Apps

Sidefari, Ubongo, Remember, and more apps to check out this weekend

If you are reading this, then you made it through Thanksgiving and Black Friday. After surviving the biggest shopping day of the year, you deserve a treat. It's time to relax and enjoy an afternoon without the family (unless the family is still visiting).

We've got a list of apps and games that you can treat yourself with this weekend. Treat yourself while you can. Christmas is around the corner and all of your free time and money will be spent on someone else soon enough.

How to hide revines from users you follow

If you use Vine, sooner than later your feed will become polluted with reposts (revines, in Vine talk) from those you follow on the service. Besides, it's really annoying having to scroll through a hundred or more revines from a user before getting to one of their own clips.

Thankfully, reducing information overload on Vine isn't as hard as it sounds as the app lets you block revines from a person and show only their original posts.

In this tutorial, we'll teach you how to hide revines from anyone you follow on the service with just a few taps. This should help make your Vine experience a little more focused and less cluttered.

Lara Croft GO gets its first expansion

Just in time for Thanksgiving, Square Enix's Lara Croft GO for iOS has received its first expansion pack following the game's August 2015 debut in the App Store. Titled “The Shard of Life” and available at no charge to those who have purchased the game, the update packs in more than two-dozen additional levels and a bunch of new monsters to defeat, costumes to unlock and gemstones and artifacts to discover.

Preview: Infuse for Apple TV + developer interview

As an Apple TV believer since its inception, I'm ashamed to admit that I've never jailbroken my device even though the lack of downloadable media player apps that would let me play “foreign” video file types has been driving me nuts.

When the latest Apple TV launched, I immediately got in touch with James Abeler, better known as prominent jailbreak developer FireCore, who happens to be the brains behind the ultimate Apple TV jailbreak, aTV Flash Black, and the creator of a versatile iOS media player, called Infuse.

As someone who has been pretty much cheerleading Infuse since its April 2013 debut, I was extremely impatient to find out if an Apple TV edition of Infuse would be on par with its iOS counterpart.

James was kind enough to add me as a beta tester so I was able to play with Infuse for Apple TV for about a week, and here's what I was able to gather.

How to save Vine videos

Who knew 6-second-long looping video clips would turn out to be so much fun? If you're into short-form entertainment, there's probably no better place to get your daily fix of user-posted clips, some of which are quite interesting—I've seen whole how-tos compressed into six seconds—than Vine.

The problem is, both Vine the website and mobile app prohibit you from saving your favorite clips to your computer or mobile device. Thankfully, there are apps for that, too.

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to save Vine videos to your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad or Mac using a nifty little utility and a free of charge web app.

Gorgeous platformer Leo’s Fortune hits the Mac

Leo's Fortune, a gorgeous action platformer with beautiful artwork that debuted on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad in April of 2014, is now available on the Mac.

A $6.99 download from the Mac App Store, this premium title is free of advertisements and In-App Purchases. Leo's Fortune has won numerous awards and is one of the best platform games available on any platform.

Our own Lory Gill called it arguably the most gorgeous iOS platformer she has played in a while, writing in her review that fans of platform games should pick up Leo's Fortune in a heartbeat.

Pixelmator for Mac goes half price, iOS version discounted to $1.99

Pixelmator for OS X, the Mac edition of the powerful image editing application which debuted on iOS in October 2014, has gone half price in the Mac App Store today. In addition, the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad edition of the software has been discounted to just $1.99 in the App Store.

Selling regularly for $29.99, Pixelmator for Mac can now be downloaded for just $14.99, a steal given the app's rich set of powerful image editing features, tools, brushes and more.

Reeder 3 is out: Safari View Controller, 3D Touch, Split View multitasking, iPad Pro support & more

It feels like yesterday, but it's actually been more than two year since Reeder 2, the second major version of a popular RSS client for iOS and OS X by Italian developer Silvio Rizzi, was released in the App Store.

And while the Mac edition of Reeder was bumped to version 3.0 in September 2015, it left us wondering whether a major update to the iOS version might be in tow.

Well, today Reeder 3 hit the App Store and it's a free update for everyone who already owns the app. There's a lot to look forward to in Reeder 3, here's a quick overview of major new features.

Great deal: Mac app bundle with Parallels 11, 1Password and 6 other apps for just $80

Supercharge your Mac with this Black Friday Bundle Deal from the good folks at Parallels. For just $80, you can pick up more than $500 worth of software, including apps like Parallels Desktop 11, Parallels Access, 1Password for Mac, Evernote Premium and more—a total of 8 useful, powerful applications.

Of course you all know what big fans of Parallels and 1Password we are here at iDB—we use the former in all of our virtual machine tutorials, and the latter is regarded as the best password management app for both Mac and iOS. Then there is Evernote and Pocket, neither of which need much introduction.

Vine rolls out Apple Watch app and new ways to discover and watch videos

Twitter-owned Vine, a short-form video sharing service, is now available on the Apple Watch with a native watchOS 2 app that streams best videos from Featured and Favorites sections to your wrist.

A Vine complication is available as well so you can track your account's loops and access the native app from your watch face. In addition to the Apple Watch app, this edition of Vine includes features that make it easier to make and discover audio remixes on the service and more.

Amazon Video for iOS gets X-Ray, 3D Touch and multitasking support & more

Amazon pushed a nice update to its video-streaming app in the App Store this morning. Amazon Video version 3.3 now includes 3D Touch shortcuts on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus Home screen for quick access to the following features: Library, Downloads, your Watchlist and Search.

In addition, the app is now fully optimized for the iPad Pro and supports iOS 9's new Picture in Picture mode and Slide Over multitasking on supported devices.