Today’s leading Fresh iPhone App lets you jam to your old-school tunes in an old-school way. AirCassette makes your iPhone look like a tape deck when it plays your music, creating a cassette tape with the name of your track written on it and spools that turn as you use the app’s functions. It’s followed by AuthenticJobs, a job board app that might help IT pros find work in this tough economy. McGyro, a gyroscope-using Western-styled first-person shooter, leads today’s games list, followed by Sprinkle Junior, a kid version of the popular physics game about putting out fires with a giant fire hose rig.
AirCassette (iPhone, iPad) $1.99
If modern technology just isn’t as cool to you as an ancient magnetic tape cassette, I’m sorry to tell you that you’re sort of out of luck in terms of the progress the world is making. But you can still pretend you spend your days listening to cassette tapes with AirCassette. The app takes music from your iOS devices and plays it, just like your iPhone, iPod or iPad’s iPod functionality already does, but it uses a cassette tape aesthetic on the screen to make you think you’re back in 1988, or 1991, or whenever you wish it was.
The app features animations for when you fast-forward and rewind, making the cassette move, and the tape wheels will roll forward as your tracks play as if you were looking at a tape deck. You can share the images of your favorite cassettes on Facebook and Twitter with your friends, and you can queue up multiple songs, then save those lists for later to create mixtapes. It’s pure retro goofy fun.
AuthenticJobs (iPhone, iPad) Free
Times are tough right now, and finding a job can be tougher. AuthenticJobs tries to give a hand with that issue, providing a targeted jobs board for IT pros filled with opportunities ranging from internships and freelance positions, short-term “gigs,” contract jobs and full-time positions.
AuthenticJobs’ listings are arranged by several job categories, and once you narrow down just what you’re looking for, you can see listings sorted by location, company and several other filters. You can mark jobs as your favorites so you can find them again easily later. Upcoming updates will feature improvements like the addition of push notifications.
McGyro (iPhone, iPad) $0.99
Most of the newest big first-person shooters to hit the iTunes App Store make use of newer iOS devices’ internal gyroscope technology. McGyro makes the gyroscope its central feature, putting players in a stationary shooting-range style scenario as an Old West sheriff. You aim your six-shooter by moving your iPhone or iPad around in 3-D space, and as you do so, the gyroscope picks up on the motion and adjusts your aim. Then it’s just a quick tap to take down the outlaws shooting away at you.
The key to McGyro is quick reflexes. Levels are filled with plywood enemies popping up to blast you, and you need to shoot them as if you were on a target range before you take too much damage. More points are awarded for hitting several targets without missing or placing headshots, and some enemies will respond with guns of their own or by throwing tomahawks that you have to shoot down. McGyro features some tight controls and a cool art style, as well as Game Center support for achievements and leaderboards.
Sprinkle Junior (iPhone, iPad) $1.99
A follow-up to Sprinkle, a physics game that tasked players with using a fire truck rig to put out fires in several puzzle levels, Sprinkle Junior takes the same idea and gears the game toward children. It’s much simplified, with levels that have been toned down in difficulty (but are still pretty interesting) and the threat of failure removed, leaving just the joy of spraying things with a hose.
Sprinkle Junior’s levels follow the original’s in that you’ll still use water for a number of things in each puzzle, like pushing objects or getting help to certain fires by ramping it off terrain in certain ways. There are lots of kooky additions, though, like a giant hamburger you have to dismantle with water in order to douse flames. Fun puzzles and a low-pressure gaming set-up should make this as fun for kids as Sprinkle is for older kids/adults.
