20 best iPhone and iPad apps this week

Mr Shingu’s Paper Zoo, DuckDuckGo Search & Stories, Rockpack, Timeline WW1 with Dan Snow, Justin’s World â€" Lettersounds, Weathertron and more

It’s time for our weekly roundup of brand new and notable apps for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices.

It covers apps and games, with the prices referring to the initial download: so (Free) may mean (Freemium) in some cases. There’s a separate roundup for Android apps, which was published earlier in the day.

For now, read on for this week’s iOS selection (and when you’ve finished, check out previous Best iPhone and iPad apps posts).

Mr Shingu’s Paper Zoo (£1.99)

Digital origami isn’t, as yet, a wildly popular category on the App Store. Yet Mr Shingu’s Paper Zoo deserves to become a big hit on iOS for the way its virtual paper animals may inspire children to make their own menageries in the real world. The app teaches kids how to make pandas, penguins and other animals by folding on-screen paper, then look after them in a virtual zoo. The digital play in this delightful app will inspire real-world creativity.
iPhone / iPad

DuckDuckGo Search & Stories (Free)

Anonymous search engine DuckDuckGo is on a post-Prism growth spurt at the moment. Now its official iOS app is aiming to be a haven for more users who are turning away from Google. The app offers similarly-anonymous search functions to the website, but also doubles as a news-reading app, serving up “the most shared stories from hand-crafted sources” in news, entertainment, sports, technology and other areas.
iPhone

Rockpack (Free)

There’s a blizzard of startups focusing on “video curation” right now, even though most smartphone owners are blissfully unaware that uncurated videos are a problem that needs solving. Rockpack is the latest app to enter the fray, and it looks pretty impressive. The idea: you create personal channels around subjects that you’re interested in, then get feeds of videos that you may like. It’s very slick, but the challenge now is to convince people they need it.
iPhone / iPad

Timeline WW1 with Dan Snow (Free)

Developer Ballista Media’s Timeline WW2 with Dan Snow app was an excellent introduction to the second world war â€" read this interview for more on the ambitions behind it â€" and now it’s got a sequel. Or rather a prequel, given that the first world war is the subject this time. Historian and TV presenter Snow provides the research, with bags of vintage clips and photos. The free download covers the first two months of the war, with a £6.99 in-app purchase unlocking the rest.
iPad

Justin’s World â€" Lettersounds (£1.49)

CBeebies star Justin Fletcher’s first app was a retelling of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This is his second App Store outing, with phonics the focus this time round. It covers the first eight letter sounds that children will learn at school, with simple and clear mini-games starring alliterative animals and items (pink pig, angry ant etc) to reinforce the learning. Plus video of Fletcher himself, who’s as engaging a communicator on smartphone and tablet screens as on bigger TVs.
iPhone / iPad

Weathertron (£0.69)

iPhone owners are spoiled for choice when it comes to innovative weather apps, with Yahoo and BBC joining the battle in recent months. Weathertron promises to present its weather forecast as a “live infographic of the entire day’s weather”, drawing on 16 sources to show the conditions you can expect. It covers more than 15k cities around the world, with a seven-day forecast complementing the detailed 24-hour data.
iPhone / iPad

Diner Dash Rush (Free)

Diner Dash is one of the more popular casual games on iOS already, but with this new version publisher PlayFirst is aiming for a Bejeweled Blitz-style hit. The core game is still focused on waitress Flo trying to “seat, serve and satisfy” customers by tapping on their tables, but this time it’s against the clock, with Facebook and Game Center-fuelled high-score tables, and in-app purchases to buy boosts to bump up your score.
iPhone / iPad

Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra by Benjamin Britten (Free)

There have been a few apps aiming to introduce classical music to children in the last year or so, with this being one of the more impressive examples. It’s aimed at 7-11 year-olds, based on a new recording of Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. Mini-games and quizzes teach kids about instruments and musical terms, with a scrolling score to help them follow the music.
iPad

Anchor by Tomfoolery (Free)

Styling itself as “the best way to share and connect with your colleagues”, Anchor is a social networking / collaboration app for the workplace, putting it in a similar spot to services like Yammer. The idea being a way for group and one-to-one text chats, a people directory and the ability to organise users into teams by project or division, with an activity feed showing the latest updates.
iPhone

