Whether you are just unwrapping a new iPhone or iPad or have received stacks of iTunes gift cards this holiday season, you are undoubtedly on the hunt for the best apps to fill up your shiny iOS devices. Read on for my recommendations of the best apps and games for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch for 2013.
Jailbreaking may be for those who want the freedom to step outside of what Apple has decided iOS devices should do, but even jailbreakers are not immune to the influence of the company’s design guidelines, it seems.
The Cydia app, which allows users of jailbroken iPhones and iPads to install software not available on the App Store, has been updated with a flat look, bright colors and translucent overlays in line with iOS 7. This follows the surprise release of an iOS 7-compatible untethered jailbreak by the Evasi0n team.
There’s perhaps a small amount of rebellion in the fact that the app’s icon has not yet been updated to an iOS 7 look.
A thank-you for help with the new look was tweeted by @saurik. Video of the new app below the break …
This morning, Apple CEO Tim Cook sent a lengthy memo to employees as a reflection of the soon-ending 2013 and the upcoming year of 2014, according to multiple sources. In the letter, Tim Cook discusses people experiencing Apple products this holiday season, the Apple products launched throughout 2013, and corporate initiatives. “This holiday season, tens of millions of people around the world, from all walks of life, are experiencing Apple products for the first time. Those moments of surprise and delight are magical, and they’re all made possible by your hard work,” Cook says in the beginning of the email.
Cook notes Apple’s new manufacturing process for the Assembled in the USA Mac Pro and calls iOS 7 an “extraordinarily ambitious project.” “We extended our lead in the smartphone market with iPhone 5s; launched iOS 7, an extraordinarily ambitious project; released OS X Mavericks for free to our customers; introduced the iPad Air and the iPad mini with Retina display; and this week began shipping the Mac Pro from a manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas,” Cook told employees. Cook also notes his pride over Apple reaching 50 billion App Store app downloads this year. Apple reached this milestone in approximately five years…
Santa’s coming a little early this year for App Store shoppers. App Santa, collaborative campaign between a group of award-winning app developers, launched today with deep discounts on fifteen of the most popular iOS apps from ten different developers.
Bring a little holiday cheer to your iOS devices by grabbing these apps while they’re on sale, or spread some joy to the world by gifting your favorites to your friends and family. You can find the full list of participating apps below.
The IMDb iOS app for iPhone and iPad gets a nice update today that finally introduces an iOS 7 style redesign for the app. On top of the new look and feel, the app also adds a bunch of new features that improve navigation and make it easier to track people and release dates using filters and wish lists:
What’s New in Version 4.0
– New iOS7 look and feel!
– New navigation and homepages for iphone, including a sleek dropdown menu, accessible from every page.
– Name lists! Finally, you can keep track of your favorite people!
– New list sorts and filters (including the much requested Release Date sort for Watchlists).
– Vote on interesting name trivia, title trivia, quotes, and goofs.
The updated app also includes a new section dubbed “Road to the Oscars” that includes “all your nominations and award season photos leading up to The Academy Awards®, including live results during both the Golden Globes and The Academy Awards® broadcasts.”
Version 4.0 of the IMDb app for iPhone and iPad is available on the App Store now.
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Need a new game to entertain you over the holidays? The sequel to the popular Cut the Rope series just launched today with all new levels and characters and its exclusive to the App Store.
As with the original app, Cut the Rope 2 follows the main character Om Nom through an animated world through a puzzles to solve in pursuit of candy.
Cut the Rope 2 is available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch for $0.99 on the App Store.
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The much anticipated Season 2 of Telltale’s official Walking Dead game, which some of you might have picked up for free in our bundle earlier this month, has today finally landed on both Mac and iOS. Telltale confirmed on its blog that the new season is now available to download for Mac and PC through Steam ($24.99), and the iOS version for iPhone and iPad is now available on the App Store for $4.99.
The sequel to 2012’s Game of the Year continues the story of Clementine, a young girl orphaned by the undead apocalypse. Left to fend for herself, she has been forced to learn how to survive in an unforgiving world. But what can an ordinary child do to stay alive when the living can be just as bad – and sometimes worse – than the dead?
Experience what it’s like to play as Clementine, meet new survivors, explore new locations and make gruesome decisions in this five-part game series of choice and consequence.
Episode one is available now for Season 2, but Telltale notes that you can “Save 25% on additional episodes in The Walking Dead: Season Two by purchasing the Multi-Pack [Episodes 2-5 bundle] via in-app in the ‘Episodes’ menu.”
