apps

Macworld’s pick of the best free iPhone apps

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Some of these are free up to a point and then is worth your paying cash. But it is worth that. Macworld’s David Price has picked out a good set that I think is free of the biases one usually sees: it isn’t packed out with games, it isn’t a selection of deliberately obscure or geeky apps that are fun to fiddle with. Instead, it’s 42 apps that if you’re not already using, you could well find become deeply important to you.

Case in point: of this 42, I use 16 regularly, 5 of them many times today and overall I’ve tried out 28.

Have a look at the lot, would you?

Notification: will you marry me? (Y/N)

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Back in the olden days, like thousands and thousands of years ago, you’d propose enough times that someone said yes. And then you were off to the races, if the races were myriad wedding-planning problems.

Back in the not very olden days, like an hour ago, you’d be considered fancy if you had an actual wedding planner. A person. Films have been made about this.

But today, you need your smartphone and a whole category of apps made just for you:

Wedding apps have become increasingly popular in the last few years as millennials begin to wed. “We got Facebook in college, we got the first iPhones,” 27-year-old Ajay Kamat, who co-founded the photo-timeline app Wedding Party, told TIME. “We have an expectation that when we travel or shop or do anything, there are services and apps that will help make that experience better for us.”

These smart apps—which are trying to break in to the $53.3 billion wedding industry—help brides and grooms send invites, organize guests, hire local vendors, gather all the photos guests take, register for gifts and crowdsource money for honeymoon activities. Apps like Appy Couple, Carats & Cake and Wanderable are becoming favorites among savvy couples who want to streamline the logistics associated with events like bridal showers, bachelor and bachelorette parties, the rehearsal dinner, wedding and honeymoon.

With This App, I Thee Wed – Eliana Dockterman, Time magazine (12 June 2014)

Bet the iPhone apps are better than the Android ones.

New Toy Syndrome

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I truly thought this was just me. If I’ve found, say, an app that works for me and I think is good, I maybe over-enjoy using it. Right now I’m havering over my forthcoming review of OmniFocus 2 for Mac because I’m wondering how much of what I like is down to it just being an old feature done in a new way.

Whether it is that or not, I am greatly enjoying using that software and it has changed how I do my work. So I’m fine with that, I’m more than fine with it – except that there is good reason to suspect it will change. It will tail off.

Clive Thompson writing in Medium:

Psychologists have noticed the novelty effect for decades. Back in the 1930s, the Hawthorne Works factory decided to change the lighting for its workers to see which would improve productivity: Higher levels? Lower levels? It turned out that it didn’t matter which way they went — any change in the workplace produced a temporary boost in productivity. Scientists call this the “Hawthorne Effect”, and while the historical record of Hawthorne is still being scrutinized, the novelty effect it epitomizes is seen all over science. Indeed, many scholars suspect novelty effects are behind some “positive” results in social-science experiments. A bunch of researchers will say Hey, let’s experiment with giving elementary-school kids individual laptops! and lo: The children do better! Except the improvement might be not because of the tool itself, but merely because the kids’ world becomes different and interesting, temporarily.

The Novelty Effect – Clive Thompson, Medium (6 June 2014)

I find that last part about kids supremely depressing. But where I might also be unhappy at the thought my new shiny OmniFocus 2 for Mac may lose its iridescence soon, I’m okay with it.

Because OmniFocus 2 for iPad is coming.

Hat tip to Lifehacker for spotting the novelty article. And hat tip to The Omni Group, because.

Quickie: Reeder update review

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Previously… yesterday the new 2.2 version of Reeder came out and amongst bug fixes and a couple of visual twiddles, the reason to remark was that it added background refresh. (Where instead of my getting the app to add the latest news whenever I open it, the app itself does that continually through the day.) I wondered whether this would work and whether it would make any difference if it did. Now read on.

It worked.

It makes a big difference.reeder

On the one hand it’s slightly disappointing because I’m used to the anticipation of waiting to see if there’s anything new to read and now I just know at a glance. But it’s unexpectedly faster. Logically, rationally, it can’t be saving me more than a few seconds compared to when I would have to wait for it to update in front of me, but it feels faster. Much faster.

I’m also reading more because of it. I find I clear down all the remaining articles and then the next time I pick up my iPhone, there’s an unread news notification. Who can resist?

Reeder for iOS is a universal app (so it’s for both iPhone and iPad) and costs £2.99 UK or $4.99 US. The Mac version is currently still free in beta but the finished and to-be-paid-for version was reportedly submitted to Apple about a week ago.

