Table of contents for Volume 2 2016 in MacLife Specials

CHUNKY > There are loads of comic apps for iPad, but most are little more than awkward readers for storefronts. Chunky is a standalone app for reading DRM-free content. We love the app for its excellent feature set, which includes support for a wide range of storage services, smart upscaling of lower-res content, optional contrast and tint fixes for faded pages, and the means to disable the page-turn transitions. NOVATION LAUNCHPAD > If you recoil in horror on seeing a piano roll or hearing the word “MIDI,” you can still create music on your iPad. This app has you select from eight free genres and then play – and, if you like, record – a mix by tapping on a grid to combine loops, sounds and effects. It’s so simple…

TOUCHPRESS > There’s an air of old-school CD-ROM about this semiinteractive classical music app. Watch a “beat map” and “note fall” alongside a performance, revealing the secrets behind the music. Shared videos can be explored and interacted with. PLEX > Although previous Apple TVs enabled streaming from network storage via a convoluted mix of iPhone apps and AirPlay, you can now enjoy native PLEX on Apple’s latest hardware. Set-up is simple, and the app looks superb on your TV, with added artwork for all your movies and TV shows. GO FOR MORE APPLE TV APPS, SEE P58 FLICKR > Bringing photos to life on the big screen has long been part of Apple TV, whether through the screensaver or the Flickr app. On the new Apple TV, this revamped Flickr…

$9.99 Developer Bloom Built, dayoneapp.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later Writing a diary may seem like a quaint concept from a bygone era, but there’s still something satisfying about jotting down personal memories for your eyes only, with the option to instantly share select entries with others when the mood strikes. Day One has always been the best iOS app for this task, but the original version (still being published under the Day One Classic moniker) now looks woefully underpowered compared to its far superior sequel. Version 2 has been completely rebuilt with two marquee features that dispel any reservations we might have had about using this app daily. The first is support for multiple, color-coded journals – memoirs are no longer confined to a single diary. Users…

$9.99 Developer Avaz Inc, freespeechapp.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later What if there were a way to use visual imagery to assist with the development of language? That’s the aim of FreeSpeech, a progressive new app designed to help students learn about the structure of the English language. Starting from a range of typical pronouns, you then choose from a range of common verbs. At any time, you can hit More Words to find an extensive list of categories, such as Most Used, Actions, People, Food and Drink, Places… the list goes on. The app then creates a kind of “mind map” of a sentence, placing words and images you choose in the correct position and suggesting what other elements are required to make a complete sentence, such…

$24.99 Developer DK Consulting, productivity-code.com Platform iPad Requirements iOS 9 or later When it comes to serious scheduling, Gantt charts are widely considered the gold standard for business projects. This bar-chart-style breakdown packs a lot of data into a compact space, making it ideal for devices like the iPad – but most of the existing apps to create them are overpriced, underpowered, or plain clunky. Project Office is none of these things. Featuring a more elegant, intuitive user interface than competing apps, it’s also more affordable than popular alternatives such as OmniPlan. Built for speed, Project Office Pro makes it easy to juggle multiple projects, assign contacts or materials, track any remaining work to be done, and head off potential bottlenecks at a glance. Up to three copies of each…

$4.99 Developer Agile Tortoise, agiletortoise.com Platform Universal Requirements OS 9.1 or later Once you’ve found your way round, this app offers some of the key features sadly missing from Apple’s built-in Contacts app. It just takes a bit of getting used to. For example, one of the app’s standout facilities is Scratchpad, which enables you to copy text from email signatures, websites and other apps and paste them in to add to or create a new contact. Brilliant – you just need to learn where it is. Once you know it’s the stick figure with lines, you just select details from your chosen source and hit Create Contact. From then on, it’s easy and useful, and worked every time. One of the biggest omissions in the Contacts app is the…

From the smallest apartment to the biggest mansion, every home can do with a bit of TLC. A few little changes can make an enormous difference to your home, and a few little apps can make an enormous difference to how much fun you’ll have doing it. HOUZZ (Free, Universal) is a good place to start. It’s packed with design ideas ranging from the sensible to the spectacularly unrealistic, and you can use it to scrapbook your favorites and find products that’ll look just great. It’s a fantastic app for finding design inspiration. If you’ve ever ordered furniture only to discover that it was too big to fit in or just looked plain weird with the rest of your furnishings, you’ll appreciate the value of the excellent HOMESTYLER INTERIOR DESIGNER…

