This week’s roundup includes improvements to an old favorite from Apple, and one entirely new offering from the company. Read on!
The $2 Exploding Kittens “is a local multiplayer card game for people who are into kittens and explosions and laser beams and sometimes goats.” (If you’ve played the physical card game of the same name, you know what’s up.) You can play with two to five people on the same network; the game is modeled on Russian Roulette—draw cards until you pick the “Exploding Kitten,” at which point you’re out.
Apple’s GarageBand app for iOS has been updated with a number of new features: The ability to record up to 32 tracks at once, the addition of 1,200 new Apple Loops and sounds, a “virtual drummer” to keep the beat to the music you create, and more. It’s easier to create pro-sounding music, wherever you happen to be.
Monthly, the $2 personal finance app, is now searchable—any income or expense by type, name, month, year—from iOS Spotlight search. Developers have also added support for multitasking, 3D Touch, iCloud syncing, and a multitude of languages: Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, English, Spanish, Basque, Galician, Catalan, Croatian, Dutch, German, Hungarian, Portuguese, Polish, Italian, and French.
Music Memos is a new app from Apple, designed for musicians, meant to help them capture ideas. “Use your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to record acoustic guitar, piano, voice, or any musical instrument as high-quality, uncompressed audio. Then name, tag, and rate your ideas to start building a library of all your favorite new song parts and riffs.”
We admit: Sometimes we get stuck in a YouTube spiral, watching Russian dashcam videos. (Don’t judge us!) The $1 Road Watcher is designed to let you prop your iPhone or iPad up on your car’s dashboard, and make some movie magic of your own.
No, they don’t sell CDs at Starbucks anymore. But the latest improvement to the Starbucks app lets you discover music playing in your local coffee franchise, save the songs to a Spotify playlist, and listen to your favorites again long after you’ve left with your drink.
The free Triprecall-M lets you create memories of your journeys—it’s the modern version of Don Draper’s slideshow, only you can add photos, videos, voice and text—and share them on your Apple TV. Next time you have guests, you can show them how much fun you had on your vacation to the Bahamas.
ZCast is a podcasting equivalent of video apps like Periscope: Choose a topic, and you’re ready to start broadcasting audio. A notable feature: Invite people from your Twitter network chat live with you, and group-cast to your collective Twitter followers.
Weather Underground has updated with interface improvements … Facebook has started rolling out 3D Touch features … Magzter has been revamped to focus on individual articles instead of whole magazines.
Author: Joel Mathis
Joel Mathis is a regular contributor to Macworld and TechHive. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and young son.