App Store Apps

Beats launches ‘Music’ streaming service for $10 a month, iPhone app now available

Cody Lee ∙ Updated March 14, 2018

As promised, Beats launched its highly anticipated 'Music' service this morning, bringing the headphone-maker into the highly competitive world of streaming audio. And with a library of around 20 million songs available for on-demand play, it's certainly built to take on the competition.

But Beats is taking a different approach to its subscription service. Unlike your Rdios and your Spotifys, it doesn't offer a free ad-supported model and the company is putting a lot of focus on its custom radio stations and playlists that it says were curated by some of the best DJs in the world...

Google Schemer is no more, download your data until February 7

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 24, 2017

Another Google service has bitten the dust as the Internet giant is set to shut down the activity recommendation app Schemer come February 7, 2014. The Next Web first noted earlier in the month that Schemer would be laid to rest in the Google graveyard.

A few days later, a Google post has confirmed the news. This past weekend, the search giant has removed the Schemer app from the App Store and has issued an email notice to Schemer customers informing them to download their data until February 7, 2014...

VLC’s iOS 7 makeover: now with Google Drive integration, Dropbox streaming and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 20, 2014

The popular cross-platform desktop media player, VLC by VideoLan, has finally received its iOS 7 makeover in Monday's version 2.2 update. Launching later today in the App Store, VLC for iOS 2.2 includes a number of new features and refinements, and a long list of bug fixes.

Perhaps most notably, you can now stream media stored in your Google Drive and Dropbox. As you'd expect from any iOS 7 app refresh, there are some new multitouch gestures for easier navigation.

VLC has always had a very robust support for non-iOS friendly audio and video file types and today's update is no exception: matter of fact, VLC 2.2 expands on that with support for some new streaming formats and protocols...

60Hz gets bumped to 3.0, arguably the best TV show tracker for the iPhone and iPad

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 23, 2018

60Hz is one of those apps that make it easy and fun to keep track of your favorite TV shows and movies. There's certainly no shortage of such software on the App Store as, for example, we previously told you about iTV Show 3, TeeVee 2, Done Not Done, ToDoMovies and a few others.

Like other apps, 60Hz notifies you when your favourite shows are playing and makes it easy to browse TV schedule, find out what others are saying about shows, episodes and movies and lots more.

Suneth and Dineth Mendis of M2D2Apps asked me to take a look at the latest 3.0 update for the iPhone and iPad and I was pleased with the overall changes and enhancements, despite minor UI inconsistencies and one nagging omission. Read on for the full breakdown...

Apps of the Week: Baldur’s Gate II, Command-C, Mega Jump 2 and more

Lory Gil ∙ Updated March 20, 2018

Well, we are into our third weekend in January and California still hasn’t seen any rainfall. Reports are coming in that we are on the verge of experiencing a drought. How does that song go. “It never rains in Southern California.” Tony! Toni! Toné! spoke the truth.

Whether you are drying out in California or freezing your fingers off in, well… everywhere else in the country, we’ve got a list of apps and games to distract you from the weather…

Shadow Blade review: who knew becoming a ninja would be so hard

Lory Gil ∙ Updated January 27, 2019

Platform gaming is one of my favorite genres. I love the mindless simplicity. When console devices were just starting to make their way into living rooms across America, platform games were the most prevalent style. I guess they remind me of my childhood.

Shadow Blade is a basic platform game, only not. That is to say, it has all of the elements you would want in a platformer, but takes it to the next level by being difficult to beat and even tougher to get all the items. That blue hedgehog doesn’t know what hard is…

Spark Camera is Apple’s Free App Of The Week

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 23, 2018

Today is Friday and you know what that means, no? That's right, every Friday a new app goes free in the App Store in Apple's ongoing Free App of the Week promo.

Hopefully, you haven't forgotten about downloading PAC-MAN, last week's Free App of the Week. Those who missed it needn't despair as Apple's new freebie is definitely worth getting excited about.

Spark Camera, a cool iPhone photography app from Ideo (the design shop that created Apple’s first mouse) arrived last October. The program got Lory and the rest of the iDownloadBlog team drooling over its sharp, easy to use interface and great features aimed at creating gorgeous mini montages by stitching together your snippets of a moment in time.

Spark Camera is normally priced at $1.99, but you can now grab it free of charge until next Thursday, courtesy of Apple's Free App of the Week...

Following backlash, Starbucks beefs up security in iPhone app

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

You have to hand it to the folks of Starbucks. When they want to, they can move rather quickly. Hot on the heels of its blog post earlier today addressing security concerns regarding its iPhone app, the coffee company released an update this evening.

The change log for the update, which is marked as version 2.6.2, notes the new release brings 'additional performance enhancements and safeguards.' And we're hoping this means that the app no longer stores user passwords and data in plain text...

Imgur’s MemeGen app lets you make your own memes

Cody Lee ∙ Updated January 23, 2018

Last summer, Imgur released an official client for iOS, essentially putting all of the web's most popular memes in the palm of your hand. Now it's bringing the ability to create your own meme to that same hand, with MemeGen.

It looks like MemeGen has actually been in the App Store since late last year, but like others, we're just finding out about it today. At any rate, the app allows you to tap Imgur's vast photo library to create your own viral web pic...

Starbucks will update its iOS app to address security concerns

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

Earlier today we told you about a report that raised security issues concerning the Starbucks iPhone app. A researcher discovered that the most used mobile-payment app in the US stores unencrypted user data like passwords and emails.

The problem with this is that by connecting your iPhone to a computer, someone could easily retrieve this info from a crash log—no jailbreak required. And the only way for Starbucks to fix the vulnerability is through an App Store update...

Gist 2.0: full Pocket integration, new summary view, Dynamic Text support and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 24, 2018

Up until recently, it used to be that news junkies like yours trulls diligently put every conceivable news app on their Home screens in order to make sure they kept tabs on the latest news as it happened. As an unintended consequence (or was it?), this has led to information overload which in turn gave birth to apps like Yahoo's excellent News Digest (free in the App Store) and Gist by Michael Mamiye.

Both of these intelligently summarize news articles so you can consume key takeaways in the shortest amount of time.

Gist for iPhone, $1.99 in the App Store, is especially interesting due to its gorgeous and sharp user interface and a clever algorithm that can summarize most articles into approximately five bullet points - that's why the iDownloadBlog team put it on the list of 10 Best News Apps of 2013.

Following up on its mid-December debut, the developer this morning issued a major 2.0 update bringing out a host of goodies, such as a more robust implementation of the summarization technology, rich Pocket support and lots more...