ios

Very Funny. Isn’t it fun redesigning an OS without having to worry about the implementation at all?

Google and Duck Duck Go are just fine on iOS. I’m a big fan of Bang On for iOS for highly specific searches. But for general, “what the hell am I looking for”, searches I really like TipToe for iOS. Tip Toe is fast and clean. There are no sponsored links, just good search results. The result list shows just enough information to pick through the results too. It also claims to not track searches although I don’t know if this can be verified.

I’ve been beta testing the IFTTT iOS app for the past month and it really is great. I like it better than using the web interface for managing rules. The Macstories review is pretty definitive but I’ll add one thing: The calendar view lets you see what rules have run recently and that’s nice. There’s a lot of attention to detail in this app. Tap into the preferences and you’ll notice that the view flips over with the IFTTT logo showing through as if it was etched into the front of a glass panel.

CoolIris, an elegant photo browser for iOS, was recently updated and added a couple of new sources. There is now support for connecting with Evernote. Importantly, it can be configured to show photos for a specific tag as well, searches or all photos. This is a nice option for using Evernote as a photo locker. I’m loving it for the scans of my daughter’s school art I collect in Evernote.

Limbo was one of the few games I finished last year and I played it on my lovely 27" iMac. I like the idea of games, I just don’t like the time commitment they require. But Limbo kept my attention until the end and I’m glad I finished it. Today, Limbo is out for iOS as a universal app ($5). Limbo is a puzzle platformer but has a slow and considered pace.

Mental Case is one of the best flash card style note apps. Today Mental Case 2 is available for iPhone and iPad. When my wife went to Law School she relied on me to recommend some good study tools. I reviewed many note-taking and flash card apps for the Mac and iOS. I settled on a combination of OmniOutliner1 for notes and Mental Case for studying. Two years later, she still thinks they’re great.

Sunstroke for iOS just received a major update.1 This is by-far the best way to read feeds from a Feed-a-Fever server. The update is gorgeous and I love the re-imagining of the “Hot” category. While refresh isn’t that speedy, browsing and interactions feel snappier to me. I reviewed Fever back in 2012. I moved back to Fever awhile ago because I don’t mind running my own server. Affiliate link.

This is part three in a multi-part series. Part one: Newsblur Part two: Feedbin Feedly is the only “free” service I’ve examined in this series. It is at least partially ad supported. The ads aren’t particularly obtrusive, but I would still prefer to pay for the service and not worry about how they are mucking with my reading. In this way, it’s very reminiscent of Google Reader. As with other Google Reader alternatives, there is an explosion of development and advancement happening with Feedly.

This is part II in a series. Previously I covered Newsblur. Feedbin is a $2 per month replacement for Google Reader. It provides most of the basic controls and similar API of Google Reader, but with a muted aesthetic. That means apps like Reeder for iPad and Mr. Reader on iOS can support it in the future. But, right now only Reeder for iPhone supports Feedbin as a sync service.

From Mathew Panzarino: First of all, many of the new icons were primarily designed by members of Apple’s marketing and communications department, not the app design teams. From what we’ve heard, SVP of Design Jony Ive (also now Apple’s head of Human Interaction) brought the print and web marketing design team in to set the look and color palette of the stock app icons. They then handed those off to the app design teams who did their own work on the ‘interiors’, with those palettes as a guide.