Apps

Concept teaches Viber how to design for iOS 7

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 25, 2013

Remember the absolutely eye-candy re-imagining of Apple’s clunky Messages app in Mavericks, so awesomely done by Ramotion, a Palo Alto, California interface design shop? If not, stop what you’re doing (reading this) and give it a quick look, now. Some of the best UI/UX designers in the world, Ramotion's grown just as sick and tired of Viber's out-of-touch looks as us.

Yours truly used to be a heavy Viber user. Now I no longer care. Why? I'll tell you why: the app's proven itself a really frustrating experience. The soft keyboard fails to honor my system-wide international settings. It crashes a lot. It acts up far too often. As if that weren't enough, Viber's aesthetics fails miserably as a victim of a bunch of poor design choices - so much so that I can't stand using it anymore. Viber really, really needs some serious rebooting.

Ramotion's vision for Viber stunned me by being so much more than a fresh coat of paint, like WhatsApp’s upcoming iOS 7 update (screenies, hands-on video) is shaping up to be. Small wonder: these guys know good interface design so I'm not surprised they've actually gone about re-imagining the whole app experience.

Are you ready to see how Viber's iOS 7 overhaul should, but probably never will, look like? Just hit the jump and feast your eyes on gorgeous renders...

Yelp updated with new SeatMe feature for making restaurant reservations

Cody Lee ∙ Updated March 1, 2017

Folks looking to take advantage of the holidays this week by venturing out to their favorite eating spots may want to check out the latest version of Yelp. The iOS client was updated today with a new feature that allows you to make restaurant reservations from within the app.

The new feature is the direct result of Yelp's summer acquisition of SeatMe, a tech start-up that developed a solution for making online reservations at popular food and drink locations, and reduces the friction between discovering a great place on Yelp and experiencing it...

Puzzle game Numerity asks, ‘What do you see in numbers?’

Lory Gil ∙ Updated December 4, 2013

Do you remember those 3-D illusion posters that were a big hit in the late 1990s? The poster just looked like a bunch of dots, but if you looked past the dots, a three-dimensional image would form and your world would be totally redefined (well, maybe nothing that dramatic, but it was cool at the time).

Numerity is a puzzle game that uses a similar concept of taking a bunch of numbers that are cluttered together and turning them into a shape just by adding a bit of color to designated numbers…

Best travel apps for iPhone

Lory Gil ∙ Updated May 12, 2018

Around this time of the year, families are preparing to hit the road, over the mountains and through the woods. Holidays mean travel. You may be only be a few hours away from the in-laws, or you may be thousands of miles from home.

If you are planning a trip this Thanksgiving, or anytime in the future, you can use your iPhone to take care of pretty much all of the arrangements. Whether you want a great deal on a hotel, recommendations on good eats, or are planning an all-inclusive trip to the Bahamas without the kids, we’ve got a list of the best travel apps that will help make that come true…

Apps of the Week: Oceanhorn, Boxer, Flight Track 5, and more

Lory Gil ∙ Updated October 12, 2018

Can you believe that Thanksgiving is less than a week away? I could swear that Father Time is sitting in his dusty old study, moving the clock hands forward during this holiday season. I don’t even have my meal plan ready yet.

If you are looking for a new email client, want to do a little coding, or have a hankering for classic video game ports, we have a few apps that will make you smile this weekend…

Google+ gains full-res photo/video backup, location sharing, inline translation and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated December 4, 2013

The search monster Google has posted another update to its Google+ app for the iPhone and iPad, this time bringing a new iOS 7 perk: the ability to upload your iOS Camera roll photos and videos automatically and in glorious full resolution, to a private album on Google+ Photos, viewable only by you (unless specified otherwise). This brings the iOS app to parity with its Android counterpart.

It's really useful because your photos get sent to the cloud in the background, even if you haven't opened the app. You could previously enable Camera backup in Google+, but this would not back up full resolution images and the app would upload for only a few minutes after it quit.

