Instagram and Snapchat aren't just two of the most popular social media or photo sharing apps in the world. They're two of the most popular apps, full stop. But do we really need them to be exactly like each other?

That's no longer a hypothetical question after the latest update hit Instagram this week. It introduced Instagram Stories, which stay on your phone or tablet for 24 hours then disappear. You can also draw on the videos or images and use text, plus control who gets to see them.

3D Touch is a pretty cool concept for the iPhone 6s, even if it’s not quite fully realised yet.

While we’re still waiting for Warhammer 40,000: Freeblade to change everything when it comes to gaming, there’s a plethora of apps embracing the feature. Here are some of the best.

MatchCut, byM2CATALYST, is a music video editing app that lets you make 15 or 30-second mash up videos - and it'spartnered with Universal Pictures to make the Pitch Perfect 2 Instagram contest.

AURA, by Lis Johannsen, lets you add filters, frames, and text to your instagram photos.

Now that the Apple Watch is publically available (kind of), even more apps and games have been popping up for it. Some of them are updates to existing software, others are brand new. The main thing is that they're all for the Apple Watch, and if you're looking to expand the wearable's library then we've got a list for you. Our previous list is also available for perusal right here.

Apps

8 : Sticker Messenger

By SHAPE GmbH

App Store Description:

"8 is made for a fast and intuitive Watch-centric chat.Invite your friends to chat by email or user name.Drag and drop your free stickers with 8.And if stickers are not enough, add some text.Endless communication, infinite as 8's shape.

We made 8 with love, stay tuned for new stickers and features!"

The Apple Watch is less than a month from hitting store shelves, and once you get your hands on it you're probably going to want some apps and games to install. Fear not! We've compiled a list of all the Apple Watch apps and games we've been able to find so far.

Games

Rules!

By TheCodingMonkeys

App Store Description:

RULES! is a cute puzzle game that's challenging, fast-paced and fun.

• Choose your preferred type of game: Beginner, Expert or Timeless •

Follow RULES! into a hundred level-deep maze of cuteness and order:

• Multi-touch interface at its finest
• Color perception assistance mode
• Whales, Unicorns, Robots and Squirrels!
• A plethora of surprising new game mechanics

• Includes a daily brain workout mini-game for Apple Watch •

Instagram has got some new tools for you: Fade & Color. Now you can soften colors in your images using the fade tool or tint pictures to give them some interesting style with Color. The Color function offersyellow, orange, red, pink, purple, blue, cyan, or green tints. There are also new Post Notifications to make sure you are always up to date on your friends feeds.

The updates has already been submitted, and you can check out Instagram's Color and Fade in a couple days when they go live on the App Store.

Instagram, the internet's favorite photography app, has just released Hyperlapse, a time-lapse camera for your iOS device.

Hyperlapse shoots footage and auto-stabilizes it so you can take video even while running, jumping, flying, or falling. You can film up to 45 minutes if you have an iPhone 5, and the video can be sped up to 12 times its original speed. Hyperlapse does not require you to sign up or create an account and the app will let you save your videos to your camera roll or share directly with Instagram and Facebook.

You can download Hyperlapse for free on the App Store now.

Sometimes, you just really need a doughnut. And if you're lost and don't know which way to turn (and don't want to open up Yelp and type "donuts"), a new app called Doughbot will come to the rescue. The app, as you might expect, takes your current location and finds the nearest doughnut shops and then presents them to you via the app's simplistic and beautiful user interface.

The app gives you navigation and walking directions when you've found the shop you want, has reviews for shops in-app that are pulled from popular review platform Yelp, and includes photo galleries powered by Instagram. Really there's no better doughnut-finding app out there, and this one costs only $0.99 - about the same as a doughnut. You can get Doughbot on the App Store right now.

A little over a year ago, everything changed. My daughter, Peregrine (Pip, for short), was born, and along with the myriad recalibrations, adjustments, and joyous changes that birth brought with it, I also finally came to terms with the true value of the iPhone camera: baby pictures! Hundreds and hundreds of them (no exaggeration) were taken by me, by friends, and by family, and then scattered over hard drives, social networks, and of course iPhones. The problem then became figuring out how to organize and store them privately and securely. As a devoted Mac user it’s easy enough to keep photos stored on iPhoto, but that’s a local option only, with limited cloud storage and sharing (those 1,000 photos on iCloud? Please!), and god forbid my hard drive crashes without proper backup.

I thought all of my problems with cloud storage for photos were solved when Everpix came along. Here was a fantastic, well-designed app that also had great web-based software and a Mac-based uploader. Best of all, it could load in all of my photos from various social streams, eliminate or hide duplicates, and handle a potentially unlimited number of photos for a reasonable monthly or yearly price.

There was just one big problem though; Everpix went out of business.

Before I get to the heart of this article, there are a few lessons to learn from my Everpix experience.

One: Always keep all of your photos on a local hard drive.

Two: Backup said hard drive as often as humanly possible (something I still don’t do, so do as I say, not as I do).

Three: Never, ever assume that a site, app, or service will exist forever. It won’t; it just won’t. They will all go away at some point. Some will last five years. Some will last a year or two. Some of the very best won’t even make it that long.

So I found myself back at square one, trying to find another good (read, as close to the effortless Everpix as I could get) cloud-based storage solution for my photos. Read on for my look at nine different cloud storage services that work with iOS.