Category: Apps

Two years ago, I reviewed Phraseology, an iPad writing app, and was impressed with it.

Version 1 of the app offered powerful tools, including paragraph re-arranging, URL schemes, TextExapander, Markdown previews and lots of export options.

In my review, I came to this:

This app was built for writers, and it shows.

For a period of time, Phraseology was the writing app for iPad, in my opinion, but today, the landscape is very different. Byword is great, and Editorial brings a level of power that is nearly impossible to match.

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Jared talks through some of the design decisions he made when designing his new app.

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Since iOS 7 landed last year, several venerable iOS apps have seen their place eroded by newcomers. The new UI and APIs have given countless developers new ways to tackle old ideas.

When I find an app I like, I stick with it. Heck, I rarely change where apps sit on my homescreen. I’ve used the same RSS client on my iPhone for years — Reeder. Reeder is great. In the wake of Google Reader, the developer has supports a ton of account types, and the UI overhaul for iOS 7 is pretty good.

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A couple of weeks ago, Dave Girard wrote up a piece over on Ars Technica about QuarkXPress, the page layout software. He opens the article with this:

As the big dog of desktop publishing in the ’80s and ’90s, QuarkXPress was synonymous with professional publishing. In fact, it was publishing. But its hurried and steady decline is one of the greatest business failures in modern tech.

Quark’s demise is truly the stuff of legend. In fact, the story reads like the fall of any empire: failed battles, growing discontent among the overtaxed masses, hungry and energized foes, hubris, greed, and… uh, CMYK PDFs. What did QuarkXPress do—or fail to do—that saw its complete dominance of desktop publishing wither in less than a decade? In short, it didn’t listen.

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While I’ll miss the old UI, Dark Sky 4.0 brings Forecast.io data into the app, which is a major win.

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Sharing things between the Mac and iOS devices has never been as easy as it should be. Even Apple’s own AirDrop can’t cross the platform boundary. Pastebot used to be the go-to application for slinging text and images from the iPhone to the Mac, and back again.

However, Tapbots seems to have forgotten about the app. While it’s still for sale, Pastebot hasn’t been optimized for the iPhone 5’s taller screen, and its website still boasts iOS 4 compatibility.

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John Voorhees at Squibner Software has created a Bionic soundboard app for the iPhone.

I was fortunate enough to beta test the app for some time, and it really is great. In addition to Myke’s standard suspense accents, the “soft Matt” clip is present, in addition to collection of clips that will play at random.

In response to the app, Joe Steele wrote an amazing review:

The sixth of January, 2012 A.D. changed the world forever. T’was App Day, in The Before-Times.

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While I know it’s been popular for some time, I’ve avoided VSCO Cam due to its unusual interface. Knowing that it was coming up on the site, I downloaded it a couple of weeks ago and have been enjoying it’s power and flexibility. Even if you are a VSCO Cam user, check out Nick’s review — I bet you’ll learn something you didn’t know about the app.

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With the help of Chris’ Gonzales and Herbert, Shawn Blanc has put together a great list of games for your favourite iOS devices.

These could be perfect if you’re looking for something to play whilst waiting for Santa to arrive.

A couple of my personal favourites on this list are Jetpack Joyride and Ridiculous Fishing. It’s a shame they left Peggle off the list though. That’s a strong recommendation from me.

This is a guest post by Myke Hurley.

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Jeff Blagdon at The Verge, on Instapaper being Apple’s App of the Week:

If you’ve never looked at Instapaper before or been hesitant to drop the whopping $3.99 purchase price, now is your chance. The free download campaign runs until December 19th.

I tweeted a link to this story earlier today, and several people replied hoping that The Verge was simply “being sarcastic” when it came to describing to Instapaper’s price point of $3.99.

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It doesn’t seem like this could be allowed under Apple’s rules. While the company has allowed developers to use custom keyboard in their apps, I believe this is the first time that a third-party has provided one to multiple applications. I’m a fan of the innovation, but I just fear for its longevity.

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Instagram:

Today, we’re excited to bring you Instagram Direct, a new way to send photo and video messages to friends.

Basically, after taking a photo, you select if it should be posted on your timeline or sent “direct” to specific people.

You know when you see a DM fail on Twitter? I can’t wait to see someone’s romantic selfies accidentally posted for the world to see.

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