Posts tagged with "iOS"

#MacStoriesDeals - Thursday

Happy St. Paddy’s Day all over the world and Happy National Unity Day in Italy! Here are today’s deals on iOS, Mac, and Mac App Store apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em while they’re hot!

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Angry Birds HD Updated: 15 New Levels→

Angry Birds HD Updated: 15 New Levels

Just in time for the release of the iPad 2, Rovio updated (again) Angry Birds HD last night to include 15 new levels and continue “the adventures in the frontier badlands”. A new golden egg has been included in version 1.5.3 as well.

Looking at early iTunes reviews, it sounds like Rovio also changed something in the “pause” screen of the app, putting a news section (some people say ads) in there and forcing users to wait for the animation to finish before resuming the game. If you’ve noticed this too, please let us know in the comments below.

Angry Birds HD is available here.

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Google Adds A Bar to Gmail iOS Webapp

Fear not, Google didn’t add a #dickbar to Gmail for iPhone. What the Gmail did is actually pretty smart: to better communicate the status of their inboxes to iPhone users, Google recently tweaked the Gmail webapp for iOS devices to include a “connection bar” that displays information for outgoing and sent mail, internet connection, and so forth. It doesn’t appear all the time, it only shows up when a certain activity is triggered – like an email you’re sending from your phone.

It also appears when your phone is offline, back online and sending, and then again when it finishes sending all messages.

You can see the connection bar in action by visiting mail.google.com from your iPhone or iPod touch now, running iOS 4 or later. If you don’t see it, try clearing Safari’s cache in the Settings app. Too bad Retina Display support in the Gmail webapp is still nowhere to be seen.

Photoshop Express For iOS Updated To 2.0, Adds Enhanced Camera Features

Adobe’s Photoshop Express

for iPhone and iPad has today been updated to version 2.0 and it brings a few substantial, and much needed improvements, to the mobile photo editing app. Perhaps of most importance is the addition of full Retina display support and multi-tasking support, which is a feature that all apps really should have had a few months ago.

Also included in the update is a new camera workflow for what they describe as “rapid in-app photo-taking” but in addition to that is the inclusion of a $4.99 in-app purchase for an ‘Adobe Camera Pack’. This pack improves upon the apps in-built camera functions by adding the features of reducing noise, self-timer and auto reviewing functions.

The app remains free and the 2.0 update can downloaded now, but to get the Adobe Camera Pack you’ll need to fork out the cash for that in-app purchase.

[Via The Loop]

iOS Games Now Listed on Metacritic

As noted by TUAW, Metacritic, the popular aggregator of movie / TV show / music / game reviews found online, announced yesterday full support for iOS games. For all the people “keeping score of entertainment” through the service, this means iPhone and iPad games are now listed in a dedicated section that displays the overall top-scoring games, and offers the option to filter down results by category and user score. The clean design of Metacritic and the ease of use of the system will surely come in handy to see what the web thinks of a specific game, as Metacritic basically works by aggregating average scores and reviews from highly visited websites like Slide To Play and Eurogamer.

Metacritic is proud to announce that we have added complete coverage of iPhone/iPad game reviews to our site. As many of you know, we have been publishing monthly IPhone/IPad games guides – recommending the best new iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch games available for a total budget of $30 — and this popular feature will continue to appear each month.

As the team behind Metacritic also notes, this change marks a major shift in the gaming community that has grown to accept iOS and the App Store as important distribution platforms for great games. The fact that gems like World of Goo (whose iPad version has been insanely successful), Real Racing, Tiny Wings and Aralon are being listed in the top games confirms many people’s theory that you can find all kinds of games on iOS nowadays.

The big names in the game development industry understand iOS is no platform to ignore, and just about any top console game now comes with an iPhone or iPad counterpart of sorts. On Metacritic you can now browse these games and check out what the reviewers are saying on the web, write a review yourself or even check out trailers and videos for a specific app. To see the new Metacritic page in action, head over here and start looking for your next favorite game.

AirTuner Turns iPhones and iPads Into AirPlay Receivers

Speaking of AirPlay apps, here’s a $0.99 one that Apple’s isn’t featuring in its custom section, but should: AirTuner turns any iOS device into an AirPlay receiver that can display videos and photos coming from another device or iTunes.

Entirely hardware-accelerated and based on the same interface design Apple uses for AirPlay, AirTuner is universal for iPhones and iPads and in my tests worked perfectly with the Youtube and Photos apps, iTunes, Safari and other third-party applications thanks to the improved AirPlay support in iOS 4.3. For what it’s worth, the app’s icon is also nice on your homescreen.

With the iPad 2 featuring two cameras, it makes more sense now to be able to instantly stream photos and videos from one iOS device to another. Imagine checking out some photos on your iPad 2, and also have the possibility to beam them to your friend’s iPad. AirTuner is a $0.99 download here.