Wake Up With Disney (£0.69)

Because really, why has it taken this long for someone to devise a way for your iPhone or iPad to wake up up with an angry Donald Duck? Don’t answer that. Disney’s latest app is starting with Donald, but will add more of its famous characters over time, providing an alarm clock with weather forecast, and the ability to poke and prod the character, Talking Tom Cat-style.
iPhone / iPad

Seenth.is (Free)

There are lots of apps to help you discover new music, but what about keeping up with the artists you already like? That’s what Seenth.is wants to help with: you sign up to follow specific artists, then it pulls their updates from services including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, SoundCloud and Instagram into one place, so you don’t miss a new track, backstage video or filtered sandwich pic.
iPhone

UFO Files UK (£0.69)

This is a great app for alien-spotters, produced as it is with the National Archives and pitched as a “chance to explore Britain’s real-life ‘X-Files’”. It serves up all the (public) Ministry of Defence records on reported UFO sightings â€" more than 5,000 in all â€" plotted on a map. More than 400 pages from the actual UFO Files have been scanned in for digital reproduction here, too.
iPhone / iPad

Math Elements (£2.49)

There’s a big demand for educational-but-entertaining maths apps for children at the moment, with Math Elements appealing even without the missing ‘s’. Already winning awards in its native Finland, it’s aimed at 4-8 year-olds, teaching them core-curriculum maths skills over 100 levels, with the twist being that they learn by teaching a cartoon mouse character.
iPad

Layton Brothers Mystery Room (Free)

A few weeks ago, iOS got a new version of the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney franchise. Now another series made famous on Nintendo’s DS handhelds has popped up on the App Store: Professor Layton. This spin-off features the son of Professor Layton solving criminal puzzles, helping Scotland Yard by collecting objects and grilling suspects. The prologue and two cases are included for free, with more three-case packs buyable via in-app purchase.
iPhone / iPad

Magic 2014 (Free)

Trading card game Magic: The Gathering continues to have a large and devoted fanbase. They’ll be the people excited about this new digital version, updated for 2014 with new cards, opponents and campaign levels to test your skills. As a free download, the game comes with three decks with five unlockable cards each, but more decks, cards and content can be bought via in-app purchase.
iPad

Q Official Glastonbury Review 2013 (Free)

The Glastonbury Festival is over for another year, so now it’s time to pick over the winners and losers of the show, critically speaking. Music mag Q is releasing an “official souvenir magazine” for the festival with reviews, photos and interviews from Glastonbury 2013. The actual 72-page digital mag costs £2.99 as an in-app purchase.
iPhone / iPad

Wibbitz (Free)

More curated video in this app, which is getting some people in Silicon Valley in a lather. Its USP: “Wibbitz creates beautiful video summaries out of text articles,” drawing on a range of sources to analyse their text and offer them up as snackable videos, images and infographics.
iPhone

Colin McRae Rally (£2.99)

Rally star Colin McRae may have died in 2007, but his name lives on in this new iOS racing game â€" a spin-off from Codemasters’ famous console franchise. It sees you speeding through 30 stages with real cars, and a mixture of skiddy surfaces.
iPhone / iPad

mem:o (£1.49)

This looks fab: a productivity / time management app based on “bright colours, simple shapes, bold typography and playful interactions”, which looks a lot different from the average calendar app. This may mean it appeals to a niche of iPad users, but it’s more than just a looker: tags, colours and themed boards offer an interesting spin on organising your weeks.
iPad

Early Ears (£0.69)

Hearing difficulties among young children aren’t always permanent, but they are a source of worry for parents â€" and a possible problem for speech and language development. Early Ears is aimed at parents of 2-8 year-olds as a way to run a standard audiology test to detect if there’s cause for concern â€" as a way to decide whether you should seek a professional diagnosis, note, not a replacement for that. It’s the work of Aston University.
iPhone / iPad

That’s this week’s selection, but what do you think? Make your own recommendations, or give your views on the apps above, by posting a comment.

Stuart Dredge

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Tagged Dan Snow , Diner Dash , Early Ears , iPad , iPhone , Math Elements , Official Glastonbury Review , Paper Zoo , UFO , UK

source: www.angrytech.com