Welcome to our weekly installment of Picks of the Week at iSource where we provide our expanded coverage of Apple accessories and applications Here we will promote our favorite iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac and Apple TV related items, as well as bring you occasional tips and tricks. Hopefully many of our favorite items will also be of interest to you. Please feel free to comment on our selections, and suggest picks of your own. Check out this week’s picks after the break
Battery Sense (v1.3.0)
Picked by: AliciaB
With all this talk of battery life, especially for iPhone, our collective attention is trained on tips, tricks and apps that can help us tweak the most out of our iOS devices. The app I’ve picked for this week focuses on helping users conserve and thus optimize battery life: Philips Battery Sense is a well made universal app that deserves a download.
The clean pristine white display of the app goes well with the subject matter. We are invited to experiment with our settings to help us get more battery life – via a central What if button. Find out how much phone talk time, audio and video playback, game play, or internet use you have left with a certain charge. Or you can explore how to gain let’s say 9 hours video playback (by turning down screen brightness or turning off push notifications we are told). This is great for the times you forget your extra battery chargers and want to know how long your remaining juice will take you.
Although I’ve previously been too lazy to constantly turn settings on and off, this app has created a new awareness. I may just tweak my habits.
(Free) iTunes Link
1 Password Pro (v3.6.1)
Picked by: Brandon K
My pick of the week is 1Password Pro for the iPhone. For months, I debated on downloading 1Password for my Mac, but the price scared me off. After receiving an iTunes gift card, I knew I had to take the plunge. I immediately fell in love with the desktop app, so I just had to get the iPhone version.
Paying money for something you might not see as an issue or have a problem with can be difficult. It might even seem like you’re correcting a problem that doesn’t exist. But password security is very important, and 1Password makes it very easy with a great interface and a user-friendly design. It doesn’t just save and store your passwords, but it also comes with a handy password generator and a spot for your notes, credit cards, and more. Having it on the go with me at all times has been very useful. Not only do I have easy access to login to any of my accounts on my iPhone, but if I am at someone else’s computer and need to login to something, I can easily look up all of my passwords.
If you already have the desktop app, then the iPhone version is a no brainer. Or, if you’re a 1P rookie, the cheaper price point for the mobile version is a great way to get sucked in to the 1Password experience.
($14.99) iPad & iPhone
($9.99) iPhone only
Blueprint 3D (v1.0)
Picked by: Alex Jordan
Blueprint 3D is a unique puzzle game wherein the user has to turn fragmented drawings on an axis until the fragments line up to create an image of a simple object. It’s a play on perspective that turns out to actually be entertaining and beautifully executed. However, it’s one of those things that is really hard to explain with language, but instead is easier to pick up and give it a try yourself. That shouldn’t be too hard considering it goes for $.99 on the App Store. Trust me, if you like puzzles, this is a unique spin on things, and well worth a look.
($0.99) iTunes Link
FREE Calls with magicjack
Picked by: Jay
The app I’ve chosen as my pick this week is Free Calls with magicJack. After purchasing an iPhone 4S, my beloved iPhone 3GS was demoted to become my son’s pseudo-iPod Touch. He loves having an iDevice of his own, and I love not having to share my iPhone all the time. Plus the bonus of iMessage working on wifi meant free text messaging!
Setting up an iPhone as an iPod Touch is painless (restore to factory settings as a “new” device in iTunes), and after it was done we wanted to find a free phone calling app for his 3GS since we dropped our landline phone service a few years ago. At 8 years-old, my son does not have a Gmail account, so a Google Voice app wouldn’t work for him (I use Google Voice for my voicemail), but he does have an email account through our internet provider.
I decided on Free Calls with magicJack for a few reasons: first was the overall rating of 4-stars; second was the fact it was free; third, the likelihood of him receiving calls from someone he didn’t know was minimal; fourth, it was free; and fifth, it works.
When you start the app, there are 3 choices of how to use it:
1. Use an existing magicJack account
2. Make and receive free calls, voicemail, and a dedicated magicJack phone number (requires creating an account)
3. Make free outgoing calls only
For my son, I used his email to create an account for option 2. His phone number, like all magicJack app numbers, begins with an asterisk (*) and he can be called directly from the magicJack app on my iPhone 4S to the magicJack app on his 3GS. Since I’m not interested in having an account for myself, I choose option 3 when I want to place a call to him.
Now, whenever he is connected to wifi, his iPhone 3GS rings when called (app-to-app) and it acts as a regular phone. He can place a phone call directly to my phone using my usual iPhone number (since I don’t have a magicJack number). It’s worth noting that the Caller ID on the receiving end shows unrecognized phone numbers, but it’s a small inconvenience for free phone service.
The quality of the phone calls have been mostly hits, with the occasional miss: it’s clear, though there seems to be the occasional lag time. Did I mention it’s free?
Amusingly, even at 8 years-old, he’d still prefer to send a free iMessage text or a free HeyTell voicemail message (my pick here) over a free phone call.
(Free) iTunes Link
Songineer™ – Instant Composer (v1.0)
Picked by: Thomas
Songineer is an interesting little app for making quick and catchy beats right on your iPhone. There are five categories of sounds that you can lay down: beat, bass, keys, lead, and atmo. Selecting any one of these categories will present you with a set of keys along the bottom, ready for the tapping.
The interesting thing about Songineer is that you don’t actually need to be very good at keeping a beat to create a catchy one.
Tapping at interval tends to create groovy little beats very quickly, and it’s likely that Songineer uses some sort of algorithm to modify the timing of your taps for maximum impact. In other words, you really have to do something god awful to create a bad tune with this app.
The major obstacle then is the interface itself. It looks cool in screenshots, but it can be very disorienting when you try to use it for the first time. Everything is so flashy that it’s hard to tell the actual buttons from the chrome. However, should you find it in yourself to master the controls of this quick composer, it can be a lot of fun to play around with. Tunes seem to be limited to just four bars in length, but you can export them (as .mid, .wav, or .m4a) if you’re keen on sharing some head bumping tracks with friends.
Songineer isn’t a unique offering, but it has enough interesting twists on standard composer controls to make it worth a look.
($1.99) iTunes Link
There you have it! Hope you enjoyed this week’s installment of Picks of the week. Please let us know what you think, and share with us some of your favorites.
Continue reading:
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- Apple Watch Pre-Order
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- Apple TV now only $69
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