Apple has named BANDAI NAMCO's 'PAC-MAN Friends' its app of the week for this week. This means that from now through next Thursday, you'll be able to pick up the title for free in the App Store—a significant discount off its normal $4 price tag.
PAC-MAN Friends is exactly what it appears to be—a modern twist on an arcade classic. Using simple tilt controls, players are tasked with maneuvering PAC-MAN through progressively challenging mazes to rescue his friends from the Ghosts' Castle.
Yes. No. YES!
These three words sum up the situation of PCalc, a powerful calculator app that features a Notification Center widget, whose developer was asked by Apple yesterday to remove as it apparently wasn't in line with App Store rules.
Today, it appears that Apple has changed its mind (again), as TechCrunch reports that they've been "hearing that Apple is changing its course. The PCalc app and widget will remain in the App Store, and all calculator-type widgets will be allowed as well, an Apple spokesperson has confirmed to us."
So what gives?
Spotify, the leading music-streaming service hailing from Sweden, gave its iPad app on Thursday a little love. For starters, the team has crafted Skype for iPad's user interface around an all-new dark look.
As a result, Spotify at last has consistent appearance on the iPad, iPhone and Mac — down to the same dark theme, precise typography and rounded iconography.
Moreover, the Your Music feature which debuted in the iPhone edition in April 2014 is now available on the iPad, too. Representing a better way to save, organize and browse your favorite songs, Your Music is a replacement to user-generated playlists. With Your Music, you can add tracks which sync across every device, without having to create playlists or use the starring feature that lumps all starred songs into a huge list.
Download Spotify free of charge in the App Store.
After updating Skype for Mac with Yosemite support earlier this morning, Microsoft on Thursday issued a new Skype for iPhone refresh. Now sitting at version 5.7, the app finally makes it easy to save and delete images from chats.
People who roam between devices and platforms will notice that chat avatars now stay in perfect sync when picking up on one device where they left on another.
You should also notice faster performance, especially when opening chats from a notification, and improvements to Skype's contact filters such as All Contacts, Skype and Online.
Skype for iPhone is available free in the App Store.
The game development team at One Man Left is known for creating fast-pasted, action-packed arcade style games. You may be familiar with their previous titles, Tilt to Live and Tilt to Live 2: Redonkulous. Well, they are back with a new game for your cramped fingers to try out.
Tilt to Live: Gauntlet’s Revenge is the third installment in the series and is proving to be, if you can believe it, the hardest of them all. We’ve got a hands-on game review of Gauntlet’s Revenge for you today.
Flipboard today released version 3.0 of its iOS client, and as you can imagine, it's a significant update. The design of the app has been refreshed, and is now more magazine-like and elegant, complete with fresh typography and a new navigation bar for easier browsing.
Additionally, Flipboard has introduced a new 'Topics' feature, which is powered by Zite's technology and Flipboard's own curators. There are over 30,000 topics to follow, each featuring content by top publishers and websites, that can be both searched and explored.
There is a handful of interesting games that involve production and duplication of cell-like organisms. Games like Osmos provide a relaxing arcade game that requires you to be ready to attack anything smaller than you, but lets you drift through life in a tranquil environment as well.
Felllice (yes, with three Ls) is similar to the cell generation game genre, but features a stark black-and-white minimalist design. Collide with cells that are smaller than yours to grow big and earn achievements.
Microsoft has outed its upcoming 'Band' wearable in what appears to be the premature release of multiple applications. This evening, 'Microsoft Health' landed in iPhone, Android and Windows stores, and a Microsoft Band Sync client popped up in the Mac App Store.
It's unknown at this time if the releases were unintentional, or part of a cheeky PR stunt, but it's likely the former, given the scope of the apps. Microsoft has long been rumored to be working on a cross-platform wearable, and recent reports say it's preparing for launch.
The perspective path puzzle game has certainly been a hit on iOS. For example, earlier this year, Monument Valley turned heads for its visually striking graphics and complex puzzles.
Miika could be called a simpler, cutesier perspective puzzle game in the same vein as Monument Valley. Players must rotate the screen around in order to reveal the right path to take in order to get to the end of the line. We’ve got a full game review of Miika for you today.
Google on Wednesday announced an update to its mobile Wallet application for the iPhone which now includes handy low balance alerts and another feature allowing users to set up recurring bank transfer in order to ensure there's always money to spend in their Wallet.
The refreshed application did not receive support for the bigger iPhone screens and will be going live in the App Store later today.
Google Wallet is available free of charge.
Omnistat is a new app available in the App Store that provides a quick glance at some basic stats of your iOS device from within the app itself, or from Notification Center via a Today tab widget. If the name sounds familiar, it's because Omnistat used to be a jailbreak tweak back in the days of iOS 5. The tweak has now matured into a legit application that is simply yet elegantly designed to show various statistics about your device such as CPU usage, running processes and more.
Pandora and Spotify rank as the number one and number two music streaming apps in terms of downloads, analytics firm AppAnnie reports - no big surprise. However, where things become interesting is that Apple's Beats Music, which the company purchased for $3 billion in May, is placed ninth, below iHeartRadio, SoundCloud and Apple's GarageBand.