Let’s be honest: the iOS experience is really all about the third-party apps.
Let’s be honest about something else: the difference between good apps and bad apps can be huge.
Let’s be honest about one last thing: discovery in the App Store kinda sucks.
Now that group therapy is over, I’d like to tell you about something I like: Shawn Blanc’s new site, The Sweet Setup. It sets out to become a catalogue of the best apps (iOS and otherwise) out there. Not the newest; the best.
There are lots of sites that review apps, and lots of great app reviewers out there, but The Sweet Setup approaches things a little differently. Instead of reviewing an app in a vacuum, The Sweet Setup tries to put the app in context, looking at its competitors and the landscape as a whole before making a recommendation.
At launch, the site is already full of great content. Here are some reviews you shouldn’t miss:
- The Best Radar App for iPhone and iPad
- The Best Podcast Client for iOS (Hi mom!)
- Our Favorite Markdown Writing App for the iPhone
- The Best Professional-Grade iPhone Calculator
The Sweet Setup is about more than app reviews, however. There’s a great blog, a growing collection of articles and more. Over time, the site will only grow in breadth and depth.
While Shawn gives a great overview of the site in today’s blog post, I spoke to Shawn this morning about why he launched the site:
Over the years that I’ve been writing about Mac and iOS software, I’ve compiled a huge back catalog of reviews that are, for the most part, still relevant. But since they are posted to my weblog amongst a waterfall of reverse-chronological posts, the old-but-relevant articles are now buried under the new. The Sweet Setup is built to have more “evergreen” content, that always focuses on the best app within a particular category.