Back in 2011, iPad.AppStorm contributor James Watts compiled a list of 15 of the best freemium iPad games gracing the App Store at that moment in time. Since then, freemium has gone from strength to strength, prompting many more software companies to ditch the premium revenue model in favor of giving away the core functionality of an app for free.
Here, we have rounded up ten of the very best iPad games that sport this particular revenue model exceptionally well. Read on to discover iPad.AppStorm’s all-time freemium favorites!
It would be fair to say that the challenges our planet faces, now more than ever, are huge. Just keeping all six billion of us nourished and satisfied on a day-to-day basis uses up vast resources, some of which are irreplaceable. Equally, there are plenty of human-made, human-affecting issues which are cause for concern.
Most of us are aware that these ongoing issues exist, but keeping up to speed with the latest eye-watering figures, never mind considering their consequence, is an impossible task.
This is the problem that Track180 is trying to solve. The aim is to provide an easy way to browse current global affairs, and the app collates information from multiple sources to give a full overview of each story. But does Track180 make things clearer, or just prettier?
Google has slowly been infiltrating Apple’s ecosystem for years now, but their secret weapon has become the Google Search app. While the app used to be just a search engine, it’s become a search engine, a Chrome-like web browser, and even a so-called Siri competitor with its Voice Search function.
Jesse Virgil took a look at the last major incarnation of Google Search with an excellent review that really gets into the grits of what makes the app awesome. Today, Google has released version 3.0, which comes with only a few substantial improvements over the older version, including the much-touted Google Now feature.
Apple’s death-grip like control of the App Store has became quite legendary since it was launched in 2008. Some of you may remember in 2009 when Apple rejected the official Google Voice app, which was eventually admitted, but not without a probe first being launched by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Or perhaps you remember in 2010, when Apple took its sweet time (25 days) to finally approve the Opera Mini browser app, which, at the time, seemed as if it would never happen.
Well, 25 days is nothing in comparison to what SkyDrive — Microsoft’s cloud based storage service — users have had to endure. Having not received an update since June 1st last year, version 3.0 of SkyDrive for iOS was finally given the okay from Apple on April 3rd (the delay was caused by a disagreement regarding the 30 percent cut from revenue Apple would receive from in-app purchases). Now that the bickering has stopped, it’s time to take a look at what the newest version of SkyDrive has to offer. (more…)
The iPad is a perfect medium for point-and-click adventure games, a genre that often plays out like visual novels with puzzles. There’s been a recent resurgence in adventure games, and developers are trying to tell stories in new and inventive ways.
The Silent Age, an episodic adventure game for iPad, is no exception. Using time jumps to alter the physical environment, the game relies on the player to make connections between what is, what was, and what will be. We’ll take a look at The Silent Age and see whether time can be rewritten. (more…)
Let’s face it – whether or not we own an iPhone, most of us are aware of its proficient picture-taking ability and the abundance of apps to support it. The popularity of iPhoneography has driven developers to produce apps of the highest quality, and to fill numerous photographic niches.
The iPad, however, isn’t known for its camera, yet plenty of iPad owners can be seen at concerts and events, taking pictures and video. It seems bizarre that these folks haven’t had a quality iPad-specific photography app to work with.
It comes as a relief, then, that this void in the App Store’s catalogue has started to be filled. The new arrival is Blux Camera, the latest in a series of photo- and videographic apps by Blux Touch, which have been hugely popular on iPhone. But can this app turn your iPad into a truly usable, if rather overgrown, photographic companion?
There’s a huge market for word games on iOS. My family is addicted to Letterpress, and my mother is having a not-so-secret-anymore affair with Words With Friends (sorry Mom!). That being said, despite its excellence, Letterpress and I aren’t exactly mutually exclusive, and if I see another hot word game app whilst I’m goofing around in a coffee shop, I might give her a shot.
And I can’t lie to you guys: Upwords has caught my eye. I’m a big Scrabble fan (disclaimer: I’ve never played the traditional Upwords game). I love the board game but have yet to play a Scrabble-like word game on iOS that I think works well. After all, the trappings of Scrabble are the trappings of a board game and I see no reason a digital display should be bound by the same rules. But I loved the twist Upwords brings to the classic game of stackable letters.
The competition has now closed –– congratulations to @guye, @amarconsultant, @AspenMIT, @uberkreativ and @luizsanlima!
Last week, Phillip Johns looked at Mail Pilot, an alternative e-mail client for your iPad. Judging by the results of our weekly poll, out of a total of 340 votes, 249 of you (nearly three-quarters) thought that the iPad deserved something different to Mail.app, and Mail Pilot for some may be the answer.
Instead of focusing on working through your e-mails as and when you receive them, Mail Pilot lets you put off e-mails and will remind you later on to take a look at them. This approach has also been taken by Mailbox – for the time being it only supports the iPhone and Gmail accounts — but Mail Pilot features a few nifty features up its sleeve that can help you reach that beautiful feeling of “inbox zero” in no time at all.
Are you interested in learning about wine, but bored with droll instructional books or turned off by elite wine-tasting groups? Maybe you’re looking to better understand the foreign words on wine labels or grasp the intricacies of pairing food and wine? The learning curve to becoming a wine aficionado may seem steep, but the creators of Pocket Wine want to change that perception. The sellers, Wine Paradigm, offer their wine knowledge and experience as a model to give you an enhanced understanding of the wine world. The result is a very useful wine reference tool for iPad, loaded with in-depth information on grape varieties, wine regions and tasting notes along with an extensive glossary of wine terminology.
This app is unlike any wine app in that it claims to give you the knowledge and guidance to make your own informed decisions about wine, rather than relying on the reviews of experts or social media. Both novices and more experienced wine hobbyists will appreciate Pocket Wine, where information is presented in terms a layman can understand, without dumbing down the content.
Wine geeks, read on to begin the journey of discovering your palate and understanding grape growing regions around the globe.
Did you ever play the original Scribblenauts game for the DS? If so, you’ll love this. If you didn’t, you’ll like it even better.
Scribblenauts: Remix is a game that allows you to conjure any object in order to complete an equally imaginative set of objectives present across a large array of well-designed levels. It operates on the premise that the sky is the limit when it comes to how you want to complete a level. Read on to see if the iOS version retains the magic found in the DS versions.
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