Becoming an astronaut is every boy’s dream. Who doesn’t want to walk on the moon? Unfortunately that dream fades away for the vast majority of us when we grow up and realize NASA doesn’t employ overweight college dropouts. That’s when we take up blogging.
But thanks to an upcoming iOS app, we can all pop on a white suit and moon boots and dance with the satellites.
Facebook’s iOS app is terrible.
That’s not a matter of opinion: it’s fact. It’s a festering pile of an app, with an average 2 star rating on the US iTunes App Srore.
The app’s slow. The notifications don’t work. The whole thing’s buggy. In every way imaginable, if you open Mobile Safari and type in facebook.com, you’ll have a better experience.
How could a company like Facebook that sees so much of its traffic come from mobile sources release such a terrible, unuseable app? And why hasn’t it gotten better?
Google Chrome is quite possibly the best web browser you can install on your Mac or PC, and it could soon be the best browser on your iOS device, too. According to one analyst, Google is “definitely” bringing Chrome to the App Store this year — possibly before the end of this quarter — which is bad news for Apple.
We’re all familiar with just how stringent Apple’s App Store approval process is, but the journey iOS apps take between submission to Apple and finally reaching the App Store is a mystery to most of us. However, one Facebook profile gives us a sneak peek into Apple’s testing lab.
Dive Apple, a female who lives in San Francisco and looks like an upside-down cat, is an App Store reviewer whose Facebook profile reveals a lot about unreleased iOS apps and life behind a desk in Cupertino.
Sparrow for iPhone — the third-party email client that has left Apple’s built-in Mail app redundant on my device — has received another major update today, which introduces a number of helpful features and quashes a handful of bugs.
One thing it doesn’t add, however, is that much-anticipated push support. That’s coming later, but you’ll have to pay for it.
Instacast, undoubtedly the best podcast manager for iOS, got a great update this week that deserves a place in our must-have apps roundup. We’ve also got an impressive voice translation tool that you just have to try, a social weather app that’s more reliable than the weatherman, plus major updates for Pocket and Google+.
Have you ever thought about what it’s like to own the new iPad? Well, thanks to Cult of Mac Deals and Snapheal…now’s you chance!
What’s Snapheal? It is a Mac app that acts as an image editor — letting you easily remove unwanted objects, fix skin imperfections, erase text and perform complex image edits in a matter of clicks…and seconds.
But let’s get the really good part….how do you win the new iPad? Well, you just need to follow these three simple steps to enter to win:
Finding apps is hard work. Seriously, folks, there are over 500,000 of them out there, each with their own iTunes page, ratings, and version history. It’s confusing, disheartening at times, and just plain difficult. There are several discovery apps out there, including the recently purchased Chomp and AppShopper. Today’s tip is about the discovery app that won the Best App Ever Award for Best App Bargain, the app that voters thought was worth way more than they paid for it.
One of my favorite jailbreak tweaks for the iPhone 4S (before I updated to iOS 5.1 and lost my jailbreak) was called Lingual, which enabled Siri to connect to Microsoft’s Bing Translate API and immediately translate words or phrases into a number of different languages.
Thanks to iTranslate Voice, you can now get the same functionality and more for any iPhone from the App Store. This excellent $0.99 app listens to you speak, then quickly translates your sentences into one of 31 languages. It’s super quick and incredibly accurate.
Gameloft has blown us away with its N.O.V.A. 3 teaser trailers over the past few weeks, and today one of the most anticipated iOS games so far this year makes its App Store debut. The series has always been up there with the best first-person shooters for iPhone and iPad, but this release promises to deliver a new benchmark for graphics and gameplay on iOS.
N.O.V.A. 3 could be the best $7 you’ve spent on mobile gaming to date.
Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom 4 can now be bought from the Mac App Store. The RAW photo editing app joins Adobe’s own Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, and is Adobe’s first full-featured flagship application to make it into the store.
Facebook just announced the App Center, a place for discovering and installing social apps/games that tie into Facebook’s developer platform. Apps offered in the App Center will be available on the web and mobile, including Android and iOS devices.
