The Apple Watch remains a connectivity tool more than anything else, putting important information on your wrist that you can choose to address or ignore at a glance. But as it gets more powerful, it’s also slowly becoming a source of entertainment, and it’s now capable of playing some mindless but entertaining games.
James Swiney’s Void-X falls into the category of shoot ’em ups, bullet hells, manic shooters, or whatever you prefer to call games where players are faced with screen after screen of patterned projectiles that need to be deftly navigated in order to take out the baddies. For some, these games provide a genuinely enjoyable challenge, while to others, they’re an endless source of stress that justifies the ‘bullet hell’ description.
Void-X is currently available for iPhones and iPads, and provides a mix of minimalist graphics (or at least as minimal as these types of games can get) and frantic gameplay. To be perfectly honest, I’m not typically a fan of these types of games, but the use of touchscreen controls, with which your finger directly controls your ship, makes Void-X much easier to play than when relying on a joystick or a D-pad. I might say I actually kind of enjoy it, but purists can also play it with a wirelessly connected controller if they prefer.
The best reason to drop $1.99 on Void-X is because it also includes a version of the game for the Apple Watch. Because of the diminutive size of the wearable’s touchscreen, this version instead uses the digital crown to control the player’s ship. That means gameplay is limited to up and down movements while your ship constantly fires on its own, but it’s no less satisfying, thanks in part to the non-stop haptic feedback as you move around.
For $1.99, it’s definitely worth an impulse purchase for those times when you’re bored out of your mind but can’t be caught poking at your smartphone. Although I recommend it more for those with more recent versions of the Apple Watch and their larger displays. I tested it on my aging Apple Watch Series 4 and it really put my slowly failing vision to the test.
Pabba told CNBC his jobs at Apple and Capital One involved monitoring metrics from credit card holders in aggregate, including how much users are spending, what percentage of them end up as delinquencies and the average of approved credit scores.
“I would say these three [metrics] are pretty high level, but you know, Capital One takes a lot of pride in being very, very thorough with these things, and of course, Apple had similar standards as well,” Pabba said.
Pabba is expected to build X1′s underwriting policies, which will use alternative data, such as bank account access or information from Plaid in addition to traditional FICO credit scores to determine credit limits and rates for customers.
X1 has backing from Silicon Valley venture capitalists like PayPal founders Max Levchin and David Sacks, among others. Its main product is a credit card with deep app integration, which allows users to create new credit card numbers for individual transactions and to easily monitor spending.
X1 also plans to offer higher credit limits to some customers, which can help keep total credit utilization down.
X1 currently has a wait list for its credit card, which it says is currently used by thousands. It also has hired a new chief financial officer in order to position the company to increase sign-ups to accelerate growth.