Apps

Battle Camp review: raise a pet on Apple Watch, battle it on iPhone

Being an app reviewer, I am most interested in the type of content available to me on Apple Watch. Sure, there are dozens of great productivity apps to help keep you connected. But what about games?

Battle Camp has been a battle pet RPG game for a couple of years. But, shortly after the first run of Apple Watches were on the wrists of early adopters, the game was updated to include a mini game that allows you to raise a pet to adulthood for a special prize. We've got a game review of Battle Camp for our Apple Watch fans out there.

Hit puzzler ‘Quetzalcoatl’ goes free as Apple’s App of the Week

Apple has just named “ Quetzalcoatl” its App of the Week for this week. This means that from now through next Thursday, you’ll be able to pickup the popular puzzler for both the iPhone and iPad for free—a solid savings of $1.99.

Quetzalcoatl features 180 carefully designed puzzles, which will provide you with dozens of hours of addictive gameplay. You beat the puzzles by maneuvering game pieces to match like-colored tiles, before the walls close in on you.

YouTube testing iOS app redesign with small subset of users

Google has been testing a revamped version of its YouTube application for the iPhone and iPad with a small subset of users, Abdiel Ortiz and Sebastien Debaenst noted on Twitter. This isn't necessarily new as some folks have been talking about YouTube's iOS overhaul for over a month now.

What is new, however, is a detailed hands-on video put together by Tech Invasion which gives us a first look at the new software centered on Material Design, Google's design language guiding software development across mobile, desktop and the web.

Sunrise Calendar update introduces Meet, the fastest way to schedule one-to-one meetings

Sunrise, a powerful cross-platform calendar application, on Thursday launched Meet, a companion iOS 8 keyboard specifically designed to make scheduling one-to-one meetings ridiculously easy.

Available as a free update to the Sunrise app in the App Store, Meet lets you schedule one-to-ones with another party like a pro, without having to leave the context of the app you're currently in or switch to Sunrise for that matter.

Hackers find easy way to steal large sums of money through Starbucks app

Hackers are stealing money from users' credit cards, banks, and PayPal accounts through the Starbucks mobile app, the coffee giant confirmed to CNN on Tuesday.

The app, which lets users pay at checkout and reload Starbucks gift cards, has an auto-reload function that makes it easy for hackers to take from users, not needing any account numbers.

Runeblade is the first game that can only be played on Apple Watch

We've been keeping you up to date on apps and games that are compatible with Apple Watch. Some are companion apps, similar to iOS widgets. Some are full games on iOS with additional features on Apple Watch

Runeblade is the first of its kind to only be playable on Apple Watch. The iOS download is actually the companion to this hack-and-slash role-playing title. Play the game on your wrist, and check out the lore on your iPhone.

Cooped Up review: don’t let your expectations cage this gem

One of the first iPhone games I, and certainly many iPhone owners, ever played was Doodle Jump. It came out while the App Store was still in its relative infancy, and the iPhone was beginning its meteoric rise in earnest. Since its release in 2009, we have seen numerous games that copy its pencil and paper art style or gameplay mechanics. So many, in fact, that it has become relatively hard for any game that looks even remotely similar to stand out.

When you first look at screenshots of Cooped Up, I have no doubt that Doodle Jump, Mega Jump, or any number of other apps will be the first thing to spring into your mind. Cooped Up is more than just a cheap knock off, though. What makes this game different? Well, that’s going to take a bit of explaining.

Apple’s App Analytics Beta now available to all developers

Apple began sending out emails to registered developers on Wednesday, announcing that App Analytics Beta is now available to all devs, no request needed. The company debuted the analytics platform, which will give developers a detailed look at their app statistics, earlier this month in a limited request-only beta test.

The feature is free to those with a $99/year iOS Developer Program membership, and offers up a wide range of useful data for app-makers. With it, developers can view information like active app users, length of sessions, total number of sessions, and see which websites or promotions are driving the most traffic to their apps.

Facebook launches quick-loading, interactive ‘Instant Articles’ as an iPhone-exclusive feature

Facebook today announced a new ‘Instant Articles’ feature which is rolling out to its iPhone application later today. As the name implies, this iPhone-exclusive capability lets cherry-picked publishers craft versions of news stories for mobile screens that load in a fraction of a second.

The new, mobile-optimized reading experience includes interactive features from Facebook's Paper app, with support for rich media such as photos and video and other embeddable content types like multitouch maps and more.

BitTorrent launches Bleep, secure peer-to-peer messaging app for iPhone and Mac

With ephemeral messaging growing in popularity, and given ongoing fear of government-sponsored snooping, small wonder that BitTorrent has now entered the market for secure chat apps — and in a pretty big way, too.

Bleep, their new Mac and iOS secure messaging and VoIP software, strives to ensure the privacy of your conversations by never saving them on your device or the servers. In a nutshell, Bleep uses encryption and peer-to-peer networking to establish a private, secure connection between devices.

With Bleep, you can whisper with friends on your Mac or iPhone and the messages will disappear after they are read.

Google arrives on Apple Watch in update for News & Weather app

Google has updated its News & Weather app today, bringing the software to version 1.7. The update includes various performance and stability improvements, and more significant to us, support for the Apple Watch.

This is essentially the first appearance on Apple's wearable for Google, who runs a competing wearable platform called Android Wear. The move, however, isn't surprising, given the company's sizable presence on iOS.