Posts in reviews

SwiftRing for Mac Combines Gestures and Keyboard Shortcuts

SwiftRing is a new app for OS X that’s still in beta and available as a free download here. It’s also one of the new apps for the Mac I’m most excited about, as I believe it shows great room for improvement, it’s promising and it combines two of my favorite things about the Mac platform: gestures and keyboard shortcuts. I love to get things done with the keyboard, especially when I’m in a hurry and shortcuts come in handy to save precious time. Still, multi-touch gestures on my MacBook’s trackpad (and Magic Trackpad on the iMac) have spoiled me with their ease to use, speed and, sometimes, “cool factor”.

SwiftRing aims at delivering the best of both worlds through a system-wide circular interface that appears as an overlay to any app (even the Finder itself) and allow you to perform any action that has a keyboard shortcut with a simple gesture. Read more

Ecoute 2.0 - Small, Powerful Alternative to iTunes

Just like any other alternative to iTunes on the Mac, Ecoute has been around for a while. Since Apple shipped its very own music player and digital hub years ago, many developers have tried to come up with original solutions for all those who couldn’t stand iTunes. And as iTunes grew bigger to accommodate apps, books, podcasts and just about anything you can put on an iPhone or iPod, thousands of users and even more developers started feeling the need of a minimal music player, again. What began as a hobby for a limited number of users (“let’s not use iTunes for music”) evolved into a real segment of a market willing to keep iTunes closed to listen to music libraries. And I understand the position of the users and developers that first thought about jumping out of iTunes: why would one need to stare at iTunes and all its features and options all the time, when you just need to listen to some music?

In spite of iTunes becoming many people’s less used music player over time, the apps that have surfaced in the past years that allow us to just play music are, in most cases, nothing but standalone iTunes controllers that strip away the clutter and focus on albums, artists and songs. They fetch a user’s library, take the music out of it and display it into a minimal, sometimes non-existent, user interface. Coversutra, Bowtie: they are two popular iTunes controllers for OS X that have gained support for other features such as last.fm scrobbling and iOS remote streaming. But in the end, they rely on iTunes.

So did Ecoute 1.0, and so does the just-released Ecoute 2.0. Ecoute is a well-known music player for OS X that plays music from iTunes, but doesn’t require you to keep iTunes running in the background. It automatically finds a user’s iTunes library file and takes content from there. It comes with a neat desktop widget for quick play / pause actions, but it’s also got its dedicated interface. Ecoute 2.0 depends on iTunes, but it adds great value while giving you a reason to stay out of Apple’s software at the same time. Read more

Update: A Minimal App For Simple Sharing

On our iPhones and iPads, we run Twitter clients. Be it Twitter, Twitterrific, Osfoora or some beta app no one knows about, many of us rely on these standalone apps to share links, thoughts and comments on Twitter. We do the same for Facebook (even if there’s no official app for iPad, third party clients are well known in the App Store), LinkedIn and other social networks. The problem: some would like to have the possibility to forward some status updates to other social networks they’re subscribed to (and likely have some friends on) without having to copy the message every single time in a new app. A few people I know use hashtags on Twitter to beam a tweet to Facebook or Google Buzz, but I don’t like the option. Next time I want to share the same message on Twitter and Facebook, what should I use?

Update is a neat $0.99 utility for iPhone which lets you do one thing: write down a status update and choose the social networks you want to send it to. Everything happens in one screen. That’s it. Once you’ve authorized the supported services (Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, LinkedIn and Hyves) in the settings, you’ll get a simple on/off menu in the compose window to choose the active services. Type, and share. You can tell the app to grab your location data or shrink URLs contained in the message. You can’t attach pictures, but I guess this is one of the non-features that make Update a great app: it’s simple and focused on text messages. If you need more, go download a dedicated client.

I like the developers’ approach with Update. It’s available at $0.99 in the App Store, and even if it’s not the app for everyone I surely appreciate its simplicity. Recommended.

Discourse, The Beautiful Dictionary App

The iOS platform doesn’t lack great dictionary apps. From Terminology for iPhone and iPad (both of them reviewed on MacStories) to the dozens available for free on the App Store, users can stay assured there’s a way to check on word meanings, references and, at best, thesaurus with an app. After all, it would be strange otherwise.

