Back in February I reviewed Elements, a Dropbox-powered Markdown editor from Second Gear Software. Ever since I first picked up the app, it’s been on my iPhone homescreen - and after finally picking up an iPad, it’s remained firmly in my iPad’s dock. Today sees the launch of version 2 - something I’ve been testing for a while.
First up, there’s a refreshed UI. Every UI element and view has been given a facelift, and the end result is that the app feel much more modern. The writing view has a new display font, and there’s a tonne of other new features: Facebook publishing; export to HTML, PDF, Dropbox, Evernote, iTunes and email; and most usefully to yours truly Publishing to Tumblr. To cap things off, there’s a incredibly smart new icon for the app.
Best of all though, Elements 2 is a free update to all existing users, and if you’re not already using Elements a copy is just $4.99 on the App Store. I’m a complete Elements addict: every post I write, all the copy I jot down away from my Mac - they all start in Elements, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
This post is part of my weekly app reviews. You can read more reviews from the series here.
Honestly, I don’t play many games on the iPad. It’s a great way to play Carcassonne (which recently received a Game Centre update, and I highly recommend) but that’s about the limit of the gaming on it. That said over the last few days I’ve been playing Sideways Racing from Bjango in my lunchbreak. Sideways is a top-down racer (the closest in comparison would be MicroMachines perhaps) with sliding, nitro boosts, demolition, and some fun arcade tracks.
There’s no accelerometer-requiring antics (which I’ve always felt to be a little awkward on the iPad) - instead, you’ve got some fairly well placed controls to drive at the bottom left and right of the iPad screen. I say “fairly well placed” as I did have a few gripes with the controls. The app boasts that the controls extend further than the marked areas but sometimes seemed to not always register even close to the marked buttons. I also found that the car’s on-screen position (exactly centre) could have been better adjusted towards the bottom of the screen to allow just a little more of the upcoming track to be shown, but they’re all relatively minor gripes (the control gripes seemed random enough to suggest I was occasionally flailing with my thumbs when trying to steer). Gripes aside, the graphics fly on my iPad 2, and the entire UI feels very polished and fluid. There’s also Game Centre achievements and leaderboards for a healthy dose of friendly (or not so friendly) competition. There’s no multiplayer racing right now (it’s just against computer opponents), but I’m hoping it’ll make an appearance in the future.
All in, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed playing Sideways Racing. The races are fun, intense and slightly chaotic but you can still casually dive in and out of the game - meaning it’s great if you just want a quick race on your lunch break. Sideways is just $1.99 on the App Store until 1st June, and comes highly recommended.
This post is part of my weekly app reviews. You can read more reviews from the series here.
Listary an app I’ve been testing for sometime. The quick run-down is that it’s a slick, quick-to-use app that allows you to build to-do lists and sync them via Simplenote. One of my favourite things in Listary is the incredibly thought-through task entry view that allows you to add multiple items incredibly quickly. I’ve been using the app as a quick and easy shopping list app, and combined with the syncing it’s going to be an inexpensive god-send for Steph and I.
Listary may be relatively simple compared to the other to-do apps out there. If you’re looking for delegation, deadlines, tags or any more of that GTD kerfuffle there’s other options. However if you want just a straight-up stylish and useful app to sync to-do lists, you should check out Listary.
This post is part of my weekly app reviews. You can read more reviews from the series here.
Over the past 10 days, I’ve been giving a tonne of new apps a go. Some of my favourites so far.
Reeder - Every bit as slick as its iPhone sibling, I’m bowled over by Reeder. It’s not as fully-featured as new contender Mr Reader, but Reeder experience is far more Apple like1. Reeder feels as though everything that’s included in the app is there for a reason, and not simply aiming to be the catch-all RSS reader (if there can possibly be such a thing). It’d be nice to see Reeder feature the ability to manage feeds, but I’m not really that fussed - I don’t tend to subscribe to RSS feeds on the iPad anyhow.
Articles - Another iPhone favourite, I’ve already reviewed that version of this Wikipedia app. Articles’ design is slick, and every bit as delightful to use as you’d expect. The animations are just right, and it makes reading Wikipedia incredibly easy on the eye.
Ego - I’ve long been a fan of Ego for iPhone, and the iPad version continues the style and function of the pocket companion. It’s a great way of not only seeing the at-a-glance stats for Twitter et al, but actually logging into the relevant services. My only gripe - Ego for iPad only displays in landscape, forcing you to rotate the device when in portrait mode to use it.
World of Goo HD - Picked up a while back whilst on sale, this and long-term favourite Carcassonne are the only two games on the ‘pad at the moment. I’ve tried Tiny Wings on the iPad, as recommended by Gedeon, however as with all the other iPhone games I’ve tried the upscaling (or playing at iPhone resolution) simply isn’t enjoyable.
iA Writer - Vying for a homescreen spot alongside current docked app Elements, iA Writer is a great app. However, whilst its extra keyboard buttons are brilliant, Writer is somewhat nixed by the fact that I can’t put documents into folders. I appreciate the simplicity of not worrying about folders, but I have two folders set up for Elements - one for this blog, the other for notes etc for the day job.
Numbers - Something of a surprise purchase (I loathe spreadsheets), Numbers has been pretty handy to work on the über-spreadsheet I’ve concocted for planning our wedding. It’s not perfect (more on that soon), but so long as you’re keeping the spreadsheet on the iPad it works incredibly well.
