App Store Apps

Gameloft’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier is Apple’s new Free App of the Week

Every Thursday, Apple features another app or game as the App Store's Free App of the Week. This time around, Apple's editorial team has chosen Gameloft's Captain America: The Winter Soldier game for the iPhone and iPad, regularly a $2.99 value.

Released three months ago, this movie tie-in has you playing as Captain America who must lead his S.H.I.E.L.D. Strike Team as they struggle to contain a massive attack on the World by several nefarious crime organizations.

The game boasts interestingly cartoonish artwork style and doesn't disappoint in terms of pure action: there are plentiful combos to master though it's not all about fighting either as you'll need to use your tactical skills to combat threats and lead your Strike Team wisely...

SoundCloud for iPhone receives stunning facelift, removes Record feature

Berlin-based SoundCloud is a popular service to upload, record, promote and share originally-created sounds and they've long had a decent iOS app on the App Store. Today, the company has issued a major iPhone-focused redesign that focuses on much simplified one-thumb navigation through the use of gestures to seek and skip tracks.

The new SoundCloud for iPhone version 3.0 also brings the ability to open another user’s profile straight from a track or playlist and includes other enhancements, detailed after the break...

The Weather Channel gives its iPad app iOS 7 love

The Weather Channel's nice iPhone app was updated two months ago with substantial design changes and much-needed iOS 7 styling. Today, it's the iPad app's turn to get some way overdue iOS 7 love.

Now available in the App Store, the new Weather Channel for iPad version 4.0 is now closely aligned to the iOS 7 aesthetic and it shows: from precise typography and flat UI elements to the use of translucency and complete lack of ornamentation to the gorgeous background photos that match your current weather conditions and more...

Audibly lets you play your music in sync across multiple iOS devices

Whenever I go camping, if I’ve forgotten to grab a wireless speaker, I have trouble getting the music from my iPhone loud enough to be heard over the roar of the fire. I’ve figured out a way to create a bigger sound by resting my device inside a metal bowl, but it is still fairly quiet.

Audibly lets you connect multiple iPhones together to create a stereo-like experience. Broadcast music from one iPhone and the others will pick it up and play it as well. Talk about DIY surround sound…

Yahoo app finally runs natively on iPad

Yahoo's main iOS client is great. Not only does it double as a portal to Yahoo's key mobile apps and services, it's basically a handy one-stop shop for copious amounts of curated and original news content summarized by Yahoo.

With articles available across twelve distinct categories - News, Business, Celebrities, Entertainment, Finance, Health, Media, Politics, Science, Society, Sports and Technology - it's easy to get accustomed to firing up the app on mornings and skim through headlines before getting out of bed.

I generally tend to avoid reading news on the iPhone's tiny screen whenever possible so you could imagine I'm really glad that Yahoo's software has finally leaped onto the iPad...

Microsoft updates OneDrive with camera backups in the background and more

The free OneDrive app for the iPhone and iPad (formerly SkyDrive) has just gotten a lot better with features like photo backups in the background and other perks that allow you to do more from your phone.

And thanks to proper support for Microsoft's mobile Office apps, getting your photos and videos into OneDrive to import them into your Office projects on the iPhone and iPad is a trivial affair now.

That's the gist of a blog post Microsoft somewhat hastily put together today to counter a Google Drive app update and a plethora of announcements that have been coming out of Google I/O since this morning...

Slides app arriving to iOS in the coming weeks, says Google

Back in April, Google finally decided to release standalone Docs and Sheets apps for the iPhone and iPad, the former a text editor and the latter a spreadsheet app.

But Google's mobile productivity efforts are comprised of a trio of apps - Docs, Sheets and Slides, a presentation software. Today at Google I/O, the search company has rounded out the trio with a new Slides for Android app that will be available on iOS "in the coming weeks"...

Google Drive for iOS updated with activity stream, incoming view, faster uploading and more

The official Google Drive app for iPhone and iPad has been updated to version 3.1 with several added features. An all-new incoming view displays files that have been shared with you as they arrive, alongside an activity stream for viewing changes to files and folders made by you and others from the details panel. We've recapped some of the other changes and have the official release notes after the break… 

Facebook’s Snapchat lookalike Slingshot now available worldwide

After launching in the United States last week, Facebook's new Snapchat competitor Slingshot is now available for international users. I can confirm that the app is available in the Canadian version of the App Store, and it appears to be available in most other countries as well. If you haven't downloaded Slingshot yet, the app is free on the App Store for iPhone… 

App Recap: check out these 7 apps for iOS

After a trio of massive sales on the App Store last week, things have quieted down quite a bit on the storefront. We've still gone ahead and hand-picked the best new, updated and discounted apps for iPhone and iPad in this edition of App Recap. There are 7 apps to check out, including updates to four popular apps and discounts on two award-winning games. Take a look at the complete list ahead… 

Console-grade Hellraid: The Escape powered by Unreal Engine 3 hitting iOS on July 10

If I had a nickel every time a developer pitched their iOS game with the overused "console style graphics" phrase, I would be filthy rich by now.

Yet in the case of Hellraid: The Escape, an upcoming action role-playing game (RPG) from Techland and Shortbreak Studios, the catch phrase rings true.

Indeed, the forthcoming iPhone and iPad title does seem to "push the boundaries of quality gaming on mobile devices even further."

Originally slated for release in June, the game has been pushed back to July as developers needed more time to work out the kinks and polish up the game's visuals.

If an announcement trailer included after the break is anything to go by, it should be well worth the wait...

Mailbox updated with Auto-swipe improvements

Dropbox-owned Mailbox has introduced Auto-swipe two and a half months ago with much fanfare. The feature has been designed to learn from your usage patterns, so that the app could help you save time by automating email management to a certain degree.

You Auto-swipe settings are kept in sync across devices thanks to Dropbox integration and now the team is building on top of that with additional improvements.

Now bumped to version 2.0.3, Mailbox includes several enhancements to the Auto-swipe feature, including a quicker way of creating Auto-swipe patterns, Auto-swipe suggestions in email view and more...