Your head might be spinning from the torrent of Apple happenings at WWDC this week, but fear not, I’ve got the cure: fresh picks from the App Store.

It’s been an exciting week for TheAppleBlog, with our correspondents posting live from WWDC in San Jose; we’ve been covering the event from all angles. Before we look at this week’s apps, let’s take a moment to summarize the latest Apple news.

We kicked off the week in style with Apple’s official keynote at WWDC. Behind the scenes we had Henry Balanon and David Koff with live reportage from the event. Streamed live to our WWDC coverage page, we hosted over 74,000 readers. If you missed it first time round, replay it here.

In an entirely unexpected turn of events, the 13″ MacBook has now gone professional. Indeed, the new 13″ MacBook Pro includes an SD card slot, up to 8GB of RAM, and a backlit keyboard as standard. Early adaptors of the 15″ Unibody MacBook Pro can join me in irking 13″ MacBook Pro owners by collectively running our greasy fingers down their glossy 13″ screens.

And, as if that wasn’t enough for us early adopters, the 15″ MacBook Pro has also been updated. In a nutshell, the update means more storage and improved battery life. Plus, the pretty much redundant ExpressCard slot has been replaced with a more useful SD card slot. Readers looking for an overview of the updated MacBook Pro line should head on over to Tom Reestman’s article.

Apple has also announced that Snow Leopard, the latest upgrade to their desktop OS, will be released this September. It’s fully 64-bit, features Exchange support, and is basically pretty wonderful, but the best thing about it isn’t the feature set, it’s the price: Current Leopard users will be able to upgrade for just $29. In the meantime, those looking for a quick software update hit should download the official release of Safari 4.

Then there’s the big news, the product announcement that I’ve been waiting months for: the iPhone 3G S. It’s exactly the same form factor except there’s more RAM, greater storage and — this is a big deal for me — a better camera. The iPhone 3G isn’t going anywhere yet, though; it’ll still be available, at least for a limited time, at the new price point of $99.

Just like the MacBook Pro family, it’s not only the iPhone hardware that has been updated, it’s the software, too. Apple is officially releasing iPhone OS 3.0 on June 17. There are tons of new features, more than I can mention here. Rest assured, though, that crowd-pleasers such as cut/copy/paste, MMS and shake to undo have been included in the update.

To celebrate the launch of the iPhone 3G S and OS 3.0, the folks at Polar Bear Farm have given us two promo codes for their latest app. The app is called Face Match; for a chance to win, simply leave a comment telling me why you’d like to use this face recognition tool for the iPhone.

Moving on to the picks, this week I’ve been looking at Photo Zen, Tumblr Gear, Swiss Maker and Spinal Tap.

PhotoZen (Free)
Until I bag myself a new iPhone 3G S, containing upgraded camera and integrated video-editing, my iPhone photography lineup consists of Quadcamera and Flickit. The idea is that since the camera on the iPhone 3G isn’t so hot, I want to take quick, fun shots and upload them efficiently, without having to sync and manage via iPhoto. PhotoZen captures this quick and fun photo-sharing ethos, allowing you to post your own images to a social bonsai tree, receiving images from strangers in return. Sweet, simple and free.

Tumblr Gear (Free)
I’m particularly interested in Tumblr Gear because it’s an alternative to Tumblr’s official iPhone app. That’s not to say I have a problem with the official app, quite the contrary; it’s great for posting new content whilst on the move. Rather than for creating new posts, Tumblr Gear was devised for browsing your dashboard and seeing what your friends have been posting. It’s optimized for the iPhone and efficient to use. For the avid user, this could be an essential app.

Swiss Maker (Free)
In reaction to the Swiss design style — stark typographic imagery featuring Helvetica — the Boston-based marketing agency Dirk+Weiss started a site: anyonecanswiss.com. Their clever site, now available as an iPhone app, lets you design a Swiss-style poster in seconds — just enter a few words and it does the tough job of changing the font to Helvetica and printing the text on a black background. Creative folk will appreciate the app for sure, those who don’t get the joke should download the app regardless — show it to your friends, they’ll think you’re erudite, topical and witty.

Spinal Tap (Free)
Around the release of their 1982 album, “Smell the Glove,” their music was described by one journalist as such, “This pretentious ponderous collection of religious rock psalms is enough to prompt the question, ‘What day did the Lord create Spinal Tap, and couldn’t he have rested on that day too?’” It doesn’t matter what the critics said though because Spinal Tap is back and they’re ready to rock. Alongside finally releasing “Saucy Jack,” the band has put out its very own iPhone app. The app is a hub of Tap-related information, there are new tracks to listen to, a Fan Wall for chatting with other listeners, brand-new videos, and even tweets. It’s good to have Spinal Tap back, both fans and those unfamiliar with the band should download the app immediately.

That’s all the picks for this week. I’ll be back in seven days with more news from the week and picks from the App Store.

In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?

