iPad apps - page 8

Paper’s great for some things, but when it comes to reading and taking notes, the traditional medium is mediocre at best. And when iPad apps try to replicate paper, things get even worse.

“It doesn’t work,” said Craig Tashman, developer of the LiquidText PDF Reader app, which Apple showcased in an iPad ad this week. “They end up inheriting the deficiencies of paper without really inheriting the things that make it work.”

Tashman talked with Cult of Mac about his quest to reinvent paper, and the massive benefit of having a $945 billion tech giant giving an indie developer some props.

The latest version of Dropbox allows iPad users to move files around with a fingertip. It also works better with long file names.

Even though iPad was designed to be controlled with touches, drag-and-drop file management has been slow to come to this tablet. Still, Dropbox is on board.

With a mind-boggling 2.2 million apps in Apple’s iOS App Store, how do you find what’s good? That discovery problem is why we’re starting the 50 Essential iOS Apps series, a curated list of the best iOS apps on the planet, with new apps added every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Throughout this series, we will highlight essential iPhone and iPad apps in a variety of categories. We will show off apps that display excellent design, functionality, features and value. Or, most often, a combination of those desirable traits. Whether you’re looking to boost your productivity, take advantage of important data or just have a little fun, we’ll recommend great iOS apps to suit your needs.

Cult task manager and notes app Taskmator just got an update that brings it into the 21st century. The iPad app, which continues the work of the abandoned TaskPaper for iOS app, finally supports the big screen size of the 12.9-inch iPad, as well as adding some general polish to the user interface and preferences.

Capo touch is the iOS version of Capo, an amazing Mac app that lets you slice and dice a song, slowing it down so you can learn it on guitar or another instrument.

Developer SuperMegaUltraGroovy added some great new features to Capo touch version 2.5. If you’re a long-time user, you’ll appreciate the interface tweaks, the Apple Music support and the new audio-scrubbing engine. If you never used Capo, and you play a guitar, you should buy Capo touch right now.

Seven months after its debut, the official Reddit app has finally been optimized for iPad. The new interface lets you enjoy the most popular posts and the latest memes in all their high-resolution glory on the tablet’s larger screen.

If you want to create amazing images like the one above, Enlight is a fantastic way to do so on the iPad (or iPhone).

Most of us don’t want to take a huge amount of time, either, learning how to create these images in-camera or with a big application like Photoshop.

Enlight makes it so easy, even a photo newbie like myself can create amazing double exposures with Enlight in just a few minutes.

Instagram has a fair amount of filters, but boy everyone uses them all the time. You know a photo’s come from the photo-sharing social network when you can call out the filters on it: X-Pro, Hefe, Clarendon!

If you’re looking to stand out from the crowd, check out AfterLight, a sweetly-priced iOS app for iPad (and iPhone) with over 74 amazing filters and effects (and that’s just the free ones) to make your photos the envy of all the other basic Instagram users out there.

Here’s how to make best use of AfterLight’s massive toolset.

VSCO is a fantastic photo app for iPhone and iPad, and it lets you shoot some killer photos as well as edit them directly in the same app once you’ve taken your masterpiece.

The app is universal, which means it works well on iPhone and iPad, natively. The extra screen real estate, however, makes VCSO on iPad a fantastic choice just for editing any photos you like, whether you took them with your iPad, iPhone, or any other camera you might have.

Here’s how.

Whether it’s airlines dropping flight manuals for iPads or iBeacons being used at airports, the aviation industry isn’t shy about embracing Apple products.

But it seems the Transportation Security Administration has yet another use in mind: It spent $1.4 million on a TSA iPad app to determine which passengers to randomly search when they’re about to board a flight.

One of the best email clients for the iPhone just got even better. Spark, which promises that “you are going to like your email again,” is now available for the iPad as well. And this isn’t an all-too-common instance of developers just stretching out the iPhone version of their app and calling it a day. Spark is fully optimized for the iPad’s larger display.

The fifth-grader who just last year was at least one grade behind in math is now a year ahead and helping his classmates. Sebastian Johnson’s grasp and meteoric understanding of math did not happen because of the tutor he met with twice each week.

