list of phrases, which they want the app to speak out loud, using eye gestures. Now, Google has added a text-free mode that gives them the option to trigger speech by choosing from a photo book containing various emojis, symbols and photos. Even better, they can personalize what each symbol or image means for them. 

Google has also expanded its screen reader capabilities for Lens in Maps, so that it can tell the user the names and categories of the places it sees, such as ATMs and restaurants. It can also tell them how far away a particular location is. In addition, it's rolling out improvements for detailed voice guidance, which provides audio prompts that tell the user where they're supposed to go. 

Finally, Google has made Maps' wheelchair information accessible on desktop, four years after it launched on Android and iOS. The Accessible Places feature allows users to see if the place they're visiting can accommodate their needs — businesses and public venues with an accessible entrance, for example, will show a wheelchair icon. They can also use the feature to see if a location has accessible washrooms, seating and parking. The company says Maps has accessibility information for over 50 million places at the moment. Those who prefer looking up wheelchair information on Android and iOS will now also be able to easily filter reviews focusing on wheelchair access. 

Google made all these announcements at this year's I/O developer conference, where it also revealed that it open-sourced more code for the Project Gameface hands-free "mouse," allowing Android developers to use it for their apps. The tool allows users to control the cursor with their head movements and facial gestures, so that they can more easily use their computers and phones. 

Catch up on all the news from Google I/O 2024 right here!

PPSSPP, an app that's capable of emulating PSP games, has joined the growing number of retro game emulators on the iOS App Store. The program has been around for almost 12 years, but prior to this, you could only install it on your device through workarounds. "Thanks to Apple for relaxing their policies, allowing retro games console emulators on the store," its developer Henrik Rydgård wrote in his announcement. If you'll recall, Apple updated its developer guidelines in early April, and since then, the company has approved an app that can emulate Game Boy and DS games and another that can play PS1 titles. 

Rydgård's app is free to download, but as he told The Verge, there's $5 gold version coming, as well. While the paid version of PPSSPP for Android does have some extra features, it's mostly available so that you can support his work. At the moment, the emulator you can download from the App Store doesn't support Magic Keyboard for the iPad, because he originally enabled compatibility using an undocumented API. Retro Achievements is also currently unavailable. Rydgård said they'll be re-added in future updates.

The emulator's other versions support the Just-in-time (JIT) compiler, which optimizes code to make it run more smoothly on a particular platform. However, the one on the App Store doesn't and will not ever support it unless Apple changes its rules. Rydgård says iOS devices are "generally fast enough" to run almost all PSP games at full speed, though, so you may not notice much of a difference. Of course, the PPSSPP program only contains the emulator itself — you're responsible for finding games you can play on the app, since Apple will not allow developers to upload games they don't own the rights to. 

It’s only been a month since Apple started allowing retro game emulators on the App Store and we already have our second bona-fide hit. The newly-released Gamma is a free PS1 emulator with plenty of bells and whistles for those looking to dive back into the world of blocky polygons. It joins the massively popular Nintendo emulator Delta. We have no idea why these apps keep getting named after the Greek alphabet, as both are made by completely separate devs.

Gamma comes courtesy of developer ZodTTD, which has been in the space nearly since the dawn of the iPhone. The app is primarily for Apple’s smartphone, but there is a dedicated iPad version, which is always nice. Gamma integrates with Bluetooth controllers and keyboards, offering a myriad of input options. It also features customizable on-screen controller skins, but we all know how frustrating it can be to play old-school games with a touchscreen. It’s nice to have the option though.

The app uses Google Drive and Dropbox syncing for backing up game files and save states, and the software will even automatically grab game cover artwork. The whole thing’s actually based on the codebase for Delta, according to reporting by The Verge. As always with emulators, you’ll have to supply the games. To stay on the right side of the law, convert titles that you already own into ROM files.

There’s obviously a mammoth appetite for emulators on the App Store. Delta, the Nintendo emulator, has been a mainstay on the charts since launch and Gamma currently sits at number six, above streamers like Disney+ and Hulu but below TikTok. The reviews, however, are mixed, with many users complaining that the UI needs a refresh and that some third-party controllers, like Backbone devices, cause it to crash. Fixes are likely coming in the near future. In the meantime, Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee and Crash Team Racing are both begging for a revisit.

In a couple of months, you'll be able to get Microsoft's mobile games from its own store. Xbox President Sarah Bond has revealed at the Bloomberg Technology Summit that the company is launching a web-based store where you can download its mobile games and get add-ons or in-app purchases at a discount. Bond said the company has decided to launch a browser-based store instead of an app to make it "accessible across all devices, all countries, no matter what" so that you don't get "locked to a single ecosystem."

Microsoft will only host its own games to start with, which means it will feature a lot of titles from Activision Blizzard. If you'll recall, it snapped up the gaming developer and publisher in a $70 billion deal that closed last year. You'll most likely find Candy Crush Saga, which has apparently generated $20 billion in revenue since it launched in 2012, and Call of Duty's mobile games in the first batch of titles available for download. Bond said that Minecraft may also be one of the first games you can get. 

An Xbox spokesperson told Bloomberg that this is "just the first step in [the company's] journey to building a trusted app store with its roots in gaming." Microsoft plans to open the app store to third-party publishers in the future, though it didn't share a timeline for that goal. 

The company first announced its intention to launch a gaming store for Android and iOS devices last year shortly before rules under the EU's Digital Markets Act became applicable. To comply with DMA rules, Apple and Google have to allow third-party app stores to be accessible on their platforms and to offer alternative billing systems for purchases. They're also compelled to allow app sideloading, which will be a massive change for Apple, a company known for its "walled garden" approach to business. 

Operators of third-party app stores will get to avoid some of the fees Google and Apple charge, but they'd still have to pay the companies for bypassing their mobile platforms' official stores. Both tech giants have already outlined how they're changing things up to comply with the DMA regulations. The companies' rivals found the changes they're making insufficient, however, prompting the European Commission to start investigating their compliance plans. 

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a Class I recall for the t:connect mobile app on iOS, which is used to monitor and control the t:slim X2 insulin pump used by people with diabetes. It was supposedly the first smartphone app that can program insulin doses that the FDA had approved. The agency issued the highest level of recall it could, because the app had serious software problems that could've have caused life-threatening conditions or even death. In fact, while there were no mortalities reported, the FDA received 224 injury reports as of April 15. 

According to the agency, version 2.7 of the t:connect mobile app had a bug that initiated a cycle wherein the app would crash and then would be relaunched by the iOS platform again and again. That apparently led to excessive Bluetooth communication that would drain the pump's battery and cause it to shut down earlier than the user would expect. Insulin pumps like the t:slim X2 are designed to automatically deliver insulin under the user's skin at set time intervals and whenever needed. They're supposed to take on the burden of managing the user's sugar levels so that they can go about their day without having to stop and inject themselves or if they're prone to getting hypo or hyperglycemia. 

If a pump shuts down without warning and before the user expects it to, it could lead to the under-delivery of insulin. As the FDA explained in its recall, that could result in hyperglycemia and even diabetic ketoacidosis, a life-threatening complication caused by the inability of the body to turn sugar into energy due to the lack of insulin. Tandem Diabetes Care, the company behind the app and the pump, sent all affected customers an emergency notice back in March. It advised them to update their app, to monitor their pump battery level closely and to carry backup insulin supplies. The FDA's recall notice could reach potentially affected customers who may not have seen the manufacturer's alerts, however, or who may have brushed it aside. Malfunctioning insulin pumps had been linked to multiple deaths in the past, so users may want to keep a close eye on theirs regardless of the brand.