This week’s roundup of apps includes a couple of new offerings to take your imagination off-planet—plus new apps for calendars, Mac security, and more.
Google Calendar has finally arrived as its own app on iOS—sparing Google-loving iPhone users the hassle of syncing disparate calendars across platforms. The new app includes a schedule view, the ability to schedule events directly from Gmail, and “smart suggestions” to help you quickly fill out your event details.
Nokia’s free Here app for iPhone is trying to position itself as an alternative both to Apple’s native iOS map and to the ever-so-popular Google Maps. This app encourages you to download maps to your phone for offline use; its features include voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation, maps for more than 100 countries, real-time traffic information in more than 40 countries, and public transit directions for more than 900 cities.
Criminel, the $2 iPad offering, looks to be heavy on atmosphere. It “is an experimental, mystery investigation game. It features detective-work, coupled with photography, in order to create a new type of interactive, conspiracy crime drama. Set in late 19th century Paris, it tells a thrilling, noir story set against the backdrop of advancing scientific, industrial changes, and the forces that are trying to stop them.” We don’t know quite what that means, but it looks cool.
OneShot is for those folks who like to share commentary—and lots of it—with their friends via Twitter. Read something you like on your phone: OneShot lets you screenshot it, crop out the extraneous stuff, highlight the pithy stuff, and share it with the world.
Sid Meier’s Starships seems like a pretty expensive iPad game at $15, but there’s a lot of game packed in here: Space combat, starship customization, interstellar diplomacy, and more. It’s more than just a space shooter, in other words, boldly going where where few games have gone before.
The oldheads among you will remember trading cards, not just for baseball but for a variety of fun activities, back in the pre-digital age. Star Wars: Card Trader revives the practice for a new era, letting you collect and trade “cards” featuring your favorite characters.
Tether uses the Bluetooth capability of your iPhone and your Mac to shut down your Mac whenever you walk away with your phone in your pocket. As soon as you return, the app automatically enters your password and lets you re-access your computer, no problem.
Ulysses is finally available on iPad after years as a much-beloved Markdown composer for Mac. “Ulysses can transform your text into beautiful PDFs, webpages, standard ebooks and Rich Text documents. You can copy as HTML or save to the cloud as Markdown.” But a feature-rich offering like this one comes with a pricetag: $20 to download.
Author: Joel Mathis
Joel Mathis is a regular contributor to Macworld and TechHive. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and young son.