Among this week’s new and updated apps, we feature an offering designed to help you make the best Caesar salad ever. Really. Plus, games, social media, and more!
There’s nothing we appreciate in an app more than specialization. Best Caesar, a free app from Tyson Cally, aims to do just one thing: help users make (natch) the best Caesar salad ever. It features just the one recipe, passed down from Cally’s father, with photos guiding you step-by-step through the process. Amazingly, there’s a social element as well, as users are encouraged to share their creations with the #thebestcaesar community online.
We’ve long been fans of this $4 weather app for iPhone and iPad. It still specializes in letting you know, up to an hour in advance, when the next burst of rain or snow is coming—a great feature if you live in one of those places prone to random precipitation. Version 4.0 arrives with a refresh for iOS 7, includes extended 24-hour and 7-day forecasts, and features all-new global maps.
This free iPhone app will settle a million bar arguments, offering annotated lyrics to millions of songs, explaining cryptic lines, clarifying inside jokes, defining unusual terms, and breaking down technical aspects of songs. It might even make you brave enough to listen to R.E.M. again.
For those who think Notes Plus is a dandy note-taking app but balk at its $5 price, developer Viet Tran now offers INKredible, a free iPad app which inherits one of its predecessor’s better features: a fine-tuned handwriting recognition feature that makes stylus-based note-taking a breeze. There are $1 in-app purchases for users who want to add different pen styles—”wet brush” or ballpoint pen” for example.
Remember the old, paper-bound baby albums? The $1 Obaby app for iPhone and iPad brings that hoary concept to colorful 21st-century life, offering users a set of up to 50 illustrations that can be used to tell the story of your child’s life, starting with the first ultrasound. In-app purchases—about $1 each—offer additional options for making the album as personalized and unique as your lil’ shmoogums.
Version 2.0 of this free read-it-later app has launched with an extensive redesign and a number of updates, including iOS 7 compatibility and background syncing. The app also features a new “recommendations” section to bring the very best long-form writing to the attention of users—and shaped by the likes of other Readability users in your network.
If you love a good puzzle—as well as Benedict Cumberbatch’s prickly take on Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous character—then the $5 Sherlock: The Network game for iPhone is probably for you. It contains 30 minutes of exclusive video content, including Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as his bestie, John Watson. You’ll join them on the streets of London and use your wits to solve a puzzle.
Admittedly, we’re taking a close look at this $2 game for iPhone out of sheer nostaglia—it appears to be an updated, and somewhat more complex, version of the old “Scorched Earth” game some of us may have played in a dorm room in 1991. It’s a turn-based artillery game in which you calculate the best shot to take at your opponent—and, if you miss, hope their calculations are no better than yours. Simple stuff, but hours of fun.
Ember for iOS (pictured) has added new annotation tools … Facebook has made it easier to decide whose posts you’ll see in your newsfeed … and Google Chrome for iOS has been updated to translate webpages from other languages.
Author: Joel Mathis
Joel Mathis is a regular contributor to Macworld and TechHive. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and young son.