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Review: FontBook for iPad

I’m a typography addict. Since I watched Gary Hustwit’s “Helvetica” documentary film, I constantly follow several type foundries and blogs (of which I consider I Love Typography and Typedia the top-notch sites) to keep myself updated on the latest news and typefaces. Hence after I saw the introduction of FontBook by FontShop (which was recently updated to version 2.1 with a Retina-optimized UI), the app was an instant-buy for me. Finally I can discover new typefaces, designers, and foundries wherever I go, offline, just with my iPad.

I usually discuss an app’s design separately at the end of a post, but FontBook has to be an exception from that, since the app itself is showing perfect use of digital typography and content curation — in no other area of design, content and design are connected as closely as in typography. FontBook is developed by a 10 person team at FontShop, one of the largest and the longstanding typeface resellers on the Internet, founded by renowned Erik Spiekermann in 1989, so it is no real surprise that it executes this need for exact design with pure perfection. Read more

Review: iTV Shows 2

iTV Shows 2 is a handy app for keeping track of your favorite TV shows across all of your iOS devices. It has an improved interface, a slick new icon, local notifications for shows about to air, and it supports iCloud sync just to name a few of its features.

The user interface in iTV Shows 2 is extremely well done; the developers definitely hit the mark with this version of the app because not only is it gorgeous but it is also easy to use and contains all the features one would expect from an app dedicated to informing you about TV shows. To use the app, one needs only to search for (and add) some TV shows to the “My Shows” list. I immediately noticed an improved performance when simply searching for a few TV show titles. iTV Shows 2 definitely seemed snappier and more accurate with its search results. After adding my favorites “How I Met Your Mother” and “The Big Bang Theory”, I jumped back to the main screen and noticed the large beautiful icons separating out the shows. These are simply categories to help the user visualize when the TV show is going to air, if it has already aired, or if the next season has yet to announce a specific start date.

Another feature I enjoyed in iTV Shows 2 was the Genius tab which displays TV shows it thinks I might also enjoy watching. It was extremely accurate with its selections, however I am not entirely sure how it derives these suggestions. Perhaps I just enjoy very common and popular TV shows. Some of the shows it suggested that I happen to truly enjoy include “Dexter”, “Breaking Bad”, and “New Girl”. These are very different shows, but the app was spot on suggesting that I check them out.

Other features include a handy calendar view in which you can tap around and view episodes throughout the month. It also supports all of the latest iOS buzz words including universal, Retina Display ready, local notifications, and iCloud synchronization. I know people have come to expect iOS apps to be universal but I still appreciate each developer that decides to essentially give away two apps for the price of one. The iPad app seemed to have all of the love and detail that went in to the iPhone version. The iCloud sync worked flawlessly during my brief test, all of the shows I added while setting up the app on my phone were already added to the iPad version after simply launching the app on the second device.

The only issue I experienced was with the local notifications. I had received my first notification for an episode of “How I Met Your Mother” exactly 1 hour late. I immediately assumed it was a time zone setting issue in the app. Sure enough, I figured out that I had to go in to Settings > Preferences > Time Zone > and enable “Perform correction”. The note by the developers state to only use this setting if the app fails to automatically perform the time zone, so perhaps you readers will experience no issues at all. Other than this small hiccup the first day using iTV Shows 2, it has been very reliable.

I have to admit, at first I questioned whether or not I needed an app to remind myself to watch a TV show since 90 percent of the time I don’t watch TV shows live anyway, I use a DVR or stream the show on a network-connected device. This touches on what I feel is an industry wide shift in how consumers are interested in viewing TV shows – many of which are opting out of standard cable television services in favor of web services like Hulu Plus, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video on Demand. I actually have traditional cable service but still subscribe to all three of these services (don’t ask me why), yet I was surprised to find as much value in iTV Shows 2 as I did. My wife and I enjoy watching entire seasons of TV shows at a time so checking off episodes as we watched them was a useful feature. I would be nice if the app eventually added some statistics about the number of TV shows I watch: maybe it could calculate the number hours I spend on TV (I am a statistics geek). Furthermore, I enjoyed the supplied information per show, e.g. what TV shows have seasons coming up, like HBO’s True Blood which is starting soon. iTV Shows 2 even has Twitter integration to share episode details with friends which was a pleasant surprise.

