All Articles in App Store Apps

UPDATE: Skype seems to be live now in the US App Store [iTunes Link]. If you find it in any other App Store’s please let us know in the comments. [Thanks daveizzle for the tip!]

UPDATE 2: According to CBC News, Skype will NOT be available in Canada (though it will be everywhere else). The reason, a patent-license restrictions on Skype’s end that they won’t discuss. Apparently that means no iPhone Skype App for Canada and crippled Skype-to-Skype and IM only for the BlackBerry come may. Sort that out, will you Skype. Now? [via arcterex]

UPDATE 3: Important note for JAILBREAK users: if you’re experiencing constant crashes, be sure to update MobileSubstrate via Cydia.

ORIGINAL post after the jump!

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Ok, don’t worry, the above image is actually from Activisions version of Ghostbusters for the Apple II that appeared in 1984 and not from this upcoming version. Most Ghostbuster fans out there are aware that the Ghostbusters are making their comeback this June on all of the major video game consoles with the original cast doing the voice acting. Well, most of you will be excited to know that your favorite ghostbusting trio will be making an appearance on the iPhone this June as well. Details are pretty much nil at the moment though hopefully Sony Pictures does it justice.

Sony says the Ghostbusters iPhone game will see you playing as the traditional team from the Ghostbusters movies, tackling New York borough by borough, trapping pesky poltergeists and stopping innocent citizens from being slimed. Think Halloween Harry, only with Ghostbusters’ Peter Venkman deadpanning it all the way through.

It should be interesting to see how the developers take advantage of the iPhones accelerometer in terms of control. So what do all of the fans think of this comeback? This is pretty big for those of us who here at TiPb grew up in the 1980’s, so we’re pretty excited to this game is coming.

[Via Electricpig]

We’ve talked about this several times before on TiPb, but Jeremy Horwitz over at iLounge takes an interesting journey via the game Peggle, what it’s release looks like for the Nintendo DS at $30, how retail sales prices break down, and what it might mean for iPhone gamers if they’re forced by market conditions to give us a barer-boned $5 version.

We know Apple said “free apps stay free”, so there’s still no model for demos to get people hooked, but the idea of ScaleWare, so a low introductory price can be followed by a few level/feature pack upgrades is something we’re fond of. Horwitz rightly points out that if devs over use this, however, it could make things worse:

just imagine the commercials showing someone actually playing a full Sony or Nintendo handheld game alongside someone clicking on iPod touch dialog boxes to the sound of a cash register.

iLounge likes the idea of regular games (i.e. cheap) with the in-app option to upgrade to deluxe versions (i.e. full price). Sounds good to us. We want great games on the iPhone, and we’re willing to reward developers with fair prices for their work. Are you?

It’s interesting to see how developers try to monetize their work in the iTunes App Store. With the downward pressure towards $0.99 or free apps, many turn to advertising to make up the difference, but users are getting increasingly oblivious to advertising at the same time.

i.TV, as part of their recent update, has tried to make advertising more compelling by making it more interactive. It’s an interesting strategy:

: i.TV introduces the world’s first “shakable” ad. This limited release “Shake-down 2 Get Down” campaign from Dockers features Dufon, from the dance expressionist group “Circle of Fire.” When you see the ad pop up, just shake your device to make Dufon dance!

Even if that loses its appeal after the first few times, it will likely still make a stronger impact than static text or banners. Can developers keep the pace of advertising innovation in line with that of the apps themselves? That remains a question.

The i.TV update also includes a dedicated tab for Comcast subscribers, the world’s first “shakable” advertisement, AT&T U-verse listings and major performance improvements.

Cheese on bread, I find the concept of this game irie enough, though the lack of articulation in the eponymous character… nothing a go so. Shouldn’t a Rasta Monkey be a wee bit easier now star?

Rasta Monkey is set in the jungle of Jamdown. The gameplay is focused on a happy Rastafarian monkey who swings around and grabs onto branches to move his way through different jungle environments. Using monkey-swinging skills, players must snag some delicious fruit along the way to score points and move to different levels.

If anyone has tried it out, let us know what you think. Nice and crisp, or go back a yard?

Pre-School Pals and My Beagle Kiddies’ Corner Forum Reviews by cjvitek. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!

Pre-School Pals

You remember those old flip books where you could mix and match the head, body, and legs from various animals and such? Well, preschool pals with Henry and Hailey takes this idea and turns it in to an app for kids on the iPhone.

