Posts in reviews

Book Track 2 Review: Widgets, Sidebar for iPad, Shortcuts, and More

I’ve been on a book reading binge this year like never before. That’s partly owing to the pandemic, I’m sure, but it’s also tied to reduced time spent reading articles and social media. In a normal year I read about a dozen books, and this year I’m on pace for five times that. As a result, it’s no surprise that one of my favorite app debuts of the year has been Book Track, from developer Simone Montalto.

Book Track launched at the beginning of the year as a promising 1.0, then followed with a big update mid-year that addressed my initial problems with the app and expanded its functionality in key ways. That update was a great setup for the launch of today’s version 2.0, which introduces support for some of the top features of iOS 14 and iPadOS 14: widgets and a new sidebar design. By getting the low-hanging fruit out of the way in previous updates, Montalto was able to keep Book Track current with all the latest OS technologies right from launch day. Not stopping there, however, he’s thrown in support for Shortcuts (the app) and keyboard shortcuts in today’s update too.

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CARROT Weather Gains Flexibility with iOS 14 Widgets, Watch Complications, and Watch Face Sharing

The weather can vary a lot day-to-day in Chicago, so I’ve always had a weather app on my iPhone’s Home screen. For the past few years, I’ve used CARROT Weather, one of the most comprehensive such apps available on the App Store. CARROT’s Today widget and Watch complications are among the best of any app category, but with the release of iOS 14 and watchOS 7, developer Brian Mueller has taken CARROT Weather’s widgets and Watch complications to a new level.

iOS 14 widgets and watchOS 7’s more flexible complications and watch face sharing feel like they were tailor-made for an app like CARROT. The variety of data available in weather apps makes them perfect for creative widget and watch face implementations, which is precisely what you get with CARROT Weather. Let’s dig into what’s new.

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Focused Work Review: Staying on Task Amidst Growing Distractions

Working from home isn’t for everyone. Many of us have been challenged by the loss of structure that an office or other public workspace provides. Not only that, but homes often provide far more distractions than a dedicated workspace. As a result, I expect that more people than ever need aids to help them do focused, productive work.

A new app from developer Michael Tigas aims to help. Focused Work is a simple, but valuable utility for creating timed focus sessions of productivity. While this may sound like merely a Pomodoro timer app, what I appreciate about Focused Work is that while it can be used with the Pomodoro Technique, it’s much more flexible than that because it enables creating any timers or sequence of timers that will best meet your own needs and fit with the way you work.

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Portal 3 Review: More of the World through Ambient Noise

There was no better time than 2020 for my discovery of Portal, the immersive ambient noise app I reviewed at the start of the year.

Back in January Portal impressed me with its multifaceted approach to providing an escape from your current surroundings. Not only are the app’s 3D soundscapes of a high sound quality and perfectly paired with headphones, especially noise-cancelling ones like AirPods Pro, but Portal also engages your other senses to help you focus, sleep, or mentally escape when you can’t physically escape. One way the app does this is through its visual scenes, which provide each different sound portal with a location’s snapshot that your imagination can lock on to. Another way is via Philips Hue integration, which enables your home lights to automatically sync to different colors and brightness settings that fit best with the portal environment you’ve chosen. This combination of immersive sound with visual scenes and real-world correlation via smart lights makes Portal a uniquely holistic experience.

I’ve been using Portal ever since January, but even more since March, when my ability to physically leave home was drastically scaled back. I don’t use it when sleeping, but it’s certainly helped me both focus and escape, providing the much-needed feeling of being in a new environment even when my physical surroundings are left unchanged. For these reasons, as well as the presence of features like breathing exercises in the app, I find it appropriate to call Portal not just an ambient noise utility, but a wellness app too.

Today, Portal is launching a big 3.0 update that leans into its core strengths by providing more of what makes the app great: its portals. Previously the app offered a total of 19 portals, and today that number more than doubles as 25 new portals have been added for a total of 44 – and more are on the way.

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GameTrack Review: An Elegant Way to Discover, Track, and Share Videogames

There is far more media I’d like to try than I have time for. Between TV shows, movies, music, books and other reading, podcasts, and videogames, the supply of content far outstrips the time I have by an order of magnitude. As a result, I’m both picky and often slow to getting around to some media, especially games, which often require a substantial time commitment. The trouble is that it’s easy to lose track of games I’ve read about, that someone has recommended, and even those that I’m in the middle of playing if I can’t play regularly.

