The Online Magazine Focused on App Design, Branding & Marketing

Today we’re starting a new installation on Tapsauce where we’ll look at the hottest news in mobile apps and discuss them here. There’s a wealth of news happening every day and we aim to deliver the best news to you in one place.

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“Freemium” is the latest buzzword in mobile gaming, used to describe a game that’s free in the store, but loaded with items and power-ups within the game ‘s in-app store, to get you to part with your dollar once you start to play. It’s the “first taste is free” idea, used by many a back alley dealer, applied to the world of gaming. It’s easier to get an initial download when a game is free (and I’ve written in the past about our reluctance to impulsively spend 99-cents on an app). But what happens when a game’s paid content is so negligible that you never even consider spending a buck or two on in-app goodies? This brings us to Beeline’s official Ghostbusters game, which, depending on how you look at it, is either the worst or the best example of “freemium.”

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Did you catch us at SXSW this year? Sorry if we missed you! We were passing out a special edition of Appetite for Destruction with a SXSW comic in the back. If you want a physical copy, just let us know and we’ll see what we can do! Ohterwise, we’ve uploaded it here just for you!

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Earlier, I spent a couple hundred words complaining about the state of mobile gaming and probably coming off like some sort of horrible combination of a whiny baby and an old man shaking his fist at the youngsters congregating on his lawn. I fear, more than anything, that a post that is composed of paragraph after paragraph of complaints and warnings and doomsaying makes me sound like I’m down on mobile gaming…because I’m not. At all! I love mobile gaming! I’m just a little picky. I would say “Maybe you should be a little picky too since it would help you find and enjoy better games,” but that sounds really snobby and elitist and I actually want you to keep reading as I endorse some of my favorite mobile games and encourage you to throw money at them.

So, without further ado, here are a few games that I’ve sunk more money into than I have most others…and I don’t feel bad about it at all.

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When I think about the future of mobile apps, I tend to think about the things that I find inherently exciting. I imagine having a library of incredibly mobile games on my smartphone, for instance. I imagine someone finding a way to top Summly and deliver the new Best Newsreader App Of All Time. I imagine a top notch Twitter client that leaves all of the others in the dust. You see, when I think about what apps will be able to do in the future, I have a fairly narrow view of what’s possible — I selfishly daydream about apps that will benefit me and only me.

By doing this, I find myself ignoring the obvious: as more and more people gain access to mobile devices and smartphones, apps are going to become more and more important to people who have different priorities than me. The coming years won’t just bring apps that will make me happy and allow me to kill some time, they’ll bring apps that will simply dull tasks and make the world a faster, easier and more efficient place in ways beyond finding a cool new restaurant.

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Freemium gaming is broken.

Okay, that’s a little harsh. I’ll be more specific, in many cases, Freemium gaming is broken. And I’m not just talking about the system of charing people a few bucks here and there to play a game (which, when handled properly, is completely tolerable), I’m talking about how the freemium style is actually causing developers to create actively bad and painful gameplay experiences that would not be improved even if they were free. People are looking at games with optional micro-transactions and learning the wrong lesson entirely. A good freemium game demands extra money because it’s addicting and fun to play, but many free to play games offer an interminable experience while allowing you to pay to skip levels or to get through the the rough sections of the game.

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We’ve been hearing about the possibility of an iWatch since the Golden Age of Steve Jobs, but there’s never been any hard evidence that such a thing was actually being seriously considered. In many ways, it feels like the natural evolution of mobile technology (your apps will always be readily available on your wrist!), but at the same time, it seems really, really dumb (I imagine people talking into the watches like a junior spy in a ’70s children’s cartoon and I giggle a little). But now, for better or for worse, we now have our first piece of hard evidence that the Apple folks are working on iWatch: they’ve filed a patent for a “Bi-stable spring with flexible display.”

In English: a slap bracelet with a touch screen.

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Is there room in the already crowded smartphone market for another operating system? With Apple and Android grappling for dominance while Microsoft and BlackBerry duel for third place, you’d think that another company would have a hard time getting a foothold, let alone becoming an actual competitor.

So, on the outside, it looks like Mozilla is heading toward certain destruction with their recently announced mobile operating system. But once you read their pitch, you can see where they’re coming from…and you’ll see why they may very well succeed.

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Earlier this week, I ran across this article suggesting a long list of overpriced “survival bag” items to pack for SXSW. I live in Austin, so the only things I’ll be packing are my iPhone pre-loaded with handy apps and a small purse with a charger cable and wet-naps. Regardless of what you’re packing in your survival bag, you should have a few apps to help you survive and stay organized. Read more about my must have SXSW Survival Guide Apps to survive SXSW this year!

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The Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 (which was recently revealed at this year’s Mobile World Congress) isn’t just a large smartphone, it’s the world’s largest smartphone. It’s stupidly large smartphone. It’s enormous. It doesn’t even resemble a phone anymore. It dwarfs the iPhone 5′s 4.7 inch screen. It’s so ridiculous that it stops being dumb and circles back around to being kind of amazing. The only thing more shocking than seeing the Galaxy Note 8.0 in promotional photographs is imagining someone actually carrying it around in their pocket and taking it out every time they want to make a phone call. Aren’t phones supposed to fit easily in your hand?

Which brings me to the question asked in the headline of this article. If you see a large cat that barks and fetches, you’d call it a dog, so when we see a “smartphone” this absurdly large, why don’t we just go ahead and call it a tablet?

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