iPad By Davis: “Apps of the Week: Concert Vault, Sid Meier's Ace Patrol, MacFormat, and more” plus 7 more |
- Apps of the Week: Concert Vault, Sid Meier's Ace Patrol, MacFormat, and more
- Star Trek Into Darkness launches next week; iTunes has all the old Trek to get you caught up
- Best Free iPad App of the Week: UPS for iPad
- AppleCare changes may extend in-store repair options to iOS devices
- How to create and access bookmarks in iBooks for iPhone and iPad
- Need an App for Mom? Check out the App Store’s Mother’s Day Gift Guide
- Iterate 46: Beck, Ohms, Urbanick, and Press
- The problem with iTunes and Windows 8
| Apps of the Week: Concert Vault, Sid Meier's Ace Patrol, MacFormat, and more Posted: 11 May 2013 04:07 PM PDT
Every week, the editors and writers at iMore carefully select some of our favorite, most useful, most extraordinary apps, accessories, gadgets, and websites. This week's selections include a music library app, a photo editing app, a turn-based tactic game, a British magazine about Apple, and a simple dots game. Concert Vault - Chris Parsons
Ever heard of Wolfgang's Vault? I've never heard of it until a couple of years ago despite the site existing since 2003. The site houses a massive library of music and live concert videos and was at one time referred to as "the most important collection of rock memorabilia and recordings ever assembled in one business". Once offered to all for free, Wolfgang's Vault is now a paid offering and even has a slick iOS app to go along with it. The app itself is free to download and with free 7-day trial you can check out all the content available and decide if it's worth the $3.99/month or $39.99/per year. Aside from just offering up a whole slew of audio content from rock, blues, jazz, folk and country legends it also offers access to the catalog of video as well. All of which is compatible with AirPlay and can be played back onto your TV. In short, if you're a fan of any of the above genres of music, this app is worth the time to check out. It really is a gold mine for content and you really do need more than the 7-day free trial it offers to make your way through it.
Afterlight - Ally Kazmucha
I'm a sucker for photo editing apps and have two whole folders of them on my iPhone. One of my favorites is Afterlight mainly because it's simple to use. I can apply lots of filters on top of each other or use it just to make basic enhancements. After you purchase the app, you'll have access to all features except for scene clips. If you'd like those it's an additional $0.99 in-app purchase. If you simply want Afterlight as a simple way to edit photos on the go, you probably won't have any interest in scene clips but if you do, you've got the option all in one app.
Sid Meier's Ace Patrol - Joseph Keller
Sid Meier's Ace Patrol is a turn-based tactics game set in World War 1. You command fighter aces in the skies above Europe, directing their movements and positioning them to take down the enemy while avoiding damage their own planes. Ace Patrol features both single- and multi-player modes. Move your fighters around by double-tapping the arrows that appear on the ground, which also allow your pilots to change altitude. While the game is initially free, giving you a chance to play through part of the British campaign, you will eventually need to pay $0.99 to go further. Additionally, there are other campaigns that you can purchase if you wish, one each for the Germans, Americans, and the French for $1.99 each, though you can pay $3.99 for all three of them. Finally, you can purchase and unlock several "Aces", each with their own special traits. Ace Patrol is available for both iPhone and iPad as a universal download.
MacFormat - Richard Devine
British based Apple magazine, MacFormat, is in the middle of celebrating a milestone for the publication. For 20 years now they have been publishing anything and everything Apple related, which is no small feat. To celebrate, they have re-published their very first issue which is available to download to Newsstand free of charge. Beyond simply re-issing a digital copy of the magazine, it includes interactive content such as video and audio clips from current members of the editorial team, and comment items throughout relating to the 20-year old content. For those of us not old enough to be using Apple products 20 years ago -- I myself was just 8 years old when this went to print -- it offers a fantastic look back, and highlights just how far we've come.
Dots - Leanna Lofte
While browsing the App Store this week, I was drawn towards the colorful dots on the icon for Dots: A Game About Connecting. This is seriously one of the most basic and simple games I have ever played, but I just can't stop playing. You simply draw a line with your fingers to connect the dots of the same color to make them disappear. You have 60-seconds to clear out as many dots as possible. You can also use Time Stops, Shrinkers, and Expanders by spending dots. I can't tell you why this game is so addicting, but it is. It's so clean, so basic, and such a great way to kill 60 seconds… or much more.
Your choice?Now that we've chosen our favorites for the week, we want to hear yours! Did you pick up a killer app, accessory, or game this week? Let us know in the comments below! 