It's a very interesting addition that turns the Google+ thing into a viable cloud backup of your iOS Camera roll. This Google+ update comes with other tweaks and nice-to-haves so jump past the fold if you're interested to learn more...

Amazon app redesigned for iOS 7

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

Just in time for the holidays, Amazon has redesigned its iPhone and iPad app for iOS 7. The update comes a week before Black Friday—the beginning of the biggest shopping weekend of the year for most retailers.

The app gives users virtually full access to the ecommerce giant's staggering selection of products, which ranges from electronics to clothes, and everything in between. And now it looks right at home on iOS 7 devices...

Boxer adds Evernote integration and iPad support, finally

Lory Gil ∙ Updated February 13, 2018

What is it about third-party email clients that send us into a frenzy? We either love them or hate them. Each person has a very specific set of requirements to establish what they think is a worthy app to house our digital correspondences.

Boxer is an email client that lets you access multiple accounts, includes Dropbox integration, Sanebox cloud storage, to-do list organization, and all manner of additional inbox-zero features. The popular email app just received an update that adds Evernote integration and finally optimizes it for the iPad…

Dropbox iOS 7 update: AirDrop, video uploads, full-screen iPad viewer and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 21, 2013

The popular cloud-storage startup Dropbox recently teased an image that gave us a glimpse into its iOS 7 makeover and we were pretty ecstatic about the new look. The good news is, the app is now live on the App Store - and it looks even better than we were hoping for!

Dropbox 3.0, now available for download on the iPhone and iPad, is a major redesign that feels right at home in iOS 7 because it honors Apple's guidelines.

It's not just the looks - Dropbox packs in some interesting and much welcomed new features like an improved PDF viewer, wireless AirDrop sharing (finally!) on iOS 7 devices, enhanced exporting and video importing, speed improvements and more.

As a bonus, full-screen viewer for photos and files is now but a tap away. Do give me a favor and jump past the fold to check out release notes and some really nice iPhone and iPad screenies...

Apple adds new features to iWork for iOS and Mac

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated September 17, 2017

As you know, Apple earlier in the month has promised to bring back dozens of recently-removed iWork features over the course of six months. In keeping with that promise, a barrage of updates has gone live Wednesday on the App Store and Mac App Store, adding new capabilities to the iWork suite of applications on Macs, iPhones, iPads and iPods.

This is the first major refresh since last month's downgrade stealthily removed arguably less popular though essential features in favor of cross-platform document compatibility between OS X, iOS and the web.

I've included full release notes and a couple of highlights right after the break...

WhatsApp’s iOS 7 update caught on video

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated December 4, 2013

Some time ago, a source with dubious credentials approached me with a bunch of claimed screenies of WhatsApp's long-anticipated iOS 7 refresh.

The genuine-looking images apparently showed off work-in-progress code, but I was reluctant to publish as the source's veracity couldn't be established with a satisfactory degree of certainty.

WhatsApp (free download) recently passed 300 million users and is quite popular.

With that in mind, one could imagine yours truly has since been on the lookout for more proof for it seemed to me there had to be some fire to go along this smoke. Finally, yesterday I stumbled upon a video hands-on which I felt was credible enough to warrant sharing here.

Without further ado, this is what WhatsApp's forthcoming iOS 7 refresh will look like...

DrawQuest is now available for iPhone, adds zoomable canvas and custom quests

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 22, 2018

4chan founder Chris Poole’s DrawQuest app landed on the iPad in February 2013, taking DrawSomething believers by surprise.

Similar to DrawSomething, DrawQuest taps your inner artist by issuing daily drawing challenges where you're asked to complete incomplete drawings. The catch: you're only allowed to use the tools provided. Novel concepts like DrawQuest and DrawSomething tend to blow up, fast.

DrawQuest is no exception - the app's amassed some pretty ardent following. Needless to say, fans have been clamoring for an iPhone version from day one and today Poole's little enterprise has finally delivered.

Yes, DrawQuest for iPhone (and iPod touch) is here and it's brought with it some new features, including pinch-zooming on your canvas and the ability to create and share your own drawing quests...