This post is part of my weekly app reviews. You can read more reviews from the series here.
Granted, Reeder (unlike Mr Reader) is post-1.0.0, however Mr Reader isn’t as easy to dive in and out of. Modals overlays when syncing are my nemesis: Mr Reader blocks me from doing anything whilst it syncs. I’m also not a fan of the icon, but that’s a purely personal taste thing. ↩
I’m a big fan of Instagram, the photo-based social network. However, as the service’s own client doesn’t support the iPad (at least, not natively) I’ve been using Instagallery since picking up my iPad 2 on Friday. The app doesn’t do image uploading, however it does offer a slick iPad (and iPhone) UI for viewing uploads, commenting and the liking of images. It also allows you to create slideshows of your timeline.
If you’re an Instagram fan, and you’re eagerly awaiting any potential iPad debut from Instagram itself, Instagallery is definitely worth a look. There’s a couple of glitches (annoyingly, the “Post Comment” button disappearing when using the iPad horizontally) but overall I’m loving the app and the ability to stylishly browse my Instagram timeline on the iPad. It’s $1.99 on the App Store.
This post is part of my weekly app reviews. You can read more reviews from the series here.
Momento has been around a little while, however I only recently started using it (after glowing reviews from a number of friends). The premise is simple: enter your social networking credentials, and Momento will (when launched) create an archive of all your activity on those networks in a calendar form - a journal for your social network activity, if you will.
Momento supports all the biggest services (Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, Instagram, Flickr and more), and is incredibly well designed. API limitations (such as only being able to go back 3,200 tweets on the Twitter API) aside, it’s a ridiculously great way to keep track of what you post to different services.
Momento is currently on sale (£0.59/99¢) for the duration of SXSW on the App Store. I absolutely love it, and think you probably will too.
This post is part of my weekly app reviews. You can read more reviews from the series here.
Junecloud’s Dashboard widget for tracking parcels is one of my staple Dashboard widgets. I don’t order a huge amount of stuff online, but when I’m wanting to check the status of it the last thing I’m wanting to do is jump through hoops on the individual courier’s website. In fact, I’d much prefer if I could keep all the deliveries on my iPhone with push notifications as the deliveries change state.
Funnily enough, that’s exactly what Delivery Status touch, again from Junecloud offers. It’ll even allow you to sync deliveries between Dashboard and your phone (awesome) and even offers you the option of forwarding on emails with tracking numbers in to have them automatically tracked on your phone and dashboard widget - a la Tripit. Each delivery, where possible, is shown on a map (my MacBook Pro was last spotted at Shanghai Pudong International Airport last night), and you do of course get Push Notifications as deliveries change location so long as you sign up, via the app, for a free Junecloud sync account. All-in, Delivery Status touch is slick and incredibly useful. It’s $5 on the App Store, and a Universal app for iPhone/iPod touch and iPad.
This post is part of my weekly app reviews. You can read more reviews from the series here.
Today’s been a busy day: FaceTime, MacBook Pro and a Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview. In amongst the madness, we discovered Tiny Wings at the office. A cute, 59p game that sees you trying to help a small-winged bird fly.
Without the aid of a catapult or thieving pigs (thankfully) Tiny Wings gets you trying to get a cutely-designed bird across a series of islands. It’s ridiculously well designed, and genuinely charming. The music, the effects, the artistic style and ease of gameplay make this a great game. It may lack Game Center (instead, opting for Open Feint - something I’m hoping will change in a future update) but for quick-to-pick-up, fun to play gaming I can’t speak highly enough of the game.
I fell in love with it at the launch screen, as did Steph. I have a feeling you will too. Tiny Wings is 99¢/59p on the App Store.
This post is part of my weekly app reviews. You can read more reviews from the series here.
Browsing Wikipedia on my phone has always torn me: Wikipedia offers a mobile version of their site, but I’ve never liked the formatting of the site. I’ve tried other apps - Wikipanion was a long-time favourite - however I’ve now completely given up and gone with Articles. The formatting, Nearby map-view of Wikipedia articles (a nice touch), article suggestions as you type and the fact that I don’t now have to append “wikipedia” to every single Google query, mean that Articles is a winner.
Articles is 99¢ on the App Store - and entirely coincidentally, also Apple’s App of the Week. There’s also an iPad version available separately.
This post is part of my weekly app reviews. You can read more reviews from the series here.
There’s plenty of drawing apps out there for iOS - the iPad has the particularly great one in Penultimate, which I tried at launch on the office iPad -but over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been using Adobe Ideas to draw mockups on my iPhone. Very simply, it’s a well-designed (and free) drawing app. There’s not a great deal to it: you create ideas and start sketching - there’s adjustable stroke widths, a complete colour picker, and the essential eraser.
Adobe also in the most recent update added layer support as an in-app purchase ($4.99). Whilst it certainly adds a bit of complexity to the app, the ability to layer different elements (and adjust the relevant transparency) is well thought out.
For all the stick I find myself giving Adobe over Flash, Adobe Ideas is a really slick and well-thought-out app. Your ideas can be emailed as a PDF, or saved to the device’s Camera Roll for export - and given that the basic app is free you’d be mad not to give it a go.
This post is part of my weekly app reviews. You can read more reviews from the series here.
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