iPhone apps - page 10

Light paintings are a fun technique, dating back to the 19th century and used by luminaries such as Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol. By waving a light source, like a flashlight, in front of a camera set for a long exposure, you can seemingly create static paintings of light in mid air.

Your iPhone is both a camera and a flashlight, but you usually need two of them to make a light painting. Now a new web app called Air Pencil is set to change that, allowing you to create incredible three-dimensional light paintings, no external camera required.

Harvard classmates Lei Guo and Oliver Hayen created what could have been just another messaging app. They knew they had something unique, as every app development team claims, so they put it in the hands of 2,000 people and hit launch.

Within 30 days, their app SOMA Messenger had 10 million users and has been growing since. They’d love to brag about who is using it, except they can’t because of security measures built into the app that prevents even them from knowing SOMA’s users.

Microsoft released a completely revamped Bing app for iPhone today with a redesigned home page and a much larger emphasis on instant answers to search queries. Finding what you’re looking for now takes much less time.  It’s possible that this release is a stepping stone to the iOS debut of Cortana, Microsoft’s answer to Google Now.

The next stage of Apple Maps’ Transit roll-out is live today. The latest update includes public transportation in Boston and, more interestingly, select Amtrak train routes in the northeastern U.S.

OK, well it’s all pretty interesting. But, you know. Trains.

Stress is making our heads a scattered mess and among some of the many suggested remedies is forcing ourselves to unplug from our devices. But one idea actually assigns meditative properties to our iPhones.

A new app simply called Pause use interactive graphics and soothing sounds to concentrate the mind on the present with the goal of providing relaxation and renewed focus. The app invites the user to place a finger on a slowly pulsating splotch of color and follow it as it moves slowly on screen, rewarding you with pleasant sounds, like chirping birds.

The app that Chipgate made famous is returning to the App Store after a brief hiatus.

Developer Lirum Labs has told Cult of Mac that its diagnostic tool, that can tell people which A9 processor their iPhone 6s contains, is back by popular demand.

If you’ve braved a line (or just waited impatiently for your mail or a delivery from your local courier) and finally have your hands on an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus of your very own, you may be wondering what do do with your new precious. Sure, you could call all your friends and tell them you’re speaking to them through your shiny new gadget, like I did with my Apple Watch.

And I’m here to tell you that everyone loves that.

But you’re probably looking for some cool apps to play around with, and it may be hard to know where to start — especially if this is your first iPhone. So here are a bunch of apps that should be at the top of your list.

You’ve got the perfect photo lined in your sites and so you push the button on your iPhone camera. Instead of a memory etched in pixels, you get a message saying “Cannot take photo. There’s not enough storage.”

An iOS app called IceCream lets you quickly free up space without deleting photos, instead saving them to a secure cloud server with the tap of a button.

We’re not quite through 2015 yet, so app developers still have time to make the prophecies foretold by director Robert Zemeckis’ documentary Back to the Future: Part II come true. And to that end, The Weather Network’s latest app update uses radar and algorithms to predict when, exactly, it is going to start and stop raining.

The new feature, appropriately called “Rain Start Stop,” claims to give you a few hours to finalize the details on your outdoor activities.

Look, we know you’ve taken your iPhone into the bathroom with you for number two. Everyone has. That doesn’t mean you should tell people about it. But a new app, charmingly called Pooductive, is for just that. It’s dedicated to facilitating meaningful, anonymous conversation on the toilet about… you can guess the topic.

Dust off your father’s Miami Vice suit and start growing a mullet. (Get it permed in back, too.) A new app turns your iPhone’s camera into a 1985-style VHS camcorder, complete with terrible quality and a date stamp.

Your iPhone can help you find a good brunch place, with reviews on Yelp that indicate a restaurant’s best dishes. But there really isn’t any real-time help, except maybe calling or taking your chances and just showing up, to find out if you and your friends can get a table at a local hot spot.

A company called Density has developed a door-frame sensor that monitors the coming and going of people and then reports to an iPhone app whether your favorite place is full. It collects data on people’s movement at various hours of the day and recommends windows of time when you can get right in.