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Guitar Rock Tour has arrived to challenge Tap Tap Revenge‘s rhythm-action throne. The new arrival touts a bevy of terrific tunes to tap along to, plus the option to play drums or guitar, loads of characters and unlockable awards.

While Guitar Rock Tour may be Rock Band squished on to the iPhone, it’s just as loud and rocks just as hard. Whereas Tap Tap Revenge is free, Guitar Rock Tour costs a few bucks ($9.99) and as such is polished better than a factory fresh Fender Strat.

At the core of any decent music-based game is the soundtrack and, while all of the song in GRT are sound-a-likes of the real thing, these are well performed covers and during a frenetic, in-game jam session the tracks come across as hard-rocking and suitably authentic.

Choose your track in Guitar Rock Tour

There’s a real range of tunes too, most of them classics in their own right, from contemporary tunes like Bloc Party’s Banquet across to classic hits with recognizable riffs such as Message in a Bottlee by The Police. Conversely, Tap Tap Revenge is heavy on excellent, yet obscure, indie and electronic artists spiced with a few chart-topping acts like Kaiser Chiefs and The Offspring.

In essence, the soundtrack for Tap Tap Revenge is more experimental and certainly more edgy. Where Gameloft call on a Blink-182 cover for some cool caché in Guitar Rock Tour, the folks at Tapulous feature girl-kissing chart topper Katy Perry’s latest hit in Tap Tap Revenge.

Play drums too in Guitar Rock Tour

One thing that Guitar Rock Tour implements wonderfully is multiple instruments. For each track you’re able to choose between shredding your way to fame on guitar or beating your way out of obscurity on the drums. In particular, playing the guitar is a joy: with chords executed in a smart way and techniques included for hammer-ons and pull-offs.  As a result, it’s far more tactile-feeling than TTR.

Another feature in Guitar Rock Tour that is absent from Tap Tap Revenge (though not necessarily missed), is a Tour mode. After picking a character and signing a cartoony contract, you and your amateur band take to the road, playing tunes across the U.S. and Canada, and rocking your way to stardom.

Along the way you also pick up various awards, meet some odd characters and unlock new tracks to play live. The story is indeed silly, yet it’s great fun and certainly a compelling way of playing through the game’s selection of 17 tunes.

Stylized clarity in Tap Tap Revenge

In terms of the graphics, the aesthetic in Tap Tap Revenge has a stylized clarity, suiting tons of musical genres, while Guitar Rock Tour is designed with a gritty rock feel — it’s like Guitar Hero meets one of those dingy little bars where the bands jam around Hendrix tunes. Effectively, it’s cliché but it works and screams of console-gaming.

But although Guitar Rock Tour clearly means business, there’s a show-stopping bug that lets the entire game down. On tracks that require more shredding and finger-picking, the backing track falls out of sync with the guitar track. As a result, the game suddenly becomes a lot harder to play and the music ends up sounding like a bad covers band who can’t seem to play in time.

The folks over at Gameloft have made a raucous rocker of a music game, with a stomping soundtrack too, and yet sometimes it just doesn’t work. For now, we’d say hold back from investing until Gameloft patches the problem and releases an updated version of Guitar Rock Tour.

In the mean time, grab Tap Tap Revenge, it may not have all the extras of Guitar Rock Tour, but it’s free, plays very well and includes some fantastic tunes too.

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Anything rock ‘n roll related makes my ears perk up, so when I heard Guitar Hero was coming to Mac, I was quite stoked.

Overall the gameplay is just about what you’d expect. You can rock out in freestyle mode and just play for the fun of it, or you can start up your own band and have a full-scale career.

I fired up career mode and sent my band, Weak Sauce, on the road pure rock ‘n roll mayhem. After a couple of days of moderate playing, I was able to beat the game on Easy. Unfortunately there is still Medium, Hard, and Extreme to conquer.

Guitar Controller

I had never played any of the previous Guitar Heros so the actual “guitar” controller was new to me. I attempted to just pick the thing up and start playing, but found out quickly I didn’t have a fat clue what I was doing. Going through the tutorials on how to use it was actually quite helpful.

The guitar that comes with the game is actually the same guitar that comes with the Xbox version…it just includes a USB converter so you can plug it in to your computer. Seems a bit cheap to go that route, but it does the trick.

Something worth noting here is that the game is still functional even if you don’t have a guitar controller. I actually found it easer to play with the keyboard than with the guitar.

Game Play

There are quite a few different “extras” thrown in the game, but the core of it all is just playing songs. The money you earn from playing gigs lets you “upgrade” your guitar, outfit, and other things but there didn’t seem to be any real benefit to doing that.

On my MacBook Pro (2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo w/ 3GB RAM), the graphics were quite smooth. I did find the video response to be better when I disabled some of the effects in the game and calibrating the guitar to my computer was beneficial.

Overall this really is a fun game and doesn’t require too much time to get the hang of it. Be sure to read up more of the details and system requirements on the Aspyr site. You can purchase the Mac version for $80.

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