All Articles in App Store Apps

Waaaaaay back in the early days of the iPhone, word spread that legendary creator of 3D first person shooters like Wolfenstein and Doom, John Carmack was eager to develop games for the iPhone. Well, hopefully good things come to those who wait, because Carmack has just posted news that Wolfenstein is on its way, and there’s more to come.

In a monstrous blog post, Carmack explains what took so long, the pros (graphics more capable than Nintendo DS) and cons (driver overhead is far, far worse), design notes, and programming.

Must read for anyone interested in iPhone development and id games. For those who just want to play, Wolfenstein is coming, Doom is coming, and undisclosed but hopefully uber-cool new id-goodness is coming.

So, who’s loading their chain guns?

Things have been pretty slow this week in terms of noteworthy apps to bring to your attention. Nevertheless , we did find you two gems on sale in a sea of apps. To learn more about these discounted apps, read on after the break! Read the rest of this entry »

Want to take your coffee to the next level? Turn your iPhone into your own gourmet coffee coach with Barista [iTunes link]. With an awesome interface, step-by-step instructions, pro-level tips and tricks, an easy to understand explinations, Barista is currently on 66% off sale in the App Store [iTunes link] but what’s better than cheap? FREE!

The kind folks at BaristaApp have given us a couple (2) promo codes to give on to you. Just drop a comment below telling them — and us — your favorite coffee beverage!

(Drawing will be random and you’ll need access to the US App Store to redeem your promo code. Be sure to leave a valid email address, we won’t make it public but we’ll need it to contact you with your code).

Good luck, and more importantly… good coffee making!

Meditate Now 2 Forum Review by msbaylor. (Visit the thread for video and more pics. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum!

Meditate Now 2 is an application that contains a series of audio clips that capable of helping you alleviate stress and allow you to relax. The audio is narrated by Stin Hansen, whom is an extremely experienced speaker and an award wining meditation expert. Her voice is absolutely perfect for this type of application. Most of audios range from about nine minutes long to about 15 minutes long (with two exceptions being at three & five minutes)

Read the rest of this entry »

BeeJive makes one of the best instant messenger clients on the iPhone — or any platform, see our review — and with version 2.1, it now includes:

• Support for Facebook IM, including the ability to login from multiple locations, update your buddy picture and Facebook status updates
• Wallpaper selection inside the application, giving you the ability to select your own wallpaper
• Performance enhancements

But wait, there’s more. It also includes a very creative — and comedic! — way of dealing with iPhone App pirates. Sort of a carrot and stick (or baseball bat and axe kick) approach:

We have recently implemented new anti-piracy measures in BeejiveIM for iPhone. We have tried to keep our approach fun with an error message and a video. But we hope our message is clear: please respect the work of developers.

We agree. Go get BeeJiveIM now [iTunes link]. Or, if you really want it for FREE, BeeJive was awesome enough to give us two (2) promo codes to give to you, our equally awesome readers. How can you get your hands on them? Just head on over to our Forums and find out!

We mentioned in passing during our pre-iPhone 3.0 rumor round-up that:

G-Maps has mysteriously disappeared from the App Store, and will “return soon”…

While XRoad’s website said the US East and West coast maps were being improved, the real reason speculated at the time is that they were perhaps about to re-appear as a full turn-by-turn navigation solution as part of the Premium App Store. Neither of those things happened, and now Gizmodo shares what might really have been going on:

Update: Some developers have told us that the reason G-Map has been pulled is that by including turn-by-turn navigation, it violated the terms of agreement—which is why it was the first turn-by-turn app to come out.

Of course, the App Store terms of service have now changed, allowing for turn-by-turn as long as the developer “brings their own maps” so we’ll have to keep an eye on this one and see what happens come “summer” and the official iPhone 3.0 release…

Dieter gave us our first eyes-on look at Sygic’s Turn-by-Turn GPS solution for the iPhone 3G, but we wondered if Apple — whose iPhone SDK specifically forbid providing such navigation — would ever allow it.

