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 swear there’s a dozen such Kickstarter projects for Touch Screen styluses. However, this one looks slightly chunkier and more substantial than most I’ve seen.
I’d imagine this will be excellent with something like Penultimate.
A great run down of what the competition needs to do to out-maneuver Apple.
It’s not as though the iPad is the only credible way to design a tablet. There’s room for competition and infinite possibilities for success … but not until these companies accept some fundamental truths about the tablet market.
If you’re not wanting to wait for the Apogee Jam input for your iPad, the iRig might be worth investigating. It’s also much cheaper than the Apogee.
I’m ridiculously excited about this. The app looks incredibly slick, polished and powerful given that it’s running on a tablet.
If you’re looking for a handy iOS recipes book for your iPad and iPhone apps, this beta book (written by Matt Drance and Paul Warren) looks to be the ticket. I’ve picked up the eBook.
iPhone 4 sees a dramatic improvement (10,400ms to 4151ms), whilst the iPad 2 is faster yet at 2097ms (all on the SunSpider test).
Google’s Nexus S is currently at 6128ms - though I’d imagine that’ll see a big performance update at I/O later in the year.
Not only are the speed gains in 4.3 dramatic, Apple’s own push of the Javascript improvements was particularly notable - in Wednesday’s keynote, it was the first thing touted in the new update.
The invite couldn’t be any clearer about the product that’s about to get updated. As perhaps the only Apple nerd to skip the iPad first time around - I spent the money buying something shiny for Steph - I’m eagerly awaiting the new release.
Verizon’s holding page for the Motorola Xoom Honeycomb tablet goes live. It’s apparently “fully Flash-enabled for video-rich web”.
Unfortunately if you like video-rich web you’ll have to wait. Despite being advertised in the specs Adobe Flash is “expected Spring 2011”.
The Verizon copy is systematically awful too. A motto of “Grab it and it grabs you”, as well as specs touting “a 3D interface that gets in your face” really sell the device over the iPad.
You’ve got to hope this is a typo: as Faruk points out, that’s as much as a MacBook Air (or two iPads).
Amazingly, that $1200 price requires the additional purchase of a month’s data subscription just to enable WiFi.
The month’s data requirement sounds like Verizon wanting its pound of flesh for every sale.
The price, if true, is absolutely nuts. Engadget’s previous $799 sounds much more plausible.
Update: Engadget are reporting that this pricing is wrong (and likely a placeholder in Best Buy’s system). I certainly hope that’s the case, though the rumours of having to pay Verizon to activate the device (and enable WiFi) seem to persist.
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