Command-tab, a keyboard shortcut so ingrained in the Mac user’s finger-memory that it’s easy to find yourself hitting it when using a keyboard with your iPad, or when you’re on a PC (NB: don’t use a PC unless you have been professionally trained and are wearing a tie).
The switcher already lets you flip between apps, quit apps, view recent documents in a cool Exposé view (use the up/down arrows), and to drag and drop documents onto apps to open them. But now there’s SuperTab, an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-style app which adds even more.
Browsing the App Store can be a bit overwhelming. Which apps are new? Which ones are good? Are the paid ones worth paying for, or do they have a free, lite version that will work well enough?
Well, if you stop interrogating us for a second, hypothetical App Store shopper, we can tell you about this thing we do here.
Every week, we highlight some of the most interesting new apps and collect them here for your consideration. This time, our picks include a fancy number trivia app, an bed-bug checker, a photo editing and filter app for the obsessive in all of us, a new update to iDraw that brings some Photoshop-style features to the already-fantastic iPad app, and a fashion blogger app for heaps of style.
Check them all out:
Numerus is one of those weird apps that shouldn’t be as interesting as it is. But once you spend a little time clicking around, you will feel the random knowledge dropping into your head.
Did you know that in 1950, the Canadian postal system processed 1,362,310,155 items? I don’t know why you would, but you do now. Also, the human body has 248 organs, there were 129 episodes of the CBS sitcom Becker, and China contains 56 officially recognized ethnic groups. I can’t stop.
Alright, maybe one more.
Is that a Bill and Ted reference in there? This app is amazing.
America is seeing a resurgence in bed-bug infestations, and here’s an app to help you screen a room and identify the little biters before they introduce themselves.
To be perfectly clear, Bed Bug Proof is an app created in part to sell an anti-bed-bug spray. But the practical information and tools it provides like the inspection guide, comparison photographs, and a magnifier/light to let you use your phone to search for eggs and poop, are useful enough to let it stand on its own.
Although it will make you itchy just looking at it. Seriously.
Photo editing for the obsessive compulsive in all of us.
Sure, the Camera app that came with your iPhone has a few filters, but we all know they’re pretty lame.
Instagram (and before that, Hipstamatic) made the quick filter process a no-brainer and popular to boot.
Jelly Bus’ Rookie, though, has all of them beat, with a veritable boat load of filters, effects, and all the settings you can possibly handle. If that’s not enough, there’s a bunch of stickers and text effects you can add to your photos to make even the most ordinary snapshot into a work of art.
Once you tweak and tap your way to photo-nirvana with Rookie, you can save your photo to pretty much every other photo sharing service out there, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr.
Get a whole photo shop on your iPad for a tiny amount of cash.
Image editing app iDraw has been around for quite some time, but the new 2.0 version (released this past week) really kicked things into high gear.
If you’re looking for a solid Photoshop-style image editing program for only a little bit of scratch, iDraw 2.0 has it in spades. The app now imports and exports PSD photoshop files with full vector path and effect support, as well as shape layers and layer effects. You can also export your designs as layered PSD files.
The app has been redesigned for iOS 7 as well, and it now takes advantage of the new 64-bit A7 processors on the new iPad Air.
Seriously, there is so much jam-packed into this release as to consider it an entirely new app, which is why we wanted to share it with you now.
Whether you’re a fashionista looking for new sources of inspiration or a tone-deaf jeans and t-shirt kind of dresser, new app Flink will help you connect to the world of fashion blogging.
Flink allows you to see hot new “looks” from the top fashion bloggers around the web, including Garance Doré, La revue de Kenza, Adenorah, Absolutely Glamourous, Mercredie, le blog de Lilou, Modasic, and Blondie Baby. You can also save these looks for later, visit the original blog posts, and “heart” the looks you love.
When you first launch the app, you’ll tap to follow as many of the included bloggers, and then tap your way through each of the photos included in each screen. You can tap through to see what clothes and accessories make up each look, or you can just swipe through and see various images of the different parts.
All in all, if you’re looking to kick up your fashion knowledge, or just find some new looks to recreate in your own life, Flink just might be the free app you’re looking for.