Seems Sygic thinks they will:

Sygic is entering the AppStore to be the first on the market that offers full turn-by-turn navigation for Apple users. “We believe Apple users will benefit soon from Sygic Mobile 2009 turn-by-turn navigation worldwide – the same as all of our customers on different platforms” said Michal Stencl, CEO and founder of Sygic.

Could this be part of a new Premium App Store launch later today? Our tipper, antonioj, seems to think it will…

Only 2 hours left, so be sure to join us for our live meta-blog coverage and hopefully we’ll find out together!

Boxee, a branch of XBMC (originally Xbox Media Center, something that gave my original Xbox a life and power well beyond what Microsoft ever intended) is free alternative to Microsoft’s Media Center and Apple’s Front Row and AppleTV that many believe soundly beats both on features alone. It’s had some hiccups as of late, what with Big Media pulling Hulu content (they likely don’t want Hulu on TVs as the same shows fetch much higher ad revenue from traditional networks than they do from the internet streams), but that hasn’t stopped them from pushing forward. The latest example? Boxee Remote for iPhone:

• the boxee remote app has two modes: Gesture and Buttons
• in the Gesture mode you need to hold down your thumb and move it around in order to navigate.
• clicking on the boxee logo acts as Select/Play/Pause
• dragging the boxee logo to the edges of the screen will act as a continuous up/down/left/right
• clicking in an input field will open up the iPhone Qwerty keyboard and will enable you to easily enter text
• the app works over WiFi, so make sure the WiFi on your iPhone is turned on

If you’re a Boxee user and you try this out, let us know how it works for you!

South by Southwest (SXSW) 2009 is trendy, twitter-filling, and the source of increasingly social iPhone news releases. What’s going on this year?

FaceBook connect comes to the iPhone. Sure, they may just have redesigned their home pages to basically become Twitter with invitations to apps you don’t want and events on continents you can’t attend, but behind the scenes:

You can now use Facebook Connect on your iPhone in the same way you can for a website. Simply download any application featuring Facebook Connect and log in using your Facebook account from your iPhone. Then, you’ll be able to easily find your Facebook friends. They will be able to see the same profile information as they can on the site, controlled by your privacy settings. You can also share what you’re doing with your iPhone applications with all of your Facebook friends by publishing stories back to your profile.

Pelago has launched Whrrl 2.0:

an application for the iPhone that enables people to capture and share the moments of their lives, as they happen, as a story. Through location, photos and text updates, users can easily turn everyday life experiences into lasting stories that can be remembered, organized and shared. Each user controls exactly who can view their story, ranging from public to private, and includes the option to broadcast status updates on Facebook and Twitter.

SGN Launched Agency Wars, a game tied into — you guessed it! — social networking and Facebook connect!

Agency Wars is capitalizing on the classic spy genre and offeres massively multiplayer game play so you can become the most deadly spy around.

TUAW is also live and on location at SXSW 2009, and have posted up coverage of the iPhone Gaming Panel.

We can’t tell if twittkitteh (iTunes Link) is shrewd marketing or wicked satire at the state of the App Store and Twitter. We suspect it’s equal parts both, finished with a good shot of lulz.

Says developer James Thomson:

Twitkitteh is, quite simply, the first Twitter application written specifically for cats.

For many years, cats have been unfairly excluded from this social networking phenomenon, but we at TLA Systems believe it is finally time to change that.

Designed from the ground up for the iPhone, and featuring a simple multi-paw interface, Twitkitteh allows your cat to post insightful comments to Twitter on a wide variety of subjects – all without the tiresome inconvenience of learning to type first.

Your cat deserves a voice on the Internet, and Twitkitteh is that voice.

Welcome to Cat 2.0.

Brilliant, and what’s even more brilliant is he’s giving away two (2) copies to our faithful TiPb readers. Just drop a twitkitteh-inspired comment (and be sure to include a real email address, we won’t make it public but we will use it to notify you if you win!). Get to it!

(Note: Unfortunately, Promo Codes only work in the US App Store, so if you don’t have access, you won’t be able to claim a prize.)