Overall, iTV Shows 2 has a sharp new user interface along with some pretty unique features. It may not be my most used app but it does serve a specific purpose and has definitely earned a permanent spot on my iOS devices.

iTV Shows 2 is available on the App Store for $2.99

Let’s Sing

Developed by Marco Tabini and Lex Friedman, Let’s Sing is the most addictive and fun iPhone game I’ve played in a while. Long story short: you can get it for free on the App Store, or buy the paid version.

Let’s Sing is a “social” iPhone game that you can play with your friends online, combining the traditional aspects of karaoke and television program “Name That Tune”. From the main screen of the app, a “Start a New Game” button allows you to find a friend to play against manually (by email or username), on Facebook, or through your Address Book. Once you’ve found a friend to play Let’s Sing with – sessions are private, meaning only you and your friend will play, and they won’t be shared publicly – it’s time to pick a song. If you want, however, Let’s Sing lets you pick a random opponent.

Let’s Sing is clever, in that rather than using a proprietary system to provide you with song previews – or worse, rely on in-app purchase to offer “song packs” – it simply connects to the iTunes Store to display three possible options at a time. Let’s Sing’s list of songs is manually curated by their developers in order to ensure a proper classification (easy/medium/hard), and, more importantly, to avoid items with complex names or strange characters that would be problematic to enter with the iPhone keyboard. The selection of songs is already fairly impressive, and support for the iTunes Store means the developers will be able to effortlessly add songs over time as they choose more. In my tests, I “sang” my friends hits from Beyoncè and Soundgarden, Micheal Jackson and R.E.M., and more.

Before a turn, songs can be previewed, and there is a link to buy an item on the iTunes Store if you suddenly realize you want that in your collection. From the song selection screen, you can also shuffle songs if you don’t like or know what you’re being offered, but shuffles are limited. Songs are displayed on a grade of difficulty, which will earn you and your friend more coins in case of successful streak. More shuffles can be unlocked with coins; if you’re out of coins, you can buy more with “real” currency using in-app purchases.

The singing and guessing part of Let’s Sing is what I like most about the game, and what got me hooked in the first place. Let alone that I get to hear online friends and colleagues I have never met in real life hum or whistle through their microphones, the whole process is extremely straightforward: you pick a song, whistle, hum, or like I do, “na na na na” through it, then hit Send. You can play back your recording to make sure you’ve got it right in 30 seconds, or cancel and re-record. Once sent, it’s up to your friend to guess, and the main screen of the app will reflect an ongoing game’s progress with an indicator. There is also an in-game chat to congratulate or shamelessly brag with a friend. Fortunately, Let’s Sing features push notifications, so you won’t have to wait inside the app for the next turn, but you’ll be informed by iOS.

On the guessing side, you can listen to what your friend recorded, and enter the song’s title with the keyboard. Alternatively, you can use in-game hints to reveal a song’s vowels or its artist.

I don’t typically play many games on my iPhone – I might take a random shot at Temple Run or Ski Safari while waiting in line – but Let’s Sing has turned out to be fun diversion that keeps me coming back. Let’s Sing combines my love for music (and guessing songs) with a streamlined way of embarrassing myself (in a good way) to people that wouldn’t otherwise hear me “na na na na-ing” the latest Nicki Minaj. It’s about your voice, your friends, and it’s fun.

Get it from the App Store.

Review: MoneyWiz For Mac


I reviewed MoneyWiz for iPad back in late February and found it to be a really great personal finance app for the iPad. Today I’m back to have a look at the recently launched Mac version of MoneyWiz. In many ways, the Mac app is identical to the iPad app, so this won’t be an in-depth review of the Mac app — rather it’ll be an overview of the MoneyWiz app and then some discussion on specifically the Mac App as well as the ‘Reports’ and the Sync service.
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Procreate Is A Full-Featured Mobile Easel And More

The biggest reason for why I always wanted to become a writer is because I’m not good at creating visual art. I like to look at any kind of great art — from the old masters to talented dribbble users — and this love for well-crafted visual arts helped me getting to write here at MacStories. I’m better at talking about cool pixels than creating them. However, three days ago I bought my first iPad, and Procreate by Savage Interactive is considered one of the finest apps when it comes to using all the capabilities of the new Retina display.

