Pixelmator decided to get a jump start on Black Friday. It’s offering Mac users who need a capable image editor a 25% discount on Pixelmator Pro, but that’s just the start: iPad fans can get Pixelmator Photo completely free.
This week we control our AirPods from our Macs, listen to podcasts on our Apple Watches, and listen to our inner selves with our iPhones.
Pure Acid is a bass synthesizer and drum machine app for the iPad, and it might just be the best drum machine app ever. It is, for me, the first app that actually feels like you’re using physical drum machine hardware instead of just another touchscreen app. Part of this is down to the one-screen interface, where everything is (mostly) always in the same spot — just like real buttons. And part is due to the app design genius of Pure Acid’s creator, Dmitrij Pavlov (aka Jim Pavloff).
This week we get healthy with Apple’s Research app, build ridiculously-powerful shortcuts with Toolbox Pro, listen to internet radio with Triode, and scare ourselves silly with Layers of Fear. Shiver.
Apple’s Shortcuts app is already a very powerful tool for automating stuff on your iPhone and iPad, and for creating your own push-button mini-apps. But what if it also could use the deep tools that Apple builds into iOS for app developers? What if Shortcuts could use Face ID, or analyze your photos using iOS’ crazy-powerful machine learning? Or if you could use the OCR to pull text out of photos, all inside Shortcuts?
Thats what Toolbox Pro does. It opens up many of Apple’s amazing under-the-hood technologies, and lets you use them just by dragging a new step into your Shortcuts workflows. Let’s see what it can do.
This week we get editing with Photoshop for iPad, transfer huge files with Dropbox, get private with DuckDuckGo for Safari, and dictate a letter, offline, in privacy.
Adobe plans to launch a version of Illustrator for Apple’s tablets next year. But this won‘t be a straight port — the user interface will be changed substantially to run on a touchscreen with a stylus.
The company also just introduced Photoshop for iPad (and revealed plans to launch Adobe Photoshop Camera, a camera app that adds lenses and filters).
iPhone and iPad can now take advantage of Dropbox Transfer, which allows users to more easily send and receive up to 100 GB of files.
It doesn’t have the size restrictions of email, and is simpler than Dropbox’s traditional system for sharing files.
This week we stream movies off USB sticks, stay safe with social networks, learn to play guitar with Apple Music, and draw pictures on virtual paper. These are the best apps and updates of the past seven days.
4Pockets’ MultiTrack Recorder Plugin is an audio-recording app that can be loaded inside other music apps. If you’ve ever seen an app like GarageBand or Logic in action, you’ll be familiar with the layout of multiple tracks on a horizontal timeline. MultiTrack Recorder Plugin offers exactly that, only it’s designed to be used inside other music apps. Apps that don’t have their own recording functions.
This week we check the weather, take a nap, edit photos on our Macs using Apple Pencil, and enjoy Catalina’s Catalyst apps.
Developers using Apple’s system to convert iPad software to macOS say Catalyst still needs lots of work before it can fulfill its promise.
The functionality is mostly there, but some features are missing and there are complaints about the style of the resulting apps.
This week we find new friends to hang out with, shoot video with both iPhone cameras at once, fall for yet another Facebook data-gathering app and more.
Safari’s content blockers effectively block trackers and other Bad Stuff on the web, but that only works in Apple’s browser. Any other app you install on your iPhone or iPad can send all kinds of personal information to anyone, without you ever knowing. Your location, the details of your menstrual cycle, how long you spend asleep — pretty much anything.
So how do you stop this? Well, iOS 13 itself can help limit some abuses. But what you really need is an iOS firewall app that can detect and shut down any unauthorized connections.
Readdle’s PDF Expert is my most-used PDF app, because it’s fast, powerful and doesn’t get in the way. I don’t even use many of the advanced features, but I still prefer it over most other options.
Now it’s even better. The most recent PDF Expert update adds support for the new features in iOS 13 and iPadOS. Let’s run through what’s new.
This week we enjoy lots of new iOS 13 updates and a new super-accurate moon-phase complication for the Apple Watch. Then we add things up with the most comprehensive calculator ever made, and exhume the body of hipster photo app Hipstamatic.
In iPadOS, the old Today View has shuffled over a little, and now lives right on the Home screen. You can pin widgets there, and they will be permanently shown on the left edge of the Home screen (in landscape, at least — in portrait they will act more like a temporary Slide Over panel).
This changes how we use widgets. Instead of being temporary, quick-info panels, or shortcuts for app functions, widgets are now always visible, and always available to tap. A weather widget can be checked with a single glance, for instance. Ditto countdown timers. And — best of all — Shortcuts can be triggered with a single tap.
Let’s take a look at some great widgets for the iPadOS Home screen.
This week we get grooving with EG Pulse, take control of Mission Control, drag stuff around with Yoink, and wonder why we need Pocket Casts.
Read all about the best new and updated apps in this week’s roundup.
This week we check out Roland’s answer to the iPhone 11’s multiple cameras, turn mono to stereo with Haaze 2, see the new 1.1 beta of Pixelmator Photo, plus one more thing.
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 rock out with Queens’ Brian May, unsend email with Fastmail, read the news later with Feedbin, and way more.
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 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.
This week we block pesky privacy-invading trackers with Guardian Firewall, make sweet (weird) melodies with Ioniarics, and discover the next best thing to the keytar with Roxsyn.
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.
