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iPad apps - page 6

Ulysses adds iPad full-screen view, and keyword manager

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Ulysses Summer 2019 edition.
Ulysses Summer 2019 edition.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

I’m writing this post in Ulysses, a text-editing app that separates the writing part from the printing/publishing/exporting part of the process. And today I’m writing in the brand-new Summer 2019 edition of Ulysses, which adds new features and a new, super-clean iPad full-screen mode.

Ulysses is therefore better than ever before. Come with me, and check out all the new stuff contained in Ulysses 17 for iOS.

Patterning’s new shortcuts transform iPad keyboard into drum kit

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Street drummer with buckets
This guy makes better music with buckets than I can manage with any app.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Patterning is probably the best drum machine app on the iPad, and one of the best iOS music apps, period. Which makes it criminal that we’ve never written a dedicated post about it. That can change today, because the developer, Olympia Noise Co., just added keyboard shortcuts.

Wait, come back! These aren’t just any keyboard shortcuts. These shortcuts let you use your iPad’s Smart Folio Keyboard, or any Bluetooth keyboard, to fingerdrum on the iPad.

Roxsyn app turns your electric guitar into a synthesizer

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Roxsyn app on ipad
Roxsyn -- a synth that rocks.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Roxsyn is the “world’s first metamorphic guitar synthesizer” for iPad. The app lets you plug in your guitar and, when you play it, synthesizer sounds come out. It also offers a full suite of knobs to tweak and shape the resulting sounds, just like a regular, keyboard-driven synth.

But — and this is important — it’s not just using your guitar as a MIDI controller for a normal synthesizer. Let’s take a look.

Overcast adds fantastic new podcast recommendations feature

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News, iPhone apps, iPad apps, podcasts
News, iPhone apps, iPad apps, podcasts
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Overcast, the podcast app of choice for lovers of good design, powerful-yet-straightforward features, and the color orange, just added a brand-new recommendations feature.

Previously, Overcast used a Twitter-based recommendation engine. But developer Marco Arment says almost nobody used it. Now, he’s replaced it with recommendations based on users’ personal listening habits, and the result is amazing. I already added a few new podcast subscriptions based on its suggestions.

How to create smart playlists in Apple Music on iOS (finally)

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Cassette tapes
Let's do this.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

It’s impossible to create smart Apple Music playlists directly on the iPhone. Or rather, it was impossible. Previously, you had to fire up iTunes on your Mac or PC, create a smart playlist there, and then let it sync to your iPhone over iCloud.

Even in iOS 13, this is still the case. But now there’s another way. A new iOS app called Miximum can create smart playlists, and even sync them to the regular Apple Music app. It is, as they say, a game-changer.

AudioKit’s retro ’80s synthesizer now works inside your favorite music app

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Even the promo pictures are pretty 1980s.
Even the promo pictures look pretty '80s.
Photo: AudioKit

Here’s some pretty big news for iOS musicians: AudioKit’s Digital D1 synth is now an Audio Unit. What? That means that, instead of running as a standalone app, you can now run it as a plugin inside your music app of choice. It also means you can run more than one copy, putting one instance on each track of GarageBand, for instance.

And what makes D1 more interesting than other synths for iOS? A few things. One, it’s open source and built by volunteers. Another is that it looks and sounds amazing. And finally, it’s totally ’80s, giving you the synth sounds of pop music’s best decade. Radical.

Today in Apple history: iPad surpasses 100,000 exclusive apps

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iPad
The iPad got developers excited from day one!
Photo: Apple

June 30: Today in Apple history: iPad surpasses 100,000 exclusive apps June 30, 2011: A little more than a year after the iPad goes on sale, the number of iPad-exclusive apps in the App Store passes 100,000.

The milestone caps a brilliant first year for Apple’s long-awaited tablet. And the amazing breadth of iPad-only apps proves the device is much more than just a bigger iPhone.

Guardian Firewall is the first true privacy-protecting firewall for iOS

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A partial visual pun for a firewall.
A partial visual pun for a firewall.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Guardian Firewall claims to be the first proper firewall app for iOS. It works by routing all the network connections from your iPhone or iPad through a VPN, and then filtering out privacy-invading trackers on Guardian’s own servers.

The idea is that all the heavy lifting is done on those servers, so you don’t have to worry about battery drain, or on the iOS security features that prevent an app from futzing with your internet connection.

Sounds good, but should you trust Guardian Firewall?

Lumafusion 2 adds 6-track video and external monitor support

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LumaFusion 2 works with external screens.
LumaFusion 2 works with external screens.
Photo: Luma Touch

LumaFusion is probably the best video-editing app on the iPad. It’s so capable that you can use it to edit movies at a professional level, and plenty of people do. And now you can buy LumaFusion 2, an updated version with more power, and some great new features, including support for working on an external screen, and six tracks of 4K video.

Ulysses’ new iPad split-screen view is better than Apple’s

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Ulysses split view
View two documents, or one document and its preview, at the same time.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

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.

Korvpressor 2 massages your songs to perfection

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Korvpressor 2 inside GarageBand.
Korvpressor 2 inside GarageBand.
Photo: Klevgrand

Korvpressor 2 is an amazing update to what was already one of the best music production apps on iOS — as we’ll see in a moment. But the real reason I’m writing about it today is the beautiful interface. I mean, look at it. Just look at it. Oh, and it also comes on Mac.