App Store - page 53

One of Apple’s Best Apps of 2012, Pixowl’s The Sandbox is a fantastically inventive mobile game that encourages players to create entire worlds and works of art, right on their iOS or Android devices. The Sandbox has reached five million downloads across app stores, and has over 300,000 unique worlds shared in its Online Gallery. That’s a lot of stuff, folks!

The new update for iOS today brings vehicles to the pixel-based world-building game, letting you carry yourself and crafting materials in a Truck from one place to another much faster. Or, if you’re of a combative turn of mind, grab a Tank or twelve and create a battle world to experiences the horrors of war, digitally.

There are new, more advanced contraptions as well, like Conveyor Belts and Multi Electro contraptions, letting you create and manage even more complicated machines and systems within your world.

Amazon expanded its digital software marketplace to the United Kingdom today, allowing Brits to download apps and games directly to their Mac or PC—just like U.S. users have been doing for some time. The process for purchasing digital items is no different, but once you’ve paid for your order, you’ll be able to download it right away.

Twitter announced today that it is bringing a new verification process to its iOS and Android apps to improve security. The new feature allows you to protect your account with two-factor authentication that can be turned on and managed directly from the app, rather than having to depend on third-party SMS clients.

Along with beefing up security, Twitter also added a new gallery view that can be seen when you tap “view more photos’ from a profile, or by doing a photo search. Lists can be managed from within the app now, too.

You can read about all the engineering details that went into the new two-factor authentication on Twitter’s blog and grab the free update right now on the App Store.

Here are the release notes:

Those still rocking an iPad 2 may have been disappointed to see that it wasn’t supported by Deus Ex: The Fall when the title made its debut on iOS last month, but a new update out today fixes that problem. It also brings major improvements to enemy artificial intelligence, and addresses some bugs.

Apple rejects a lot of iOS apps and games, but Send Me To Heaven has to be the first that was turned away due to the way in which it is played. The aim of the game is to throw your $700 smartphone up into the air as high as you can, but rather unsurprisingly, Apple thinks that this behavior “could result in damage to the user’s device.”

Fortunately, those who enjoy smashing up expensive items can get it on Android instead.

Google has released an official AdSense app for Android and iOS, allowing AdSense users to keep track of their earnings on the go. You can keep an eye on your latest earnings for the day, see what you earned yesterday, and view your earnings for the month so far — plus lots more.

Apple has sent out an email to registered developers to outline its restoration plans for a number of services that are still down following its Developer Center outage. Those include Xcode automatic configuration and access to license agreements, program enrollments, and renewals—all of which are to be reinstated this week.

As someone who has been testing iOS 7 for months, I can tell you that when it drops, some app icons are going to stick out like a sore thumb. Why? Because icon design that looked good in the house Scott Forstall built are going to look really out of place in the house Jony Ive knocked flat to the ground.

Unfortunately, unlike on OS X, there isn’t an easy way to swap out an app’s icon for a custom one of your choosing. That said, a new app called Iconical has figured out a workaround. The app lets you customize your homescreen, no jailbreak required, by taking advantage of the custom URL schemes of over 14,000 apps. This, my friends, is a clever idea.

For iOS users, the Pebble Smartwatch has largely existed as an exercise in frustration. While Android users can tie the Pebble Smartwatch into their smartphone’s central nervous system in all kinds of ways, the feature set of the e-ink proto-iWatch has been comparatively worse.

Case in point? Pebble Smartwatch owners who have an iPhone in their pocket couldn’t even get email notifications on the face of their watch. That’s a big deal: getting notified of new emails is seemingly one of the big things you’d want a second screen on your wrist to do. Luckily, that’s being rectified.

Bad Piggies, the super popular puzzle game from Rovio, has gone free for the first time since it hit the App Store last September. It’s thought to be thanks to the App Store’s App of the Week promotion, so you have seven days to download the game before its price goes back up.

It’s happened to everyone. You’re typing on your Mac, and you suddenly get a phone call on your iPhone. But you only have two hands. On a deadline, you grab your iPhone, and try to talk to whomever is calling by clenching your phone against your shoulder with your chin, but it suddenly slips, and slides down your tucked shirt and into your underpants. And now, here you are, screaming at your crotch to call you back while shaking an iPhone down your pants leg. How embarrassing.