I’ve approached the problem in a lot of different ways. Text notes are a quick and portable solution but lack detail. Apps designed to track lots of different kinds of media have the benefit of consolidating everything in one place, but often don’t accommodate features specific to one kind of media. As a result, I’ve recently gravitated to apps that focus on just a single type of media. For videogames, that solution has been GameTrack, an app that we’ve covered in our Club MacStories newsletters in the past.

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The Wallpaper App Review: Endless Wallpapers Tailored for Apple Devices

I’m very picky about wallpapers on my devices, and when I finally find one I like, I stick with it for a very long time. At some point during that very long time, I start getting tired of my wallpaper and look for a replacement, only to quickly give up and conclude that none of the other options are good. The number of wallpapers available on the web is practically infinite, yet these days I scarcely bother to look for anything new.

So in some respects I’m both the best and worst person to review The Wallpaper App, a new Lumen Digital utility for iPhone, iPad, and Mac that does nothing but supply new wallpaper options. Best because I could use a new wallpaper solution, and worst because my passionate condemnation of most wallpaper options makes me inclined to find little of value in a new wallpaper app.

I see four primary strengths to The Wallpaper App, all of which give it an advantage over other wallpaper apps or services I’ve tried in the past.

  1. It’s extremely simple to navigate
  2. All wallpapers are designed to work well behind app icons, widgets, etc.1
  3. You can customize wallpaper colors manually
  4. Wallpaper size options are tailored for Apple device sizes

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Crouton Review: An Elegant, Modern Recipe Manager and Cooking Aid

One trend that emerged from stay-home orders this year is that many people have spent more time cooking than ever before. Many restaurants have been unable to offer indoor dining, and the lack of a commute as much of society adjusted to work-from-home life provided the opportunity to spend more time in the kitchen. Bread baking became a popular habit, but so did home cooking in general. All of this has brought an influx of new entrants to cooking.

I’m not new to cooking, but I’ve nonetheless found myself in the market for a better solution for recipe management, meal planning, and cooking walkthroughs. The app I’ve found best suited for my needs is Crouton, from developer Devin Davies.

Crouton offers a handful of valuable aids for cooking, but the feature at the center of it all is the app’s recipe management system. Once you have recipes stored in the app, you can view those recipes in a well-designed, intuitive format, but you’ll also be able to easily assign recipes to your weekly meal plan, add ingredients to your grocery list, or be guided through step-by-step instructions while cooking.

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Fiery Feeds Adds Full-Text Search, Saved Searches, iPad Pointer Support, and More

When I imagine the quintessential RSS user, I think of someone who wants full control of their web reading experience. They don’t want to leave news curation up to an algorithmic service like Apple News, or a social media platform like Twitter or Facebook. They also care about tools like filtering controls, and tweaking the reading experience to their preferences. For such a user, Fiery Feeds may be a natural choice due to its abundance of supported RSS services and settings to tweak, along with some key pro features. Today, Fiery Feeds is better prepared to meet the needs of that kind of user thanks to a pair of important additions: full-text search and saved searches. Throw in optimized iPad pointer support, plus a new native article rendering option, and the latest Fiery Feeds update is a compelling one.

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Due for Mac Modernized with New Design and Features

A full-fledged task manager is terrific for many projects, but if you dump your entire life into one, it can quickly become a cluttered mess. At the same time, if you’re focused on a big project, it’s easy to let everything that’s not in your task manager slip through the cracks. One strategy for attacking the problem that has worked well for me is using a separate, lightweight app for tasks like remembering to take out the garbage, pick up medicine at the pharmacy, or publish an article when an embargo lifts.

In the past, I’ve used Due on the iPhone and iPad for these sorts of tasks. There has been a Mac version of Due for years too, but it hadn’t been updated in about two years and was showing its age. However, with today’s update, Due for Mac joins the iOS version with a fully-modern design and slate of new features, putting it on par with the outstanding iOS version, which I’ve covered in the past.

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