apps - page 82

We’re giving away a very sophisticated bundle of apps this week. We’ll start out in the study, browsing through and listening to the Classics. Then we might dabble in a little alchemy with the flaming Professor Helsing! We’ll pick 5 random winners to win 4 great apps and if you want a chance to get your hands on some these iPhone apps this week, then follow the instructions carefully below:

1. Like us on Facebook AND Like Appular (you have to do this to complete step 2)
2. Tag us both in your status : “Cult of Mac and Appular are throwing one classy iPhone App Giveaway!”
3. Your status tag will be your entry into the giveaway, only ONE entry is allowed per person, and the giveaway will last until 11:59pm tonight. We’ll contact the winners on Tuesday or Wednesday about how to get the codes!
4. Optional step – Tell us what you think about these apps if you own them already in the comments section.

Special Thanks to Appular for helping us put together these app code giveaways! If you’ve got a mobile app that you’d like marketed effectively, contact the good folks at Appular!

Here’s a look at the apps we’re giving away:

More and more, the publication of Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines is starting to seem like it might be a promise of the end of arbitrary app rejection. Following the surprise about course by Apple when it comes to allowing Google Voice apps on the App Store, it now appears that they’ve also rescinded their long-standing ban on App Store ringtone makers.

Pretty much since the App Store’s inception, applications that allowed users to make ringtones from the songs on their iPhone have been verboten. Exactly “why” has always been up for debate: although Apple did sell ringtones through iTunes, they clearly didn’t mind users rolling their own, as evidenced by GarageBand’s Export Ringtone feature. Whatever the reason, though, it was plenty hard to sneak a ringtone maker by Apple up until recently. Since the publication of Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines, though, no less than five ringtone makers have gone live on iTunes… seemingly ending the arbitrary blacklisting.

If you’ve ever wondered what killed off AT&T’s unlimited bandwidth plans, look no further than the App Store.

The study was performed by Finnish analytics company Zokem, which analyzed the mobile web usage of over 10,000 smartphone users across 6.5 million sessions in sixteen countries over the past year.

What Zokem found was that while a smartphone’s mobile browser — Safari, in the case of the iPhone — is still the biggest bandwidth hog on most smartphones, apps are now taking up 50% of mobile data volume. Predictably, the most popular apps across all smartphones are Facebook and Twitter.

Keep in mind that this study was not aimed at any particular platform, so iPhone users were lumped in with Android, Palm and Windows Mobile customers as well. Given how well-developed the iPhone’s App Store is compared to its competitors equivalent marketplaces, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if iOS device users use up an even larger percentage of mobile data through apps. At the end of the day, though, the disparity between app and browser usage is only going to get more profound as more media — and perhaps iTunes itself — enters the cloud.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2I-jCY4N9I&feature=player_embedded

The Parallels Desktop
has been updated to version six today, bringing over eighty new features to the Windows virtualization program, including enhanced performance and vastly improved 3D graphics rendering speeds…. but maybe it’s neatest trick is finally letting you run Windows 7 on your iOS device.

Well, kind of. Parallels isn’t actually virtualizing Windows on your iPhone or iPad. Rather, the Parallels Mobile App is basically a VNC, allowing you to seamlessly connect and control your Parallels Windows install from any network-connected iOS device. Fair warning, though: things get a bit cramped trying to drive Windows from your iPhone.

Parallels Mobile is a free download from the App Store, while Parallels Desktop 6 costs $80, or $50 if you already own version 5.

This weeks must-have iOS apps include Nike’s latest to help you track your run stats, professional HTML emails on your iPhone with MarkdownMail, quick and easy invoice creation for your business, and AppShopper’s new app that helps you keep track of the App Store.

Check out a few of our favorite apps from the past week after the break!

Last year, Apple pulled Google Voice’s official application from the App Store without either ceremony or explanation. The move always seemed pretty suspect, and intended more to protect the interests of AT&T than iOS users, but it seems that there is good news on the horizon: Google Voice is likely heading back to the App Store.

According to the developer of the third-party Google Voice application GV Mobile, he emailed Apple’s approval board after the release of yesterday’s App Store guidelines, pointing out there seemed to be no provision at all explaining a Google Voice ban, and asking what the chances were of getting his app reinstated. Apparently, the response was encouraging, and Kovacs was led to believe that if he resubmitted his app, it would likely be improved.

On Google’s part, they say they have nothing to announce at this time, but if third–party Google Voice applications start getting approved again, it’s very likely the official app will soon possible. Let’s hope that Kovac’s exchange wasn’t a fluke and Apple has come around on its senseless ban against Voice once and for all.

The popular open-source media player VLC is headed to an iPad near you thanks to App Store developer Applidium… and while it’s currently waiting for approval, there’s every indication that this time, Apple will let it through.

That wouldn’t have been the case a few months ago: Apple had tended to reject media playing apps from the App Store for “duplicating functionality.” This was an extraordinary headache for individuals who wanted to watch media on their iOS devices without first undergoing the cumbersome conversion process to QuickTime compatible MP4.

Recently, though, that’s started to change, with Apple approving more universal media-playing apps like OPlayer and CineXPlayer. If the new VLC is subject to the same standards, it should have no problem getting through the approval process.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed that it does. VLC has long obviated QuickTime on my Mac. I’m ready to let it do the same for my iPad as well.

