Apple has launched a new section of its iOS App Store, offering a roundup of the past month’s best mobile apps as selected by an Apple editorial team.
The “Best of April” selection is split into two categories: “Great Games” and “Amazing Apps.” These include titles such as Monument Valley, Fantastical for iPad, Duolingo, and Hitman GO.
ComiXology has long been one of my favorite iOS apps, but I’m not a big fan of the latest update, which makes it impossible to purchase comics from within the app.
For the longest time, ComiXology was the easiest and best way to buy comics on a mobile device. Now the app has become solely a comic book reader: You must visit ComiXology’s website to buy new issues. You can still browse comics in the app, and download free ones, but the actual payment part must be done elsewhere.
Why has ComiXology gone all supervillain on us?
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The Leap Motion Controller adds a whole new layer to your digital world, transforming the way you interact with your computer into a 3D interactive experience. That wide-open space between you and your computer is now your virtual canvas. Play, create and explore as you reach into another world without actually touching anything.
And right now Cult of Mac Deals has this revolutionary device for only $79.99. Plus, Leap Motion is offering a $20 credit free to their App Store with this promotion, so you can start exploring right out of the box!
The StackUp iOS App Bundle is offering 12 iOS apps valued at $113 for just $36. Several of these apps are geared towards making your iOS experience a more productive one, which is why this particular bundle caught my attention.
To pick up any (or all) of the apps in The StackUp iOS App Bundle, you can head to the Deals page and click on the “Buy Now” button or use the “Text Me” option to get texted a link so you can directly download the app to your iPhone.
Apple’s continued Chinese expansion saw App Store revenue in China increase by 70% last quarter. That’s according to figures from a new Q1 2014 report from app analytics firm App Annie.
Key to this increase is the China Mobile deal which was announced at the end of last year, opening up Apple’s potential customer base to the 763 million users currently on the country’s biggest mobile network.
Apple has been releasing its weekly top games charts as of late, and they make interesting reading.
The latest list — published Tuesday afternoon — shows the cumulative iOS game downloads for the week running April 7 to April 13.
Faster than a speeding bullet,
As one of last year’s top-grossing iPad apps, the digital comics platform has sold an astonishing 6 billion comic book pages since its 2009 debut — 4 billion of those coming in 2013 alone.
In helping revive an industry that was almost dead on its feet, ComiXology has done for comics what iTunes did for legal music downloads.
At the height of its success, it’s now been snatched up by Amazon for an undisclosed amount of money — prompting the question of whether Apple has missed out. (Particularly when taking into accounts the reports that Amazon is reportedly set to debut a smartphone of its own — capable of busting out 3-D.)
After all, ComiXology’s CEO David Steinberger has always had big ambitions. He once wrote that his “crazy goal” was to turn everyone on the planet into a comic reader. Sounds just like Steve Jobs.
Before the acquisition, CEO David Steinberger told Cult of Mac ComiXology’s backstory and its deep ties to Apple. Sometimes the Cupertino company has acted as its Krypton-esque home planet, and other times more like its Lex Luthor-style nemesis.
Ready for ComiXology’s secret origin story?
Let’s be honest, searching in the iTunes Store sucks, especially on the desktop. It’s often slow, and the results are difficult to navigate. Apple has tried to simplify things by displaying one result at a time in the App Store on iOS, but that approach also means that it can take longer to find the specific app you want in a sea of knockoffs.
A new web tool called “fnd” makes it easier to quickly search and navigate not just the App Store, but the iTunes Store in general.
For those who thought Office for iPad was too late to the party, the numbers tell a different story. Today Microsoft announced that Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote combined have been downloaded a staggering 12 million times in one week.
If you doubt that number, then just take a look at the App Store charts.
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Pebble Notes, a new iPhone app written by a student for students, puts important information on your wrist by sending your notes to your Pebble.
So many of us rely on the notes we’ve created and stored on our smartphones to get us through the day. We use them to make shopping lists for the supermarket, jot down passwords and codes we’ll need later on, and to help us remember other important information — such as answers for exams.
But if we leave our iPhone at home, they’re no good to us — unless you have Pebble Notes.
Apple has released its latest weekly list of the most downloaded games in the App Store.
Unlike a near-realtime list like the iTunes chart, this list reflects cumulative total downloads over a 7-day period — in this case March 24 to March 30.