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| Star Trek Into Darkness launches next week; iTunes has all the old Trek to get you caught up Posted: 11 May 2013 01:39 PM PDT
Thursday, May 16th marks the US premiere of the 12th Star Trek flick: Star Trek Into Darkness. Like the 2009 film simply titled Star Trek, the new Into Darkness is directed by JJ Abrams and follows the adventures of the crew of the [new] original Enterprise under the command of a reimagined Captain Kirk played by Chris Pine. While the action-oriented direction of the last film, cockier Kirk, aggressive lens flares, and design of the new old U.S.S. Enterprise might have ruffled a few feathers, the 2009 entry kicked up the production quality of Star Trek films by an order of magnitude or two. Four years later, the new Star Trek Into Darkness has already premiered in a number of countries worldwide and will be landing in the US next week. The new film has a dedicated iPhone app and a villain that recorded his audition with his iPhone while on vacation in England. And the Enterprise itself has a bridge that critics likened to the design of an Apple Store. Okay, we might be stretching here. We just love Star Trek and we expect that you're likely a fan too. Statistically speaking, it's not a stretch to make that assumption. So, why not watch some Star Trek this weekend before heading to the cinema to catch Into Darkness? There are ten classic films staring your favorite combination of Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley or Stewart, Frakes, and Spiner, and of course there's the 2009 Star Trek blockbuster with Pine, Quinto, and Urban. And they're all on iTunes, plus 716 episodes of five series spread across thirty seasons. In short, there's a lot of Star Trek to be watched, so with a new film coming up next week, you better get started now while you still have time. You are going to see Star Trek Into Darkness, right?
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| Best Free iPad App of the Week: UPS for iPad Posted: 11 May 2013 11:17 AM PDT
One of the best things about using an iPad is all the great apps that we can run on it. There are excellent apps for just about any purpose you can think of. Better still, there are lots of great free apps for the iPad. Our Best Free iPad App of the Week posts highlight these apps. This week's pick is UPS for iPad, which provides a number of resources for managing UPS package delivery and using their services. Here's a bit of its App Store description:
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| AppleCare changes may extend in-store repair options to iOS devices Posted: 11 May 2013 11:22 AM PDT
For a long time, the only devices Apple has ever extensively serviced in-store have been Macs, with some requiring mail-out repairs. If recent rumors are to be believed as true, Apple plans on extending in-store repair options to iOS devices. According to a report by AppleInsider, Apple will begin actually repairing iPhones and iPads in-store instead of swapping them out for replacement refurbished devices in the very near future. Anyone who has ever taken a broken or defective iPhone or iPad into Apple is already aware that as it stands now, you will be given a replacement device in place of your current one. The fee is based on whether or not you're in or out of warranty and whether the issue is caused by accidental damage. Tara Bunch, a vice president for Apple, spoke in a Town Hall meeting on Thursday discussing changes to these current policies. An employee in attendance summed up some of the biggest policy changes:
The rumored changes, according to the source, could result in $1 billion a year in savings for Apple. As it sits right now, Apple only does simpler repairs on iOS devices in-house which include back glass replacements for the iPhone 4/4S for $29, iPhone 3G/3GS screen replacements for $99, and a few others that include the vibrator assembly in the GSM variant of the iPhone 4 and battery replacements. The cost of these repairs could be an indicator as of what is to come. Back in September of 2012, iMore heard Apple would replace iPhone 5 screens for $99. While that never seemed to come to light, a lot of it was probably due to part constraint and the difficulty of obtaining replacement assemblies as most of the manufactured stock was going to new and replacement devices. We were told they weren't sure when it would go into affect but eventually, it would. According to AppleInsider, the new policies are set to go begin this fall with international rollouts following suit afterwards. Would you be content if Apple offered more repair options in-store instead of swapping out your device for a new one, considering it would most likely have a lower price tag attached? Or do you prefer paying a little bit of a premium for a new, if not just like new, replacement? Source: AppleInsider 
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| How to create and access bookmarks in iBooks for iPhone and iPad Posted: 11 May 2013 10:16 AM PDT
iBooks not only allows you to store all your books and PDFs in one place, but lets you make easy to access bookmarks in any book you'd like for quick reference later. Just bookmark a page and jump back to it whenever you'd like. Here's how:
How to bookmark a page within a book in iBooks
That's it. The page is now bookmarked for reference later. If you don't want it bookmarked any longer, just tap the red bookmark again to remove the bookmark. How to access bookmarked pages within a book in iBooks
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| Need an App for Mom? Check out the App Store’s Mother’s Day Gift Guide Posted: 11 May 2013 09:54 AM PDT
If you're looking for inspiration in choosing an app or apps to gift a mom in your life for Mother's Day, then you may want to check out the Mother's day Gift Guide featured section in the iPad App Store today. The gift guide is made up entirely of apps and includes 9 sub-sections including: Gifts for Foodies: Cookbook and culinary apps Gifts for Photographers: Photo and video editing and effects apps Gifts that Wow: An odd,eclectic section with apps ranging from iMovie to Star Walk and others about the universe around us Apps for Kids and Games for Kids: Perhaps with the idea that a good set of distracting apps for the kiddos is a nice gift to help Mom get some relaxation in on Mother's Day? Gifts for Gamers and Gifts for Hardcore Gamers: For all the Gamer Moms. It's a good looking collection, with a lot of range to it. Even so, I 'd say it'd be a good idea to make sure...  Related Stories
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| Iterate 46: Beck, Ohms, Urbanick, and Press Posted: 11 May 2013 07:09 AM PDT
Jordan Beck, Jay Ohms, and Chad Urbanick of TwentyFive Squares join Marc, Seth, Rene and Andrew Martonik of Android Central to talk about their outstanding Android RSS reader, Press. Also, life after Google Reader, platform exclusivity, and more! Show notesGuests
Hosts
FeedbackYell at us on Twitter/ADN via the above accounts. Loudly. 