Twitter for iPhone — née Tweetie — is a wonderful first-party client with almost any functionality you could care to name, but one area in which it loses to some of its competitors is in its lack of support for push notifications.

No worries, though, because along with yesterday’s triumphant debut of Twitter for iPad, the iOS team are also working on integrating push for iOS 4.1.

Says Twitter:

We’ve been testing push notifications internally. When we launched Twitter for iPad, there was a configuration error that caused us to offer push messages to a small set of users. We’ve stopped sending push messages, but users may see an option to turn on push until we release an updated version of the app. So, push isn’t ready yet but we look forward to rolling this out soon.

As Twitter notes, you may be able to turn push notification on under settings even if you aren’t on iOS 4.1 Gold Master, although we’ve heard reports that it may require uninstalling and reinstalling the app to get working.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, push notification service Boxcar — which does a healthy bit of business in the tweet pushing market — has just gone free for all Twitter notifications.

The lack of an official, native version of the Twitter client for the iPad has been a puzzling omission, but now the big blue bird has set things right, having pushed their native iPad app to iTunes.

I haven’t had a chance to play with it, but it seems that a big part of the native client’s delay was because Twitter had big ideas for the app, grafting a truly unique (and, perhaps, a bit quirky) interface on top.

Gizmodo’s Matt Buchanan explains the new interface:

The interface starts out straightforward, like a simple cross between the Tweetie for Mac and the iPhone app. But Twitter for iPad is actually a bit more complicated than it lets on—it’s the most complex of the three. Rather than sticking with the iPad’s standard split-pane views, like in Mail, Twitter is kind of like its own desktop environment, with overlapping, stacked panes that move from left to right. So, on the far left, you’ve got the main control panel, like Tweetie for Mac, which is the bottom pane. To the right of that, and on top of it, you’ve got the tweet list—either the main feed, mentions or direct messages. Whenever you touch on a tweet, a third pane opens to the right, on top of the other two. If there’s a link in the tweet, it’ll open the browser. If not, it’ll open that person’s somebody’s profile. (And if you type a direct message, that’s layered on top of everything else via a popover, for four total layers.) You can switch back to the main tweet list or control pane by touching it, and it’ll load browser pages in the background while you browse through other tweets. It can get cluttered quickly if you’re opening sub-menus and other things—at the same time, it gives you a lot of flexibility.

Buchanan ultimately finds the new interface bold, but quirky, but Techcrunch’s MC Siegler declares it a triumph, announcing that it completely and totally obviates not only any other Twitter app out there, but Twitter’s own website. Then again, I thought pretty much any Twitter client had killed the need to visit Twitter.com over a year ago.

Twitter for iPad is a free download, and it’s available now on iTunes

Popular multi-IM and voice-chat service Fring has just been updated to bring 2-way video calling on iPhone 4 over 3G (Apple’s FaceTime is Wi-Fi only), as well as voice and text chat.

We’ve tested it out; while it has a few minor issues, Fring has freed videochat from Wi-Fi. If you like to videochat on your new iPhone 4, it’s a must-have app.

Apple has set up the most astounding wall we’ve ever seen. It is filled with 30 24-inch Apple Cinema displays that are synchronized and powered by 30 Apple Mac Pro workstations is a Matrix movie like waterfall that displays the top 50,000 apps in the iTunes App Store.

Fruit Ninja is a super fun game from Australian developers Halfbrick Studios that is impossible to put down!

Fruit Ninja incorporates the speed and simplicity of games like Doodle Jump with an innovative control method that makes the game addictive. I love this game. The graphics look like crap but the game proves the old adage — gameplay is king!

After Style.com, which is reporting over one million ads served via iPhone in a month, companies are launching iPhone fashion apps faster than a pop singer can add extensions.

A few that caught our eye:

E! Entertainment channel. Yes, this means the Fashion Police have made it to your iPhone. More for ogling those red-carpet horrors than reading, though, since scrolling is required for catty comments.

Perez Hilton. Love him or hate him, now you can get the snark and gratuitous photos on your commute.

Ralph Lauren, who began his career as Ralph Lipschitz, tie designer is now putting his latest runway creations, plus backstage clips and a look book on the must-have accessory of the iPhone.

The next time you’re stuck in traffic, start stumping for Obama.
That’s the idea behind the Obama for America iPhone app, free for download on iTunes.
It organizes your contacts “by key battleground states” and keeps an anonymous record of your virtual campaign trail. And if you haven’t got a move on yet, it’ll tell you where the nearest Democratic headquarters are and keep you updated on local events.

While it seems a little full-on for the armchair activist, kudos to iPhone dev’er Raven Zachary for the idea.

Via Cnet

iBeer is a virtual pint for the iPhone and iPod Touch that is supposed to behave like a real pint of delicious bubbly beer, according to the developers.

Thanks to the iPhone’s accelerometers, it tips, pours and drains like a real pint. It even foams up when you shake the iPhone.

However, the $3 app is getting mixed reviews on the iTunes App Store. Some love it, but many say the fun lasts for about 30 seconds.

“For $3, I can get a real beer,” says one.

Here it is in action on YouTube: