Welcome to our weekly installment of Picks of the Week at iSource where we provide our expanded coverage of Apple accessories and applications. Here we will promote our favorite iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac and Apple TV related items, as well as bring you occasional tips and tricks. Hopefully many of our favorite items will also be of interest to you. Please feel free to comment on our selections, and suggest picks of your own. Check out this week’s picks after the break. artCircles [ v 2.0.6 ] My pick this week is Art Circles from art.com. I love art. I am a design, student (which is not art, but handles problems in an artful way), and I’ve always had an interest in great art, and the questions art tries to answer through the lens of its aestehtic appeal. Well, Art Circles whimsically presents some of the great works of art, to those who enjoy art, and those that would like to know more about it. Some of the works are organized by color, others by Curator selection, and others by an assortment of adjectives. From there, if you see a work that you like, you can order a print, right from the app. It’s w cute way to explore art, and it doesn’t cost a time for you to enjoy it. A Fact Every Day! 365 fun facts for kids [ v 1.0.3 ] This is a very simple but charming app with appeal for kids and families. It presents a new fun fact each day. Each fact is read aloud and accompanied by a clever and funny cartoon. The interface is great and completely intuitive – so even younger kids can get around the app with ease. A single tap repeats the reading out loud. Swipes left and right move you Read More
The Worldwide Developers Conference will take place in early June, and with it will likely come a preview of iOS 6. As such, we’ve put together a team list (organized by author) of the improvements we’d like to see in the next iteration of iOS. The wishes here are varied, but it’s clear (due to a bit of repetition) that notifications, iCloud, and the file system on the iPhone and iPad could do with some loving this year. New Maps Need to Kick Ass: If all the strong rumors are true and iOS 6 is ditching Google Maps for an in-house Apple solution, then they need to be awesome – at least as good as what Google offered. I’m happy to see the change, as long as we don’t lose functionality or features. 1) Free Facetime! I love Facetime but I think it needs to meet its true potential as a WhatsApp, BBM killer by accepting users on other platforms. Let the BB, Android and heck, Windows Phone users, in and I think it has the potential to even take over Skype. Seriously. Apple can make this work. 2) Simplify “Other” iOS 5 makes it difficult, if not impossible, to know what the “Other” data that iTunes says is taking up space on your iPad or iPhone. Your best bet at the moment is to go into Usage and check the space taken up, application by application. I’ve done this over and over and over and still cannot figure out what is taking up space. I can only suspect these are attachments on email messages but this theory is not easily corroborated. 3) I’d like to be able to put Newsstand into a folder. I don’t use it that often ands clogs up my minimalist iPad desktop. 4) I’d like to Read More
I’m still a little annoyed with Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance’s (N.O.V.A.) lackluster attempt to make a fake acronym, but there’s no denying the third installment of Gameloft’s shameless Halo clone is pretty. Many of the delicious FPS delights – like dynamic lighting, particle systems, and enemies that fly away like ragdolls when you shoot them – are now present in a $7 iOS game. The production values are generally good enough for me to describe N.O.V.A. 3 as a “first person shooter”, and I no longer feel the need to preface it with the word “mobile” as a sort of disclaimer. I’m also a fan of the universal status of the app, which means that a single price tag nets you both the iPhone and iPad versions of the game. I still don’t like Gameloft’s unabashed copycat game designing style, but if clones on iOS are looking this good, that’s got to be a decent sign for gaming on the platform, right? Read More
Welcome to our weekly installment of Picks of the Week at iSource where we provide our expanded coverage of Apple accessories and applications. Here we will promote our favorite iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac and Apple TV related items, as well as bring you occasional tips and tricks. Hopefully many of our favorite items will also be of interest to you. Please feel free to comment on our selections, and suggest picks of your own. Check out this week’s picks after the break. Spotify [ v 0.5.0 ] Until very recently, I had not paid much attention to Spotify, a music streaming service that wasn’t even available in the U.S. until last last summer. The other day, the Spotify app was in a prominent spot iOS App Store, and I though, “why not?”. I downloaded it, logged-in with my Facebook credentials (don’t be creepy) and immediately began listening to music that I like. On demand. Whatever I wanted to hear. There are other feature, such as offline playlists, and computer to device streaming, but the meat of the service lies with streaming whatever you want to listen to, whenever you want to hear it. This is very liberating compared to Pandora, which functions much more like traditional radio. Upon signing in for the first time, a 48-hour trial starts immediately. After that, you have three options for the service: the free account which is ad-supported and allows a limited number of playback time, the unlimited account for $4.99/month that gets rid of ads and allows unlimited playback, and then the premium account which gives access to a number of other features, besides unlimited playback. Also, the iOS apps are very well designed, and easy to navigate. The iPhone version is nice, but the iPad version is exquisite. Over the long run, I Read More