If you think Facebook is trying to take on Apple and Google’s storefronts directly, fret not. The App Center will be part of the official Facebook application and send mobile users to their respective storefronts, whether it be Apple’s App Store or Google Play.
Just hours after announcing its acquisition of Penultimate, Evernote has released an update to its iOS app that promises to deliver some major improvements to note taking on the iPhone. It has improved the way in which the app handles attachments and checkboxes, added support for Photo Stream, redesigned the audio recorder, and more.
PlayForge, the developers behind the popular undead farming sim Zombie Farm, have confirmed that a sequel will make its App Store debut within the coming weeks, bringing plenty of “changes and upgrades.” It’ll also let you transfer all of the progress you’ve already made in Zombie Farm — including your stock of brains — so that you can pick up right where you left off.
When Daniel Chase Hooper posted the concept for his simple text editing technique on the iPad, he most likely had no clue it would snowball into something so huge. After nearly every tech site on the internet posted the concept, a jailbreak tweak was made available a couple days later. Jailbroken iPad owners can use the editing techniques Hooper outlined right now (yes, they’re that good), and we’re hoping that Apple will add the functionality in a future version of iOS.
Now Hooper’s concept is making its way to the App Store in the form of an upcoming iPad app called SlideWriter.
Let’s hear that again. Apple is taking in 84 percent of all mobile gaming revenue in the US.
With all the fooferaw about how many more Android handsets are selling than iPhones, it’s easy to think that Apple may be on the way out. Not so, says a new report from NewZoo, a market research company in the gaming space.
Instacast, undoubtedly the best podcast manager for iOS, just got a whopping update that includes a long list of new features and improvements. In addition to a “revamped and improved” user interface, the update brings episode archiving, a sleep timer, a download manager, and lots, lots more.
Lego Harry Potter is finally back on iOS to play out his final years at Hogwarts, and he’s at the top of this week’s pick of must-have iOS games. Toothless from DreamWork’s How To Train Your Dragon also makes his App Store debut in a terrific physics-based puzzle game, and we’ve chosen one of the cutest adventure games you’ll ever play.
Facebook has updated its Facebook Messenger app in the App Store with several new features. You can now see when someone is replying to a message with a live typing indicator, much like iMessage in iOS. Read receipts will also reveal when a message has been read and by whom in a group message. Location information has also been added for showing where someone was when they sent a message from their Apple or Android smartphone.
After months and months of waiting, Spotify finally released its iPad app this week, and it does not disappoint. It features a terrific interface optimized for the iPad’s larger screen, plus plenty of other great features. There’s no wonder why it’s at the top of this week’s must-have iOS apps roundup.
Other picks include a great little app for controlling Bluetooth from your home screen, an impressive photography app from Polaroid, an innovative new web browser, and more.
An iTunes customer who was billed twice for the same song has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple after the Cupertino company refused to refund his money. Robert Herskowitz $2.58 for Adam Lambert’s pain-inducing pop song “Whataya Want From Me,” but he should have paid just $1.29.
He’s now taking Apple to court in an effort to make refunds easier for iTunes customers.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jNJOd3muQg
Although several rather bizarre rumors have claimed Apple will integrate a projector into a future iPhone, it seems a little unlikely — at least for many years. But thanks to PoP Video, you can add your own projector that displays 960 x 540 video for just $99.
Apple released a slew of iOS app updates today in the App Store. iMovie, iPhoto, Garageband, Cards and iTunes U were all updated with various improvements and bug fixes.
All of the updates can be downloaded for free and are available now.
The jailbreakers among you will undoubtedly already be familiar with DreamBoard, an awesome tweak that quickly applies custom themes to an iOS device. It’s probably the easiest way to give your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch a nice new look, and therefore it’s extremely popular.
One shameless iOS developer is attempting to cash in on that popularity by creating a DreamBoard knockoff that is now available in the App Store for $2.99.
Having already treated himself to the hugely popular photo-sharing service Instagram earlier this month, there’s talk that Mark Zuckerberg could now be eyeing up a potential takeover of Viddy, a service that is often described as “Instagram for videos.” It would be the perfect companion to Facebook’s latest purchase.