It’s the weekend, which means (we hope) taking a day off from the usual grind to relax, mow your lawn, have a lie-in, and check out the hottest apps to hit the App Store over the past seven days.
And, man, have we got some good picks this week — from Apple Watch email clients to excellent comedic weather apps!
Check them out below:
CARROT Weather
Photo: George Tinari/Cult of Mac
We’ve long been fans of CARROT apps — featuring everyone’s favorite sarcastic AI taskmaster — here at Cult of Mac.
Having previously been available only on iOS, CARROT Weather launched in the Mac App Store this week — giving you short-term, hourly and 10-day forecasts for your desktop or laptop, complete with CARROT’s usual dose of hilarity. Forecasts are courtesy of the Forecast.io API (the same folks who created Dark Sky), so you don’t have to worry about accuracy.
But, really, who can hate any weather app which warns about tornados by showing you flying sharks?
Cost: $9.99
Available for: Mac
Available from: Mac App Store
WhatsApp Messanger
Photo: WhatsApp
WhatsApp certainly isn’t a new app, but it got a pretty sizeable update this week — adding the ability for custom notifications, easier photo-editing and contact-sharing, the inclusion of videos in chat backups, swiping to mark chats as read or unread, etc.
If you somehow haven’t gotten around to trying WhatsApp, it’s definitely worth a go if you chat a lot with friends and family. The newfound ability to personalize the app more than ever is just the icing on the cake in terms of improving an already great service.
Cost: Free
Available for: iPhone, iPad
Available from: App Store
Outlook for Apple Watch
Photo: Microsoft
Emails have so far been of limited use on Apple Watch, largely because of the impossibility of responding to messages using Apple’s native Mail app.
Thankfully Microsoft has an answer with its Outlook Watch app, which allows not only for you to catch up on unread emails on your Watch, but also to reply directly using voice dictation, along with a range of pre-written replies. Sadly, you can’t customize these responses, but it’s still a vast improvement on existing Watch email apps which, basically, direct you to pick up another device if you need to respond to a message.
There’s also the ability to see what’s next on your calendar by swiping, and a custom notification system for letting you know about the crucial messages you receive.
Cost: Free
Available for: iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch
Available from: App Store
Spider: Rite Of The Shrouded Moon
A game where you control a spider as it explores the grounds of a mansion, spinning webs as you go to capture insects, doesn’t sound like it’s got the makings of a great game — let alone one of our picks for Game of the Year so far in 2015.
In fact, this superb title is the long-awaited sequel to Spider: Secret Of Bryce Manor, one of the early App Store hits, which remains a total gem. Not only does this follow-up look gorgeous and play like a dream, but it includes some truly innovative ideas — like keeping track of your local weather and time to vary up several aspects of gameplay.
Highly, highly recommended.
Cost: $4.99
Available for: iPhone, iPad
Available from: App Store
MMX Racing Featuring WWE
I’ll admit it: I’m a pro wrestling fan. Something about the wacky lunacy, larger-than-life characters, and “pyro and ballyhoo” of WWE has always done it for me. You know what else goes well with American-style professional wrasslin’? Monster trucks, of course.
MMX Racing Featuring WWE is, basically, a marketing crossover in which WWE-inspired trucks get to participate in monster truck drag races. It’s loud, dumb, and a whole lot of fun. And compared to some of the weirder crossovers we’ve seen on mobile, it makes a lot of sense. Personally, I can’t think of a better way to recover from a late Saturday night.
Cost: Free
Available for: iPhone, iPad
Available from: App Store
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
6 responses to “Monster trucks, Apple Watch email, and other awesome apps of the week”
I wish I could use the Outlook app. Gmail iPhone app as been stuck in time for a long while. But, since Outlook doesnt fetch contacts from my gmail contacts, only from my phone contacts, I cannot switch. I hope Gmail will get an update and an Apple Watch feature soon.
Apple is dying, old expensive and out of touch. Missed the cloud..big mistake.
Dream on
Figured I might get that response on an Apple site…look around the world has passed up Apple and all they are doing is trying to be a protectionist organization. No innovation, no new products just bunch of dud attempts lining up and their users drying up. End fd the myth of $200 iPhone makes all new users question the value of a $650-1000 phone which happens to be Apples only viable product that all other ancillary products rely on
The musings of the ignorant. I’ll simply say that Apple is the most valued company on Earth. ‘Nuf said.
And how did they get that way.
Hint OVERCHARGING and creating the subsidy hidden pricing..all going the way of the dodo bird, Time to pay the piper for the deceit, they will not be missed