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Posts in reviews

Hoplite: A Mini Dungeon Turn-Based Strategy Game for iPhone and iPad

Each step feels more perilous than the last. As you dash over a pool of lava, you lunge to slay a demon archer, cornered and unprepared for the daring attack. Looking ahead it seems all but impossible to make the last jump, as demon footmen move to block the exit. Throwing your spear, you impale the dark beast, only to be greeted by a bomb that lands behind your feet. You bash away the bomb with your shield, taking out another demon as it explodes at a distance. Leaping across the last chasm, a lapse in judgement leaves you directly in the crosshairs of a second archer, who fires an arrow directly into your exposed side as you land.

And thus ends the quest for the Fleece.

This is Hoplite, where a pair of sandals, a trusty spear, sturdy shield, and three hearts are all that protect you from hordes of demons in the Underworld. Your quest is to recover the Fleece and make it out alive, but the journey is treacherous.

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Unread Review

Unread for iPhone

Unread for iPhone

Unread, developed by Jared Sinclair, is my new favorite RSS reader for iPhone. Unread is on my Home screen, on the same spot that Reeder held since late 2009 when I first reviewed it. Unread provides a fantastic mix of elegant typography, intuitive gesture-based, one-handed navigation, iOS 7 features, and modern sharing tools that, in my opinion, make it the best RSS reader for iPhone today.

The Sound Of Settling

I’ve been using Reeder for over four years, and the app hasn’t changed much. It received interface refinements through the years and support for more RSS services was added after Google Reader’s demise in 2013, but it’s no secret that, for months, Reeder stagnated, with no updates to reassure users that Silvio Rizzi still had big plans for the app. Not that the lack of updates was a problem per se: Reeder was a great app and it always kept working, but seven months without updates on the iPhone and the removal of the iPad and Mac versions from the App Store didn’t suggest that Reeder was on track for major changes.

In September 2013, just a week before iOS 7, Rizzi released Reeder 2, a new app for iPhone and iPad. Reeder 2 brought a completely new UI for the iPad and an evolution of the iPhone’s one, leveraging new animations and transitions for navigation inside feeds and articles. My review wasn’t completely positive: while I lauded the app’s speed, elegance, and familiarity, I also stressed that, in the age of Mr. Reader, Reeder for iPad was too little, too late for my workflow. I concluded by saying that Reeder was a “beautiful and familiar app that could have taken bigger risks”. In spite of the fresh(ish) coat of paint, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Reeder 2 wasn’t exactly new or advancing the basics of the app in meaningful ways.

Especially if you’ve been waiting for an update to Reeder for iPad, maybe a redesigned Reeder that doesn’t go crazy with new features but that instead brings a cleaner reading and syncing experience is exactly what you wanted from Rizzi. Reeder 2 is a fine piece of software – it certainly looks and works better than the majority of RSS clients on the App Store – but my hope was that Rizzi would include new functionalities in the sharing and browsing departments. I guess that, with Reeder 2, I was expecting the same impact that Reeder 1 had in 2009, whereas what I found was a beautiful, solid, but familiar (and trite, in some areas) take on the same app.

I was hopeful that the new foundation would give Rizzi time to regroup and evaluate how Reeder could add new iOS 7 features without losing its nature in the process, but, four months and a 2.1 update later, things haven’t changed much. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – good software takes time, especially when you’re an indie developer – but, as a user, I was curious to see whether other RSS readers could satisfy my news-reading needs better.

Hence, Unread. Read more

Working with Evernote for iOS 7

Evernote 7.3

Evernote 7.3

When Evernote for iOS 7 was released in September, the app received a fair amount of criticism: the company had once again completely redesigned the app after users were still learning their way around the previous major redesign, there were bugs with sync and the note editor, plus several other minor issues that, together, didn’t provide a smooth upgade experience. Evernote listened and started working on iOS updates aimed at fixing problems reported by the userbase, which had resulted in low ratings on the App Store.

A few weeks ago, an article by Jason Kincaid highlighted some of the troubles he had with the Evernote apps, which prompted CEO Phil Libin to publicly address his complaints and, in the process, commit to making 2014 the year of prioritizing fixes and improvements to the existing Evernote experience instead of more complete redesigns and big feature additions. In January alone, Evernote has completed the transition to a new sync infrastructure that made sync four times faster for all users, and, today, released version 7.3 of the iOS app, which I believe shows a good thinking process by Evernote.

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A Look at SwiftKey Note

Third party keyboards have been showing up on iOS, not as system replacements, but as individual apps that aim to provide an alternative to Apple’s standard keyboard. Keyboard replacements on Android, and apps on iOS like Fleksy, aim to either provide an alternate method of inputting characters (such as swiping over characters with your finger) or predict what you’re going to say next.

Apple’s keyboard for iOS is good, but not great. Auto-Correct doesn’t provide the right balance of letting me decide what I want to say[1] without disabling it completely, and popovers dismiss corrections rather than select them. Apple’s keyboard feels counterintuitive, and dare I say Apple’s smaller displays don’t lend themselves well to cramped keyboards[2] with buttons for dictation and international keyboards.

