Friday, October 31, 2014

Best iPhone and iPad apps of October

Hopefully you guys are gearing up for a fun-filled Halloween, but we wouldn't let October slip by without rounding up the very best games and best apps for iPhone and iPad that have been released in the last 30 days. We've got a ton of running and racing games this month, plus one of the best RPGs we've seen in the App Store in awhile. There are also lots of high quality creative apps to check out, whether your into music, art, or videography.

We're always eager to hear what you guys have installed, so be sure to hit up the comments with your favorite new apps. With that, let's dig into our top ten new iOS apps that were released in October.

Vektor

Vektor is an aggressive cyberpunk endless runner. You're a futuristic courier trying to deliver sensitive material to a corporate customer, and mercenaries are busy trying to take you out. Simple controls help you weave through traffic while avoiding would-be attackers. The neon, Tron-inspired art and music style is entirely hypnotic and the ever-increasing challenges are likely to keep you coming back for more.

Run Sackboy! Run!

Run Sackboy! Run! is a simple platforming game that ties into the upcoming Little Big Planet 3 for PlayStation. Grab coins, avoid obstacles, and make sure you don't get slowed down too much, or the The Negativitron may catch up with you. The graphics and premise are very kid friendly while maintaining a lot of charm for the older folks too. The signature real-world textures of everything in the game makes everything instantly comfortable. In-app purchases are employed to score you extra lives or cute new costumes, though you can play your way to new outfits too. Best of all, those costumes will become available to you in the console game as well. Grab Run Sackboy! Run! if you're looking for simple, down-to-earth fun.

Daddy Long Legs

This is a free game similar to the awkward long-distance runner QWOP. Players have to delicately maneuver a giant two-legged spider-type creature for as long a distance as possible. Every tap of the screen switches which legs are moving, but make sure to time it right, because Daddy Long Legs has an awful sense of balance and it's a long way down. Best (worst?) of all, the game keeps tabs on how many falls you make over the course of playing.

Daddy Long Legs has quick replay value, a sharp art style, and a high difficulty curve.

The Banner Saga

The Banner Saga is a highly polished tale chock-full of Norse mythology. Jump between meaningful dialog sessions and turn-based tactical combat with 25 different characters spanning 5 different classes. Manage scarce resources to improve your heroes and keep your band moving across a cold and desolate landscape.

The art style alone in The Banner Saga is enough to pick it up, but it also strikes an excellent balance between strong, character-driven story and classic RPG-style combat.

Tilt to Live: Gauntlet's Revenge

Tilt to Live: Gauntlet's Revenge, is the latest iteration in an excellent action game series. Instead of being stuck in a static arena and having to tilt your device around incoming enemies and towards power-ups, you have to work through a continually scrolling stage, similar to an endless runner. Gather blue cubes as best you can without getting hit. Take too many hits, and it's game over. The finely tuned gyro controls make for a really tense and fast-paced game.

Inbox by Gmail

Inbox is Google's reimagining of handling e-mail, that bundles in reminders, and collapses similar messages together. Particularly important messages will bubble up to the top, and Google will go ahead and pull in useful information from outside sources for certain messages. You can also snooze e-mails and reminders, so you can tune out from threads you aren't directly involved in, or tasks you can get to right now. For now, you need an invite to use Inbox, but Google seems to be giving those out pretty liberally.

Pixelmator

Pixelmator is a hugely popular photo editing and art app for Mac that has found its way to iPad this week. As you might expect, you can work seamlessly between the two devices, so you can keep working on your projects while on the go or at your desk. Correct colors, set white balance, blur, sharpen, distort, add text, and do just about everything else you could need to do with a big boy image editor.

Adobe Premiere Clip

Adobe Premiere Clip helps you easily import video shot on your iPhone or iPad onto your Mac for editing, in addition to enabling some light editing of your own. Trim your videos, make some color adjustments and transitions, plus drop in soundtracks, including a handful included with the app. The Auto Mix feature will make sure audio quality is consistent between clips. Of course it all ties in with Adobe Creative Cloud so you can upload your video and keep working on it on other devices seamlessly.

Adobe released a whole bunch of other great iOS apps this month that are also worth checking out: Brush, Shape, and Color, plus significant updates to Line, Sketch, and Mix.

Autodesk SketchBook

Autodesk revamped their freehand drawing app and the new version is fantastic. Fine tune a wide range of brushes, some of which are bundled, some available through an in-app purchase. A layer editor and a mirroring tool unlock once you set up an account, plus you can plug into DeviantArt to share your stuff instantly. Tablet and smartphone screen sizes are supported.

SketchBook is worth a download if you do any doodling.

Auxy

Auxy is a fresh new music creation app with a really fantastic interface. Simple gestures and four different types of instruments looped and layered together help you create some interesting music. Add and distort different bass, synth, and drums, tweak the tempo, change the key, do whatever tickles your fancy and make something unique. Final creations can be shot out to iTunes, uploaded to SoundCloud, or opened in any other supporting apps. If you're looking for a basic way to get into music creation, Auxy is a great starting point.

Your favorite new iPhone and iPad apps from October?

That's all we've dug up, but let us know which new apps and games you've downloaded over the last four weeks. Happy Halloween, folks!








Minuum receives largest update yet, brings support for 12 more languages

Third party keyboard "Minuum" has received it's largest update yet today. The update contains support for 12 new languages, fifteen new themes, along with some new advanced customization settings.

