apps - page 4

As 2019 draws to a close, Apple has revealed its picks for the year’s best apps and games. All available through the App Store, of course.

“We are excited to announce such a diverse group of 2019 App Store winners, showing that great design and creativity comes from developers large and small, and from every corner of the world,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Marketing. “We congratulate all the winners and thank them for making 2019 the best year yet for the App Store.”

Check out Apple’s picks below.

The new Apple Watch series 5, running watchOS 6, can track just about any kind of activity. But one thing it doesn’t track is your sleep. Or at least, it doesn’t offer sleep-tracking in a native form. That’s left to third-party app makers. Today we’ll see two great apps to do just that. One is ultra-simple, and the other is super deep. Let’s take a look.

Apple has no intention of scrapping iMessage games — despite some of the rumors you might be reading online this week.

Stories surrounding the supposed move started trending on Twitter, causing some fans to freak about the feature’s removal. But at no point has Apple stated that it will close the iMessage App Store.

This week we create groovy beats, take photos in the dark, relax with chilled ambient sounds, and more. It sounds like a rad party!

This week we turn photos into vector images with Vectornator X, compose amazing ’80s synth pop with FM Player 2, check out a new beta of an old favorite with NetNewsWire 5.0, and way more.

This week we Slide Over the forecast with Carrot Weather, lock down our internet connections with a free firewall, relax at the airport with Flighty, edit our voice memos with Just Press Record, and more.

Check out the best new (or updated) apps around.

Eventide, one of the most important creators of musical effects, and the inventor of many crazy audio-mangling ideas, is now making effects apps for the iPhone and iPad. This is just about as big as news can get for musicians working on iOS. For those outside the world of music-creation, Eventide is roughly equivalent to Adobe, and the release of these apps is like Photoshop’s entry into mobile.

iOS musicians can now enjoy three effects from Eventide, all of which are Audio Units (plugins for other apps), and all of which run on both the iPhone and the iPad.

Imagine that you’re working on a document on your Mac. At some point, you’ll need to take a look at those emails about the project, or check that photo you snapped of the whiteboard. Maybe you have them all open already, in your perfectly organized workspace. But what about when you come back to that document tomorrow, or next month?

What if you could tap a key, and a panel would pop up, with all those linked documents listed? You could just click on one to open it. That’s what you get with Hook, a new Mac app that links documents together so you never need to go searching for them again.

In a subtle, but significant, change, iOS and Mac app listings on the web now direct users to a URL at apps.apple.com, instead of itunes.apple.com.

This follows WWDC, where Apple shared details of a world beyond iTunes. Apple is breaking up the iTunes app into Music, Podcasts, and TV apps. While you don’t need to worry about your iTunes content, this is the latest example of Apple shifting away from that branding.

Apple revealed the 2019 Design Awards at WWDC highlighting nine apps that offer a unique approach to design.

This year’s selections come from Italy, France, Lituania and the U.S. A lot of games are included in mix but there are also some breakthrough apps for sports, drawing, photo editing and medical imaging.

Ulysses, the best long-form writing app on iOS and Mac in my opinion, just got a sweet update. It adds support for publishing to Ghost blogs, but even better for almost everyone is the addition of split-screen editing. This lets you view two Ulysses documents side by side, on the same screen. It might not sound like much, but it’s surprisingly powerful.

I’ve long been a fan of Brian Mueller’s CARROT apps, which offer everything from fitness-tracking to calorie-counting tools with a sarcastic AI taskmaster keeping you in line. Today, Mueller has released the latest update for CARROT Weather — and it’s pretty darn packed.

Version 4.11 is centered around notifications and adds a plethora of features not available in any other weather app.

This week we sell our skills in videos, slow down any song in Apple Music, make wild music with Factory, and more.

Perfect Tempo lets you speed up or slow down any song in Apple Music, so you can learn how to play it. Unlike every other app that does this, Perfect Tempo works on any song on the Apple Music service, not just purchased and/or downloaded songs. It also has a great, easy-to-use design, which is way better than the utilitarian drop-down lists of many other apps.

With its innovative Flyover feature for Apple Maps, Apple gave users an eye-popping way of exploring real life places in three dimensions.

Now it’s reportedly leant its AR expertise to a new iOS app for the new Statue of Liberty Museum. For those visiting the iconic location, the app provides a location-based audio tour. For those elsewhere, it provides a way of checking out an AR recreation of Lady Liberty from the comfort of their couch.

All new apps and app updates must support the iPhone XS Max and latest 12.9-inch iPad Pro starting March 27.

In a post on its developer portal, Apple notes that apps must be built with the iOS 12.1 SDK or later. New Apple Watch apps must also support the Apple Watch Series 4.

Instead of just firing up that ambient music playlists again today, why not try the PolyPhase app? It’s a “generative sequencer,” which is an accurate but uninteresting way of describing its purpose: to create great music, automatically.

PolyPhase is intended to be used as a creative tool. A music can manipulate its settings, and listen until she hears something worth saving and turning into a song. But the app is equally good as an ambient soundtrack generator. One that will never stop. Ever.

Apple is currently dealing with a number of apps abusing its enterprise certificate program.

According to a new report, software pirates have used the technology to distribute hacked versions of many popular apps. These include the likes of Spotify, Pokémon GO, Angry Birds, Minecraft, and others. Apple originally introduced its enterprise certificates to let companies make business apps for employees, without going through the App Store.

This week we blur the background in Skype, edit Photos on the iPad in Obscura, clean up our TV shows and movies with iFlicks 3, and check the forecast on our Apple Watches with Carrot Weather.

Apple came down hard on Facebook when it was found to be behind an iOS app that was gathering large amounts of user data. But it’s not the only app to gather information about what users are up to, and to feed this back to developers.

According to a new report, apps including those for Air Canada, Abercrombie & Fitch, Expedia, Singapore Airlines, Hotels.com, and others utilized analytics software that employed “session replay” technology to reveal how users interact with the apps.

This week we enjoy Fastmail’s sleek new look, import photos into Lightroom using Shortcuts, control our Ecobee home-automation accessories from the Apple Watch, and get writing with Goodnotes 5. And that’s not even everything!

The App Store raked in almost twice as much revenue as Google Play in 2018, despite significantly fewer downloads.

Google’s marketplace did enjoy a 27.3 percent rise in gross app revenue year-over-year — a larger rise than Apple’s — but iOS remains the most lucrative platform for developers by far.

GoodNotes is one of the most popular notes app on iOS, and the Mac. and with good reason. It combines a great PDF viewer with a free form notes app, and mixes the two together. This week, GoodNotes 5 launched, an entirely new app (with upgrade pricing for users of the old app) that blows out the dust, and the olde-timey app UI in favor of a clean and organized view.

This week we check out Feedly’s amazing new iOS app, remember to take breaks with Focus, and write shortcuts from scratch, in code (!), with the Shortcuts Cub compiler. Woah, right?

This week we time our tea with Tidur, fix up our photos’ focus with Focos, watch movies with Iina, and map our minds right with WriteMapper.