review - page 16

The revamped Google Search app for iOS, which we reported on yesterday, is a huge improvement on what went before.

Today’s – probably this week’s – Best Thing Ever is the amazing, ear-exploding wonder that is Brian Blessed Alarm Clock.

Mixel is a free digital art and social networking app for iPad. It works beautifully; you and your kids will love it. The only downer is its unfortunate requirement that you link it to Facebook. No Facebook means no Mixel.

AppZilla 2 is one of those jack-of-all-trades apps, squeezing 120 little mini-apps into one place.

Tap it, and it grinds open with a dramatic kzzzzzzrrr-tang sound. Inside, you see a springboard-within-a-springboard, with pages of apps to mess around with.

When you first hear about it, Blueprint 3D doesn’t sound like it could be a compelling iOS puzzle game – but it is.

The premise couldn’t be simpler. Each level shows you the blueprint image of an object, exploded in 3D so that the object itself isn’t immediately obvious. Your task is to move the exploded view around until its identity is revealed. That’s it.

YouTube wasn’t supposed to be a music player, but that’s what a lot of people use it for. There are millions of songs on YouTube – the only problem is finding them.

That’s why you might enjoy a Mac app called Musictube, which takes the hard work out of finding and playing the songs you want. If you want a video jukebox on your Mac, this is it.

You know about Activity Monitor for your Mac, right? How would you like to have an Activity Monitor for your iPhone too? Something like Activity Monitor Touch might do the trick.

New on the Mac App Store is Tincta, a text editor for coders and writers. It’s small, lightweight, fast – and free.

This is the Incase Origami Workstation ($30), a case for your Apple Wireless keyboard.

Yes, you read that right: this is not an iPad case. It’s a keyboard case. But it’s awesome. Here’s why.

The new Doctor Who Encyclopedia for iOS claims to offer everything a Who fan might need to know about the three most recent incarnations of TV’s best-known time traveller. But this is one app that could do with a zap from a sonic screwdriver: although it’s stuffed full of facts, the presentation could be improved.

If you need to do some serious writing on your iPad, you should give Writing Kit a try.

When Apple announced iCloud, it also announced the end of MobileMe web hosting.

If you’re among the small community of iWeb/MobileMe users who’ve been wondering what to do when MobileMe finally gets switched off next June, I suggest you take a look at Sandvox as one possible replacement.

One of the apps available in The Fall 2011 Mac SuperBundle offered on the Cult of Mac Deals page is Camtasia by TechSmith ($149 regularly/$99 introductory pricing, in the Mac App Store. Camtasia is a screen recording application for the Mac that has generated a lot of buzz over the years on the Windows platform, and has started to make some noise on the Mac front as well.

Camtasia is laden with features like simultaneous webcam and screen recording, contains a wide selection of effects and filters, and offers online video tutorials to help you through the process of putting together a great screencast. If you’ve ever wanted to put together a screencast, Camtasia is an incredibly simple — and yet powerful — tool to get the job done. But it’s not without its flaws.

There’s nothing like wandering through the Outback, camping under the stars…with an iPad: It can help identify the constellation you’re gazing at, let you sneak in a few chapters from your latest read or track your odyssey. That is, if you can keep the thing juiced.

Solar power is the obvious choice, but there aren’t many portable solar panels with the ability to charge the iPad; add the requirement that the panel be truly rugged and your choices become very, very slim. Luckily, the Joos Orange solar panel ($150), the outfit’s first product, may be the only choice you’ll need to consider.

No doubt, leather requires some sacrifice. Those who want their iPads wrapped with animal hide usually have to make do with considerably more bulk, less usability or less money in the bank account — or, most often, all three. But Sena’s new Florence iPad 2 case ($70) is a surprising exception.

Every new Mac comes with iPhoto, which is getting better all the time. Still, it doesn’t have all of the features that are made for folks who are really into manipulating their photgraphs. Adobe’s Photoshop is often too much for the budding shooter (and cost prohibitive to boot), and image editors like Acorn – while simple to use and well-priced – don’t necessarily have the “feel” of iPhoto that many Mac users are used to.