The iPad has gained a reputation as a very capable and powerful musiccreation tool. GarageBand is a great place to start, but taking the next step can be difficult when faced with an overwhelming number of creative options. Don’t worry: we’ll point you toward the very best beat-making apps out there. There are some basic apps you’ll need in order to use your iPad as a pro-level recording and music tool, starting with your main DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software. CUBASIS ($49.99, iPad) is the most powerful, full-featured iOS DAW platform. It boasts an extensive set of MIDI recording and editing tools, integrated sampled audio tracks, a nice set of basic audio-processing tools, and total support for external synths and effects via Apple’s Inter-App Audio framework – for passing sound…

Free (with IAPs) Developer Apperto Ltd, apperto.com/videorama Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later Videorama is one of the latest contenders in the video-editing market, with a focus on combining clips and photos with complex effects. Videorama sits in a clever space between a simple, fast editor and an effects powerhouse, happily charging only for what you need. Videorama excels by keeping its feature set fairly simple and focused, in most cases for the better, but occasionally to a fault. For example, even though you can create projects in landscape, portrait, or a 1:1 square, both the iPhone and iPad version are locked to running only in portrait. That said, it’s easy to get started and add clips. Videorama does a good job of holding your hand in the beginning,…

$1.99 Developer FutureTap, futuretap.com Platform Universal, watchOS Requirements iOS 8.3 or later If the idea of displaying 360-degree Street View panoramas on a wristwatch sounds like some kind of crazy fever dream, guess again. Streets 3 is the only app to date that has risen to the challenge, but it sets the bar so high, it’s hard to imagine future contenders doing it much better. Naturally, the first hurdle for developer FutureTap is convincing folks to pay good money for something they can already get free with Google Maps – but even ignoring Apple Watch support, Streets 3 is well worth the money, because it’s dedicated entirely to Street View. For starters, on iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, Streets 3 can be summoned directly from Apple Maps by tapping Share…

$19.99 Developer Karelia Software, karelia.com Platform Universal, watchOS Requirements iOS 9.1 or later To-do apps are everywhere, but since this one costs significantly more than most others, and especially since the App Store is stuffed with apps like the powerful, free Wunderlist, it had better be pretty special. Happily, it is. A quick overview of the iPhone app first. You can have multiple lists, grouped into folders, jobs can be tagged (as you go, or by assigning them to tag trees you’ve already built), and you can view jobs by tags. Set due dates and start dates and your tasks that need actioning now will show up in a Today view, while others will be in Upcoming. Usefully, tasks can have sub-tasks assigned to them (and they can have sub-tasks…

Free Developer Sonic, itranslate.com Platform Universal, watchOS Requirements iOS 8 or later Many of you may have traveled through foreign countries during the dark days before smartphones, missing out on the convenience of having a translation app to communicate with locals. But no more: one of the best around is iTranslate, which recently released a big update that makes it easier to travel abroad, especially in regions where cellular data is spotty or unavailable. We’re talking about offline mode, which allows translations between the most popular languages, no internet connection necessary. There’s also a voice conversation mode available for over 40 languages, and the ability to translate websites using Safari or the in-app browser on iPhone. But the coolest part is that you can initiate translations directly on Apple Watch,…

$4.99 Next time you have guests coming over for a party, make sure they bring their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch along, then fire up your Apple TV and let the fun begin. Together with a free iOS companion app (sorry, Android users), PhotoWall+ allows partygoers to capture photos of the event and throw them up on the big screen for all to enjoy. When guests aren’t adding new pictures, PhotoWall+ automatically generates a slideshow of everything taken thus far, complete with your choice of transition. New images get added as they’re taken, but you can pause the slideshow at any time using the Siri Remote and manually browse photos at your own pace. After everyone has gone home, simply log into a web app from any browser to download…

Free The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (y’know… NASA) has had an iPhone app forever, but this year we get lovely Apple TV support. It was worth the wait – if you’re the least bit interested in science or outer space, this deserves a prominent position on your Home screen. For starters, we have a beautiful live streaming view of Earth from the International Space Station, as well as NASA TV’s public and media channels. There’s also a library of on-demand videos with more than 10,000 different clips, another 14,000 high-res still images (and counting), plus a special category called Earth as Art. Although NASA missions may not be as thrilling now that the Space Shuttle has been decommissioned, enthusiasts can still keep tabs on current events with images, 3D…

OTHER APPS OPERA OPERA.COM >>> This web browser has doubled down on speed and privacy, with an ad blocker and VPN (virtual private network) in recent releases. It also aims to be kind on your MacBook’s battery. FIREFO X BIT.LY/FOX >>> Mozilla’s browser isn’t especially Mac-like, but it is fast and customizable. You can quickly tailor its toolbar, or install any number of addons and themes. TOR TORPROJECT.ORG >>> If you want the utmost privacy, Tor essentially bounces your communications around the world, preventing anyone learning your location and visited sites. Which web browser is best for you to some extent comes down to the type of person you are. Safari’s a solid choice on the Mac – broadly dependable and wellintegrated into the operating system. Also, if you’re wedded…

$2.99 Developer Nice Apps, getniceapps.com Requirements OS X 10.10 or later Launchey has a simple purpose: it enables you to launch apps on your Mac from the menu bar. And with a bit of setting up (and with the right frame of mind), you might find that a very useful addition to your Mac. To start with, we found Launchey not that useful. You can click its icon to bring up a list of all the apps in your Application folder, in alphabetical order – not ideal if you have loads, like us. But you can change which folder it looks in for this list, so you could add a subfolder of only your most-used apps, and then have it only show those, which is much more useful. But the…

$39.99 Developer Paragon Software, paragon-software.com Requirements OS X 10.7 or later, 64-bit processor This app offers sector-level drive backup, allowing volumes to be migrated to another computer or virtual machine with the operating system, applications, and files intact. And unlike Apple’s Migration Assistant, Paragon’s Snapshot feature works without a system restart. It can also be used for day-to-day backup, with incremental imaging that excludes duplicate data. The interface is clear, with complete information about each drive. Clicking the gear icon displays a list of actions, such as wiping data, redistributing free space, or restoring a deleted partition. And it’s not just for Mac-formatted disks – it works with NTFS, ExtFS, FAT, or exFAT partitions. Last but not least, if the new System Integrity Protection (SIP) Apple introduced with OS X…

TOUCHCAST STUDIO > This app makes videos people can touch. Pick your content – web pages, photos, moving footage – then add annotations and use studio features, such as the built-in teleprompter and green-screen effect. Shared videos can be explored and interacted with. The app’s simple to use, and the iPad Pro’s large screen is great for editing. PIGMENT > A coloring app for iPad Pro might seem odd, but Pigment’s great when you need to unwind. Particularly with an Apple Pencil, the tools feel great and look the part, mixing tactile realism with digital efficiency — you can, optionally, select sections of artwork so you don’t go over the lines! ADOBE COMP CC > This app is all about wireframing layouts for print, web and mobile. Shapes, placeholders, images…

$4.99 Developer Bloop SRL, airmailapp.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later We really like Airmail on the Mac, where it checks off nearly everything on our email client wish list (and then some). This mobile app brings the experience to iOS, so you can have a joined-up Airmail setup on all your Apple devices. Nearly everything we like about Airmail for Mac is present on iPhone, including message snooze capabilities and bulk editing. There are also plenty of nice touches, such as the ability to attach files from popular cloud services or send details to other excellent apps, including favorites such as Deliveries, Evernote, and Fantastical 2. If you’re already using Airmail for Mac, getting started on iPhone is a snap with iCloud sync. Accounts previously set up on…

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re taking a break from checking out what people are sharing online. If you too are itching to share what you love with the world, there are plenty of great ways to do it. We’ve rounded up the best of them to help you choose where to share. You could think of PINTEREST (Free, Universal) as a public scrapbook, or scrapbooks. As one of the top 50 most-visited sites in the world, it’s where hundreds of millions of users go to find, pin (save), and share everything from recipes, to inspirational quotes, to home improvement ideas, to fashion gotta-haves. You can create multiple “boards” to organize “pins” however you like, and the whole thing is free and supported by advertising. With aspirations…

Whether you’ve had your fill of refreshing Facebook or helping disgruntled birds right the wrongs in their lives, it’s time to put your iOS devices to work by helping you learn something new. Here are some of the App Store’s best apps for gaining new knowledge and skills. Whether you’re looking to further your current career, work your way into a new one, or dive into a hobby, UDEMY (Free with IAPs, Universal) has over 32,000 courses for learning everything from programming in various languages to yoga, and photography to business development. There are even courses for personal development and learning languages, and many start at $10. All courses can be downloaded for offline use, and you can even message instructors for help. If you’re looking for an academic topic…

For everything from big work projects involving several people, to just re-decorating the spare room, planning is crucial – and picking the right app to help you will make things much easier. Once you get to the execution stage, the same thing applies – choose the best apps for the job in hand and the project will be much simpler. We’ve picked out six apps that cover all the stages in running a project, from researching to planning to execution. Between them they allow you to gather research notes, map out ideas, plan the stages of the project, and capture specific tasks to be carried out by you or a colleague. TRELLO (Free, Universal) uses a system of boards and cards. You create lists on boards using cards, and each…

$2.99 Developer Contrast, contrast.co Platform Universal Requirements iOS 8 or later This app has a funny history of being both embraced and shunned by Apple. It’s currently being embraced, so make the most of it now! Basically, it lets you create your own shortcuts for doing things on iOS – it can simply launch apps for you, but it can also perform complex actions within those apps, queueing up common tasks for you, effectively. You can access these shortcuts either within the app itself in a grid, or through its Today view widget, or through 3D Touch on compatible phones (though some can also be activated by location or through other triggers). It’s also massively expandable thanks to integration with IFTTT. Basically, it’s there to make certain tasks easier to…

$4.99 Developer Perttu Pölönen, mymusiclock.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 7.1 or later If you’ve ever learned, or tried to learn, a musical instrument, you’ll know that it’s often frustrating or even boring: behind every impressive improvisation, stunning solo or semi-competent strum, there are hours and hours of trying to find what notes work where. Musiclock changes that, and it’s a fun tool for expert players and songwriters too. Musiclock helps you learn scales in a very easy way. Pick the scale you want – Major Pentatonic, say, or Blues – and then choose a backing track. You can then choose the key, start the track and play along, either with your own instrument or with the on-screen piano. That latter option highlights the notes that fit in your chosen key,…

Free ($7.99 for all features) Developer JuicyBits, juicybitssoftware.com/bez Platform iPad Requirements iOS 9 or later This vector-drawing app – named after Bézier curves – provides all the tools you’d expect in a basic desktop app, and does a very neat job. The Bézier pen tool worked as expected for creating perfect curves, but it can be tricky to hit the first point on a path again to complete a closed shape. There’s a reason why vector artists use a mouse or a graphics tablet, not a touchpad. Apple Pencil support makes this easier, but there’s no support for third-party active styluses on older iPads. If you’re not too familiar with Béziers and prefer to draw freehand, you can – a pop-up control lets you smooth out wobbly paths, and you…

$1.99 Developer Interactive Universe, flowspeedcontrol.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 7 or later Slow-motion video on the iPhone is great, but if you want to create movies with multiple speeds, Apple doesn’t offer that much control – while iMovie can handle different speeds, there’s no graduation between them. Flow fixes that. Import your slo-mo videos into Flow and you’ll see a graph at the bottom, which is a representation of the speed of the video throughout its duration. You can raise or lower points on the line to speed up or slow down the video, so you can change speed many times over a single movie. Crucially, it adds smooth changes between speeds, making for a much more professional look. Adding new points is easy (tap and hold), though the whole…

Using filters to add that certain look to your photos is just the tip of the fun editing iceberg. The App Store is full of great photo tools that can do everything from add text overlays to combine multiple photos into impressive works of art. Over (Free, Universal) is a simple yet powerful tool for turning photos into everything from backdrops for inspiring quotes, to greeting cards, to event promotions. It’s free and comes with a core set of tools to enhance photos with text, filters, graphics, and so on – but things get even more interesting with the add-ons (from 99¢), which add more advanced tools, stock photo directories, and a world of fonts. When a single photo won’t do, MIXGRAM (Free, Universal) is a popular collage and layout…

Free Developer Cardiogram, cardiogr.am Platform iPhone, watchOS Requirements iOS 9 or later Living with a heart condition is a bit like driving with a blindfold – you don’t know you’re in trouble until it’s too late. A new iPhone app called Cardiogram helps pull back the shroud of mystery about what’s going on inside your chest, turning the Apple Watch into a mobile heart-rate monitor. With Cardiogram, it’s easy to visualize how your heart reacts to intense workouts, and compare your resting heart rate against a trio of scenarios (average runner, average biker, and couch potato). Resting heart rate is used as a key indicator of cardiac health, so being able to record data automatically throughout the day helps illuminate potential problems before they arise. From the Apple Watch app,…

Free Developer Benjamin Giboudaud, facebook.com/returnapp Platform iPhone, watchOS Requirements iOS 9 or later This app does that simple thing of dropping a virtual pin in a location and then giving you turn-by-turn directions back to it using the standard Maps interface – so you get driving/walking/transit options and the Watch wrist-taps, plus the directions also push back to your iPhone. So far, so standard – you could access all that kind of stuff in Maps on your iPhone – but having it on your Watch is useful in more ways than one. There’s a Complication which does nothing more than launch the app, but from there you can quickly tap a “+” to drop a new pin and assign it an icon; this quick access from the watch face is…

Free Developer Hulab, mapstr.com Platform iPhone, watchOS Requirements iOS 7 or later Building a list of locations and plotting them on a map – restaurants you want to try in your home town, spots you want to visit in the city you’re vacationing at next month, client locations for work – is hardly an original idea, but Mapstr does it well. You can add locations on your iPhone by searching around you, by typing (or photographing!) an address, or importing from contacts, Foursquare or even CSV or KML files. Then, on your Watch, you can quickly pull them up and get pictures and useful information (including opening times, where supported), and Maps-powered directions. Or, on the Watch, tap to save your current location; a little annoyingly, it won’t just drop…

Free All-you-can-eat subscription services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime are fine for most folks, but some of us have more specific (dare we say cultured) tastes. That’s what makes outlets like VHX so interesting – it’s a platform where video content providers can create their own Netflix, and rent or sell copies. While VHX has had a player app for some time on the iPhone, the upstart company only recently upgraded it with native iPad support and now, at long last, it’s on Apple TV as well. There’s not a whole lot to it – log in with your VHX account credentials and there’s all of your library content, ready to stream – but for the more than 5,000 sellers and 1.25 million customers, it’s a godsend. VHX is…

99¢ Apple TV is great for consuming cool video content, playing fun games, and even learning, but sometimes all you really want to do is vegetate on the couch and just… stare at something. That’s pretty much exactly what Perfect Storm HD was designed for – a single dollar gets you all of the rough ocean, thunder, lightning, and rain visuals your eyeballs can take, accompanied by the requisite sound effects and cinematic, royalty-free background music score provided by the folks at Incompetech.com. There are only two storm scenes to choose from with a swipe across the Siri Remote: being immersed right in the middle of a rough sea, or buffeted about in choppy waters with a lighthouse just off in the distance. Perfect Storm HD includes separate volume controls…

$8.99 Manufacturer Trollin, trollin.loos.li/iconStiX Requirements OS X 10.10 or later iconStiX aims to bring individuality to your desktop, by way of adding text, images, and shapes to icons. You drag items from Finder or select objects from a Favorites window (that oddly sits above every other app window until it’s closed). Elements can be tweaked, and icons are then exported or applied to existing items in Finder. Granted, the likes of Image2icon offer much the same (and in that case in a more friendly design). But what puts iconStiX into our recommendation pile is its flexibility. Although you can just drop a shape on a folder and add an effect, this app offers far more. There’s support for multiple layers and objects. You can adjust any item’s position, skew, angle,…

$36 Developer Stairways Software, keyboardmaestro.com Requirements OS X 10.10.3 or later Keyboard Maestro is all about controlling your Mac with user-defined macros. These comprise a trigger and one or more actions, ranging from simple hotkey commands through to more advanced interactions based on specific conditions. An example action bundled with the app is Paste Selection Into Last Application. On pressing the relevant shortcut, it copies a selection, switches to the last used app, pastes, and then switches back again. Naturally, the sky’s the limit once you get familiar with how to create your own macros. Triggers now include keys tapped multiple times, window focus changes, and updates to folders. The last of those means you can be notified when new files are added to a shared folder. Actions-wise, too, the…

