Microsoft’s Metro UI has been met with mainly praise barring a few people who just can’t stand it. I absolutely love the Metro UI in with its emphasis on typography. While Metro may seem a tad pointless in apps like Email, it really shines in graphic-heavy interfaces and hence Track 8 by Ender Labs is a wonderful Metro music player for the iPad. While there are other Metro UI apps in the App Store like Maha for Twitter and Muzik, Track 8 is easily the best one of the lot and my favourite music player on the iPad. The references to Windows 8(Metro theme) present in the name and the icon which is an eighth note are a nice touch.
When you launch the app you are greeted with album cover tiles for your history and most played tracks. This is basically a skin for your default music player since it doesn’t let you add music and only accesses what the default music app has (including iTunes match songs). You can search by artist, album or playlist and clicking on an alphabet reveals a Metro tile view for every alphabet with the ones you have results for a lighter shade than others. It is worth noting that when you select an artist or an album, the app pulls a background image for the same artist from Last.fm and displays it in the background. This can be turned off but I really like it. All basic options like repeat and shuffle are present and the look of the app when it is playing a certain album is drool-worthy. The app looks spectacular on the new iPad. All transitions are very smooth and fast and the app also has appearance customizations in the settings page. The colour theme options are exactly the same as a Windows Phone device including a light background option which has always looked horrible according to me. You can disable artist backgrounds here and it tells you how much storage it is using for the same backgrounds. The audio playback buttons are present in every view at the bottom of the screen. Since this is only a skin, you can’t create any playlists which is sort of a let down.
There are a few things I would like to see in future updates to the app like Last.fm scrobbling, Portrait mode, Pre fetching of backgrounds for artists and finally an iPhone app. This app is proof that Metro UI looks great on a tablet. If you think Metro UI looks and feels good, Track 8 by Ender Labs is a must buy. It is available on the App Store for $1.99.
Every programmer probably uses or has used Stack Overflow at some point. Stack Overflow changed the face of development forever. BigBig Bomb have really created something special with StackTrace. StackTrace is a stunning iPad app that lets you explore Stack Overflow’s wealth of knowledge.
This app has really raised the bar for all apps in terms of UI. Every subtle animation and transition is brilliant. When you first launch the app you are greeted with a view that gives you the option to add different languages as tags. Each tag/language has its own box with statistics and a separate colour scheme. Clicking on any one of them takes you to the actual question view. There is an abundance of purple in StackTrace as the main highlight colour. The final detail page for each question is where you will spend your time and they have made it simple and elegant. Comment bubbles expand when you click them and the overall feel of everything here is classy. My favourite part of this view is the fact that the actual code is syntax highlighted. Double tapping the code or an image here will reveal it fullscreen. Scrolling horizontally here is problematic when the code isn’t more than a few lines long. Scrolling cannot be done from the bottom of the full screen view as expected and needs to be done by actually swiping the few lines of code on the top of the screen. In this view you can also share the current page by copying the link or emailing it. Tapping the star on the top right let’s you favourite the current topic. There is also the most useful feature of the app, searching Stack Overflow that I discovered by accident because it was hidden. You can pull down any non detail view to reveal the search bar that let’s you search Stack Overflow and view the results by Newest, Votes or Active. I find it really surprising that this search bar isn’t always visible as it will no doubt be the most used feature of the app.
While the aesthetics of this app are spectacular, I had a few issues with the colour scheme. The home page has a different colour for each tag while the actual tag pages all have the same purple colour scheme. I would have liked the option to have unique colours for each tag throughout. Barring these minor complaints, StackTrace is an essential app for every programmer with an iPad and the UI makes you want to lick your iPad screen. This is probably one of the best looking iPad apps ever and it is retina iPad ready as well. I can’t imagine using Stack Overflow without this. It is available on the App Store for $4.99. Do yourself a favour and get this app.
The last year has seen tons of social networks come up and very few have actually been worth anything. MLKSHK is like tumblr and dribbble together with some reddit thrown in. It lets you share (collect in shakes) GIFs, videos and images and like other people’s posts.
STRW is a beautiful mlkshk client for iOS. It has a very nice swipe-able pane UI with some pleasing colours. When you launch the app you are greeted with probably the best log in screen on an app ever. You are prompted to enter your details while there is a nice ocean wave animation happening at the bottom of the screen. This water animation drains away when you log in. This app lets you see your friends’, favourite, and your shakes. The best of section shows you the popular posts. The subtle buttons for the comments, saves and likes are really excellent. The app lets you view animated GIFs in another view by tapping the green play button on the image. You can post a shake from just about anywhere in the app by tapping the blue plus sign on the top right. Sharing posts to the usual places is available as well. The entire experience of using STRW with its smooth transitions and pleasing interface was ruined by a few things that I could not let go off.