It was, his father Fred said, because of an iPad app called Tabtor Math, a tutoring program that assesses skills, analyzes learning snags and designs a personalized curriculum to raise math proficiency in students grades K-8.

Readdle’s beloved Spark email app for iPhone and Apple Watch is also coming to the iPad and Mac. A spokesperson for the company confirmed that development is underway for the apps in an email to Cult of Mac. The iPad version will likely make its debut next month in December, while a Mac version is a little further down in the pipeline since it’s only currently in the planning stages.

We’re not quite through 2015 yet, so app developers still have time to make the prophecies foretold by director Robert Zemeckis’ documentary Back to the Future: Part II come true. And to that end, The Weather Network’s latest app update uses radar and algorithms to predict when, exactly, it is going to start and stop raining.

The new feature, appropriately called “Rain Start Stop,” claims to give you a few hours to finalize the details on your outdoor activities.

Are you tired of your Instagram feed being low on sponsored posts from companies trying to sell you things? If so, here comes the best news you’ve ever heard.

The company has opened up its advertising code to make it easier than ever for partners to get ads all up in the Facebook-owned photo-sharing app.

The Apple Watch has been out for a few months now, and it’s given us plenty of time to decide what we do and don’t want from the wearable. It’s a versatile device, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean that we expect it to do everything for us. In fact, a lot of the apps that we use all the time on our iPhones and iPads would be ill-suited, if not impossible for that plucky little screen.

Here are some Apple Watch apps that wouldn’t break our hearts if nobody ever got around to making them.

If you’re like me, you spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to pick out the perfect weather app for your iPhone. Apple’s Weather app just doesn’t cut it and it’s very hard to find something that has a little bit of every detail without being cluttered or downright ugly. That happy medium for me is Carrot Weather but unfortunately it’s been crashing on the iOS 9 developer beta. In its place I’ve been testing Radar Cast, a slightly unusual weather app that attempts to deliver all the most crucial information to your iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.

How big a fan of Hellboy are you?

If you answered, “Such a big fan that I wish ‘Hellboy’ were a language I could speak all the time — if only someone would make a keyboard to that effect,” you’re in luck because custom keyboard designer Swype has teamed up with publisher Dark Horse Comics to bring both Red and samurai rabbit Usagi Yojimbo to your iMessages.

You know that feature when you order online from Domino’s that keeps you posted on the process of your order and even tells you which employee has put your pizza in the oven, and who just left the store to bring it to you?

I love that feature, for some reason. I don’t think it makes me some kind of creepy pizza stalker, if that’s even a thing.

But my main issue is that I had to keep my laptop open to stay on top of the whole process. Luckily, however, Domino’s has addressed that one, strangely specific gripe with the latest update to its mobile app.

Smug Californians now have proof they’re better than you.

A couple of the most popular fitness apps in the App Store have pooled their data to figure out which U.S. states have the best (and worst) health habits. They examined a combination of workout and nutritional info among their users and concluded that the Golden State has the best habits, and Wyoming has a lot of work to do.

I typically look for two things in a hotel room: Internet included with the room and free breakfast. But a new hotel in London’s Covent Gardens might have me adding some things to that list.

The recently opened Hub hotel from Premier Inn, the U.K.’s largest lodging chain, sports some pretty impressive tech features that involve both smartphones and wearables like the Apple Watch. And while your hotel room shouldn’t be the coolest part of any trip, Premier is really giving the rest of your vacation something to live up to.

We’ve had a couple days to check out Apple Music, Apple’s song-streaming platform that launched Tuesday. It comes loaded with 30 million songs that you can listen to on demand with a quick search or a request to Siri.

But all that choice and tech power may come at a price, as some users are reporting that the new Music app is killing their iPhone’s battery life.

Apple Music is the latest way to stream a ridiculous number of tunes on demand. And with all that variety, you’re going to get some cursing in there. It’s just how a lot of musicians work.

But if you don’t want to hear all of those bleepables and swears, it’s a pretty quick fix to keep it from showing up in your stream. Here’s how to do it.

The latest update to Facebook’s Messenger app will let you use it even if you don’t have (or want) an account for the social-media platform.

It’s still Facebook, though, so you’re going to have to cough up some personal info.