Reeder updated with background refresh

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reederMy favourite newsreader app for iPhone and iPad has today been updated to version 2.2. It includes a lot of bug fixes (can’t say I ever noticed any bugs in my daily, near hourly use) and behind the scenes differences to how many news feeds it can handle. But the biggie, the reason to mention this instead of just update it on my iOS devices and forget about it is this:

Background app refresh (per account setting, disabled by default)

It sounds like such a small thing and perhaps it will be but I’m looking forward to trying it. Background app refresh means that Reeder will get news stories for me behind the scenes. I won’t even have to be in the app. So instead of opening it and refreshing the list for myself, I can pick up Reeder and know that it us up to date right now.

But.

You saw that bit about it being “disabled by default”. It took me a minute to find out where to switch the thing on.

To do that, go to Reeder and swipe left-to-right until you reach a screen with a settings cog wheel. Tap that, choose your account name toward the top of the screen that appears. In there, tap on Sync and change it from On Start or Manually to Background refresh. Then tap the < arrow to get out of that screen and the √ tick to confirm the change. Reeder for iOS is a universal app (so it’s for both iPhone and iPad) and costs £2.99 UK or $4.99 US. The Mac version is currently still free in beta but reportedly not for very much longer.

1Password for Android coming 10 June

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From the official Agile Bits blog:

1Password 4 for Android arrives on Tuesday, June 10. It is an entirely new and full-featured app, built for both phones and tablets!

It is also an experiment. All new features will be unlocked and free for everyone to use through August 1, 2014. After that, 1Password 4 for Android will go into a reader mode, and all features can be unlocked for an in-app purchase.

Marco Polo lost again – if you’re a woman

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Previously… Marco Polo is a new 69p iPhone app for helping you find your phone when you've left it around the house. Just shout “Marco!” and your iPhone will reply “Polo!”.

The trouble is, it doesn't work for women. Or children. Or the Bee Gees. Hats off to The Unofficial Apple Weblog for bothering to test it out – and hats off to the app's maker, Matt Wiechec, who's taken TUAW's criticism and is dealing with it.

Read their coverage of his response and hear their test of the app too.

Why it’s worth grabbing free apps

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The rule is that Android users get free apps, iPhone users pay for them. I am an iPhone user and I am more than fine with paying for apps. The amount of use I get from them, the pitifully cheap prices, it’s not a debate. But I do get free iPhone apps and specifically I do often grab paid ones that are briefly on offer as freebies. I’ll do that in part because all those 69p purchases add up and I’ll do it mostly because I’m often poking around an area, looking for a type of app rather than a specific one. And then I also do it because there is a specific advantage:

Free is cheaper than paid.

Okay, there are two specific advantages:

Once you have an app, you have it forever

Actually, three:

Once you have an app, you typically get free upgrades

So if an app that I definitely want then I’ll just buy it. But if there’s one I fancy trying or that I think I will need at some point, I’ll grab it when it goes free – and I may even delete it immediately. Without opening it even once. Because I’ll open it when I need it and all I have to do now is download the thing. Actually, you don’t even have to do that: starting to download it is enough, as I found when I went through the Channel Tunnel part way.

Once you have officially bought the app, you can delete it and know that you are able to get it again whenever you want. For free. Even after the price goes back up, most of the time also after the app has been upgraded later. Some apps make their new versions completely new apps that you have to pay for again and there are apps that do vanish forever. You’re out of luck with those but otherwise, this all works. So, for instance, Lonely Planet made a lot of its travel guide apps free last year and I grabbed the lot, deleted the lot – and then brought back ones when I was actually going travelling.

Quick story? I once advised on an app that was so bad I gave the maker a list of 19 reasons it could not be released. They ignored me, submitted it to Apple, and Apple rejected it with 20 reasons. I still kick myself over the one I missed. But the maker sort-of addressed those 20, enough to get it on sale anyway, and I was required to have it on my iPhone. But it was so bad, I mean it was still so embarrassingly bad that I deleted it. Whenever I’d be in a meeting when I was asked a question about it, I’d just re-download it from the App Store, slog through trying to work out the answer, then delete it again. One day I was asked a question by one editor in the company and couldn’t get it back: another editor had approved it being removed from the App Store forever. I don’t know who that was, but he or she made me look bad in that meeting. And I applaud him or her for doing it. That’s how bad the app was.

But you want to know how to find when apps go free. Try an app way: download the Apps Gone Free