Diverging from Mundomono/Kid Bunch’s past fairy tale titles, Bean Bag Kids Apollo 11 ($3) tells the story of the three American astronauts who traveled to the moon, culminating in the first ever moon landing. Using button-memorizing and tapping sequences, kids aged six and up can control takeoff of the spaceship, separation into parts, landing on the moon, and a return to space. The graphics engine has radically improved over the developer’s past titles, now featuring impressive 3-D models and special effects that look like they could have come out of Super Mario Galaxy. The audio and storytelling is reasonable as well, albeit with some small details that could stand to be fixed. There’s a bit less actual Bean Bag character content than before, but the cool spaceship sequences and now interstellar scale of the artwork make up for that. Really young kids will find the button memorization sequences too challenging. Note that this app is currently available elsewhere and should be coming to the US App Store soon.
Care Bears: Create & Share! (Free*) from Budge Studios lets kids create postcards with Care Bear art, greetings, and stamps, then e-mail or save them. The art portion of the app lets you pick from a wide variety of actual Care Bear colors and belly badges, as well as letting you create your own badges. Adult Care Bears and the new child character Wonderheart Bear are included. Greetings can either be typed or drawn, and kids can choose from different backgrounds, frames, and stamp designs before sending off their creations. You can even substitute a photograph of your face for the Care Bear’s face, if you’d like. While the app is free, most of the Care Bears’ bodies are locked behind a $4 in-app purchase that unlocks everything and removes ads — individual Bears can be purchased separately at a higher total cost. Unfortunately, the Good Luck Bear art remains locked even after the purchase, requiring you to promote the app on a social media service to unlock that feature, which may disappoint young kids.
Apple’s new Logic Remote (free) app for iPads lets users control Apple’s just-released Mac app Logic Pro X. Logic Pro X is a professional music recording app, and the iOS Logic Remote app lets users interact with it from a distance. Logic Remote lets iPad users play instruments, navigate projects, and mix sessions in a number of ways. Obviously, the $200 Logic Pro X program is required for the app to have any use.
Microsoft has released two separate free iOS apps for its Outlook mail program — OWA for iPhone and OWA for iPad. Both apps require an Office 365 subscription. The apps offer quicker ways to organize or browse email and manage schedules. Security is also a priority, with both apps including a remote wipe of corporate data that leaves personal data untouched, in addition to a separate app passcode for additional security.
