The weekend’s halfway gone already, but if you fancy a lazy Sunday getting up to date with the very best apps available for your Apple device, Cult of Mac has your back.
From great games to a superb email client or 100,000 artistic masterpieces at your fingertips, check out our picks below — spanning iPad, iPhone and even Apple TV.
Assassin’s Creed: Identity
If you’re a fan of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, a new game is always going to be worth a look — despite the fact that, at nine years old, the stealthy open-world franchise is starting to feel a bit creaky.
Identity shakes things up by adding a role-playing game element to proceedings. Calling itself the “first action RPG” of the franchise, it lets you explore the Italian Renaissance timezone with your choice of Berserker, Shadow Blade, Trickster and Thief-class character, with plenty of upgradeable stats, weapons and outfits along the way.
Sure, it’s a simplified game compared to what you might expect from a console version of Assassin’s Creed, but in my opinion it’s the most successful attempt yet to port the series over to iOS. And the landscapes looked gorgeous on my iPhone 6s and iPad Air 2.
Available for: iPhone, iPad
Cost: $4.99
Get it from: App Store
Spark email for iPad
Photo: George Tinari/Cult of Mac
My colleague George Tinari reviewed Spark’s new iPad app at length this week, but here’s the CliffsNotes version: long regarded as one of the best email clients for the iPhone, Spark’s iPad app does a great job organizing emails by grouping them separately, then presenting the new and most important stuff right at the top. A quick gesture lets you archive, delete, pin or snooze any email — which makes dealing with your daily deluge of e-letters more tolerable than it currently is.
The iPad version brings over some other additional features like smart search with natural-language support, unified inbox, saving email as offline PDF, smart notifications (which intelligently won’t send an iOS notification for junk mail) and swiping to change signatures.
The fact that it’s free is just the icing on the email cake.
Available for: iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch
Cost: Free
Get it from: App Store
Rayman Classic
Okay, so Rayman Classic actually arrived on iOS ten days ago, rather than over the past seven, but I’m still including it in this week’s app roundup because it’s so darned awesome!
Timed approximately to coincide with Rayman‘s 20th anniversary (were the mid-1990s really that long ago?!), Ubi Soft’s side-scrolling 1995 hit has finally made its way to iOS, giving gamers the chance to save the Great Protoon from evil Mr. Dark all over again — courtesy of the titular limbless hero.
If you didn’t get a flood of nostalgia from reading that, just take my word for it: the game’s great.
Available for: iPhone, iPad
Cost: $4.99
Get it from: App Store
Art Channel for Apple TV
Photo: Art Authority
Apple TV offers some impressive screensavers of its own, but if you’re looking for a neat alternative, try Art Authority’s new Art Channel, which offers billions of dollars worth of high-resolution masterpieces (more than 100,000 in total) for you to enjoy from the comfort of your own home.
Subscriptions are only 99 cents per month, with a 7-day free trial, while the selections constantly varies to not only include “all-time highlights” and high-priced masterpieces, but also seasonal updates like “Easter Story” or “Valentine’s Day Inspirations.”
If you’re an art lover, you’ve probably come across Art Authority before (it was co-founded by early Apple employee Alan Oppenheimer, co-creator of AppleTalk, the original network system for the Mac). This recent update is definitely worth your time.
Available for: Apple TV
Cost: $0.99 per month
Get it from: Apple TV App Store
