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iPad apps - page 7

Fiery Feeds adds Instapaper-like universal read-later service

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Some illustrative fire.
Some illustrative fire.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Fiery Feeds is my favorite RSS reader app on iOS. It strikes the perfect balance between power, good looks, and ease of use. For instance, you can customize the entire look of the app with themes, you can set it to share stories to your chosen apps with a single swipe, and the whole thing is navigated with swipes. Version 2.2 just showed up, and it’s a biggie. Apart from some neat UI changes, Fiery Feeds now has iCloud syncing, and its own built-in Instapaper alternative.

Perfect Tempo slows down any song in Apple Music’s cloud

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Change the tempo of any song in Apple Music.
Change the tempo of any song in Apple Music.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

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.

Factory makes other iPad synths look like toys

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Factory sounds great, and looks ok.
Factory sounds great, and looks ok.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Factory is an aptly-named new iPad synthesizer from SugarBytes. In fact, calling it a synth is underselling it — kind of like calling GarageBand a “tape recorder”. Factory does synthesize sounds, but it also has built-in effects, a sequencer, an arpeggiator, and a totally wild DJ-style crossfader, which lets you morph between presets.

The app is ultra-flexible, as capable of finely-crafted sound design as it is of sonic mayhem.

How to record Apple Music from your iPhone to your Mac

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Send DRM or other audio up the USB cable, and record it.
Send DRM or other audio up the USB cable, and record it.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Did you know that you can record the music playing on your iPhone, to your Mac, straight up the USB cable? Just hook your Mac up to your iPhone (or iPad), using the Lighting cable that came in the box, and you can record anything. Additionally, if you’re looking to play music while recording video iPhone, this guide will show you how.

It’s just like taping off the radio when you were a kid — or maybe when your dad was a kid — only better quality.

This single iPad knob costs almost $400

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My, what a beautiful knob!
My, what a beautiful knob!
Photo: Synclavier

The Synclavier is a digital synthesizer from the early 1980s. Synclavier Go! is an iPad app that mimics the classic synth. But this post isn’t about those. It’s about the Synclavier Knob, an accessory for the app.

The Synclavier Knob is a single knob on a mounting plate the size of an iPad mini. That’s it. Oh, and it costs $399.

How to find video subtitles on Mac and iOS the easy way

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subtitles mac
Subtitles — like many accessibility features — can be useful to anyone.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Both macOS and iOS have excellent built-in support for subtitles. And many video player apps will play a subtitle file for you if you just drop it into the same folder as a movie, or even drag and drop it onto a movie that’s already playing.

But if your hearing is fine, why should you bother with subtitles? I came up with a short list:

  • The audio on the movie/TV show is unclear.
  • English isn’t your first language, and you appreciate the help.
  • You want to watch a movie with the sound low.
  • You don’t understand the accents in that British TV drama.

The good news is that subtitles are easy. And the bad news? There is none.

iOS’ most essential music-making app gets a massive update

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AUM should be on every musician’s iPad.
AUM should be on every musician’s iPad.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

If you’re an iOS-using musician, then AUM is an utterly essential app. It’s an audio mixer, but that description hides its power. AUM does let you mix the audio from various apps, but it also hosts audio units (like plugins), routes audio between them, records those channels, and more.

This week, AUM got a huge update, adding a whole bunch of great new features.

Use Readdle’s Documents to transfer files between Mac and iOS

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Readdle’s Wi-Fi Transfer gets our ‘stamp’ of approval.
Readdle’s Wi-Fi Transfer gets our ‘stamp’ of approval.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

If you have an old Mac that doesn’t support AirDrop, or you use a PC with your iPhone or iPad, then getting files from one to the other is a real pain. Readdle’s Documents app fixes this, making it easy to beam anything from one place to the other, wirelessly. Today we’re going to see just how easy it is. And one other neat trick is that you can use this on any computer, not just your own.

Atom Piano Roll is an iOS MIDI-lover’s dream

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Atom piano roll
Atom is a like a player-piano for your iPad
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

 

Atom is a “piano roll” sequencer for making music on iOS. A piano roll is named for the software used to run olde worlde player pianos. It’s a roll of paper with holes punched in it. As the roll moves through the piano, the holes are read by a “tracker bar,” and the corresponding notes are played.

Imagine such a sheet of paper in the digital realm. That’s a modern piano-roll sequencer, and it’s a commonplace way to control software instruments. Atom brings some amazing tricks to the piano roll. It’s also an Audio Unit (AU) app, which means it can work as a plug-in inside your favorite iOS Music apps, like Cubasis and GarageBand.

Pixelmator Photo first impressions: An amazing iPad image editor [Review]

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Pixelmator Photo should be on every photographer’s iPad.
Pixelmator Photo should be on every photographer’s iPad.
Photo: Nuria Gregori

Pixelmator Photo, a new image-editing app for iPad, gives you tons of tools for tweaking your images. The app lets you apply filters, crop, trim and generally making your photos look great.

In this regard, Pixelmator Photo is like a zillion other photo apps for iOS. What sets it apart are a) the now-expected Pixelmator polish, and b) machine learning that powers pretty much everything.

I’ve taken the app, which launches today, for a quick spin, and it’s pretty great. The photo-editing space is so crowded with great apps, though, that we’re spoiled for choice. How does Pixelmator Photo match up?

Stark is a new kind of guitar amp for iPad

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Stark looks as good as it sounds.
Stark looks as good as it sounds.
Photo: Klevgrand

A new music app release from Klevgrand is always something to get excited about. And a new guitar amp simulation app? Almost as rare as an in-the-wild sighting of an AirPower mat. Combine both, at an introductory price of just $10, and you have a pretty special day. The app is called Stark, and it’s also the first Audio Unit amp sim for iOS.

How to get Apple News outside the U.S.

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Who doesn’t want to read all the most important news of the day?
Who doesn’t want to read all the most important news of the day?
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

This post could more correctly be titled “How to get Apple News outside Australia, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S.” Those are still the only places that Apple News is available, almost four years after the service’s launch in September 2015.

Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to get the app even if you don’t live in one of those countries. Here’s how.

GoodReader 5 brings split-screen documents to iPad

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iPad users can view two documents side-by-side with GoodReader 5.
The iPad pre-dated the iPhone, at least inside Apple.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

The latest version of GoodReader enables iPad users to view two documents side-by-side. It also offers a long list of  improvements to its built-in PDF viewer and methods for securing files.

This iOS app debuted back in 2009, not long after the original iPad, and has been called a Swiss army knife of file managers.

Apple busts out iPad Pro tips in new vids

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Sketching with an Apple Pencil is the merest tip of the iceberg of Apple’s suggestions for making your iPad Pro more useful.
Apple Pencil will soon convert your chicken scratches into legible text.
Screenshot: Apple

Making your iPad Pro more useful is the theme of a series of short videos released today by Apple. Each takes a common task and briefly shows how it can be tackled with a iOS tablet and Apple Pencil.

There’re suggestions on creating presentations and podcasts, going paperless, and more. Watch all five videos now.

Pixelmator preps AI-powered photo editor for iPad

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Pixelmator Photo will offer a wide sweep of image-editing tools, many enhanced through machine learning.
Pixelmator Photo will offer a wide sweep of image-editing tools, many enhanced through machine learning.
Photo: Pixelmator

Pixelmator makes image editing software for Mac and iPad, and it’s hard at work now on a new iPad application that uses artificial intelligence to improve its photo-editing capabilities.

The new app — dubbed Pixelmator Photo — will employ Apple’s Core ML (machine learning) technology to intelligently improve the exposure and cropping of images.