App Store - page 76

Early last year, Apple applied for a patent which described how they could add a “wild new dynamic screen saver system that could sense the environment it is in and in a chameleon-like fashion automatically change the screen saver.”

Clumsy wording aside, I loved the idea from the get go. Imagine, docking your iPhone at night, only for the screen to perfectly match the decor of your bedroom. Unfortunately, like most of Apple’s patents, there’s no telling when or even if Apple will ever actually roll out such functionality.

Luckily, we don’t need to wait for Cupertino to get off their duffs, because Chameleon Clock is here to turn our iPhones and iPads into chameleons for us.

A consulting firm has discovered that Apple’s existing iOS 6 betas will only support up to 500 installed apps at any one time, and that with any more than that, devices suffer from slow boot times, random reboots, and “other issues.” The firm has had to convince Apple that users need support for more than 500 apps to have the limit lifted.

Readdle has today issued a major update to PDF Expert, its excellent PDF management app for iPad, to introduce a number of handy new features. In addition to faster PDF rendering, version 4.1 brings Dropbox AutoSync, Microsoft SkyDrive integration, and more.

Antivirus software specialist Bitdefender has found that nearly 19% of iOS apps access your address book without your knowledge — or your consent — when you’re using them, and 41% track your location. What’s most concerning is over 40% of them don’t encrypt your data once it has been collected.

That’s all going to change when iOS 6 makes its debut later this year, however.

I spent a good chunk of my childhood playing Pokemon on my Game Boy, and I’d love to be able to relive those days on my iPhone. Unfortunately, Nintendo is adamant it won’t be bringing any of its titles to iOS. While that’s a huge disappointment to most of us, some developers see it as an opportunity to create some great alternatives.

Little Masters is exactly that — an alternative to Pokemon for iOS. And as you can see from the screenshots above, it’s remarkably similar.

Microsoft’s free My Xbox LIVE app for iOS just got a brand new update that introduces the ability to use your iPad as a remote control for your console. You can use it to navigate your way around the menus, control media playback, and to “find fresh entertainment” in the new Discover section.

Kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup is an incredible word processor called UX Write, which makes working with large, complex documents on the go a breeze. You’ll also find Simpsons Comics, the latest app from comiXology that brings Bongo’s Simpsons library to iOS; a wonderful app from NASA that allows you to get up close and personal with the spacecraft used to explore our solar system, and more.

Kicking off this week’s must-have games roundup is a massive update to Tiny Wings — one of my favorite iOS games — which adds a brand new game mode with 15 levels, Retina visuals, and more. You’ll also find Amazing Alex, the latest game from Angry Birds creator Rovio; a wonderful multiplayer RPG; a retro Neo-Geo shooter, and more.

Found is a lightning-fast search tool for your Mac that can also search across your cloud services like Google Docs, DropBox and Google Drive. It makes searching for files ridiculously easy with it’s gorgeous interface. This entire week we’ve given readers a chance to try out the new free app and win a MacBook Pro with Retina display at the same time. If you haven’t taken Found for a spin yet you should hurry up and get on the ball. Today is the last day of the giveaway, so if you’re dreaming of a new MacBook Pro with Retina display entering your life, hurry up and enter and you just might be our lucky winner.

Here’s How To Enter:

Foursquare, Facebook, even Find My Friends… these are all services that are ostensibly designed to help us to find our real-life buddies when we’re around town. So why are they so bad at it? Why do they all feel so useless?

The reason’s pretty simple when you think about it: most of the time, you don’t really care where your friends are, or how many trophies they’ve earned, but when you do want to know where they are, you want to know exactly where they are at that precise moment, either because they’re running late or you’re hoping to meet up. And the only way to really know that with any certainty is to ask directly.

Tehula is a new iPhone app that makes asking people where they are just deviously simple. And it works even if you don’t have an iPhone or iPad: all you need is a phone with a GPS unit and a web browser.

After landing on Android and iOS yesterday, Rovio has confirmed that Amazing Alex will be making its way to Mac and PC. The new physics-based puzzler is Rovio’s first break away from the hugely successful Angry Birds series, and it’s already gotten off to a great start, rocketing up to the number one spot in the App Store’s paid charts in several countries.

Not too far back, we brought you the news that Apple would soon be adding a Food and Drink category to the App Store. Today, Apple has pushed the new category live, and you can go check it out for yourself.