What, that hasn’t happened to you? How strange. Must just be me. Either way, though, wouldn’t it be cool if you could just route incoming iPhone calls to your Mac? Now you can, thanks to Dialogue.

Readdle produces some of the best productivity apps money can buy for iOS devices, so it’s no surprise that it’s still going strong as it celebrates its sixth anniversary today. And in honor of this special occasion, the company has slashed up to 70% off all of its paid apps for a limited time.

It has also added a super cool timeline to its website that highlights some of the most important milestones and innovations from over the past six years.

Who better to star in the world’s most famous endless runner than the world’s fastest runner? That’s Imangi Studios’ latest stroke of genius: they’re now offering Olympic world record runner Usain Bolt, that stroke of greased lightning himself, as a playable character in Temple Run 2.

Google Play has finally surpassed the App Store in the number of downloads in a quarter for the first time ever according to a report from App Annie.

Thanks to strong performances in India and Brazil, Google Play topped the App Store with 10% more app downloads in Q2 2013. Despite Google Play netting more downloads, when it comes down to what matters most – cash, money, revenue – Apple is still generating 2.3x more dead presidents than Google Play.

The Adobe Ideas app for iOS has today been updated to add support for stroke smoothing, and the pressure sensitive Pogo Connect stylus. The release also adds new sharing options, including the ability to send your artwork to other iOS apps, such as Photoshop Touch.

FileMaker has announced it will discontinue Bento, its database client for Mac and iOS, on September 30. The company will increase focus on the FileMaker product line going forward, with the aim of creating “an even better experience for these customers.”

You know the document you’re looking for, but you can’t remember where it’s saved. Did you upload it to Dropbox or Google Drive, or was it sent to you in an email? Fortunately, a new iPhone app called FindIt lets you quickly search all three — all at once.

One of the many big, tattery holes in Apple’s Maps app is the lack of transit data. At launch, Apple wisely allowed third-party transit apps to plug into Maps to supplement their own subway and bus directions — perhaps the first bonafide example of Apple allowing iOS users to set their default app for anything — but it was obviously just a stopgap, because just last week, Apple scooped up Hopstop, one of the biggest transit apps around.

Unlike other Apple acquisitions, though, Cupertino hasn’t shut Hopstop down. In fact, the app was just updated with a beefy 2.6 update that makes it even better, including real time delay and incident reporting.

Path has updated its iOS app today to introduce the ability to hide the Friend Progress Bar from your feed. The release also brings the ability to edit your email address and password within the settings drawer, and new stickers and filters.

Apple has refunded Briton Lee Neale £4,000 ($6,131) after his 8-year-old daughter Lily spent the cash on virtual items in her favorite iPad game. Lily knew the password for her father’s iTunes account, but no one expected her to use it to rack up a huge bill on in-app purchases.

UPDATE: Lucky Frame has provided us with some updated stats: Gentlemen! now has over 6,000 players on Android, with just 50 paid downloads.

Gentlemen!, a brand new title from Scottish development studio Lucky Frame, made its debut on Android and iOS last week. It’s been a pretty big success so far, with plenty of acclaim from reviewers, a mention in a British newspaper, and thousands of players worldwide.

But it’s not all good news for Lucky Frame. You see, only 20 of the players on Android actually paid Gentlemen!’s $4.99 price tag, the company revealed to Cult of Android.

The other 3,000 stole it.

Some space geeks are calling today “The Day the Earth Smiled,” because the Cassini probe is set to take a picture of our planet as seen from Saturn later this afternoon. To honor this momentous occasion, the maker of astronomy software SkySafari is giving away basic versions for iOS and OS X (and discounting the Android version) through Sunday.

VLC made a comeback on iOS today, but if you didn’t get it within a few hours after it became available, then you’re out of luck, because it has disappeared again. But don’t worry — it hasn’t been pulled; an App Store issue is preventing it from being found.

We’ve seen lots of demand for BBM on Android and iOS since BlackBerry announced in May that the service would finally go cross-platform. And the Canadian company has promised us that the app will be here by the end of summer. But how long is BlackBerry’s summer?

According to one company executive, we could be waiting up until September.

The official Evernote app for iOS now allows you to mark up images, PDFs, and notes thanks to the Skitch integration added in its latest update today. The release also brings shortcuts, recent notes, the ability to submit support requests, and more.