Over the last couple of years, Google has been trying to turn its mobile Chrome browser into a sort of meta-operating system in its own right, by allowing Macs and PCs to run dedicated cross-compatible ‘apps’ right within Chrome. It’s actually a cool idea, but because of Apple’s closed iOS ecosystem, it’s been functionality that iPhone and iPad owners can’t take advantage of. But no longer. Google has just brought Chrome apps to iOS.
For the last few weeks, I have had a little pebble-shaped gadget sat out on the wall of my balcony. It’s the Tempo, a Bluetooth thermometer which keeps the last 24 hour’s temperatures in memory, and passes them to your iDevice on demand. It’s also pretty tough, as we’ll see…
If you’re a movie nerd, then you’re going to freak out about Yeah! Movies. It’s an iPad app which lets you stream many great films (Kill Bill, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Mad Max, Blade Runner, Caddyshack and so on, but it doesn’t stop there. You also get around 500 “curated extras” with every movie purchase.
Do you hear that tinkling, rattling sound? That’s the sound of a million teeth skittering across the floor tiles as their previous owners relax their legs after smashing the teeth out of their own skulls with their own knees.
What the hell am I talking about? The absurd, almost violent knee-jerk reactions to Apple app updates that pare back functions in order to provide a clearer path for future updates. It’s like these folks never heard of pruning a rosebush to promote better growth.
And the news: Applescript is back in Numbers.
Dark Sky, the Instapaper of weather apps, just hit v4.0. It’s still only available in the U.S and the UK, and it still gives you accurate, hyper-local predictions for rain, but just about everything else has changed. For the better, I might add.
Readability, the oft-overlooked but competent rival to Instapaper and Pocket, has reached v2.0, and added an iOS 7 makeover, plus a few neat new features.
This must be just about the worst gadget ever, which of course makes it the most fun to write about gadget ever. It’s a love-detecting bra, which will only open its front clasp if “true love” is detected. Where “true love” means “iPhone” and “detected” means Bluetooth.
Cortex Camera fixes one big deficiency with the iPhone’s camera: low-light noise. Or more specifically, the iPhone has no way to avoid cranking the ISO when shooting in low light. With a regular camera, you can just choose a longer shutter speed to keep the ISO low, steady the camera on a tripod or other sturdy base, and enjoy noise-free pictures taken in the dark.
And now you can (kinda) do this with your iPhone, using this sweet and simple app.
Today brings a big update for users of Pushpin, the already-excellent Pinboard bookmarking client for iOS. V 3.0 brings a sweet iOS-friendly look (it really does look great), plus a proper iPad interface, plus… well, a lot. Let’s taker a quick look.
Love chess, but don’t have the time or the sticking power to play a whole game? Then you should probably take a look at the $1 Mate in 1 Puzzle app, newly updated for iOS 7 and ready to puzzle your brain with something a little more satisfying that an other round of QuizUp.
You know how you really, really love your significant other? And how you like to remind him/her of just how important they are to you by sending sweet little messages to them every day? Well, now there’s an app for that, letting even the most forgetful, self-centered idiot make himself look like the most romantic person in the world. Behold, Romantimatic, probably the first app ever to combine pink and cogs into a single logo.
Dispatch is one of the greatest email apps for the iPhone (but sadly still not the iPad). It’s purpose is to let you power through your emails and whittle down your inbox in double-quick time. And the latest update adds some welcome streamlining.
Most of use post our crap onto Twitter, Flickr, Instagram or – ugh – the Facebook. But creative pros have their own social network. Behance is more than just a place to hang your latest photos, motion-graphics, fashion or branding design, though. It’s kind of a mix between an online resume and and portfolio, with plenty of concept ideas thrown in for good measure. And it’s also built into some Adobe apps: Lightroom lets you publish straight to Behance, for example.
Which is a long way of getting to the point. Behance v3.0 for iOS just launched, and it brings an updated look and new features.
What’s in an app name? That’s the question an developer had to ask himself after accidentally naming his app that was sexually suggestive enough that no one actually wanted to use it.
Evernote continues to suck as an app, and excel as a back-end service for better-designed apps. EverMemo is yet another quick note taking app which posts your important scribblings direct to your Evernote account to be indexed and assimilated, all without having to launch Evernote’s own bloated monster and tap desperately as you try to find the new-note button before you forget whatever it was you were trying to remember.
You’re most likely using one of two calendar services, or maybe both: Google Calendar and/or iCloud. Now – if you’re using the truly excellent Fastmail email service – you can test out the beta version of its new calendar. It’s as clean and simple as the mail service, and syncs perfectly with your iDevice or Mac using CalDAV.
Seemingly just moments after an iTunes update added the ability to browse our App Store wish lists, along comes Mentio, an iPhone app to do the exact same thing. Only instead of using your existing iTunes wish list, it lets you build your own, and buy apps, movies and music from within the app itself.
The Todoist todo app has been updated and renamed. It’s now called “Todoist Next,” and it has been turned into a lean, mean visual-scheduling-and-collaboration machine.
Instapaper’s Instapaper Daily feature, which shows the day’s most popular new story for your quick-consuming delectation, was apparently so successful that it has spawned a sequel. Instapaper Weekly. This time it’s not a new website which shows you an ultra-clean view of the day’s top Instapaper story: it’s an email newsletter.
Quick: You have taken a bunch of great photos of your recent birthday weekend in [EXOTIC LOCATION], and your parents want to take a look at your vacation pictures on the big screen. But you also spent some “quality time” with your girlfriend/boyfriend/spousal unit in the hotel room, and you sure as hell don’t want your folks to see those photos. What do you do?
You use Boinx’s PhotoPresenter, an app that’s designed for impromptu slideshows.
You’re going to love Phoenix Photo Editor from the second you launch it. After a neat but not-too-long launch animation, you get straight into your photo library, with oversized thumbnails that let you actually see what the photos contains before choosing to load it. Confused about another “import” button down at the bottom of the screen? Tap it. It’s for grabbing pictures from your i{hone albums, Instagram, Facebook or Flickr.
And it gets better from there.
Man, do I feel clean today. No, it’s not the fact that I quit drinking two summers ago. Nor that I stopped smoking a few years before that. Nope. I feel clean because I finally deleted iPhoto from my Mac. It’s gone, never to spin up the fans again because it’s detecting faces with the accuracy of a demented uncle, nor to inexplicably flip away from the album I’m viewing every single time I switch to another app, however briefly.
I don’t even need Apple’s worst app (worse than iTunes I say) for Photo Stream any more, becasue now I have the $4, 6 MB MyPhotostream to take its place.
VLC, the versatile play-anything video app that I have installed on every Mac I’ve had admin access to in the last half decade, has gotten a great update in its iOS incarnation. VLC for iOS not only looks better, but will now grab video from Dropbox and Google Drive.
iOS 7.1 takes another slow step closer to launch with the release of beta 4 to developers. As ever, the release notes are scant, so it’ll take some digging to really find out what has changed. There’s on bit of good news though: the Messages app should no longer lie to you about messages failing.
Lightroom might be coming to the iPad sooner than your think, if this accidental posting of the photo-editing app is anything to go by. Oddly, it shows “Adobe Lightroom for Mobile, Annual” at $99 per year, which would suggest that this is a landing page for a service, not an actual app as one source of the story believes.