This week’s roundup of new and updated iOS apps includes cool new offerings for music and movies, as well as a new storytelling form designed just for your phone or tablet.
Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is one of those fantastic apps that shows you why the iPad was created—it features four different versions of the symphony from four noted conductors, including Leonard Bernstein, along with the score, a “BeatMap” of each of the four orchestras, and plenty of expert commentary. You’ll only get excerpts, however, with the free download: Users must pay $14 to get the full app experience.
The free Festival de Cannes app should be a delight for movie lovers, offering live coverage of the Cannes Film Festival in France, including trailers for the movies being shown, audio interviews with the cast and crews of prominent films, daily photo galleries, and more.
Haunting Melissa isn’t just an app for the iPhone and iPad—it’s a horror story that slowly unfolds on your iOS device via push notifications and Blair Witch-style video. You’ll discover why Melissa vanished, and what horror awaits at the farmhouse where she slowly seemed to go mad. You can pay as you go—about a buck per chapter—or fork over $15 for the season pass.
Oh sure, the Peterson Birds Pocket Edition looks like a really handy reference guide, helping you identify different birds by sight, song, and even geographic location. Sure, it helps you keep a checklist of all the birds you’ve ever seen. Yes, it’s filled with amazing illustrations. But it falls short in one major area: No recipes.
Admittedly, there was a time we thought Pinterest might be a social-networking fad that lots of people signed up for but nobody actually used—like Google+. We were wrong. The latest update to the iOS app includes the ability to “pin” interesting items directly from your iPhone or iPad, as well as the option to be notified when your items have been re-pinned by someone else. You can even invite friends to pin with you on group boards. With its constant, incremental improvements, the app is more Pinteresting than ever.
If you want to be a real Kirk about it, you KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN play your favorite science-fiction franchise as a role-playing card game. Star Trek: Rivals lets you face off against friends in turn-based battle; you can increase your odds with the in-app purchase (ranging from $2 to $25) of “latinum strips” that keep you in the hunt for galactic supremacy. It’s the real McCoy.
tenXer tracks what you do, where you do it, and for how long—sometimes requiring you to input certain information (like how many cups of coffee you drink in a given day), but other times relying on your iPhone’s GPS to get a sense of your habits. (Once it figures out where you work, for example, the app will track your time there without your input.) The goal: To get enough information about your regular routines to help you identify and make changes.
The $1 Yelling Mom app is a to-do offering that looks and acts a lot like the popular Clear app, with two exceptions: 1) It’s yellow. 2) It offers a number of time-based reminders, and lets you separate your goals into items due today, tomorrow, and “someday.”
UPS for iPad (pictured) launched, allowing users to manage deliveries … eBay for iPad users can now add multiple items to their shopping carts … and Google Play Books can now import and sync ePub and PDF files.
Author: Joel Mathis
Joel Mathis is a regular contributor to Macworld and TechHive. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and young son.