DUOLINGO > Learning languages can be tricky, so this app transforms the process into a bitesized game. Select a language from over 20, then work your way through exercises that test recognition of words and phrases. Before long, you’ll favor extending your learning streak over wasting time on Facebook or Candy Crush. FORECAST > A weather app for people who like the look of Dark Sky, just not its cost, Forecast is about hyperlocal forecasting. You get fast access to current conditions, imminent rainfall, and predictions for the next week. It’s a web app – the sole one included here – so visit forecast.io in Safari and add it to your Home screen. OVERCAST > Overcast is worth grabbing as an alternative to Apple’s Podcasts because it’s packed full of…

CHEATSHEET > Rather than jotting down important but short notes — Wi-Fi passwords, new luggage lock combinations, and so on — on scraps of paper, use Cheatsheet. A list is created on your iPhone — or directly on Apple Watch, using dictation — and looks great in the app or glance view, with large icons helping your eyes find every factual morsel. PCALC LITE > This calculator Watch app may send you into Casiodrenched nostalgic bliss. It betters any plasticky forebear with its smart, responsive interface, in which a tip calculator is available from the blue button; tip percentage and number of guests are elegantly set from the Digital Crown. PCalc is $9.99, yet the Lite version generously includes the Watch app! CURRENCY > Plenty of currency conversion apps exist…

Remember when we used to telephone buildings and hope that somebody was there? Crazy times. These days messaging apps enable us to chat in real time no matter where we are or what we’re doing. Every iPhone and iPad ships with Messages and FaceTime, of course, but third-party apps offer all kinds of additional goodies – not least the ability to chat with people who aren’t using Apple gear. Im the business world, SLACK (Free, Universal) is becoming a very big deal. It’s rather like a private Facebook for the world of work, with teams messaging one another individually and in groups, sharing files, tracking projects and updating their expenses. There’s a great Apple Watch app too. If your work is more like Jason Bourne’s, you might like TELEGRAM MESSENGER…

$3.99 Developer Codarica, codarica.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 8 or later Worrried about your kids playing too many games and not learning anything? Well, why not let them combine the two? That’s the aim of Coda Game. Codarica, developer of the CodaQuest website building app for kids, has realized that kids love simple, repetitive action games and that they are relatively easy to “self code” given the right tools. Developed with children aged 6-12 in mind, the app aims to teach kids about “computational thinking, problem solving, creativity and logic” – the fundamentals of programming. In actual fact, there isn’t a great deal of programming, but kids are introduced to placing game elements and then discovering what effect they have. There are several game modes, including block breaking, side scrolling,…

$4.99 Developer Peter Szwach, useproud.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later Everyone could use more time in their day, but most productivity apps feel like they weren’t designed for people. Proud takes a more flexible approach, encouraging downtime to catch your breath when there’s too much to do. That’s not to say Proud doesn’t work like traditional to-do apps, but here lists and tasks work the same. Tasks can include unlimited sub-tasks, so busy users can pile on as much as they want and trust Proud will have their back. Proud offers three views: Lists, Reminders, and History. The first shows a complete picture of what needs to get done, the second focuses only on what’s coming, the third shows everything accomplished so far. New tasks are added with…

$24.99 Developer The Soulmen, ulyssesapp.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 9 or later Ulysses is one of our favorite Mac writing apps for all kinds of work: reviews, features, novels, broadcast scripts… you get the idea. It’s a very fast and flexible text editor based around Markdown, which enables you to format documents or add links and other code with a few simple keystrokes. It started off on the Mac, made its way to the iPad and now it’s on the Phone too. Nobody’s going to pick the iPhone over a Mac for prolonged writing, but Ulysses makes it as pleasant as possible. Your formatting and code options are just a tap away from the keyboard, and it’s equally easy to access tags, file attachments, notes and writing goals. It’s much…

$9.99 Developer DK Consulting, dk-daytime.weebly.com Platform iPad Requirements iOS 8 or later Whether you’re managing a busy schedule at work, at home, at a freelance business, or even for an entire office staff, staying on top of projects and appointments has become one of the most crucial roles of the smartphone and tablet. This app has a very good handle on helping get things done, but it’s strictly for the iPad crowd right now. Daytime offers a no-nonsense user interface with separate tabs for Projects, Contacts, Task, and Calendar entries across the bottom of the screen, plus a fifth Home button focused strictly on what needs to be addressed today and in the next seven days. From here, you can tackle the most current tasks in a color-coded timeline, quickly…