Are you tired of your Instagram feed being low on sponsored posts from companies trying to sell you things? If so, here comes the best news you’ve ever heard.

The company has opened up its advertising code to make it easier than ever for partners to get ads all up in the Facebook-owned photo-sharing app.

The Apple Watch has been out for a few months now, and it’s given us plenty of time to decide what we do and don’t want from the wearable. It’s a versatile device, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean that we expect it to do everything for us. In fact, a lot of the apps that we use all the time on our iPhones and iPads would be ill-suited, if not impossible for that plucky little screen.

Here are some Apple Watch apps that wouldn’t break our hearts if nobody ever got around to making them.

Not long after debuting to a pretty successful launch, Filters for iPhone is up for sale. Developer Mike Rundle explains that he has a full-time job plus children to feed and his little side project of love deserves more attention than he can give. His asking price? $10,000.

If you’re like me, you spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to pick out the perfect weather app for your iPhone. Apple’s Weather app just doesn’t cut it and it’s very hard to find something that has a little bit of every detail without being cluttered or downright ugly. That happy medium for me is Carrot Weather but unfortunately it’s been crashing on the iOS 9 developer beta. In its place I’ve been testing Radar Cast, a slightly unusual weather app that attempts to deliver all the most crucial information to your iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.

How big a fan of Hellboy are you?

If you answered, “Such a big fan that I wish ‘Hellboy’ were a language I could speak all the time — if only someone would make a keyboard to that effect,” you’re in luck because custom keyboard designer Swype has teamed up with publisher Dark Horse Comics to bring both Red and samurai rabbit Usagi Yojimbo to your iMessages.

If you’re afraid of ever being in a dangerous situation without any witnesses or good samaritans nearby, you might want to consider downloading this new app appropriately named Witness. Calling itself the ‘panic button for the smartphone age,’ one tap broadcasts live video and your current location to a list of preset emergency contacts, who can then decide if it’s appropriate to take action.

Of course, if they do nothing, they could potentially have front-row seats to a very morbid and disturbing show.

You know that feature when you order online from Domino’s that keeps you posted on the process of your order and even tells you which employee has put your pizza in the oven, and who just left the store to bring it to you?

I love that feature, for some reason. I don’t think it makes me some kind of creepy pizza stalker, if that’s even a thing.

But my main issue is that I had to keep my laptop open to stay on top of the whole process. Luckily, however, Domino’s has addressed that one, strangely specific gripe with the latest update to its mobile app.

Smug Californians now have proof they’re better than you.

A couple of the most popular fitness apps in the App Store have pooled their data to figure out which U.S. states have the best (and worst) health habits. They examined a combination of workout and nutritional info among their users and concluded that the Golden State has the best habits, and Wyoming has a lot of work to do.

I typically look for two things in a hotel room: Internet included with the room and free breakfast. But a new hotel in London’s Covent Gardens might have me adding some things to that list.

The recently opened Hub hotel from Premier Inn, the U.K.’s largest lodging chain, sports some pretty impressive tech features that involve both smartphones and wearables like the Apple Watch. And while your hotel room shouldn’t be the coolest part of any trip, Premier is really giving the rest of your vacation something to live up to.

We’ve had a couple days to check out Apple Music, Apple’s song-streaming platform that launched Tuesday. It comes loaded with 30 million songs that you can listen to on demand with a quick search or a request to Siri.

But all that choice and tech power may come at a price, as some users are reporting that the new Music app is killing their iPhone’s battery life.

Apple Music is the latest way to stream a ridiculous number of tunes on demand. And with all that variety, you’re going to get some cursing in there. It’s just how a lot of musicians work.

But if you don’t want to hear all of those bleepables and swears, it’s a pretty quick fix to keep it from showing up in your stream. Here’s how to do it.

The latest update to Facebook’s Messenger app will let you use it even if you don’t have (or want) an account for the social-media platform.

It’s still Facebook, though, so you’re going to have to cough up some personal info.