The Week in iOS Apps: Total Recall

This week’s roundup of iOS apps is full of Hurt. Trust us.

This week, we showed you how to create a ringtone using Garageband on your iPhone and iPad. We also brought news of Quark’s new HTML5-based App Studio, designed to be used on the iPad.

Here are a few other new and updated apps that caught our eye this week.

eBay Now: Here’s a new app that—for now—is only useful if you live in San Francisco, but that shouldn’t be the case for long. The free eBay Now app for iPhone lets users order items from an array of brand-name stores (including Macy’s, Target, and more) and get same-day delivery of those products by an eBay Valet. The company says most deliveries should arrive at your location within an hour of being ordered. That might mean trouble for brick-and-mortar stores, but it could be quite convenient for consumers. eBay says the service will be expanding to other markets soon.

Photoset/Flayvr: Now that the app market for editing and sharing photos seems to be utterly saturated, the Next Big Thing appears be helping iPhone and iPad users organize and display multiple photos in single sets. This week saw two new free services that do just that. Photoset is a free app from Tumblr that offers users several different templates for creating multi-photo displays, and you can share those displays via Twitter or Tumblr. Flayvr is built just for the iPhone, but it offers a similar capability to group and share photos via social media. Which one you use might depend on how often you want to share your pictures on Tumblr.

iGrand Piano/Tempo Primer LE: One of the most fun things to do on your iOS device is make beautiful music, and there are great tools out there. Among the newest: iGrand Piano for iPad, a $20 offering from IK Multimedia that offers 17 different “professional” sounding piano simulations. If you’re sticking to a real piano but want to make the most of practice, the $1 Tempo Primer LE app for iPhone acts as a metronome, but also lets musicians record their practices for later review.

Just Landed: Have to pick up somebody from the airport? This free iPhone app tracks inbound flights—it even notifies you of flight status changes—and reminds you when it’s time to go meet them at the gate. It’s just that easy.

Recall/Recalls/Recalls Plus: From the “It’s Hard To Come Up With New Names” Department, three apps with similar monikers that do very different things: The free Recalls app for iPhone and iPad keeps you up-to-date on all the products that have been recalled by five different federal agencies, including the Consumer Product Safety Organization. Recalls Plus does pretty much the same thing, but it comes from a different developer. Recall, on the other hand, is an iPhone app that helps you remember all the great recommendations—for movies, restaurants, and more—that your friends have made to you. Are there any more new or updated apps with this name? We don’t recall.

Tender Loving Care: Have you ever said to yourself: “Gosh, I wish my iPad had more games that were revivals of 1990s games that were strongly reminiscent in theme and production value of late-night Cinemax movies of that same era? Only, I really need it to star John Hurt?” If you have $14 to spend, this is your lucky day.

Topia World Builder: If, on the other hand, you like your iOS games to be a little more kid-friendly, well, the $1 Topia World Builder game for iPhone and iPad lets you and your child build mountains, rivers, and entire animal species. It’s good, creative fun, but sadly: There is no John Hurt.
Other apps of note: The Angry Birds franchise added new levels of Bad Piggies to the game … SlingPlayer for iPad was updated to offer HD picture quality … Monopoly Millionaire was unveiled as a new take on the old game … Craftsy debuted as a way to demonstrate the production of knick-knacks…The classic open-world racing game Crazy Taxi features music from Bad Religion and The Offspring.