When the app tries to fetch items that don’t exist, there is no notification for when there is nothing available. The view keeps trying to refresh with the spinner going on and on doing nothing until you manually change the section. Moreover, the source link below the posts does not have URL shortening and sometimes has huge URLs that ruin the experience. I hope this is addressed in a future update.
Barring this, STRW is well worth your time if you use MLKSHK and is available for Free on the App Store.
I’m sure everyone who has attempted to prepare something to eat in the kitchen has found himself in a situation where you have to use X units of an item, but you have no clue exactly how much that unit is exactly. Many a times, a recipe for your favorite food item asks you to mix 4 pints of item A with 4 fluid ounces of item B and then add 3 milliliters of item X.
Kitchenator is a simple iPhone app that’s built to help you in cases like this. It features an intuitive, single-screen UI that lets you quickly select the ‘From’ unit, the quantity and the ‘To’ unit and instantly displays the result at the bottom of the screen. So, for example, it’s very easy to find out that 10 Fluid Ounces is equal to 1.25 cups and that 1 Gallon = 8 pints. The app uses a nice dark wooden texture in the background and choosing the units is quick and easy — just scroll vertically. You can quickly change quantity by multiplying or dividing by 10s, and the app even lets you use fractions. The app includes milliliter, teaspoon, tablespoon, fluid ounce, cup, pint quart, liter and gallon as units.
Kitchenator is a wonderful app that’s bound to help you in the kitchen. It’s just $0.99 on the App Store.
Invy is a beautiful & elegant app that lets you quickly and easily schedule a meeting/event/appointment with anyone. The app is perfect for cases where you have to co-ordinate with multiple people and go back and forth with emails and messages trying to fix a specific date and time for the meet.
The app is extremely well designed and easy to use. Say you want to go watch ‘The Avengers’ that’s releasing this Friday on April 27th here in India. Just launch the app and tap the new Invite button, give it a title, location and select all the recipients you want to invite. Then pick the date(s) that you think would be good for the meet and you’re done. Invy sends out emails to the recipients letting them know that you have invited them to an event. Your friends can then choose which dates are perfect for them that they are available on, and alternatively even leave a comment. If the recipient has the iPhone app installed, he is sent a push notification instantly and can RSVP from within the app.
Invy features a gorgeous UI with big fonts and neatly laid out elements. Navigating through the app is pretty intuitive and subtle animations and transitions add to the overall feel of the app. Once a date is agreed upon, Invy automatically adds an entry to iCal. At $1.99 on the App Store, Invy is a beautiful and fun way to quickly schedule meets with your friends.
National Parks by National Geographic is a stunning interactive guide to the parks in the US. It also arrived just in time since National Parks Week just kicked off on the 21st of this month. It is the perfect companion app if you are planning on visiting one of the parks or just want to learn something about them.
When you run the app you are greeted with an absolutely beautiful loading screen that has a slideshow at the bottom with pictures from the parks that are breathtaking. When the app finally loads (It takes a noticeably long time to go beyond the sponsor page) you are shown a nice wall with images of parks taped on it. This app also uses the swipe-able overlapping pane UI that apps like Facebook and Path use and I love the animation when a page is changed on this app where the previous page moves to the background and the new one slides up.
Since this is a guide app, almost every page has an option to view a map and everything mentioned has its GPS coordinates so there’s no way you’re getting lost with this app. Each park has its own elegant page with statistics about it and local weather. The amount of effort put into the interface here is unbelievable. In fact the weather section here puts most dedicated weather apps to shame. The statistics page gives you some brief historic statistics about the park.
While the actual guides are only available via IAP, you can still see information about the park along with Camping and Lodging details. You get one complementary park guide of your choice. The actual guide has four sections : Photo Tips, Park Secrets, What to See and What to Do. The Photo Tips section is my favourite. It has some spectacular shots from the park by National Geographic photographers along with information about the shooting conditions and other comments. Each section has a very nice photograph on top. National Geographic have gone all out with even the smallest things like map pin placements and map information. The sliders that let you filter the locations on the map by activity and season will be very useful for visitors.
As a photographer you would probably want to pick up this app along with most IAPs so you can learn how to recreate some of the amazing shots by brilliant photographers. When you purchase a guide, its photographs are added to the photos section. The sheer amount of information in this app is staggering and it has you covered on all bases. There is a separate section on itinerary that lets you add your own and an Editor’s pick with some more tips for first time visitors.
If you’re thinking of visiting one of the national parks or just want to gain some knowledge and drool at some great photographs getting this app is a no brainer — it’s FREE on the App Store. Its utility and beauty are on par and while getting all the park guides will cost you a lot, the information and photographs provided make up for the hefty price tag.
[Via MacStories]
