Traveling abroad, especially for the first time, can be overwhelming. From figuring out transit systems to finding places to say, there’s a lot to consider. That’s why over the past several years, I’ve come to rely on a handful of choice apps to help me travel better, smarter, and cheaper.
International or not, these are the travel apps for iPhone and iPad I never leave home without:
The weekend is short enough as it is, and Cult of Mac knows you don’t want to spend it searching through the App Store for the best apps you might have missed over the past week.
Whether you’re after wacky bread-related games for your iPhone, video chatting tools for your iPad, or or a nifty travel-related messaging service for your Apple Watch, we’ve dutifully combed through the best offerings of the past 7 days to find something for everyone.
Check below to see our picks:
When Airbnb set out to design an app for the Apple Watch, its team did so like a master woodcarver. Whittle away until you leave what is essential.
The popular community hospitality network launched a watch app today that provides a simple messaging hub for hosts and guests. Travelers can send a host a message with name, photo and requested dates. A host can accept or decline right on the wrist and respond to messages, either through dictation or a preset response.
As part of Time’s 100 Most Influential People, Jony Ive penned a short essay praising Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky for creating a “remarkable startup.”
“The service that Brian and his partners imagined is soaringly ambitious and utterly practical,” said Ive, who didn’t make Time’s list himself this year.
Airbnb has revolutionized the way we travel by allowing people to rent rooms on the fly in 190 countries around the world. Now that President Barack Obama is finally opening U.S. relations with Cuba, Airbnb is taking over Havana and other cities in the communist island nation.
The DIY rental service says it already has more than 1,000 listings available in Cuba. You have to be a U.S. citizen to stay at the Airbnb rooms, but you could score an awesome retro-chic rental for super-cheap.
Cast your eyes on a few of the glorious places you can rent.
Airbnb is poised to completely disrupt the hotel industry, and today’s rebranding of the startup makes it even more obvious.
Like Uber and TaskRabbit, Airbnb is all about using technology to make a seamless experience in the real world. You can look up a place to stay in the iPhone app, communicate with the owner, and book it without ever having to be put on hold or wait in line at a front desk.
With a redesigned interface focused on simplicity and discoverability, Airbnb is making it easier to find places to stay. But sadly all of that is being ignored because of how ridiculous that new logo looks.
Thanks to your iPhone you can couch surf, catch a ride downtown, find a date or maybe even source a freebie for dinner.
The sharing economy has gone mainstream, filling our smartphones with apps that run counter to your mother’s admonitions. You know, those common sense “Stranger Danger” rules we’ve all had drilled into our heads about talking to strangers, letting them in our houses or accepting stuff from them.
But it’s one thing to talk about these apps and another to actually use them.
So we did. Cult of Mac staffers jumped into cars with strangers, let them stay in our houses, took random jobs and put out free treats for the taking. The results were, uh, mixed.
Let us know in the comments what your experience has been!
In a little over two weeks, a ton of people will make the trek to Austin, Texas for the annual South By Southwest conference. Commonly known as SXSW, many people have made the pilgrimage to the event year in and year out…and 2014 will be no different.
Whether you’re planning on returning to SXSW again this year or are making the trip for the first time. Cult of Mac Deals has assembled a survival kit that will help you take advantage of every opportunity this massive event has to offer. The South By Southwest Tech Survival Kit consists of The Karma 4G Hotspot and The Portable Power Bank – regularly priced at $159 — for only $99.95 during this limited time promotion.
Spinlister is like Airbnb for bikes. Instead of renting some piece-of-junk city bike for exorbitant rates while you’re on a city vacation, you can instead rent a hipstermobile from a private individual. For—it seems—equally exorbitant rates. And you can of course make some extra cash in your home town renting out your own spare steed.
Apple has today announced that the App Store has surpassed a whopping 40 billion downloads, with almost 20 million seen in 2012 alone. A record-breaking December, helped by another successful Christmas, boosted this year’s figures, with more than two billion downloads during the month.