After testing it for some time, I have to say that Procreate seems to be a perfect companion for artists when it comes to digital sketching and painting on the road. It’s a full-featured creation app, not forcing the user to cut back in functionality at all. Before I dive in deeper into its feature set, let me shortly recap the app’s main elements and controls.

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My New Dropbox List-Making App: TaskAgent 2.2

In the past few months, I have been refining my Dropbox-powered writing workflow, adding new tools and checking out updates to existing ones in order to achieve a reliable, yet seamless environment for quick notes, longer articles, and lists. In particular, I mentioned TaskAgent, an iOS app to manage lists through easily formatted text files inside Dropbox.

In TaskAgent, I keep lists of apps I want to buy or update, and lists of stories I want to work on. These lists can be archived and retrieved later, and they exist as standalone .txt files in my Dropbox. If I want, I can add items to my lists using TextDrop, GoodReader, or TextEdit on my Mac; I guess it’d be nice to have a dedicated TaskAgent Mac app with the possibility of entering items with keyboard shortcuts.

See, on my computer and iOS devices, I keep lists. I have the aforementioned work-oriented lists of apps and posts I’d like to work on. I have lists of apps I want to recommend for our Inspiring UI series, and I have lists of developers I want to interview. But I also keep lists of podcasts I want to check out, movies I want to buy, groceries I need to pick up, and ideas I want to submit to a developer as feedback for his beta app.

In my mind and in my workflow, lists and tasks are separate entities. A list may contain items that will become tasks; my OmniFocus keeps the things I know I have to do – neatly organized and synced to the cloud. Over time, I have found the separation of lists and tasks to be necessary to properly divide my organization skills in two distinct areas: remembering Vs. doing. And I have found TaskAgent 2.2, released today, to be the best app at enhancing this text-based setup on the iPhone and iPad.

From a core functionality standpoint, TaskAgent 2.2 isn’t too dissimilar from the versions we have previously covered here at MacStories. However, alongside a much simpler formatting syntax and a slew of new features, TaskAgent 2.2 impressed me thanks to its completely redesigned interface and Dropbox sync engine.

On the iPad, large “notebook thumbnail previews” adorn a sidebar that can be dismissed with a button in the upper toolbar. On the iPhone, lists are shown through a Facebook-like panel that also contains shortcuts to create a new lists, enter the Settings, or open Archived lists (which aren’t permanently deleted). TaskAgent 2.2 cleverly uses these new list previews to bring up functionalities that would have otherwise been buried in sub-menus within the main interface. A tap & hold on a list will reveal options to quickly delete, rename, duplicate, or archive a list. To avoid the guilty remorse of having too many items in a list, TaskAgent now lets you hide the “0 out of x completed” description, so you’ll focus exclusively on managing your lists without feeling bad about having too many items inside them.

One of TaskAgent’s previously often criticized feature was its New Item dialog. Version 2.2 does away with uninspired blue alert boxes and introduces a new quick way of entering items one after the another: on the iPad, that’s a popover, while on the iPhone the menu has been rendered as another panel on the right. Depending on your settings, new items will be added at the top or bottom of a list, and you can enter multiple ones in a row without having to tap Done every time. The overall workflow is incredibly faster.

TaskAgent 2.2 is unarguably a better version of the app, and, to me, the best solution to manage lists on iOS while retaining the capability of editing them anywhere as long as I can open a .txt file. I can access my lists from my browser with TextDrop or from iOS using GoodReader and ReaddleDocs. I can associate TaskAgent’s folder (which can be moved anywhere inside Dropbox) with a text editor and start editing right away. I can quickly append new items to a specific list file using Alfred, and if I want, I can share a list to Evernote as well, as TaskAgent supports that service, too.