When playing this app, the first thing you can do is go through and look at the various “preschool pals” as they are supposed to appear. They include things like a fireman, policeman, robot, ballerina, etc. You can look at each image, and hit the play button to have each one say something (just a sentence or two). Keep reading Pre-School Pals Forum Review…

My Beagle

My Beagle is a “create a dog” app aimed at young kids. The concept of this app is simple – you can create a picture of a dog with various…accessories (for lack of a better word) from a wide list of options. Starting the app is simple – you simply click on the play button and get brought to a blank slate with a generic beagle image. From there, using the dial on the left, you can choose various accessories or attributes – collars, food bowls, background, eye shape, etc. You get to design a beagle to your liking.

When creating your masterpiece, you choose each of the categories of accessory, and then can choose from different images by sliding a button left or right to show the options. For example, with background images, you can choose from some butterflies, some birds, some trees, etc. The wide variety of options means that there are plenty of ways to create a unique masterpiece on your iPhone. Keep reading My Beagle Forum Review…

TiPb scored the above eyes-on way back at Macworld 2009, and now TUAW brings word that SlingMedia’s Player for the iPhone has finally been submitted to the App Store. Of course, no one but the magic 8-ball knows how long it will take for — or even if — Apple to approve it, but this is SlingPlayer, folks, so we’re taking even the tiny little steps as they come.

Any super-keeners revving up their SlingBox’s in anticipation? Or do you doubt Apple (or the carriers?) will actually let it into the App Store and onto the iPhone?

Back in January, before iPhone 3.0 made MMS an impending feature for all (carrier depending!), Jose sent us word that Vodafone Portugal had launched their own iMMS app. Well, now Jose is back and so is Vodafone Portugal.. with Mobile TV:

an application to watch TV from the iPhone. The download is free but after that you have to pay a subscription. One day is 0,89€, one week is 1,97€ (first week free), one month is 7,44€ (first month free).

So is this another case of a carrier leading where Apple will one day soon follow? They have announced new live streaming capabilities in 3.0…

Screen shots after the break.

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Tapbot was kind enough to give us a sneak-peak at Convertbot, their latest app, which converts units of power, pressure, speed, temperature, time, volume, work, angle, area, currency, length, and mass with the same kind of fun, fantastic interface they brought to their previous app, Weightbot (see our interview).

Rotate the wheel, old-school iPod style, to pick your category, tap to lock in the first unit, confirm, tap to lock in the second unit, confirm that, and you’re ready to go. (You can also tap the center button to change the direction of conversion at any time — i.e., miles to km, km to miles).

Rather then the generic keypad, Convertbot drops down it’s wheel to reveal a custom job, complete with backspace.

It’s a simple application done with a lot of care and consideration. It’s the kind of app we need more of. Full gallery after the break.

Convertbot is now available for $0.99 via the iTunes App Store.

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The App Store, even with 25,000 applications, is still a new market and one we’re all, developers, users, and media alike, trying to figure out. Developer James Thomson recently did an experiment to see how Twitkitteh, a fun little app, would compare in terms of sales and earnings, to his acclaimed PCalc in the App Store.

The results? Thomson talks about them in a blog post entitled Where Did it All Go Wrong?

Since Twitkitteh released about a week ago, we have sold exactly a hundred and one copies, at roughly 99c each. That makes it about £50 in terms of income at current exchange rates after Apple’s 30% cut. About 14 quid of that went on the domain name for a year, and about another 11 quid on hosting the domain on our existing server.

That leaves us £25 profit for three week’s work. Oh, and minus the 120 or so engineer-hours spent designing, writing, and promoting it that could have been spent on something else. So, depending on exactly how much you rate iPhone engineers at on an hourly basis, you can calculate exactly how much we lost on the whole project.

The good news is, with his grand Twitkitteh experiment completed (for now?), PCalc and PCalc Lite have received updates:

PCalc [iTunes link] gets a brand new engineering layout, with hyperbolic trig functions, hypotenuse, leg, gamma, delta percent and more. You also get a classic theme taken from PCalc on Mac OS X, and six new key click sounds you can choose from too.

PCalc Lite [iTunes link] gets just two of the click sounds, and some other small improvements. PCalc Lite remains completely free however, and completely awesome. If you want to get a feel for how the full PCalc works on the iPhone, just try it out.

Here’s hoping quality apps like PCalc and others will sell well enough that developers won’t have to spend their limited time working on the next great fart app to makes ends meet.