My Must-Have iPad Apps, 2013 Edition

Must Have iPad Apps 2013

Must Have iPad Apps 2013

For the past three years, I’ve been running a series called “My Must-Have Mac Apps” that, once a year, would list the apps that I found indispensable on my Mac. This year, considering the changes that I went through from a workflow perspective, I thought it would be appropriate to start focusing on iOS as well. I’d like to start with the iPad.

I’ve been working primarily from my iPad for the past 15 months. For a variety of personal reasons that I’ve discussed before, I found myself unable to work from my Mac every day, so I decided to try and see whether the iPad and iOS could be viable OS X replacements – not just companions. I ended up enjoying the iPad as a work device and, eventually, as a primary device powered by terrific apps that allow me to be more efficient on iOS.

From a high-level, conceptual standpoint, this isn’t a new topic for MacStories readers or listeners of The Prompt. In the end, though, it all comes down to the apps – the software that I use on my iPad for work and play, for productivity and entertainment.

Hence, “My Must-Have iPad Apps”. I consider this the first installment, even though it technically isn’t: I published similar articles in 2010 and 2011, but I skipped 2012 – the year when I really got serious about working from the iPad. This year’s installment is a reboot of the iPad series, which I’m going to publish regularly from now on; if you want, you can check back on the old articles linked above to see if there are apps that I’ve been using for three years (spoiler: yes).

The list below is organized in four sections: Main, for apps that I use several times every day; News, for discovering links and staying on top of RSS; Entertainment, for media consumption; and Utilities, for single-purpose apps that I use often but not heavily every day. Each app is listed with its App Store link and, at the end of the article, you’ll find my iPad app of the year. Read more

Temporarily Capture Moments with Meteor for iPhone→

There are lots of pictures we take in the moment that we shoot off to social networks, private chats, and to others in emails, but they don’t necessarily need to stick around. Meteor advertises itself as a photographic memo pad that lets you take photos that only matter right now, deleting your photographs after a period of time unless they’re manually saved to the Camera Roll. For a buck during their launch sale, Meteor tries to unclutter your Camera Roll by separating memories from photographic reminders, in the moment goofiness, and can even perhaps save you from post “why did I take a picture of that” regret. It works with Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, iMessage, your email app, and your favorite photo app.

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Honda Announces Deep iOS Integration With Upcoming Vehicles→

Eric Slivka from MacRumors on the latest in-dash technology to be found in the new Honda Civic and Honda Fit:

The new Civic, which goes on sale tomorrow, and the upcoming Fit, which launches early next year, will offer an all-new Display Audio interface featuring a 7-inch touchscreen that will be familiar to smartphone users, offering easy access to a variety of features.

“Display Audio” is quite the oxymoron.

Whatever happened to iOS 7 in the Car? What Honda is offering are proprietary (and expensive in the case of navigation) apps that are simply launched through the car’s virtual dashboard.

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PDF Expert 5 Brings Updated Design, More PDF Editing Features to iPad

PDF Expert

PDF Expert

Released today on the App Store, PDF Expert 5 is Readdle’s new version of the popular PDF Expert for iPad, a feature-rich PDF manager and reader that I’ve been using on my iPad for years. PDF Expert 5, a separate app sold at $9.99 on the App Store, brings a cleaner design for iOS 7 and, more importantly, new functionalities such as better document management, an improved sidebar and document viewer, Review mode, and more. Read more

PayPal Launches Digital Gifts Store Featuring iTunes Gift Cards→

From PayPal Forward (via setteBIT, iMore):

Beginning today, just in time for the holidays, PayPal will be opening the doors (or the URL) to the PayPal Digital Gifts store.

What is PayPal Digital Gifts? It is a store that will give people the chance to purchase digital gift cards from a host of our partner merchants. We have one marquee merchant in the store today and will be adding more very soon!

Right now, the new store is limited to iTunes codes for the US iTunes Store. It’s nice that Apple is making it easier to buy iTunes credit online, but the regional restrictions are curious (an euphemism for awful): unless your PayPal account (not just the iTunes one) is a US one, you can’t send an iTunes code as a gift to someone else – not even if your account is configured with USD. PayPal’s Digital Gifts store would be very convenient to me and I hope that these restrictions will be removed soon.

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Realmac Releases Free Ember App for iOS

Ember

Ember

In July, Realmac Software released Ember, the successor to LittleSnapper that allows you to organize images in a digital scrapbook for OS X. From our review:

Ember is a very polished app with a fantastic UI, slick animations, full-screen mode and it’s simply a fun app to use and organize images with. If you’re a digital creative person and want to organize your screenshots, inspirational images and reference files, Ember could be what you need.

Today, Realmac is back with Ember for iOS, a free companion app for the iPhone and iPad that lets you manage and organize your library but that doesn’t come with editing features yet. Realmac decided to start with a free app as a foundation for all Ember customers; annotations will be added in a future update with In-App Purchases – a trend that’s making several indepedent developers and small software shops, such as Realmac, experiment with different business models than the traditional paid app approach. Read more

GIFs for Documentation→

You could accomplish many of the goals of the way I use GIFs with inline videos or links to Youtube/Vimeo. However, I find that in many cases the result of a simple focused GIF is far better than a video. Firstly, they don’t require fancy hosting or embed codes to work. Any modern browser can display them inline. Their short, looping nature also make it really easy to immediately get the gist of what the video is trying to communicate. They also take far less time to create than a polished video.

I have the same setup as David Smith, only I use Reflector to capture videos of iOS devices.

GIFs are typically used for Internet memes and jokes (or wars), but they have been working well in my reviews, especially for iOS 7 apps. Creating GIFs of iOS apps is one of the few things that I still can’t do on iOS.

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Apple Buys Topsy→

The Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. has acquired social-media analytics firm Topsy Labs Inc. for more than $200 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

Of all the acquisitions that Apple did in 2013, this is one of the most interesting ones to me. Topsy was capable of analyzing trends in tweets and it was one of the few official Twitter partners with access to the full Twitter firehose (including all tweets starting from 2006).

There are many possibilities opened by this kind of access and technology. At TechCrunch, Matthew Panzarino imagines that Topsy’s technology could be useful to improve Twitter search tools built into Siri:

There is also a slim possibility that Apple may want to use Topsy’s stored trends data and firehose access to improve Siri search. It could provide Siri with a reliable way to present people with trending topics and search results according to Twitter when queried.

As Panzarino also speculates, however, I believe that there’s real potential in Twitter analysis algorithms used to augment iTunes and App Store discovery for media, and especially apps. Imagine being able to determine in (almost) real-time the kind of buzz that an app is getting by analyzing tweets sent by humans (not bots or websites) about a new app release. I’ve written about this before, and smaller third-party companies have already tried to provide their own layer of App Store discovery tools by triangulating signals from App Store charts, online reviews, and social networks.

And, of course, there’s the TV rumor: Twitter has become the de-facto destination for real-time TV commentary by millions of watchers, with the company going as far as surveying a subset of users about live TV viewing habits in their latest iOS app update. Topsy’s firehose access and algorithms could have endless potential for Apple’s rumored television plans.

As John Gruber notes, it is a curious acquisition. Apple may have bought Topsy for its team or technology or patents, but the fact that Topsy was highly specialized in Twitter tools and that Apple already has native Twitter integration in iOS and OS X creates several interesting scenarios. Although, as we’ve seen with the Chomp acquisition, this kind of changes can take a long time.

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