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| The problem with iTunes and Windows 8 Posted: 11 May 2013 05:34 AM PDT
According to the chief financial officer of Windows -- what, your company doesn't have a product-level CFO? -- Microsoft has laid out the welcome mat for iTunes for Windows 8, but Apple has yet to come a knocking. Why ever could that be? I was asked recently on Twitter why the Mac App Store wasn't bundled into the desktop iTunes app the way the iOS App Store is, and so many other things are. I don't know the official rationale, but my immediate instinct was -- because it's the Mac App Store, and that means it doesn't have to be ported to Windows. And if it doesn't have to get ported to Windows, it doesn't have to go into iTunes. After all, iTunes is the only major piece of software Apple currently ports to Windows. Safari for Windows, after a brief, uneventful life, has gone missing in action, and QuickTime and the various iCloud and iOS management utilities are just that -- utilities. iLife doesn't get ported. Pro tools don't get ported. Just iTunes. Steve Jobs once called iTunes for Windows a glass of water in hell. I've joked it was revenge for Office on Mac. Really it was a business necessity in the pre-post-PC world. iPods -- and eventually iPhones and iPads -- needed iTunes on the desktop to purchase, manage, and sync media and apps, the vast majority of computers ran Windows, and so iTunes had to run on Windows. iTunes desktop isn't so easily reinvented. So it's being obsoleted. And that screwed it over for everyone. Apple, in their infinitely looped wisdom, decided it would be easier for them to port, and easier for us to use, a single, monolithic iTunes app than anything more specific or distributed, a single jack-of-all-trades app, wrapped up for easy transplant, rather than several masters of one carefully cut apart and crafted. And as iOS grew, and new content types like apps and iBooks, and new use cases, like Wi-Fi sync grew, iTunes on both Mac and Windows grew (and grew). Absent the need to port to Windows, we get the light, purpose-built Mac App Store. On iOS get separate iTunes Store, Music and Video apps, we get a separate App Store, and we get separate iBooks, Podcasts, and iTunes U apps. We get many little shots of water that aren't anywhere nearly as hellish. iTunes desktop isn't so easily reinvented. So it's being obsoleted. In a post-PC world, a lot of the jobs formerly required of iTunes on the desktop have been pushed up into the iCloud. You can pretty much setup, manage, fill, and sync a new iOS device, out of the box, without ever once plugging it into iTunes on the desktop. (I don't think I've synced with iTunes on the desktop even once since the iPhone 4S launched with iOS 5 in October of 2011.) Sure, transferring big media files and moving around large numbers of icons are still painful in the wireless world, but that's something Apple can and needs to fix, and inevitably it won't be by going back to the iTunes desktop. There's a reason why the iPad doesn't run iTunes desktop, and why you can't download iTunes desktop from the iOS app store. There's a reason why the iPad doesn't run iTunes desktop, and why you can't download iTunes desktop from the iOS app store. You can't tether an iPhone to an iPad for device management purposes. iOS didn't need no sticking iTunes desktop. And it's the same reason why Windows 8 probably won't get a "Metro" version of iTunes desktop either. Microsoft is still dominant-beyond-dominant in the PC market, but the PC market isn't as important as it used to be. New iOS customers, the kind who are drawn to things like Windows 8 "Metro", are probably also drawn to online services like iCloud, Dropbox, Skydrive, Spotify, Netflix, etc. and they'll do just fine without traditional iTunes ported and portly on the Surface RT. Mainstream customers, the kind who are sticking with Windows XP or Windows 7, are also likely sticking with iTunes desktop, and they'll be just fine with traditional iTunes running as a traditional desktop app. iTunes for Mac is in the midst of a transition. It's not impossible to see where it's going over the next few years, and it's not the stodgy old desktop we all know and love to hate. It's going somewhere new. If an how iTunes for Windows goes with it will depend on Windows' importance in the post-PC world. Maybe iTunes will become more an iCloud-powered player than device management game. That Microsoft has re-discovered the tablet market is nice. That they're experimenting with mix-mode devices is interesting. But Metro probably doesn't need full-blown iTunes any more than iOS does, and the Windows 8 Store probably won't get old-style iTunes much faster than the App Store will get old-style Office. The world has changed. 
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