$6.99 Developer Simon Tocknell, songhubapp.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 7 or later If you’ve ever forgotten a melody because you didn’t have a recorder handy, or lost a lyric for want of a scrap of paper, you’ll love Songhub: its mission is to make songwriters’ and musicians’ lives easier by keeping their melodies, lyrics, chords and even sheet music in one place. The app caters for two kinds of songs: songs you’re writing, and songs you’re performing. If you’re writing a song, you create a songbook detailing your chords and lyrics and recording the melody; if you’re performing, you create setlists and then assign songs from your library, or import chord charts, sheet music or Word docs via iTunes File Sharing. It’s all synced online so you can use it…

$4.99 Developer Samer Azzam, procamapp.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 8.0 or later This collection of tools for taking and editing photos and videos with your iPhone or iPad lacks a little bit of polish, but it contains some great options. Like many other “pro” camera apps, ProCam lets you set exposure, shutter, ISO, focus, and white balance manually – in a slightly fiddly but usable manner – as well as changing the aspect ratio and showing a range of grids (including golden ratio) to help compose dynamic shots. You can save in TIFF rather than JPEG, turn geotagging on/off, and burn copyright and/or location info into the picture itself. Some features miss the mark for pros; the histogram is coarse and only shows overall light, not per-channel levels, and the…

REGARDLESS OF whether you take photos on your iPhone or on a professional-level DSLR, the camera isn’t psychic, and it can’t always produce exactly what you had in mind – so there are times when you need to do a little editing. There are also times when you need to fix errors such as a sloping horizon, or to brighten a shot that’s too dark. Or perhaps you want to get a bit more creative, turn the image black and white and boost the contrast to inject a little atmosphere? There are plenty of really great apps for doing the job, with some offering one-click fix-alls or a selection of retro-style filters, and others that allow you to take manual control and make carefully measured adjustments. A problem with many…

$2.99 Developer CraftyApps, apps.dinglisch.net Platform Universal, watchOS Requirements iOS 8 or later Kids say the darndest things, but it’s not always easy to whip out the iPhone or grab an iPad to record them. That’s where Crafty Family Recorder comes in – it’s like Apple’s built-in Voice Memos app, but designed with convenience and sharing in mind. You can record and play files back right on Apple Watch – even when an iPhone isn’t connected. Or use the Watch as a remote control to initiate recording on the iPhone, so there’s no need to fumble in your pocket and miss baby’s first words. Back on the iPhone or iPad, you’ll be able to rename and trim all of your recordings, view timestamp information, and share directly via AirDrop, email, Dropbox,…

$2.99 Developer Film Hubble, rachelhigley.com Platform iPhone and watchOS Requirements iOS 9 or later Until we adopt a decimal clock system (and, given that the metric system never took off in the US, that doesn’t feel likely), calculating how long there is between now and your next calendar event can sometimes be a bit tricky. “Okay, it’s 3:07 now, let’s just call it a quarter after three, and my meeting is at 4:45, so that’s 3:15, 4:15 – one hour – plus another 30 minutes; so, about an hour and a half, I guess? Oh, but minus the time it took me to work this out?” This app, which is designed purely to run as a Complication, shows you how long until the next event on your calendar (you pick…

Free (with IAPs) Developer DivDev, divdev.se Platform Universal, watchOS Requirements iOS 9 or later It’s kinda crazy that, in 2016, with such an explosion of on-demand TV distribution channels, we still frequently tune into broadcast channels to watch our favorite shows. But lots of us do, and if that includes you, Episodes makes it easier. On your iPhone, search for the shows you love then mark them with a star. With the free version of the app, you can mark up to three; if you want more, you need to sign up for a $4.99/year subscription. Now, on your Watch, you can either launch the app to see the upcoming episodes, or if you’re a diehard fan, give up the big central area of the Modular face to show details…

$4.99 We’re big fans of Plex, the home media server/client software that offers movie, TV shows, and music lovers the opportunity to build their own library of digital content free from the shackles of iTunes. While Plex offers its own native Apple TV client, a new app called Binge aims to do it one better by reducing the user interface to a simple list of content. While that may sound like a backwards approach to some viewers, some of us just want to dive in and start watching without all the fancy cover art and glitz. That’s not to say Binge doesn’t offer this, but viewers have to scroll through the list of content on the right half of the screen first in order to preview a title. For now,…