You can find the full change log below:

NEW LANGUAGES: German, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, Russian, Portuguese (BR), Portuguese (EU), Polish, Swedish, Turkish, Czech

NEW THEMES: Choose from 15 limited edition FLAG THEMES and other colorful themes!

MORE CUSTOMIZATION (Advanced Settings)

  • Turn sounds on/off
  • Turn autocorrect on/off
  • Turn auto-capitalization on/off
  • Turn double-space for punctuation (,.!?/-:;@#) on/off

INTERNATIONAL CHARACTERS (ç, ø, ñ, ü, etc.)

Minuum is just one of a spate of third party keyboards released for iOS 8, and it's nice to see it receive such a large update within such a short time-frame.

Have you had a chance to try out Minuum or any other keyboards? Let us know how it went for you in the comments.








Verizon responds to AT&T by offering more data on $80 & $100 plans, $150 port-in credit

Craving more data for your money? Verizon has just announced that it is upping data allotment on its midrange More Everything plans for a limited time. $80 will now score you 10GB of data per month, while $100 will net you 15GB. Perhaps even better, the deal isn't limited to new customers; existing More Everything customers can get in on the action too.

In addition to the data increase, Verizon is also running a limited promo intended to snag new customers by offering $150 to those who port their numbers over to the carrier in red:

In addition, customers who switch to the nation's largest and most reliable 4G LTE network and purchase a new 4G LTE smartphone with either a two-year contract or under Verizon's popular Edge program will now receive a $150 port-in credit.

Both deals start tomorrow and will run for a limited time, although Verizon didn't state exactly when they will end. Still, this is an interesting response to AT&Ts similar announcement earlier today.

Will you be taking advantage of either of these deals? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Source: Verizon








How to deal with zip files on your iPhone or iPad

Zip files—that is, single-file bundles that contain multiple items—are incredibly useful tools. On my Mac, I use zip files for all sorts of tasks: shrinking document sizes, transferring data from one place to another, and collecting various files together into a single bundle.

On the iPhone and iPad, zip files are a bit less convenient, due to iOS's lack of central file system. You can't currently open downloaded files in iCloud Drive, so you're left to rely mostly on third-party apps for viewing, unzipping, and compressing your own zip files. Here are a few of my favorite ways to handle zip files on iOS.

If you get zip files in an email or iMessage

It used to be that if you got an emailed zip file, the only way to handle it was to use iOS's "Open In" feature to send the file to a third-party app. Not so anymore: As of iOS 7, the Mail and Messages apps automatically decompress zip files after downloading, so you can view each component file within the bundle using the Quick Look feature. From there, you can individually select files to send to other apps on iOS, or send the entire zip bundle to a third-party app.

Mail and Messages are currently the only iOS apps that offers this Quick Look feature; Safari just prompts you with an "Open In" command, should you stumble across a zip file while browsing.

If you get zip files from anywhere else

If you're downloading a zip file from Safari, AirDrop, or in any other place on iOS that can't handle opening zip files, you'll more likely than not be presented with an "Open In" command. This offers you a list of zip-file-compatible apps; you can then choose which one you prefer by tapping it.

Of all the apps I've tested over the years, Transmit and GoodReader are my personal favorites for dealing with zip files, though Dropbox isn't bad if you just want to host a zip file for someone else to download. (The app won't unzip files, sadly.)

Goodreader and Transmit work very similarly, downloading the zip bundle to the app's local file repository. From there, Goodreader offers to automatically unzip your file, while Transmit requires a tap on the zip file and a subsequent tap on "Decompress" to unzip.

You can also zip folders in both GoodReader and Transmit. In GoodReader, select the folder and tap Zip; in Transmit, tap the checkmark in the upper right corner, select the folder or multiple files in question, then tap the Actions > Compress.

Zip like a pro

What about you, folks? Have you any need for zipping or unzipping files on your iOS device? Have a way to make this even easier? Let's chat in the comments.








How to remove a credit card from Apple Pay

With Apple Pay you can conveniently and securely make payments online, and for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus users, at many merchants that accept NFC payments. Simply add your cards and your on your way. But what if you cancel a card or it's no longer valid? Luckily, removing them from Apple Pay is easy enough!

How to delete a card from Apple Pay on iPhone and iPad

  1. Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad that contains the Apple Pay card you need to delete.
  2. Tap on Passbook & Apple Pay.
  3. Tap on the credit card you'd like to delete.
  4. Tap on Remove Card — you'll need to scroll all the way to the bottom.

That's all there is to it! The card you removed will no longer be eligible for use with Apple Pay on that particular device. Keep in mind however that Apple Pay works on a per device basis so you'll need to remove that particular card from every device it's linked to individually. Alternately, you can remove all your linked cards from a specific device remotely if you need to via iCloud.com. You can follow our guide below if that suits your needs better!








Debug 49: Siracusa, round 2

Debug is a casual, conversational interview show featuring the best developers in the business about the amazing apps they make and why and how they make them. On this episode Fresh from his review of OS X Yosemite, John Siracusa returns to talk interface, vibrancy, and a whole lot of Swift.

Show notes

Guests

Hosts

Feedback

Question, comment, recommendation, or something you want us to follow up on for the next show?

Email us at debug@mobilenations.com or leave a comment below.