The iPhone rumor mill has been in overdrive lately, but with the iPhone 6 launch not expect until later this Fall we weren’t expecting to see any pictures which makes this afternoon’s set of alleged iPhone 6 rear casings almost too delicious to believe.
A set of images of an alleged iPhone 6 hit Twitter this afternoon, originating from obscure account but have since been picked up by Sonny Dickson, the infamous leaker who revealed the iPhone 5 as well as a number of other Apple products.
The images feature a space gray and gold iPhone, both with an edge-to-edge display and a thinner profile. The rear casing also suggest Apple will ditch the two glass sections in the back – maybe finally utilizing their LiquidMetal tech for an antenna?
We can’t confirm if the images are genuine yet, but they still give you a pretty good idea just how beautiful a bigger screen iPhone will be.
Update: Looks like these photos are fake. At least there are more surprises to come.
The new iOS 7 Weather app, taking a cue from the gorgeously designed Yahoo! Weather app that came out just before iOS 7 did, has all sorts of neat details and gestures to help you keep track of the meteorological realities around you.
If a list of all the cities you add to the Weather app and the extended 7-day forecast basics aren’t enough, there’s even more to find once you dig into the app a bit.
The next version of Apple TV may allow you to take your viewing with you wherever you go. Photo: Apple
It’s been nearly two years since Apple has updated the Apple TV, but according to a report from Bloomberg fans will only have to wait until April to see a redesigned Apple TV with new interface and plenty of new channels to boot.
Stratus by SteelSeries Category: Game Controllers Works With: iPad, iPhone, iPod touch Price: $79.99
The joy of most iOS titles is the ability to play using the touchscreen. The gaming world has benefitted greatly from iOS game developers learning how to best control their games without a physical controller.
However, there are a few games — especially versions of old-school console games — that just cry out for an actual button-filled controlling device that you can use while staring intently at the screen.
The Stratus, and other controllers like it, aims to fill that need with a smaller, super-portable and highly accurate controller that takes advantage Apple’s own iOS game controller code that’s built right into iOS 7.
Whether you’ll find this a successful or not depends a lot on your device, the games you want to play, and how your hands fit on the Stratus itself.
This Cult of Mac Deals is the perfect software stack for any creative. It’s so perfect, you could even call it a “super” stack.
Cult of Mac Deals has assembled $650 worth of creative resources in one massive package, featuring software that is ideal for the designer and photographer. We’ve even planted an app in there that many bloggers and online writers use. And you can get all of these apps – 9 in total – for just $29 during this limited time offer!
Whether you’re a fashionista looking for new sources of inspiration or a tone-deaf jeans and t-shirt kind of dresser, new app Flink will help you connect to the world of fashion blogging.
Flink allows you to see hot new “looks” from the top fashion bloggers around the web, including Garance Doré, La revue de Kenza, Adenorah, Absolutely Glamourous, Mercredie, le blog de Lilou, Modasic, and Blondie Baby. You can also save these looks for later, visit the original blog posts, and “heart” the looks you love.
When you first launch the app, you’ll tap to follow as many of the included bloggers, and then tap your way through each of the photos included in each screen. You can tap through to see what clothes and accessories make up each look, or you can just swipe through and see various images of the different parts.
All in all, if you’re looking to kick up your fashion knowledge, or just find some new looks to recreate in your own life, Flink just might be the free app you’re looking for.
O’Rear, 73, recalls Jobs being aloof and preoccupied but — despite being young (he was just 27) — carried a real aura that this was someone who couldn’t be ignored.
“We had barely heard of him at the time,” O’Rear says. “With the same project I ended up photographing names like David Packard and Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard, and Bill Noyce of Intel — all of who were better known than Steve. But there was a sense that Steve was a renegade, and so we should make sure we get his picture.”
The buzz continues around Flappy Bird, Dong Nguyen’s scary addictive side-scrolling bird flapping game. The developer pulled the wildly successful app from both iOS and Android App Stores on Sunday, citing the fact that his game was too addictive. There are mobile devices out there on eBay and Craigslist for outrageous prices, and everyone seems to want to talk about the retro-inspired flap-fest.
While many of us have Flappy Bird still installed on our phones, it’s possible many folks didn’t get to the party until now.