Way back in May, Justin Williams’s Second Gear teased an unannounced app via Passbook using an in-house system called Pit Pass. The Passbook pass updated to reveal the icon and name of the app released by Second Gear today: Photos+.
What the app does is really simple but useful in a big way. Photos+ displays your images from your Camera Roll and other albums found in Photos.app, but it takes a different approach to displaying thumbnails and most importantly includes EXIF info like timestamp and location hidden in the native photo browser…
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If you’ve grabbed a Flipboard article that you want to share with other Flipboarding friends, the latest version of the iOS app allows you to do it right from within the app.
Do you ever find something on Flipboard that you want to pass along? Now it’s easy to share the stories you enjoy with other people within in the app—give the gift of awesome reading this season.
– Share stories directly to your friends on Flipboard. Select the mail icon in the share menu and enter their name or email address. Your friends will be notified in Flipboard to see what you have shared with them.
– Receive notifications when other people on Flipboard share stories with you.
– Bug fixes and performance improvements.
Flipboard is a free download on iTunes. The app was last updated in November with a more iOS 7 style look and performance improvements.
From 9to5Google:
As Samsung works to capture more of the Android gaming market with the release of a new controller, a new analytics study shows Android gaming is on the rise. Apple may be considered the dominant leader in the mobile gaming category and it remains steadily in the driver’s seat, but 2013 indicated the Play Store is moving up fast.
Ssshh, don’t tell the kids they’re learning physics, just tell them it’s an iPad space game! Stephen Hawking’s Snapshots of the Universe is an iPad app containing a mix of mini-games, videos and text that allows children to discover some of the fundamental principles of physics and space.
Based on the work and writings of Stephen Hawking, this app teaches both adults and students the basic theories that govern our lives on Earth as well as the movement of the stars and planets. You can play and learn at the same time in each of the eight experiments included in Snapshots of the Universe:
– Spin planets in orbit with your own solar system
– Drop objects with Galileo to learn about gravity
– Let Einstein feel some G-force in outer space
– Search for black holes in the constellation of Leo
– Discover Einstein’s warped worldview
– Plus more…
Each section has an app allowing children to carry out virtual experiments, see further visual explanations in video clips and then read up on the topic in more detail. The app is described as suitable for children aged 9+.
Published by Random House, the app is available on iTunes for $4.99.
Via Engadget
Earlier this year Apple finally allowed apps in the Games category to appear on the South African App Store. Today the company has sent out an email to developers notifying them that the same change has been made in Costa Rica and Qatar. App developers don’t have to do anything to enable their apps for sale in those stores as long as the apps have been cleared for sale in those countries.
If developers have not set their apps to be available in those countries, they’ll need to make that change before their games are available in those stores.
http://vimeo.com/81527238
During its press event held in New York City today, Instagram announced a new sharing feature called Instagram Direct that will allow users to share images and videos to other users privately.
The new sharing model will require users to follow each other to send photos and messages privately to individuals or groups of up to 15 people. A pending requests inbox will catch photos and messages from users who are not mutually connected.
Instagram also noted its growth from 80 million users to 150 million users worldwide from the start of 2013 to today. Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram, boasted that over half of Instagram’s users use the service daily…
From 9to5Google:
Chalk up another Google Drive update for iOS as Google just announced a new sorting feature for files. Google’s iOS version of Google Drive has received quite a few updates in recent months to bring it in line with its Android counterpart. The new sorting feature should prove useful to just about every Google Drive user as it’s a much-needed and important feature.
Castro is a brand new podcasting app for the iPhone (available in the App Store for $2.99). It’s not an update to an existing podcast client. It’s a new app. It doesn’t have any legacy to anchor it down because it really is a fresh start.
A few days after Fiksu showed how much better iOS is than Android when it comes to allowing older devices to upgrade to to the latest operating system, and most analytics companies were reporting iOS 7 penetration of around three-quarters of devices, Apple has updated its developer site to show that iOS 7 penetration is at 74 percent.
Apple’s data is likely the most reliable, based on visits to the App Store during a 7-day period ending on 1st December. iOS 7 adoption was incredibly fast, helped by record opening weekend sales of the new iPhones, and has grown a further 10 percent in the past two months.
The numbers are in sharp contrast to Android, where the latest KitKat version (Android 4.4) is at just 1.1 percent and the previous 4.3 version of Jelly Bean at just 4.2 percent.
