Tag: best apps (Page 3 of 5)

App Review: Best of Cycle World

best-of-cw-appI’ve got another app review for you today, this time from Cycle World (which is published under Hachette Filipacchi Media along with Car and Driver). The app, appropriately named “Best of Cycle World,” can be picked up from the App Store for free.

Before installing the app I read a few users reviews complaining about the update schedule and limited content. I would wholeheartedly agree if the app was billed as digital magazine, but it’s not. It’s a companion to a subscription magazine and should be considered as such. Bearing that in mind, I think the app is a great way to carry CW content in your pocket.

The app works like a content-rich RSS feed for the magazine’s best articles. It’s a simple list that links to individual articles, all of which have a picture gallery. While the content is decent, a few simple updates could improve the app. I’d recommend a system by which the reader can see what’s been read and what hasn’t. Also, adding a picture count (1 of 8, etc.) to the galleries would be a small improvement.

Overall, can’t complain much about free content. If nothing else, it saves you the embarrassment of carrying a magazine into the bathroom while your girlfriend’s over. That is, if you still care about that sort of thing.

App Review: Car and Driver Buyer’s Guide

IMG_0710When I look at mobile apps for popular magazines I always look for the same thing: content. A lot of publishers skimp on content just to have a name in the App Store. Luckily, that’s starting to change, and Car and Driver’s Buyer’s Guide is part of a welcome shift toward content-rich apps. The Buyer’s Guide is a great companion for anyone shopping for a new car, and best of all it’s free.

The app is simple and straight-forward. You search for cars based on make and model, whereupon you can find reviews, photos, specs for every trim level, and a list of competitor’s vehicles to consider against your choice. The main page also has general categories like “Latest Reviewed,” and “Fuel Misers.” These are especially helpful if you’re just starting your search or are unsure where to look. In any case, there’s always plenty of information. Of the 20 or so cars I browsed through, I never left the app thinking they’d missed something.

The app also has a general advice section including articles like “How to Test Drive a Car,” and “What’s the Right New Vehicle for Me?” The articles are full-length and offer the same kind of advice you’d get from the magazine or any male relative over 40.

If I have one complaint about the app it’s that there are ads, but that’s the price you pay to get a free app. Otherwise, it’s a great tool for anyone in the market for a new vehicle.

Joe Hewitt quits iPhone development because of Apple

Joe Hewitt.Joe Hewitt’s been unhappy with and outspoken about Apple’s app approval process since about the time he started working on the Facebook app. Well he’s finally had enough. According to a recent, tweet he’s done working on the app and ready to move on.

Time for me to try something new. I’ve handed the Facebook iPhone app off to another engineer, and I’m onto a new project.

Hewitt also said in very clear language that he left iPhone development because of Apple. Speaking to TechCrunch he said, “My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies. I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process.” As are a lot of people, but to this point no one with Hewitt’s resume has made the same decision (Arrington left the iPhone for a different reason and he’s not a developer).

Hewitt’s in a better position to “quit” then some developers, though. He’s got a swanky gig at Facebook, where he’ll still be developing after his announcement. A house like Tapulous, on the other hand, is making enough money off the App Store that it’s unlikely it will leave, and we probably wouldn’t hear about one of its developers quitting because of a philosophical opposition like Hewitt’s.

Instead we’ll probably continue to see the trickle of policy changes Apple has made over the last several months. The most recent allows developers to see real time status updates about the app, so when it’s sitting in “waiting for review” you can start throwing around some lawsuits.

App Store breaks 100,000 mark

Apps from the App Store.Today Apple announced that the App Store has breached the 100,000 mark. That’s right, more than 100,000 apps are available for your iPhone or iPod Touch. A solid 50% of those apps are strictly for replicating flatulence and then auto-tuning it to your favorite T-Pain beat.

In all seriousness, it’s another great milestone, and another great reason to reorganize the whole damn thing. This is probably the last time you’ll hear an app count out of me until the 500,000, at which point the numbers won’t even matter because of the hellacious mess the App Store will be in. It’s not that I can find something when I’m explicitly looking for it, but that it’s difficult to get the new and unmentioned stuff, the apps that don’t make the blog circuit. Those are the things I still want access to. Appoftheday made a decent start, but app organization needs more than just a community vote.

App exposure site founded by a 15-year-old

app-of-the-dayWhen I had the thought that someone should do some app organizing, giving consumers a way to find the very best iPhone apps out there, I didn’t think it would be a high school sophomore. Jordan Satok had plans to surprise me, it seems. The 15-year-old web entrepreneur started appoftheday.com, a site that aims to give exposure to the very apps many of us are looking for.

The daily recommendations come courtesy of community nominations. You get just one nomination per day, and since the site ties in with Gravatar, the hope is that users will just log in with an email, keeping developers from going in to spam their own apps with votes.

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