We’ve already shown you a straight-up clone of Flappy Bird that you can play on any web browser, but these new ones are odd. And totally cool.
One of our favorite photography apps for the iPhone, VSCO Cam, got a big update this morning that give you more reasons than ever to turn VSCO into your only photography app/social network.
Windows Phone is over three years old now, but its app catalog still looks pretty slim when compared to rival offerings from Apple and Google. In an effort to plug the gap, Microsoft could allow Windows and Windows Phone users to run Android apps — just like BlackBerry 10 does.
Footage has been released of a television crew discovering an original Lisa mouse used by Steve Jobs. The mouse was one of a collection of miscellaneous items found inside a time capsule in Aspen, Colorado.
Jobs had visited the area in 1983 for the Aspen International Design Conference — during which he delivered a speech predicting many of the Apple technologies which would come to pass during his lifetime — including the iPad, wireless networking, and even the App Store. Afterwards, Jobs was one of several conference attendees who donated objects for the “Aspen Time Tube” which has now been recovered.
Google has today confirmed in a regulatory filing that it has completed its $3.2 billion acquisition of Nest Labs, the smart home thermostat company founded by Apple’s former iPod chief, Tony Fadell.
With the exhibition having now opened, this is the portrait of the Apple co-founder that curators Joel Dinerstein and Frank H. Goodyear III chose to use: an image taken by photographer Charles O’Rear — perhaps most widely known for his digitally augmented “Rolling Hills” background used for Microsoft Windows XP.
A new Cydia tweak lets Snapchat users easily log their conversations in a way that subverts the original concept behind the private one-time message sending tool.
Integrating with the existing Snapchat app, the tweak adds an additional option under the “Open Settings” button on the official app. To access past conversations, users can hit the the settings icon to access the popup menu, then tap on the “Open Snapchat Log” option to view the log.
When Heidi from Waterfield Bags wrote to tell me about the Rough Rider, I had no choice but to write about it. It’s called the Rough Rider after all, which pretty much means I can make as many “going commando” and “bareback” jokes as I like.
New app Metadata+ tells you whenever a drone strike kills somebody overseas.
Working by pulling data from the UK’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the app plots the location of each strike on a map, and then sends a push notification when an attack takes place.
If that doesn’t strike you as something the often-conservative Apple would want available in its App Store, you’re not wrong.
The app’s official release comes on the back of five separate rejections by the company, and a renaming from Drone+, Drones+, and Dronestream to the more innocuous-sounding Metadata+. The official App Store description reveals only that the app deals in, “Real-time updates on national security.”
Popular account manager and bill organizer app Manilla has received a significant update.
Back by the Hearst Corporation, Manilla is designed to let you manage and share personal finances, household bills, subscriptions, healthcare account, and travel rewards — alongside acting as a handy reminder tool for various bill payments.
Fancy a blue virtual keyboard for your iOS 7 device? If so, the appropriately named Cydia tweak BlueBoard may just be the tweak for you.
Once installed, users need to launch the Settings app and respring the device to get the tweak up and running. The tweak affects both keyboards within iOS 7, so that when enabled both the standard light keyboard or dark keyboard come with blue keys.
Ever wanted to save just one sentence of a web page? Or have you ever bookmarked a page, or sent it to your favorite read-later service, only to come back and wonder what the hell it was you’d wanted to remember?
Then Gloss is for you. It’s a bookmarklet and service that lets you highlight a single line of text on any web page, and it rocks.
Excessive demand and limited production cycles have pushed the Mac Pro’s estimated shipping date back to April.
The high-end machine, available in both Quad-Core and 6-Core editions, was originally supposed to ship in December, before being pushed back to February, then March, and now April.
If you Google Cult of Mac for “minimal iPhone case” you get a lot of results (too many, in fact, including a Mac-only music app – nice job Google). But you should ignore every last one of them, becasue the Bumprz really is a “case” so tiny you almost can’t see it.
Canon’s new G1 X Mark II brings good news and bad news. The bad news is that it ditches the optical viewfinder that has been found on G-series compacts like forever. The good news is that it adds a faster lens, better manual controls, a flip-up touch-screen LCD panel, Wi-Fi and NFC.
