Ten 3rd Party Alternatives for missing Win8 apps
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A desperate app selection calls for desperate measures
The Windows Store has grown significantly since the dark and dreary pre-launch days of Windows 8,
more than quadrupling its catalog size since October 26th. Don't let
that 20,000 app number fool you, though. Quantity is not the same as
quality, and the platform still suffers from hit-or-miss availability
when it comes to blockbuster apps. You’ll find modern UI offerings for
some of the big-name apps from other platforms in the Windows
Store—including Netflix, Hulu, Skype, and Kindle—but you’re bound to hit
a brick wall when looking for many other must-have titles, including
Pandora, Twitter, and Facebook.
Luckily, third-party developers have stepped in with their own versions
of your favorite missing apps. We've sifted through the Windows Store to
identify the best Band-aids for the most painful Windows Store
no-shows.
PRadio
Xbox Music is nice and all, but millions of people have millions of
hours invested in finely-tuned Pandora playlists. Pandora doesn't have a
Windows 8 app, but PRadio is about as good as a replacement gets. While
the app’s interface doesn’t look anything like Pandora’s web app, it does
provide immediate access to your radio stations (complete with
thumbs-up and -down capabilities for further tune tweaking) and
Pandora’s massive library of free streaming music.
PRadio behaves exactly as a modern streaming music app should,
integrating with the search charm for easy music searching and playing
music in the background when you switch to another app. Like all Windows
8 apps, it supports Snap. Snapped mode gives you playback controls at
the side of your screen while using other apps.
The People app
Developers have built several third-party Windows 8 Twitter clients, but
you can’t really use any of them. Twitter restricts third-party clients
to a maximum of 100,000 users and the Twitter apps for Windows 8 have
hit this limit—unsurprising, since the official Twitter client for
Windows 8 isn’t out yet.
Unless you were lucky enough to grab Metrotwit or Tweetro early, your
best bet is the included People app. It’s not the best Twitter client,
but hey, at least it allows you to send and view tweets. Alternatively,
the Tweetro app recently reappeared in the Windows Store after a brief
hiatus, but now it carries a $9.99 price tag that seems steep when you
consider an official Twitter app is slated to show up in the next few
months.
MINE for Facebook
Unlike Twitter, Facebook has said it has no plans to build a Windows 8 app.
The native People and Messaging apps offer some basic Facebook
integration, but they're no substitute for a full-blown Facebook app.
MINE for Facebook is the best alternative app available at the moment,
offering a customizable view of your Facebook feed, notifications, and
your friends’ profile pages. You can also update your status, leave
comments, share links and pictures, and more.
It doesn’t replace the Facebook website entirely, though—you’ll still
have to use the Facebook website to milk cows in FarmVille.
PrimeTube
YouTube works just fine in Internet Explorer 10, but if dedicated apps
are more your style, you should install PrimeTube. PrimeTube presents
YouTube in an interface that feels right at home on Windows 8, allowing
you to browse YouTube in that tile-tastic modern style.
PrimeTube isn’t just a YouTube player, though. The app allows you to log
into your YouTube account and view your subscriptions, manage
playlists, and leave comments. PrimeTube also continues playing YouTube
videos in the background—something that can’t be done with Internet
Explorer. It’s perfect for music and speech-heavy vids.
Movie Guide
Movie Guide takes the place of IMDB, which is M.I.A. on Windows 8. The
app lets you browse movies and watch trailers, dividing its selection
between in-theater movies, older classics, and upcoming flicks.
While Movie Guide appears to be fairly light on content when you first
launch it, it actually has a very comprehensive database of 69,000
titles and tons of actors and actresses. I like to use the database for
movie discovery: Find your favorite movie with the Search charm to
browse a list of similar movies, or tap the movie's director to view a
list of other flicks they’ve directed. Once you’ve found a movie you
want to watch, you can add it to your watchlist so you’ll remember it
later.
G Maps
Bing Maps is decent, but lacks drill-down features like the handy-dandy
public transit directions found in Google Maps. Don't think that's a big
deal? Witness the uproar over Apple's switch to an in-house Maps app on the iPhone.
The Windows Store offers two unofficial Google Maps apps, confusingly
named G Maps and gMaps. Both apps support the standard Google Maps
features, including directions for driving, public transit, walking, and
cycling; location search; layers; and satellite maps. Each can also
track your location via GPS if your tablet has a GPS chip.
Of the two, G Maps has much smoother transitions while zooming, though
it does pester you with ads. Hey, the developer has to make his money
before a real Google Maps app appears, right?
Laterark
Tablets are great for reading, whether you’re relaxing on the couch or
sitting in a coffee shop. Services like Pocket—formerly Read It
Later—and Instapaper make this even easier, allowing you to save
intriguing web articles you stumble across for later perusal. Neither
service offers a Windows 8 app, but that doesn't mean you're bereft of
delayed gratification tools.
Latermark integrates with your Pocket account, delivering your saved
articles in a touch-friendly, reading-optimized layout that's optimized
for tablets but still purdy on a desktop monitor. It sure beats
squinting at small fonts on a website. One downside: Latermark doesn’t
automatically synchronize articles for offline reading, although
articles you open in-app are cached for Internet-free reading.
IM+
Windows 8’s Messaging app works with Facebook and Windows Live Messenger
accounts, but what if you have friends who use other chat networks? You
don’t have to kick your old friends to the curb when you upgrade to
Windows 8—just use IM+.
IM+ is completely free and supports a wide variety of other chat
networks, including popular services like Google Talk, AIM, Facebook,
Jabber, ICQ, and Yahoo Messenger. In other words, IM+ fills the massive
gaps left gaping by Windows 8’s native Messaging app. You can even have
it send you a push notification when one of your buddies reaches out to
ping you.
News Bento
The News app included with Windows 8 is primarily focused on—you guessed
it—news. To see the latest content from your favorite tech blogs (like PCWorld!) and other sites in a beautiful, Flipboard-style digital magazine, use News Bento.
News Bento lets you define categories of content you’re interested in to
hone in on specific types of articles. The app includes a preset
directory of many of the top news sites around, though you can also
subscribe to non-included sites, add any RSS feed from the web, or link
the app to your Google Reader account.
Milligram
Windows 8 isn't just missing Facebook and Twitter; Instagram is a
no-show on Microsoft's new platform, too. Fortunately, there's a
non-official app for that. Milligram gives you access to the latest
content on Instagram, displaying the latest popular and trending photos.
Want a more personal touch? You can also link to an Instagram account
to view the latest food photos from the hipsters you’re following.
You can like other people's photos, save them to your device, and even leave comments, but you can’t actually upload
photos to the picture-friendly social service. That may be a blessing
in disguise, though—have you ever seen someone taking a photo with a
tablet? It's ridiculous.
Chris Hoffman @chrisbhoffman
Dec 27, 2012 3:00 AM