Free If your kids like to make stuff with Play-Doh, there’s now a free Apple TV app that will keep them busy all summer long doing just that. The aptly-named Play Doh Fun isn’t an officially sanctioned Hasbro app, but does offer plenty of ideas and instructional videos on how to turn everyone’s favorite flour, water, salt, boric acid, and mineral oil-based modeling compound into all kinds of cool stuff, in a range of categories. From assembling Play-Doh activity sets to dollcraft and fun time do-it-yourself projects like a paint set, corn-on-the-cob, and rainbow with a pot-o-gold, the ideas are endless. There’s even a video on how to create a smartphone out of Play-Doh, a Pac-Man complete with four ghosts (that was one of our favorites), and of course, a…

ALTHOUGH IT has plenty of options, Apple’s Mail feels quite rigid in use. The main reason to switch to Airmail (airmailapp.com) is that it’s so flexible and accounts for people with vastly different ways of working with email. Also, its wealth of options make it extremely efficient for blazing through bulging inboxes, throwing yourself with joyful abandon towards the great promised land of Inbox zero. It all starts with browsing your messages. This works in much the same way as in Mail, enabling you to sort your inbox by various criteria, such as sender, subject, or date; unlike Mail, keyboard shortcuts are already assigned for these, speeding things up a little. Airmail goes further, though, with a set of filters that make life a bit easier. For example, you can…

PATH FINDER’S website (cocoatech.com) neatly sums up the main reason to use it instead of Finder: “Path Finder’s philosophy is to let you work how you want”. This isn’t the case with Apple’s file browser. While Finder has improved in recent years with things like tabs, it isn’t nearly as flexible as this third-party rival. At a glance, Path Finder doesn’t look all that different from Finder, but you’ll immediately notice there are a lot more panes in its window. Whereas Finder has a sidebar and optional status and path bars, Path Finder has a bottom shelf with four configurable panels. If that’s not enough, you can add four more to the right-hand side of every window, and a Cover Flow pane that sits above the Icon, List or Column…

SKYPE SKYPE.COM >>> FaceTime’s great when it works, but we find it can choke on poor connections. Also, it’s only on Apple devices, but Skype’s on every major platform, and can be used to call phones at cheap rates, making it a great substitute. SPOTIFY SPOTIFY.COM >>> iTunes is a bit bloated these days. Spotify is more svelte, doubling down on streaming in a manner that’s more usable than Apple Music. Its weekly playlist is particularly great. DROPBOX BIT.LY/MFDRI >>> iCloud Drive gives you a place to store files online, providing you with access to them on various devices. However, Dropbox has a ton of app integration, superior sharing options, and works on more platforms. KINDLE BIT.LY/MFKNDL >>> This suggestion veers very much towards the practical. Objectively, Kindle isn’t especially…

$99 Developer Rogue Amoeba, rogueamoeba.com Requirements OS X 10.9 or higher Loopback is a Mac utility that creates an unlimited number of virtual device configurations for sending audio between apps, and even allows multiple sources to be combined into one, for easy recording. It works with any app that outputs audio, as well as devices which connect to the Mac, such as USB microphones or video capture boxes. After adding a New Virtual Device and assigning a custom name, add one or more audio devices or applications. Finally, select the new virtual device in your target software, which can include Skype, GarageBand, or countless others. Audio channels are automatically mapped when added, but can be manually configured by dragging the desired channel(s) from Audio Sources. This kind of customization is…

$32 Manufacturer Noodlesoft LLC, noodlesoft.com Requirements OS X 10.10 or later Hazel is a housekeeper for your Mac, tidying behind you as you work. You select specific folders to target and rules to apply, setting up conditions and specifying what should happen, such as files being sorted into folders automatically based on their name. Hazel ships with basic rules to get you started, which act as examples. These place specific media types into relevantly named folders, or flag documents of a certain age with a label. Through carefully constructed multi-condition rules, you can craft surprisingly complex actions, involving importing content into apps, archiving, and uploading. For example, you could have Hazel root around Downloads for music, put it into iTunes, and trash the original files. Construction of rules is now…