SwiftKey Note doesn’t replace Apple’s keyboard layout, but it does attempt to improve upon automatic corrections while offering easy-to-tap suggestions as you type. Does it hit the ball out of the park? Not completely, but it’s decent and for the most part has better suggestions than Apple.

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Launch Center Pro for iPad Review

Launch Center Pro

Launch Center Pro

Contrast’s Launch Center Pro, the app that started the small revolution of iOS automation in June 2012, arrives today on the iPad with a new version (sold separately at $4.99) that takes everything you know about Launch Center Pro for iPhone and scales it up to the bigger screen. Launch Center Pro for iPad doesn’t do anything dramatically different from its iPhone counterpart: you can create custom actions, play around with Dropbox and clipboard integration, and do all the things that were possible in Launch Center Pro 2.1 – only now on your iPad too.

Finally.

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Vox 2.0

Vox is a simple and powerful drag and drop media player for the Mac, letting you drag in folders and individual tracks to create custom playlists. The app supports just about any media format, from FLAC to AAC to WAV, and has a built in equalizer so you can dial in the perfect sound. Vox has been around since 2007, and I’m amazed that it continues to be free.

I mentioned it briefly in the footnotes when I talked about GoodReader’s iOS 7 design, but there’s so much music out there that’s not in iTunes. Upcoming artists are putting demos and downloadable Mixtapes on SoundCloud, Bandcamp has become an avenue for independent game makers to sell soundtracks, and Amazon’s willing to send you the digital equivalent when you buy physical albums. If you love supporting your favorite artists, iTunes also ignores common perks that you get when preordering music direct, including exclusive tracks, different masters, custom artwork, and swag. A lot of music ends up in my Downloads folder, and instead of waiting on iTunes, I just drag my folders of newly acquired tunes into Vox.

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Pushpin for Pinboard Updated with New iOS 7 Design, iPad UI, Search Improvements

Pushpin

Pushpin

Pushpin, a full-featured Pinboard client that used to be my personal favorite before iOS 7, has today been updated to version 3.0, which brings a new design, a split pane interface on the iPad, and several other features. On the iPhone, I now prefer Pinswift, but Pushpin remains the best Pinboard experience for the iPad, which is where I spend most of my time bookmarking links and discovering new ones every day.

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Etymologies, Pronunciation, and Notes with WordBook

WordBook

WordBook

I was recently looking for a dictionary app that could handle standard dictionary features (thesaurus, synonyms, web lookups, etc) as well as user notes for words, and I decided to check out WordBook after reader Jeff Clatworthy recommended it to me on Twitter. As I mentioned last night on The Prompt, WordBook isn’t the prettiest app around, but it does exactly what I need for definitions and notes.

Because English isn’t my first language, I often want to associate Italian expressions with English words to remember the context of a definition – for instance, I would associate “for the umpteenth time” with “per l’ennesima volta” in Italian, which makes it easier for me to remember the word “umpteenth”. Surprisingly, I wasn’t able to find a dictionary app with this kind of feature (Terminology, my favorite one, doesn’t have one) and, of course, Apple’s built-in dictionary lookup functionality on iOS is limited to the basics. WordBook has an option to add notes to words and, in trying the app, I also found other features that I like.

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Twitterrific 5.6 With Live Streaming

Hey! Live streaming for Twitterrific is really here. It works over Wi-Fi, and can be enabled by toggling the setting in the settings. Live streaming works similarly to “pin timeline” settings in other apps, where enabling live streaming makes it so that you’re always viewing the latest tweets in your timeline. You can scroll around, but the timeline will jump to the most recent tweet when left idle (useful for anyone who docks their iPhone in a cradle at their desk). On the flip side, Live streaming keeps the display turned on, which can unintentionally drain your battery if you set your phone down or forget to put it to sleep. I think it needs some fine tuning before it’s just right.

Something to keep in mind is that Twitterrific enabled background refreshing in a previous update, which fetches tweets when you’re outside of the app. If you only check the app a few times a day, Live streaming might not be such a big deal. If you’re always on Twitter, however, Live streaming is worth turning on, despite some caveats.

The other biggie found in Twitterrific 5.6 is list management. You can create, add people to, and remove people from lists. You can create and delete lists, as well as set whether they’re private. I would expect to find a lot of this functionality in the sidebar, but Twitterrific has it tucked away in a contextual menu. Creating and managing lists is done by tapping and holding on an avatar in your timeline, selecting “Manage in Lists,” and going from there. I kept looking for list settings, a hidden add button, and kept wondering what I was missing — it’s pretty well hidden. You can also get to it by tapping the gear icon when viewing someone’s profile.

As for the smaller things, you can now view images in Direct Messages, as well as copy discussions from the share menu.

Live streaming for Twitterrific has obviously been a long time coming. Twitterrific 5 has been a series of big incremental improvements, starting with things like Push Notifications and Muffling, and performance continues to blow me away. To celebrate their big update, Twitterrific 5.6 is $0.99 for a limited time in the App Store, and those who’ve previously purchased the app can download the update for free. And you’re getting a lot of bang for your buck: the app works across iPhone and iPad.

Perhaps the last remaining question is when is The Iconfactory going to bring these updates back to the Mac?