Could Apple’s Achilles’ heel be what many consider to be its crappy app offerings? Buzzfeed’s Charlie Warzel thinks so. “With the exception of the Health and Podcast apps, I’ve become accustomed to relegating Apple’s (undeletable) native apps to the junk drawer,” he writes. Worse yet, “The initial wave of third-party Apple Watch apps felt not only flat, but as if they’d been built without real humans in mind.” 

The Washington Post’s Philip Bumb is not super excited about “News” the Flipboard-like app that Apple just launched to replace its Newsstand service. Or, at least, he thinks News is much better for Apple that any of its publishing partners. “Apple's goal is always to keep you in the Apple universe,” Bumb writes. “It would rather have you read articles in News than on Twitter because, while publishers keep revenue from ads, Apple gets 30 percent of new subscriptions.” 

Challenging Facebook and other messaging services, an upstart named Jott is luring young users by working without a data plan or WiFi connection. So far, “the app more than doubled to half a million active users in March, up from 150,000 active users previous,” TechCrunch reports, citing estimates from Jott co-founder Jared Allgood. Allgood tells TechCrunch that the app continues to gain momentum, adding 15,000 to 20,000 users a day. 

Periscope just released an update to its iPhone app, which should make it easier for users to discover new and interesting video streams. “The app now features a map view, so you’re able to find new streams based on location rather than simply in a list,” The Next Web reports. “Map view should make it easier to follow breaking news events and find streams from areas you’re interested in.” 

Google is testing a health software suite calls the "Study Kit," which is made up of Android and iOS apps, and a Chrome extension. “The testing comes ahead of a wider launch for the project scheduled for later this year,” The Verge reports. The effort is part of its Baseline Study project, which was developed by Google's experimental Google X wing, and will take medical data from thousands of individuals to build a picture of ideal human health. 

Watch out, Instagram. Image-sharing service Imgur has launched a fully native Android app, and relaunched its iOS app. “Built from scratch, the new app features a card-based gallery to showcase image posts,” The Next Web notes. “You can swipe left or right to browse Imgur’s endless stream of content and tap to comment, vote or favorite posts … There’s also an option to browse streams by topic.” 

While the exact timing of the launch is the subject of much debate, Apple is almost ready to roll out its music streaming service. “With its dominant position in music threatened by a decline in download sales, Apple Inc. is preparing to launch a direct rival to Spotify AB and other popular services that let users stream songs instead of buy them,” The Wall Street Journal reports. 

Glose -- the e-book app with a uniquely social bent -- is finally coming to Android devices. “Reading a book on Glose is nothing like reading a book in the Kindle or Oyster apps,” TechCrunch writes. “Glose is a collective experiment -- you can discuss quotes with your friends and see your friend’s annotations as inline comments.” 

Google just launched an "Accounts" page, where users can manage the settings for every one of the search giant’s apps. “In addition, even if you don't have a Google account, you can now personalize search, ads, apps like YouTube and other settings,” Engadget notes. “Google also revealed a new privacy policy that details what data it collects from you, how it uses it, how it targets you with ads and what you can do to control all that.”