• Series

Seventy-two in a series. Welcome to this week's Best Windows 8 apps guide. I browse the store each week to find the best new apps for Windows 8 that have been released to it that week.

The big news this week was Mozilla's announcement that it would be postponing the release of the Modern UI version of the Firefox web browser once again.

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Tenth in a series. A big week for Apple as it released the long-awaited update for its mobile operating system. iOS 7.1 adds support for CarPlay, enhancements to Siri, iTunes Radio, Calendar, and Accessibility, and a new HDR camera setting for iPhone 5s. The big news for owners of iPhone 4 is iOS 7.1 runs far less sluggishly on the older hardware.

Of the new and updated apps that have arrived in the store this week, highlights for me include a free adventure game from two ex-LucasArts designers, an app which transforms everyday snaps into works of art, one that stops you forgetting...er… something… and a kitchen app that that will let you find, and conjure up, delicious culinary delights.

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Seventy-one in a series. Microsoft is about to release an update for Windows 8.1 that became accidentally available yesterday but has since been pulled again by the company.

While it is still possible to download the update from file sharing websites, it needs to be noted that there is always risk involved when downloading updates from third-party sources.

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Ninth in a series. This week Google updated its Gmail app, adding background refresh, so it can now fetch new mail even when it’s not open. This is a great addition, and stops you having to manually refresh to check for new messages. Google also added simplified sign-in. Log in to any Google app -- Gmail, Maps, Google+ or Chrome, for example -- and your account details will be used to log you in to all other Google apps automatically.

Of the new apps that have arrived in the store this week, there's a great, easy to use file transfer tool, an app that will help you monitor and (maybe) manage your caffeine consumption, a social local discovery tool, a dance game, and a cartoon racer that will let you go head to head against Top Gear's The Stig.

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Eighth in a series. The app that’s got me most excited this week isn’t even out yet. Audio Defence: Zombie Arena, from the makers of Papa Sangre II, is an audio-only first person zombie shooter that promises to be awesome. If it can hit its Kickstarter target that is.

Of the new and updated apps that have arrived in the store this week, the Professor Layton inspired The Voyage is a great puzzler, and God of Light will similarly tax your gray matter. Parents worried about what their children get up to on the web while using an iPad (or iPhone), will be interested in the MetaCert browser. Google has improved its Hangouts messenger apps, and a chunk of the world's knowledge has been curated into Learnist.

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Seventieth in a series.  Microsoft modifies how apps are listed in Windows Store this week. Instead of listing all apps in a category, all lists of the store are now limited to 1,000 applications.

Since there is no option anymore to display the overall number of apps in each category or the store itself, there is no option to keep track of rising and falling numbers of total apps in store.

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Sixty-nine in a series. The last six weeks have not seen any movement in regards to the total number of applications available in the US Windows Store.

Six weeks ago, 105,216 apps were listed in the store, which is about 150 less than this week's 105,379 application count.

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Seventh in a series. There was no round-up of iOS apps last week, not because there weren’t any worthy releases -- this is iOS, there are always great apps to cover -- but because I was away. I’m back now though, and so normal service is resumed.

This week there were some great new apps and games released, including a stunning adventure set inside a pop-up book, a 3D tour through some of nature's wonders, and a game that aims to improve your listening skills (something my wife says I need to do -- or at least I think that's what she says).

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Sixty-eight in a series. Welcome to this week's edition of the Best Windows 8 apps series.

After last week's negative growth we are seeing a slight increase in apps this week. It is nothing to brag about though, as the total number of apps increased by 50 only, but still better than negative growth.

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Sixty-seventh in a series. Microsoft continues its efforts to remove unwanted applications from its Windows 8 store. That's the reason why this week's growth is negative.

The total number of applications dropped by 534 apps to 105,509 thanks to efforts to clean up the store's Entertainment, Photo, Lifestyle and Education categories. The Entertainment category alone lost 659 apps in the past seven days.

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Sixty-sixth in a series. There are now over 106,000 apps in the US Windows Store. Growth has improved considerably after last week's weak performance, as 773 new apps were published to the store in the last seven days.

83,437 of those are free to download and install, while the remaining 22,606 are either paid apps or desktop applications.

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Fifth in a series. A big week for Apple as the company delivered record fiscal first quarter results -- $57.6 billion revenue and $13.1 billion net profit. The tech giant revealed it had shipped 51 million iPhones, an all-time quarterly record, compared to 47.8 million a year-ago, and 26 million iPads, up from 22.9 million in the same period a year ago. Wall Street wasn’t impressed, but that’s to be expected.

Of course a big part of Apple’s success is the number and quality of apps available for its hardware. As the owner of both iOS and Android devices, I find the apps for the iPhone and iPad to be vastly superior (although there are always exceptions). There’s less garbage, and far fewer ad-riddled apps. Part of that reason is Apple’s strict approval process, and the amount of money it pays to developers -- $2 billion in its fiscal first quarter -- helps too.

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Sixty-fifth in a series. Growth has been almost negative this week. Not because of a lack of new applications published to Windows Store, but because of Microsoft's continuing clean-up operations.

About 500 apps were removed from the Tools category alone, and slower than usual growth in other categories is an indicator that Microsoft removed apps from other categories as well in this week.

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Sixty-fourth in a series. A total of 1,107 new apps were released to the US Windows Store this week, which is more than double last week's abysmal performance of 476 apps.

The growth is even higher than that -- without options to find out exactly how high -- as Microsoft removed apps from the Food & Dining, and Travel category this week.

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Sixty-third in a series. The week by week app growth in Microsoft's Windows Store has taken a turn for the worse in the past couple of weeks.

Apps stayed steadily over the 2,000 apps per week mark after the release of Windows 8.1, but have fallen below that in the past three weeks.

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