Google this afternoon announced an update to its Search apps on both Android and iOS that includes voice search support for three addition languages. In a blog post, the company announced that the app can now understand French, German, and Japanese. In addition to being able understand the new languages and give text results, the Search app can also now give spoken answers back in those languages.
To try it out, simply tap the microphone in the search box and ask for anything you’re looking for. If you need some coffee in Munich, just say “Wo bekomme ich Kaffee in München?” to get a list of local options. Wondering what the height of the Eiffel tower is? Get a quick answer by asking, “Quelle est la hauteur de la Tour Eiffel?”. Maybe you need to know who invented the transistor ? Try asking in Japanese for “トランジスタを発明したのはだれ？”
Google says it will continue to work on adding even more languages to its Search app and that this is just the beginning of its efforts.
The Google Search app update is available for free in both the iOS App Store and on Google Play.
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As we’ve previously reported, Apple began giving away select paid apps in its Apple Store app recently as an added incentive to download and check out the app.
This week in particular Apple has replaced the free app with free music from iTunes instead. The playlist is appropriately holiday themed and features songs such as Silent Night by Kelly Clarkson and The First Noel by Mary J Blige.
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I love it when an app developer takes one of my minor grumbles and comes up with a simple solution. PopCalc is one of those.
There are times when I have a few sums to do, and the standard calculator app is a bit too dumb, while creating a spreadsheet in Numbers feels like overkill. What I really want is a cross between the two: the simplicity of a calculator, but some of the functionality of a spreadsheet. And that’s exactly what PopCalc aims to deliver …
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Originally released in August for Xbox 360, PS3, and Windows, 2K and TransGaming just released The Bureau — XCOM Declassified on the Mac App Store. The release follows the launch of the popular XCOM: Enemy Unknown game on Mac earlier this year, but unlike that game, XCOM Declassified is a third-person shooter with strategy elements taken from the classic XCOM titles. The game received some mixed reviews, but was generally well received by most.
The year is 1962. JFK is President and the Cold War has the nation gripped by fear – but a far more powerful and insidious enemy than communism is threatening America. Known only to a select few, a top-secret government unit called The Bureau begins investigating and concealing a series of mysterious attacks by an otherworldly enemy. As special agent William Carter, call the shots, pull the trigger and lead your squad in a gripping third-person tactical shooter set within a high-stakes, covert war to defend humanity. The Bureau’s mission is clear – survive, adapt and overcome the enemy threat to protect the citizens from the truth.
The Bureau – XCOM Declassified is available now for $34.99 on the Mac App Store. Minimum system requirements below:
OS: Mac OS X Mountain Lion 10.7.5 or higher
Processor: Intel Core i series processor
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Hard Drive: 15 GB free
Video Memory: 512MB
Video Card: AMD HD4870 / NVIDIA 8800GT or better*
Input: Keyboard and 3 button Mouse or Logitech Dual Analog Stick Gamepad
Reuters is reporting that Lucy Koh has today dismissed a data privacy lawsuit against Apple that dates back to 2011. The plaintiffs were suing on the basis that (in iOS 4.1) Apple collected WiFi hotspot and cell tower location data even though Location Services were disabled.
Today, Tapbots has released Tweetbot 3.2 to the App Store, the latest version of their highly-popular Twitter client. Tapbots have been pretty relentless in updating their flagship app with version 3.1 arriving only two weeks ago.
Tweetbot 3.2 brings a long-awaited night theme to the app, offering another theme choice to users who may not like the stark-white default look.
The theme can be set to adjust automatically based on time or manually set as the default look. The application theme can also be changed via a hidden gesture; simply swipe up and down with two fingers to toggle between the light and dark theme.
Business Insider created the above chart to show exactly how the revenue gap between iOS and Android apps shows up for developers.
While there’s no doubt the gap between the two platforms is narrowing, it’s also clear that in the metrics that count, iOS is still where you want to be. Ad revenue – read free apps – is where Android is making money for developers …
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According to a report from TechCrunch, Apple has recently implemented updates to the App Store’s search engine allowing it to compensate for “misspelled queries with small typos” and provide more useful results. The update also reportedly extends to app titles that have spaces in the title:
For example, those looking for the highly ranked “QuizUp” game wouldn’t have found it before if they had typed in “Quiz Up” with a space. Now it appears.
The result will ultimately be better discoverability for apps in the App Store, especially for developers targeting keywords that are commonly misspelled. As noted by TechCrunch, it’s also something that has helped Google provide better results on its Play store (as highlighted in the graphic from SEO firm SearchMan above):
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