Perhaps the most notable inclusions are the success of Papa’s Freezeria To Go and Backflip Madness in the paid charts, and the Threes!-inspired 2048 and Boom Beach in the free charts. Here’s the whole list:
Apple has notified developers that it is increasing App Store prices in certain countries due to “changes in foreign exchange rates.” Affected currencies include the Australian Dollar, Indian Rupee, Indonesian Rupiah, Turkish Lira, and South African Rand.
Prices for Israeli New Shekels and the New Zealand Dollar will also be decreased. All changes should be applied within the next 24 hours.
Source: Apple
Realmac Software today confirmed that the much-anticipated update that will bring reminders to Clear for iOS will arrive in April. It was originally due to arrive this month, but the company has been working hard to ensure everything’s just right before it goes live.
Apple has added a new “related apps” feature to the app store when viewed on an iOS device. Now, along the top of the screen, over the details of an app, you’ll see the breadcrumb trail in the picture above.
Following a change to VAT (value added tax) legislation in the United Kingdom, there have been a lot of reports suggesting that Apple customers in the U.K. may soon have to pay more when buying from iTunes and the App Store.
As it turns out, those reports are likely incorrect.
You see, Apple has been charging Brits 23% VAT on digital content until now — but the U.K. VAT rate is only 20%.
Of the endless barrage of clones that emerged after Flappy Bird’s surprise success, Flapthulhu is the one that I go back to over and over again. Not only is it a clever parody of both the works of H.P. Lovecraft and the Flappy Bird phenomenon in general, but it’s a genuinely better game than Flappy Bird, with a subverseive sense of humor, fantastic 8-bit style graphics great style. Now, Flapthulhu has gotten better thanks to a version 2.0 update, which adds to major new features.
If you spend a lot of time on the App Store, you’ve probably wondered if app icons are colored the way they are for a reason. Are certain shades more likely to correspond to certain app types than others? And what are the most over- and under-represented Pantone swatches in the App Store pallette?
If these are the sort of questions you have ever asked yourself, you’ll probably enjoy this great infographic by Brandisty, who crawled the iOS App Store, grabbed the top 5 app icons from each category, and then ran a hisogram analysis to find out which colors were used most often.
I wish they’d polled more apps, but this is great. Business apps are just as blue and boring as I thought they were! Check out the complete infographic after the jump.
It’s well known that Apple can be very controlling about what makes it into the App Store — cracking down on everything from Flappy Bird clones to games which feature the word “enemy” in recent times.
But Apple’s latest target might surprise you a bit more: Steve Jobs apps.
The duo who discovered this were sibling developers John and Grant Gill. They created an app called Quoth Steve, which offered daily quotes from Apple’s late CEO on everything from business and design, to love and regrets. The pair submitted the app late in December, hoping to launch it January 1.
Apple is well known for its often inconsistent approach to app acceptance or rejection (more on than in this week’s upcoming Newsstand magazine), but this is a bit silly.
According to Apple, Hunted Cow developer Andrew Mullholland had his app Tank Battle: East Front 1942 rejected for App Store inclusion because it has German and Russian positioned as enemies in it.
The Speedtest.net app is the quickest, easiest (and free-iest) way to test your broadband and data speeds on your iOS devices — and now it’s finally gone universal.
The Ookla app’s universal update has been eagerly anticipated for some time, since the app was originally released optimized only for the iPhone and iPod touch.
Popular (and speedy) Reddit client app AMRC has just received a major update.
Adding a new icon for the app, the update also offers (for a $2.99 in-app purchase) some premium features, including night mode, search, and shortcuts to save subreddits.
New retro-styled JRPG puzzle game Block Legend made it to the App Store today — and it’s accompanied by the most entertaining game trailer we’ve seen in ages.
Inviting players to travel through a range of different lands fighting monsters and completing quests, Block Legend combines tile-breaking gameplay with a massive world populated by different characters.
Award-winning Reuters photojournalism app The Wider Image has just been updated to version 3.0.
Originally arriving on iOS platforms in October 2012, The Wider Image lets users explore the world through captivating visual stories from award-winning Reuters photojournalists.
In addition to images, each story provides additional interactive content in the form of expanded facts and quotes, along with audio materials, and more.