Still, there’s always room for better. So developer Emilio Palàez (also known for his Notified app in Cydia) and designer Mathieu White set out to create the most beautiful and easy to use dictionary app for the iPhone. Discourse, which we previewed on MacStories a few weeks ago, is now available. As I expected when running the beta version, Discourse is pretty great. Read more

Dock Spaces Brings Multiple Docks to OS X - Review & Giveaway

By default, OS X allows you to set up one and only one dock on your machine. Many users keep their dock at the bottom, with all the apps installed on their computer, some prefer to keep it hidden with only the most used apps – others keep it on the left. The dock is one of the most recognizable features of the Mac, the tool that lets you access your application with just a click. But the default dock doesn’t come with all the customization features offered by Patrick Chamelo’s Dock Spaces.

Dock Spaces, recently updated to version 4.0, enables you to set up multiple and customized docks depending on what kind of dock you need at any given time. Just like other apps like Hyperspaces let you create multiple spaces with different preferences, Dock Spaces is a tweak that comes as a preference panel which you can use to switch between different, contextual docks. Say you’re working on Photoshop and together with that you need easy access to other apps for graphic design: you can create a dock with all those apps, other than your “default” OS X dock. Basing on this same concept, you can set up as many docks as you want for all the different contexts and situations you’re going to use your computer. Read more

This iPhone App Snaps Pictures With The Volume Buttons

Remember when Camera+ was removed from the App Store because the developers hid a feature in it that allowed you to snap pictures using the iPhone’s volume buttons? Apple didn’t want that and as far as I know they’re still going against apps that modify iOS’ standard functionalities such as volume adjustment. But then why is there an app in the App Store that lets you do just that? Quick Snap, available at $1.99 and released two weeks ago, enables you to take pictures using the physical volume buttons. I just bought the app and it works.

Not only does Quick Snap take pictures with the “+” volume button, it also triggers a timed shot with the other button. I don’t know how this app made its way into the App Store, also considering how much the developers promote the feature on the app’s description page. But other than that, the app isn’t really great. It’s got a less than decent UI and its animations when changing from portrait to landscape mode are slow. It saves pics to the camera roll, but it hasn’t got basic camera features such as zoom or tap to focus.

But hey, it’s got the volume buttons thing. If $1.99 is a good price for such functionality, then go ahead and buy it before Apple pulls it. I’m just surprised the App Review Team missed this one.

Update: And just as we expected, the app is gone. It wasn’t that great anyway.

Sleipnir: Free, Innovative Browser for iPhone

From the same developers of Inkiness for iPad comes Sleipnir, a new app for the iPhone that’s without a doubt one of the most innovative, stable and fast alternative browsers released in the recent months. My problem with alternatives to Mobile Safari is that they don’t provide anything better than Apple’s implementation, aside from a different visualization of tabs. Many apps sold through the App Store simply gained popularity because they brought “desktop-class tabs” to the iPhone or iPad, with the trade-off of adding ugly UIs and navigation controls to an already-powerful WebKit engine. I’m all for alternatives and different solutions to built-in software (especially when the third-party version is available for free, like Sleipnir), but I’m looking for something that really takes advantage of iOS. Not just a port of desktop functionalities.

Sleipnir offers just that. From the first first launch, you’ll immediately notice it’s an app developed with the iPhone (and iPhone users) in mind. It doesn’t come with “desktop tabs” yet it allows you to organize open pages in an innovative and useful “tabbed view” I haven’t seen in any other app. Sleipnir might just be the most innovative iPhone browser to date, powered by a nice interface design and a seriously great engine. Read more

No More Hidden Fees: We’re Giving Away Wallet Dilemma So You Can Shop Safely Overseas With Your Credit Cards

Perhaps there’s a beautiful French woman waiting for you overseas. Boarding the next International flight and armed to the teeth with your Visas and MasterCards, you’ve found the perfect place in Paris to buy her that beautiful diamond ring. While I am stealing a page out of a Google commercial, spending money overseas is no joke when credit card fees are involved. Don’t be caught off guard: Wallet Dilemma for the iPhone accurately approximates just how much those Euros will end up costing you in good ol’ USD.

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Bringing Google Calendar To The iPad, Cloud Calendar Just Works (And We’re Giving It Away)

The simplicity of iCal should be transcended to our Google Calendars. Wrestling iCal and Google Calendars to work in harmony has been somewhat of a challenge because I have completely two different sets of calendars and events that need to be merged, and currently I can’t risk the time (or expense) to sit down and ensure my mid 2011 dates aren’t hacked to pieces because of conflicts. What I need isn’t a syncing solution, but rather a completely new app that allows me to separate my personal life from my business life. Cloud Calendar from Clean Cut Code delivers all of my Google dates to my iPad with the familiarity of iCal.

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