Manga Rock has always been my favourite manga reader for iOS, so I’m happy to announce that the newest release of the app, Manga Rock 2, is now available as a universal download for iPhone and iPad. MR2 is a completely new app (and therefore a separate download and purchase) with a much sleeker interface for browsing, managing, and reading manga from MangaReader, MangaFox, and MangaEden(EN). This means that you can use just one app to read all of your manga, which translates to a library that’s easier for users to manage, and an easier update cycle for the developers. I’ll have a more in-depth review coming in a few days, but it was worth announcing that the in-app purchase that unlocks the full version of MR2 is available for $0.99 (normally $3.99) for the first three days after the launch. If you’re already a user of a previous version of Manga Rock, then this is a dirt-cheap way to upgrade to the newest app – and even if you’re totally new to the world of manga, $1 is an absurdly cheap price to pay for access to thousands of translated titles. Read More
Penultimate, one of the most popular handwriting apps for the iPad, has become part of the Evernote family – as in, Evernote has acquired the company that makes Penultimate. Cocoa Box’s Penultimate, the beautifully simple handwriting app for iPad, has been one of our favorites pretty much since it came out two years ago, so we’re very thrilled to announce that we’ve acquired the company and that Penultimate is now part of the Evernote family! This looks like very good news for users of Penultimate and Evernote as well as for anyone looking around for a great notes and / or handwriting app for iOS. I especially like seeing this section of the Evernote announcement: Penultimate creator, Ben Zotto, is joining Evernote to head up future app development. Penultimate will stay a separate, elegant application and will get many much-requested Evernote-y improvements including full search and synchronization. Ben will also lead the effort to put handwriting and digital ink functionality into other Evernote products and platforms, so you’ll see handwriting cross-pollination popping up everywhere. Again, this sounds like great news for both of the existing apps – and also suggests that we may well see some exciting new apps come out of this acquisition. Read More
Welcome to our weekly installment of Picks of the Week at iSource where we provide our expanded coverage of Apple accessories and applications. Here we will promote our favorite iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac and Apple TV related items, as well as bring you occasional tips and tricks. Hopefully many of our favorite items will also be of interest to you. Please feel free to comment on our selections, and suggest picks of your own. Check out this week’s picks after the break. Minecraft – Pocket Edition [ v 0.3.0 ] My pick this week is Minecraft Pocket Edition. To me, and reasonable people might disagree, this is a sandbox game with no real point, while being endlessly entertaining anyway. The worlds feel massive, and there are several modes of play, but my favorite is “Creative Mode”. In this mode, you are free to wonder, and dig, and build. This game is particularly impressive for several reasons. First, it is developed by a single man, Markus Persson. Secondly, the scope of the game, especially on an iPad or iPhone, is impressive. It’s worth a look at just $6.99. Plus, there is a lite version to take for a test spin. Newest update includes… Major version 0.3.0 (Crafting!) + New crafting UI reachable from [...]Inventory -> [Craft] + Cows and chickens! + Damageable items + Drop items from your selection slots by press and hold + Some resources can only be gathered with specific tools (see crafting descriptions) Video Time Machine [ v1.3 ] WARNING: If you need to be productive for the new few hours, stop reading about my pick of the week. Because I guarantee that, once you download this app, you will get lost for hours. Introducing Video Time Machine – a clean, neat app that lets you easily discover over Read More
The Daily – the first ever iPad-only newspaper – has now got an iPhone version. The new iPhone app is available now in the App Store. It’s a free app but The Daily are still touting that existing iPad subscribers get the app for free. I’m a subscriber so I’m keen to see what the iPhone app is like. I’ve only just installed it a few minutes ago, and so far my only quick impression is that ads feel more intrusive then on the iPad. I’ll post more thoughts when I’ve spent some time with the iPhone app. Oh, and such very sad news about Junior Seau. Read More
There’s a reason EA won The Consumerist’s Worst Company in America Award – And here it is: Yup. Not only did EA give you the honor of spending ($4.99 or higher) on Rock Band for your iPhone, but now as of May 31st, you’re not going to be given the privilege of playing it anymore. To be sure, this isn’t a technical issue either. Rock Band itself is playable offline, so there’s nothing preventing EA from letting the game rock on from that aspect. Sure they’re planning to shutdown the content servers, but if the game stays playable offline why kill if for everyone who already has the content? My feeling is they just flat out decided the time has come to take back their license. Remember – you’re only buying a license to the game, not ownership. I can respect the need to expire content and not host servers for ages – but this app has only been out for 2 years and this sets a horrible precedent for how long a purchased license remains valid. Oh, and even better – they’ve left Rock Band on the App Store (without any disclaimer of the shutdown), so you can still go buy the game today. You just can’t play it any more come the 31st. So guess what EA? I’m revoking my “I’ll purchase from you license”. Read More
Drafts, my go-to scratchpad for notes on my iPhone, just got a major update to version 1.1 today. Among the changes to be most excited about: a kickass new icon, the ability to hide actions you don’t use, and more lovely time-saving actions. Drafts is easily one of the cleanest apps I’ve picked up in a very long while. It’s butter smooth to use for quick notes and tweets, and I’m in love the absurdly fast launch time. Read More