This is where FX Photo Studio Pro by MacPhun ($40 in the Mac App Store) comes in.

Back in March, at the next to last Apple keynote he would ever attend, Steve Jobs coined the phrase “post-PC world.” The usual cynics tittered at the time, and perhaps are still tittering, but as he often was, Steve was right: day by day, the iPhone in our back pockets or the iPad in our messenger bags are the most important computers in our lives.

For iOS 5, Apple put their money where Steve’s mouth was. Apple was going to prove to everyone that the umbilical between iOS and a Mac or PC could be cut.

Apple’s strategy was simple. They would go through iOS, identify every feature that assumed or required a PC, and radically retool it so that it relied on the cloud instead. With iOS 5, Apple stores all of your data — your mail, your calendar, your address book, your photos, your music, your ebooks, even your Doodle Jump save games — in the iCloud. iTunes Match hurls your complete music collection onto Apple’s servers, available to download anywhere and anytime without pulling out your Apple Connector cable. Meanwhile, Wi-Fi Syncing makes sure that if your iPhone or iPad does need to talk to your PC, it can do so just by being plugged into a wall socket and within stone’s throw of your PC.

All of this would be ambitious enough, but Apple didn’t stop there. They added major new features to almost every core iOS app: Mail, Safari, Camera, Calendar and more. They integrated Twitter sharing into the core of the operating system. They made a serious play for the hearts of magazine publishers with Newsstand. They totally overhauled the way iOS handles notifications. They introduced over the air updates. And then they introduced their own new iOS device messaging system that threatens the bottom line of every wireless carrier’s extortionate, hopelessly overpriced SMS texting plans.

So now iOS 5 is here, and the question is: has Apple severed iOS’s innate tether to the PC, or will iOS 5 be remembered as a smaller interim step towards the post-PC world Steve so presciently envisioned?

We’ve been playing with iOS 5 for months. Here’s what we think: by gum, Apple’s done it.

New from the folks at Realmac Software is Analog, an desktop OS X application that iPhone photographers will find rather familiar.

Review by Kelly Keltner

Griffin’s Sport Armband for iPhone ($30) — a product name that fills my head with visions of iPhones running around the track (“Go, go, little 3GS! You can do it! You’re not too old!”) — allows you to get up and go without worrying about your iPhone. It’s a decent attempt at making workout clothing for the iPhone, but just as with those just-a-bit-too-tight yoga pants, there are a few bulges that might cause a few sideways looks in the gym.

I love iPad 2 accessories that follow the guiding principles of the gadget they were built for. I mean, c’mon — d’you really want to lug around a case the size of a large waffle skillet just to have some keys to type on? Of course not.

The Logitech Keyboard Case by ZAGG for iPad 2 ($100) follows those principles to the letter: It’s light, super-functional and ultra-portable, just like the gadget it was made for.

Note: Although this iCapsule only fits the original iPad, we thought we’d include it anyway; why should iPad 2 users have all the fun?

The Rocketfish iCapsule Keyboard ($49) is a big bulky blob of a hardshell case. But it’s probably the best case on the market for turning your iPad into a laptop.

Adonit’s humble origins as a Kickstarter project hasn’t stopped the outfit from taking the iPad-accessory world by storm. Adonit’s Jot styli were radical standouts in our stylus shootout a few weeks back, and their version of an iPad 2 keyboard case, the Adonit Writer for iPad 2 ($100), sparked similar “whoa”s as I marveled at its design.

Every Mac sold since the launch of OS X 10.5 (Leopard) has had a copy of Apple’s backup software, Time Machine, included.

And thank goodness for that, because backups were the elephant in the computer industry’s room. Everyone knew it was essential to keep backups, and everyone knew that most people just didn’t bother.

Smule’s MadPad is a crazy finger-tapping box of fun for your iThing, guaranteed to put a smile on your face. Once your kids get their hands on it, it will soon drive you insane, but never mind: it’s worth it.