River of News: First Real Alternative to Reeder for iPad?

We can describe the history of RSS apps on the iPad in this way: before Reeder and after Reeder. I don’t want to sound like a fanboy (which if you want, I am) but seriously - there’s no better Google Reader client on the iPad than Silvio Rizzi’s Reeder. In case you missed our much-linked Reeder review in July, I wrote:

“Reeder provides a great Google Reader experience, and you’ll find yourself constantly coming back to the application to catch up with the news, share, fave stuff and save articles for later. Even when you have a queue of 200 items to be processed, it will be a real pleasure to check those items using Reeder.”

I stand by my statements. Reeder is one of the app I use most on my iPad, and the fact that it’s never gone away from the App Store charts since its release tell you something about Rizzi’s success.

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Push Your iPhone Towards the Air…And Use It As A Telescope

“There’s an app for that.”

I’m just going to say that there’s an accessory for that. There are hundreds of thousands of applications for the iPhone, but don’t understimate the avaiability of custom accessories for it. Just head over store.apple.com to see by yourself. Still, the cool & geek stuff reside in modders’ minds. Those very brave people who don’t care about limits and hardware limitations and create stuff like a Macbook Air under an Apple keyboard.

Now we have an iPhone 4 telescope.

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LG: “Our tablet will be better than the iPad.” - We Mark Their Words

LG’s vice-president of marketing for mobile devices Chang Ma told the WSJ:

“Our tablet will be better than the iPad.

The tablet will include content focused on creation such as writing documents, editing video and creating programs. It will also have “high-end features and new benefits,” many of which will focus on productivity, Mr. Ma said.

“It’s going to be surprisingly productive,” he said.”

We’ve been waiting for you, LG. Sort of. Mainly because we wanted to mark such words and save it for future reference. Funny thing is, many of these manufacturers made jokes about the iPad when it was announced, and now they’re desperately trying to catch up.

Oh, how the market changes.

Elements Winners Announced

Thanks everyone who entered the Elements giveaway. We also want to thank Secondgear Software for the promo codes they offered to MacStories readers.

Here are the winners:

Nate

Cipus

Jeremy Conlin

You’ll receive the promo codes in your inbox in a few hours. Congratulations!

Filer: Elegant File Manager for iPhone and iPad

Getting files on the iPhone and iPad is some kind of a problem: unless you purchase an additional application in the App Store, there’s no easy way to get any file on iOS by default. Sure, you can email yourself some files and open them in Pages, Numbers - still you have to purchase the iWork apps and only documents can be opened in them. This is why GoodReader for iPad sold so well in the first weeks of April: there was no alternative. If you wanted stuff to land on the iPad, you had to buy GoodReader.

Now we have alternatives. I already reviewed Air Sharing HD, iFiles (the app I use every day) and explained how you can easily link your Mac’s Finder to iOS using a jailbroken iPad. Filer, previously known as Downloader, is a very nice looking and useful file viewer / document manager available both on iPhone and iPad as universal app.

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EpicWin: To-Do List With an RPG Spin. Reviewed.

I was really looking forward to the release of EpicWin for iPhone. Ever since it was first announced, I thought that it might be interesting to see whether an RPG-based productivity app could shake things a little bit in the App Store. Yes, the App Store is full of crappy “business” and “productivity” apps; on the other hand, there are some exceptional tools like OmniFocus and Things that lead the mobile GTD revolution.

Still, many people find these apps boring. They don’t get things done with them because they don’t feel motivated enough. You missed your daily review? You get a badge on the homescreen. And they don’t get things done.

EpicWin is meant for all those people who want to be productive but haven’t found the right iPhone app yet. By making your to-do list feel like a quest, can EpicWin really change the way we organize and complete our tasks?

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Apple Launches “Compare Macs” Option in Apple Store

Here’s why store.apple.com was down last night, and we didn’t even notice this when it got back up. Apple added a new “Compare Macs” option to the Apple Store, as first noticed by The Loop. The new option allows you to, ehm, compare various Mac models: you can compare price, tech specs, software and even the environmental report for each model. The interface design, as Apple’s tradition, is absolutely beautiful. It’s also very easy to use.

Well done, Apple. This will sure come in handy. To try the new “Compare Macs” option, just select a Mac and hit the button in the top bar - or hit this direct link.

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