TaskAgent makes lists “open” and available anywhere. Only $1.99 for a limited time.

Bang On Centralizes Mobile Search

Mobile search is and has ever been a very problematic area. After nearly five years of iPhone, developers are still discussing iOS browser search functionality, speed, and the right way of implementing it into the devices workflow. When it comes to services other than Google or Bing, Apple took the easy way by dividing its mobile OS into multiple apps with each one having its own searching capability (Safari for websites, YouTube for videos, etc.). This trend did not stop after the launch of the App Store: third-party apps like Articles and more recent examples like Spotify rely on their own search engine implementation. Bang On by Derek Kepner might be able to change that. Read more

Justnotes is Simplenote’s Desktop Companion and a Little More

I already know what you’re thinking: “Justnotes looks a lot like nvALT.” You wouldn’t be wrong in thinking that Justnotes is visually reminiscient of Notational Velocity and its poweruser fork, nvALT, but it wouldn’t be fair to judge without getting hands on. I’d posit Justnotes as an alternative to TextEdit on OS X — it’s a container for creating, sorting, and archiving text files. Otherwise, Justnotes is simply the desktop counterpart to Simplenote… With a twist.

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Due, the Super-Fast Reminder App for iOS, Now Available for the Mac

I remember the first time I heard about Phocus’ Due - John Gruber linked to it. After buying it, Due has always stayed on my iPhone. I’ve tried many similar apps, but Due has always been my go-to application. Due isn’t trying to compete with the larger, more involved GTD apps, so anyone can use it and learn to love it.

One of the most important features of Due has always been the auto snooze feature, as Calendar events and Reminders will show you something once, then vanish back into the OS. Due will continually remind you about something until you get it done, and that’s what I love about this app. I also love that each alert is customizable - need to delay it an hour, a day, or a few minutes? No problem! The timers are also fun and much better than the iOS Clock functions. I use several timers when I’m cooking or grilling, whether it’s flipping burgers or making homemade eggrolls. Due for iOS is a very popular reminder and timer application for iOS, available as a universal application that looks great (and is retina-ready) on both the iPhone and the iPad. We have covered Due several times before, but now it’s available for the Mac!

I was priviledged to help test this app from its inception and it’s been exciting seeing it evolve into the 1.0 release in the Mac App Store. The UI is very similar to the iOS counterpart, so the learning curve is very fast. It has those wonderful pinstripes and the pop-up windows look very nice. The icon is very slick - one of the best I have seen for a reminder application. Due for Mac (along with the iOS version) uses iCloud or Dropbox syncing so that all of your data is available no matter where you are. Set a timer on the Mac app, launch the iOS version so that changes can sync, then go outside. When the timer is up, your iPhone will alert you that it has expired. I prefer iCloud syncing as it is hard wired into the OS; in all my 1.0 testing, sync was fast and flawless.

Like all other versions, Due has natural time parsing which makes it a breeze to enter reminders. Type, “Make dinner reservations with wife at 10am tomorrow” and your reminder is set for 10 AM tomorrow. ”Cancel Spotify and renew Rdio subscription in 1 month” and you get a buzz a month later. There are no awkward date pickers, nor rigid date and time format to follow.

As with the iOS versions, assignable alert sounds are available for the Mac. You can use louder and longer alerts for very important reminders, and softer ones for regular reminders.

Power users will love all of Due for Mac’s shortcuts. Don’t worry about using your trackpad - show or hide Due, create reminders, reschedule them, mark them complete, delete them - it’s all a keyboard shortcut away. Due for Mac also supports Growl notifications. If I had to comment about something that I’d like to see it would be a global hotkey to bring up Due no matter what you are doing, and I’d also like to see an optional menu bar icon.

Due is a very fast reminder and timer application. I’d like to think it’s Reminders on steroids. Due is $9.99 and available via the Mac App Store. The iCloud (Dropbox) sync is worth $10 alone and if you already have the universal iOS app, iCloud and Dropbox sync make Due for Mac a must buy. If you’re looking for a great reminder app to add to your arsenal, you can’t go wrong with any of Due’s weaponry. $15 will cover every one of your devices.