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Posts in reviews

Favorites: My Phone App Replacement

Every time I post screenshots of my iPhone homescreen here on MacStories, I get comments and emails asking me about “that blue icon” next to Captio in my dock. Since I wasn’t able to reply to all those comments and emails and I love to talk about apps that change my workflow, I want to clear the air on this app and write about it.

The app is called “Favorites”, it’s been around for a while in the App Store and it’s developed by Matt Legend Gemmell over at Instinctive Code. It’s a very straightforward app that lets you create shortcuts for your favorite contacts and tap on them to initiate a phone call. Think of it as a homescreen for your contacts. Read more

MoneyTron: Innovative Financial App for iPhone

I remember I installed MoneyTron on my iPhone back in August. Back then I thought it was cool, I gave it a brief spin and decided I would review it on MacStories in a few weeks. Weeks passed, we launched a new MacStories, iOS 4’s folders started getting crowded and I forgot about MoneyTron.

Now I think it’s time to talk about MoneyTron, which is a sexy little gem of a financial app. As you may remember, I’m not exactly into this kind of apps: mostly because I’m looking for something simple yet capable of adapting to my complex setup. It’s not easy to find an app that can do that. Most iPhone apps are geared towards simplicity but they don’t take into account (no pun intended) that when it’s about managing finances, simplicity is overrated. Sometimes you need the powerful tools to  get ahold of your transactions and keep everything clear.

MoneyTron offers a variety of innovative features I haven’t seen in any other financial apps for iPhone. Read more

A Beautiful TV Guide For Your iPhone and iPad

I’m thankful for the possibilities offered by today’s technologies, which allow me to ditch the old ways of doing…stuff for more pleasant, rich, interactive and beautiful experiences. Apple’s devices and apps in the App Store surely played a great role in this digital revolution: we don’t buy specific items anymore because there’s an app for that. The last time you bought a radio player? An actual map? A point & shoot camera? Exactly.

Still, there was no “last time” for me when it comes to TV guides. I never bought those magazines that offered monthly and weekly views and summaries of what would be in television – I  just checked TV programming on the internet. Or on my local newspaper. But now I’m ready to step my game up, with an app simply called “TV” and available at .99 cents in the App Store for iPhone and iPad. It’s uncluttered, beautiful, elegant and, finally, it’s something that deeply integrates a TV guide with the information coming from the internet. Read more

Rise Alarm Wakes You Up In Style - Review & Giveaway

iOS bugs aside, I’ve been using Apple’s default clock app for years to set my alarms, quick reminders and check on world’s time zones. Rise Alarm by Ken Yarmosh, though, is a nicer alternative to the Clock app, which comes with both an iPhone and iPad version and lots of options to choose from.

Rise Alarm sports a great design, a variety of sounds to customize the alarm clock experience and an intuitive user interface based on gestures. Can it replace the default Clock app? Read more

Color Splash Gives A “Dramatic Look” To Your Photos

I downloaded this app last week, but it turns out it’s been around for quite some months in the App Store. Color Splash by Pocket Pixels is a simple iPhone app (iPad version is available, too) that allows you to highlight areas of a photo to make them black & white, or make the entire photo black & white and only set certain areas to be colored.

It’s a very cool effect that it’s made easy by iOS multi-touch technology and would otherwise be a rather difficult task for the average user on Adobe’s Photoshop. Read more

MacStories Preview: Screens, New VNC Client for iPhone and iPad

When the iPad came out in April, there was a category of apps I was looking forward to trying on the tablet: VNC clients. Those apps that allow you to connect to your Mac using OS X default sharing capabilities, enabling you to mirror your computer’s screen on an external device – such as the iPad, indeed. I got my iPad, and soon after that I installed iTeleport on it.

I’ve been using iTeleport on a daily basis since then to check on my computer when using the iPad in another room – usually the living room –  to change songs in iTunes, quickly move files to Dropbox and stuff like that. iTeleport is a fast and stable application, and it also comes with a feature that lets you connect over 3G routing the computer through a Google Account. Using a computer remotely over 3G isn’t the best experience you can get, but it works fairly well to start downloads and trigger actions on the go.

A few weeks ago Luc Vandal from Edovia contacted me and asked me if I’d be interested in trying a new VNC client they had been working on for months. I said yes, and now the app is basically ready for App Store submission. I’m running a final version of the app, the same that Edovia will submit to the App Store.

Screens by Edovia has become the best VNC app I’ve ever run on my iPhone and iPad. Read more

Weet for Mac: The New Tweetie? More Like A Promising Beta App.

Weet for Mac was released yesterday as a first beta, and it quickly made the rounds of the internet as dozens of blogs covered the app, and thousands of users went ahead and downloaded the beta hosted on Droplr. It seems like until Loren Brichter comes out with his long-awaited Tweetie 2, there’s a real, tangible need of Twitter clients for OS X.

My guess is that, plain and simply, Tweetie still manages to be the best desktop Twitter client for many users. Sure it doesn’t support native retweets, it hasn’t got support for Lists yet and it hasn’t been updated in months – but the interaction and navigation methods developed by Brichter are still far superior than most clients available on the Mac.

That said – we don’t want to write another Tweetie-related post here – let’s take a look at Weet. It’s a first, rough and not-so-stable beta, but I think that it gives us an idea of things to come in this app, the path the developers have chosen with the app’s interface and the overall feeling. Read more