Newly launched at SXSW this week is Picle, a free iOS photography app with a twist: the aim is to make something that sounds like Instagram. It’s a lovely idea but the initial release suffers a few disappointing problems.
Along with everything else in iLife for iOS (and iWork too), iMovie got an update at the new iPad announcement on Wednesday. The big new feature is trailers, which you may have used before on the desktop. Now you can make them on iPhones (4 or later) and iPads (2 or later).
We wanted to put the new iMovie through its paces, so here’s a trailer we made.
Here is the new Pages for iOS, as announced by Apple last night.
Not a huge amount has changed here, to be honest, but there are one or two nice additions, stuff that help Pages retain its top spot in the small world of word processing on iOS.
Fans of Monty Python, gather your dead parrots and your stuffed John Cleese plushies: today is your day to celebrate the official launch of Monty Python: The Holy Book of Days for iPad, an app that gives faithful Python followers everything they could ever wish for on a plate, with strawberries on top. The rest of us might be left wondering what the fuss is about, though.
So the 25 billionth download from the iOS App Store was none other than Where’s My Water? Free. It brought its owner a shiny $10,000 iTunes gift card and worldwide fame for 15 minutes. But will it bring you anything? The short answer is probably: no.
Fuzel is another one-dollar photo collage maker for iOS. There are dozens of others, so what marks this one out?
Well actually it’s rather impressive. To start with, it has a lovely natural interface that begins with the faux-textured front cover of a photo album, with your most recent creation poking through a hole. Swipe this aside, and keep swiping through your creations, just as you would with a real album.
First things first: Pentax calls this “the smallest, lightest interchangeable lens camera in the world,” and they’re dead right. This camera is small. You thought your micro four-thirds camera was small, but it’s huge compared to the Pentax Q. It’s hard to appreciate just how small it is, until you put it next to something else that’s really small. Like an iPhone.
As you can see, the Q sits neatly atop the iPhone’s screen, not even touching the edges of its case. It’s tiny.
Camera Awesome is a new all-singing, all-dancing photo app on the iOS Store this week. But just how awesome is it?
Brought to you by photo sharing site SmugMug, the first noticeable thing about this app is the price: it’s free. There are no adverts inside it, you’ll be pleased to hear. But there are quite a lot of extras that can only be unlocked with in-app purchases.
The Grix is a cool new $5 pixel editor for iOS, with wide appeal for serious pixel artists and anyone looking for a creative way of killing a dull moment.
I first heard about Launch Center from my old TUAW colleague Dave Caolo when he began writing a series of posts about it on his excellent 52 Tiger blog.
Read what Dave writes, and take careful note of his wise words: Launch Center is an ingenious little marvel that’s well worth having on your iPhone. Allow me to explain why.
ThumbTack is a Menu Bar utility for OS X that puts your most recent Pinboard bookmarks in easy reach, no matter what application you’re using.
Denso is a little bit like Flipboard, but just for video content. Open it up, and you’ll see a selection of curated and branded channels that you can subscribe to on your iPhone or iPad.
Here’s how you know you’re a nerd: a charging station gets you excited. Yeah, I’ll say it: the IDAPT i4+ Universal Charger ($60) excites me. And yes, I’ve known the touch of a woman.
Before you judge me any further, let me explain how the i4+ works; you might start getting a tingly sensation too.
The HunterWanderer is a premium iPad 2 case handcrafted by Pipetto in London. It promises to offer you the ultimate protection for your beloved tablet, while maintaining a lavish look that oozes quality. It’s made from waxed cotton and genuine Italian leather, and not only does it look good, it’s also very practical.
PopClip brings cute iOS-style select-and-click text tools to your Mac. It’s great.
While investigations into the working conditions in its Chinese factories still underway, Apple has now commissioned an independent environmental group to review its supply chain and identify any environmental concerns. The reviews are set to begin next month, and will focus on the environmental impact of factories belonging to Foxconn and one other unnamed supplier.
Acorn describes itself as “an image editor for humans”, and that sums it up in a nutshell.
What you get inside Acorn are pretty much all the image editing features you’re ever going to need, for a fraction of the price of some of the competing apps.
Makego is a cool new app that makes your kids’ real world creations come to life.
The two-dollar app comes with three virtual vehicles – a racing car, an ice cream truck, and a river boat. All you have to do is make one (out of Lego, paper, or anything else you can think of), plop your device inside, and run the app.
Hands up if you forget birthdays all the damn time. Hey, whoa, slow down. I can’t see all of you at the back. Waaaaay too many hands. Wait. No, OK, hands down. Let’s do this differently.
We’ll forget about the counting bit, and just assume that pretty much everyone forgets birthdays and ends up hating themselves just a tiny bit more each time. Especially when a few months later, the person whose birthday you forgot remembers yours, and sends a perfectly judged gift too. Dammit.
ImageXY is an image resizer for OS X, available for 10 dollars on the App Store.
There are many grid cameras in the App Store, but Grid Lens by Bucket Labs caught my eye because it adds a little bit of fun, something you don’t see often in camera apps.
This is the timer-tastic Repeat Timer Pro, a two-dollar multitimer for iOS.
Meet Niko, star of a cute-character platformer for iOS that involves the usual amount of bouncing, running, hopping and collecting things.
If you do a lot of typing on your iPad, the ZAGGFolio keyboard case should be on your list of things to try. It’s a nice wireless keyboard and solid iPad case combined in one reasonably-priced unit. Let’s take a closer look.
Apple’s new iBooks Author application for Mac is an impressive piece of work, even more so when you consider that it costs nothing. Although easy to use compared to many other page layout apps, it’s still quite a lengthy and complicated process to produce a book with it. It’s also squarely aimed at the education market. It was designed for the creation of textbooks.
So what if you want to make a shorter, simpler ebook? What if your kids want to make one? iBooks Author, for all its benefits, would probably be overkill. Enter, stage right, Book Creator for iOS. This five-dollar app lets you create simple ebooks on your iPad with very little fuss.
