Author Archives: Thomas

I got an e-mail from Capcom this morning informing me that Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is now out as a free download on the App Store. The title is actually a port of the excellent Nintendo DS puzzle-adventure game of the same name, so the touch mechanics should transfer over …

I always find it interesting to see how different people attempt to organize everyday life. Shawn Blanc recently posted a quick thought on To-Do Lists and Schedules, stating that he has  “a daily to-do list and a routine schedule. The to-do list is the “what”, the schedule is the “when”.” …

Launch Center is one of those $0.99 apps that you could easily form an entire iPhone workflow around – you just need a bit of time to think one up. I decided to give the app a shot after seeing it mentioned recently on MacStories. On the surface, Launch Center …

  There’s a new task manager making the rounds on Twitter, and it’s called Clear. It specializes in super-simple task management and a heavily gesture-driven interface – there are no buttons on-screen, just lists made out of plain text. The sneak peek doesn’t seem to show any fancier features like …

iBooks’ Night mode theme is named well enough, but it can also be a little misleading, since the white-text-on-black-background is actually a delight to use at any time of day (especially when combined with Full Screen mode). Night Mode really enhances the illusion that the text is printed right on …

It turns out that the wait to try out Steam Mobile was much shorter than I thought. I logged on to Steam on my PC last night and found a new item in my account inventory, and it turns out that was all I needed to take part in the …

Steam for iPhone is out – or, rather, it’s percolating. The free app will eventually allow everyone with a Steam account to chat with their steamy friends and buy steamy games (for PC and Mac) straight from the iPhone, but right now it’s really just a beta opt-in. Downloading the app …

Lifehacker has a pretty useful little guide on all the things that a long tap (or a tap-and-hold) on the screen can do in iOS 5. I think it’s a great theme for a help post, since touch screen controls are not always the most obvious – especially if people …

Federico Viticci of MacStories tweeted about the distinction between using note apps for “notes” and for “long [form] writing” and got me thinking about how I work on iOS. I agree that this distinction exists — that the app that rocks for viewing notes isn’t always the same as the …

I’ve been loving Flipboard for iPhone as my go-to RSS reader for the last few weeks, but I’ve discovered what seems to be a pretty major oversight: hyperlinks within articles aren’t highlighted in any way. Links look just like regular text, and although I can still tap on them, it’s really …

Everybody knows that when it’s cloudy, there will always be a chance of meatballs, and the thing about meatballs is that they don’t let you sync properly (vegetarian-friendly metaphor coming later on). This has been my experience with iCloud Sync in the excellent Day One journal app. The cool thing …