Since its debut back in 2009, the iPad has dominated the tablet market. At the time of writing this piece, the device holds around 55% of the market share in the United States. Rival tablets from the likes of Amazon, Samsung, and HTC have tried to do battle with it, but they’ve had very little impact on its success.

But there is one tablet that Apple will need to keep its eye on: Microsoft’s new Surface. It’s already being dubbed an “iPad killer” by some, and although we’re skeptical the Windows-powered slate will “kill” Apple’s device, there are a number of reasons why the “Pro” variant will have more of an impact than you think.

Get in your doomsday bunker because Rovio has released a new game. That’s right, Casey’s Contraptions Amazing Alex is now available on both the Google Play Store and App Store. You’ve seen the trailers and now it’s time to see how much weight Rovio’s name carries.

Parallels 7, arguably the best desktop virtualization tool for Mac, has been updated to take advantage of the new MacBook Pro’s high-resolution Retina display. Its cousin, Parallels Mobile for iOS, has also received the same treatment, and now supports the Retina display in the new iPad.

Before every iOS app in the App Store began sending you push notifications — whether you want them or not — the best way to stay on top of your alerts was with Boxcar, a free app that delivers push notifications on behalf of a huge catalog of apps. In its App Store description, Boxcar boasts about delivering over 1 billion notifications since its debut in July 2009. But it seems the service may have finally ended.

Google has released a major update to its Google+ iOS app that brings full support to the iPad’s Retina display. Borrowing from the Android version, Google+ on the iPad relies heavily on images and sports a very clean, minimal interface. The iPhone version of Google+ was updated weeks ago with a similarly clean UI, probably due to the fact that Google acquired Kevin Rose’s talent at the app development firm Milk.

In today’s update, the location-based Google+ Events feature has been integrated into the universal app. You can attach photos directly from your device’s Camera Roll and add them to your posts. You can also start and join hangouts in-app and stream them to your TV using AirPlay.

Who would have thought we’d see the day when Rovio released anything but an Angry Birds game? Well, that day is almost upon us, as Rovio has released the official Amazing Alex trailer announcing a July 12th release for both the Google Play Store and App Store.

When Apple opened the App Store in 2008, it began a revolution that would lead to the largest and most vibrant mobile apps ecosystem in existence. It should then come as no surprise that Objective-C, the object-oriented coding language used by developers to build apps for iOS and OS X, has become the third most popular coding language, right behind Java and C itself.

When you have a lot of documents, pictures, songs, and videos on your Mac fighting for every last kilobyte of space, finding the right file at a moment’s notice can be an impossibly long and tiring task. Add in the complications and fragmentation that we get from the “Cloud” where we share different files on Dropbox, Google Drive, Gmail, or Google Docs, and the search gets exponentially harder.

Found is a lightning-fast search tool for your Mac that wants to put an end to all that rubbish and help you find your files wherever they are. It’s an awesome, easy-to-use app with a gorgeous interface and the makers just came out with a new update that makes it even better. A few weeks ago Found gave three lucky Cult of Mac readers a free MacBook Air for trying out the app. Well, they’re back, and the prize is even bigger for Cult of Mac readers who download Found’s newest update.

If you want to search files on your Mac with ease, AND win a free MacBook Pro with Retina display, then all you got to do is follow these simple rules:

Apple has been pretty strict on BitTorrent clients — or anything related to torrent downloading — for iOS, and it does its best to keep them out of the App Store, meaning you must jailbreak your device if you want to install one. However, the Cupertino company appears to have let one slip through its net. Transmission RPC, although not a full-fledged BitTorrent client, is a $1.99 app that allows you to control Transmission for Mac OS X from your iOS device.

The official Readability app for iOS has received a major update today that not only promises to deliver “huge performance improvements,” but also adds a number of new features, including new “Top Reads” and “Longform Picks” reading lists, YouTube and Vimeo integration, and more.

In an email sent out today, Apple has begun to push OS X developers to submit their Mountain Lion ready applications to the Mac App Store. This email follows the release today of the OS X Mountain Lion GM build to developers.

Despite months of speculation, many doubted Google would ever bring its terrific Chrome browser to iOS. But the search giant has put an end to the rumors by finally releasing it, and it’s kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup. We also have a new weather app for those who like to keep it simple, arguably the best Google Analytics client for iOS, and more.

Kicking off this week’s must-have games roundup is a fantastic first-person shooter from the creators of Shadowgun, in which you must take down hoards of bloodthirsty zombies before they take control of planet Earth. We also have a wonderfully unique astronaut simulator called Astronaut Spacewalk, plus lots more.

Continue reading