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Posts in reviews

Note Hub: Notes, Drawings, Maps, Calculator, Tasks and a Browser…In A Single App

Some apps do one thing exceptionally well and some try too much just to miserably fail in the end. Either you’re a great note taking application or you’re a sketching software, but surely you can’t aim at doing both just fine. Note Hub wants to break this convention by being the app you come back to for anything related to…well, a pretty huge amount of things: notes, maps, browsing, drawings, tasks. It’s even got a calculator.

Note Hub wants to be the app you use for your note taking needs, but after some tests I have to say it’s more an app geared towards “visual” people who need to work with rich media on a daily basis and would like to organize content in a user-friendly interface. Read more

ReadSquare: RSS Reader with a Reeder-like UI, But I Don’t Get It

On the iPad, Reeder is my default app for RSS feeds reading. It’s so beautiful, fast, feature rich and, at the same time, elegant I don’t see myself switching to another application anytime soon. But our job is to try new apps and keep you in the loop, right? So when I stumbled upon the preview page of this new iPad app – ReadSquare – I was very excited to try the app and I started waiting for it to show up in iTunes.

Last week, the app was released as free for a limited time. It’s available here for download. But while I was looking forward to see the app in action and whether it could deliver on what the developers promised (what actually got me interested in the first place), I now have to admit the execution is, sadly, very poor.

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iPhotoSync Lets You Effortlessly Transfer Photos Between iPhoto Libraries

If you have recently upgraded to iPhoto ‘11 (I bet many of you have) and you still haven’t found the time to set up that Dropbox-based library synchronization between all your computers you read about on some blog or forum board, perhaps you’d like to wait to give iPhotoSync a try. I was indeed about to drop my entire iPhoto library in Dropbox, but then I realized that iTunes (apps and music) was my priority, so I went for a local sync option. iPhotoSync is an app that can run in the background as an “agent” and allows you to sync iPhoto libraries across multiple Macs running on the same local network.

Developed by Haystack Software (the same guys behind Arq for Mac) and completely compatible with the latest iPhoto versions, iPhotoSync is really simple: make sure you have two Macs running iPhoto and iPhotoSync on the same local network, fire up the app on both Macs, let the iPhoto libraries communicate with each other. For instance, you’ll be able to pull all the new photos from another Mac’s iPhoto library, automatically sync photos added to a specific event, automatically sync photos added in the last month. Basically, iPhotoSync transfers photos back and forth.

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Dribbblr: Elegant Dribbble Client for iPad

I wanted to write about this app before, but I couldn’t manage to get it working properly on my iPad running iOS 4.2 beta. Luckily enough, the Tapmates developers worked hard on releasing a compatibility update, and here I am testing Dribbblr on my iPad running iOS 4.2 GM. Dribbblr is a free client for Dribbble.com, a gallery of great works submitted by popular and new designers who managed to get an invite to the website. It’s a great place to discover new talents and, why not, new apps coming out on iOS and OS X.

You can browse Dribbble from your iPad without an account, but thanks to the recently opened API Dribbblr adds native features like a completely redesigned interface and navigation that wraps Dribbble’s screenshots around a polished and minimal iPad interface. The app is free, but you can upgrade to a Pro version via in-app purchase ($2.99) that removes all the ads, although they’ve been cleverly integrated in the “timeline” and they’re good-looking enough to not get in the way all the time. Read more

miCal, Powerful Calendar App for iPhone

If you follow me on Twitter, you might have noticed I’ve been tweeting about Google Calendar integration on iOS since last week. Indeed, I’m looking at all the possible ways to integrate Google’s calendar utility on iOS, especially on the iPhone which is the device I always have with me. It turns out there are many ways to get your Google Cal up and running on the iPhone, the default one requiring you to create an Exchange or CalDAV account in Mail, Contacts and Calendars. In that way, you’ll be able to use Google Calendar in Apple’s default Calendar app and enjoy the additional sync services offered by Google (very similar to MobileMe).

Or, you can just go looking for a 3rd party calendar application in the App Store and play with features Apple didn’t implement in its default app. So I did, and here’s the first app I downloaded, miCal.

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AppSwitch: Cool Process Management App for iPhone

My  good friend @kenyarmosh tweeted about this app a few hours ago and it immediately caught my attention: a process management app for iOS, like the ones seen on Android and, yes, the dekstop? How’s that even possible without breaking Apple’s ban of usage of private APIs?

AppSwitch, available at an introductory price of $0.99 in the App Store, monitors and provides detailed information about the apps running in the background on your iPhone. As a matter of fact, AppSwitch can monitor both running apps and background system processes, something that I haven’t seen in any other App Store app before - mainly because Apple doesn’t want users to know which system processes are running. With AppSwitch you can keep an eye on your iPhone memory usage (with an interface similar to the Mac’s Activity Monitor) and see which apps are actually multitasking and which are not, with the possibility to quickly jump to another app or to an app’s specific feature. Read more

PDF Expert: PDF Reader and Annotation Tool That Fits In My Workflow

As you may know, I try a lot of apps every week. Perhaps that is wrong, as one may be tempted to constantly jump between different softwares just for the sake of having something new to play with (like kids are always attracted by new toys), but I’m firmly convinced I’m doing this because there are hundreds of indie developers that don’t have the resources or the knowledge to virally promote their apps, yet they deserve attention.

That’s why I’m doing this. And thanks to this “method” (or habit), every once in a while I discover gems that redefine and refine my workflow. New apps that set new standards and raise an already high bar. It’s not easy. But it’s possible. Read more

MacStories Weekly Game: Samurai II

For this week’s “MacStories Weekly Game”, I needed a good ol’ action game to talk about. You know those hack & slash type of games, where you usually wander around levels focusing on killing enemies and making combos? I grew up with them. Then God of War came around and the new kids got a new concept of hack & slash. But Samurai II is different: while clearly inspired by the post-God of War generation (the level schemes, the rich graphics, the bosses, the upgrades, the roll), it retains a somewhat old-style feeling that I was missing on the iPhone.

Samurai II: Vengeance is the sequel to last year’s Samurai: War of the Warrior, featured by Apple in the Best Games of 2009. It was indeed a great game, packed with stylish manga-like graphics, swipe-based controls and good action. Quite possibly, the original Samurai for iPhone is still one of the best action games out there. With Samurai II, though, the developers enhanced the whole system, create even better graphics and took away a few things. Read more