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Unlike the vast majority of professions, Writing requires no qualifications of its purveyors — anybody can be one. The boundless level of expression afforded to authors of any genre is unmatched by any other art form. A level of expression limited not by talent or ability, but only by the imagination of the craftsman. It has been said that writing itself is not difficult, but rather the difficulty arises with forming good ideas.
Authors cannot be taught how to be creative or imaginative; it is for themselves to coax ideas out of their minds. What can be encouraged, however, is the development of those oh-so-rare seedlings of invention into fully rooted bougainvillea. Writers App isn’t designed to boost imagination, but it does provide the tools needed to help cultivate your ideas into flourishing works of literature. Intrigued? Let’s find out more. (more…)
I’ve been writing screenplays for a couple of years now, and the biggest disappointment I had with my iPad was the fact that I could never find a great way to write screenplays with it. And it’s not that I’m too picky, it’s more like Hollywood is very particular about the script formats they will accept. I’ve tried just about every solution under the sun — there are at least seven different apps on my iPad that I attempted to write screenplays with — but until recently, there was no solution that simply worked the way it should have.
Enter Final Draft Writer for iPad. For the uninitiated, Final Draft is the film industry’s accepted writing standard for computers. Not unlike Microsoft Word for many professional writers, every screenwriter that makes a living in LA uses it and has a love-hate relationship with it at the same time. It also has its own proprietary file extension (.fdx) that makes it very difficult to use anything other than Final Draft for screenwriting. The people behind Final Draft have been promising an iPad app for a long time, and with one reviled exception, failed to provide. Now it’s finally here, and there’s only one question on every screenwriter’s mind: was it worth the wait? (more…)
Microsoft’s development for the iPad has, in my opinion, been a little sketchy in recent times. Although there has been chatter of the entire Microsoft Office suite being released for the iPad (thanks to a job posting on Microsoft’s website), nothing much concrete has emerged apart from two components of the Office bundle, OneNote and Lync.
Yet, even Microsoft’s development of OneNote for iPad has been a little lacking as well — the current version hasn’t seen an update since December 2011, over 8 months ago — and even searching for the keyword “Microsoft” in the App Store on the iPad brings up the alternative query, “Did you mean mochasoft?” Of course, there are apps out there that offer full Microsoft Office compatibility and try to emulate some of the features seen in the popular office suite, such as CloudOn and QuickOffice Pro HD, however up till recently there has been no decent alternative to Microsoft OneNote.
That has changed, however, with the release of Outline+ which offers intuitive note-making as well as full OneNote support and a whole host of other features. I managed to download the app and give it a whirl. Here’s what I thought of it. (more…)
Outlining is a fantastic way to organize ideas for everything from a detailed narrative to an app review. ThinkBook has always been my go-to outlining app, but the lack of robust syncing or export options makes it difficult to edit outlines on anything except the iPad. I would venture to say that no one likes to edit outlines in TextEdit, but I’m sure that there’s at least one text evangelist out there who’s crazy enough.
Cloud Outliner by Denys Yevenko is a basic outliner that trades complex features for easy export and sync. The app supports iCloud and Evernote syncing, and can export to OPML. Is the promise of robust outline syncing too good to be true, or does this little app pack a powerful punch? (more…)
When it comes to note taking and writing apps, it seems like there are a million different options to choose from, all of them with their own little perks and quirks. One popular option for the iPhone was Drafts, a “simple,” yet very usable app that made it quick and easy to do whatever you wanted with your text. Unfortunately, it wasn’t available for the iPad. Not until now.
Today, Drafts for the iPad is brand new and it’s got a ton of new features. How good is it? Well I’m using it to write this very review right now, so let’s find out together after the jump. (more…)
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes it takes nearly that many to critique a piece of artwork. In business, that usually means back-and-forth emails full of convoluted and misunderstood directives, which frustrate both the artist and the approver.
Proof not only demonstrates that “criticism can be pretty,” it proves that it can be simple. Its tap-and-type approach vividly displays feedback directly on the artwork. Afterward, insight can be condensed into a PDF and shared via e-mail.
Can Proof become the darling of designers, photographers, directors, developers and editors by saving time and streamlining comments? Let’s jump into it and find out. (more…)
Let’s face it: the Microsoft Office suite has largely dominated the workplace productivity landscape for the better part of two decades. Even as worthy competitors have arisen, the “industry standard” nature of the programs has pushed them to the side. Now however, as there are evolving spheres of software platforms, developers are working to incorporate that standard into their products. Web and mobile apps are providing support for importing the dreaded .docx, .xlsx and .pptx formats.
While Microsoft seemingly crawls toward the release of their first-party Office iPad app, it is being beaten to the punch. There are umpteen text editors for iOS, some full office suite alternatives, and of course, Apple’s own iWork set to compete with. But now, SlideShark has chosen to concentrate solely on presentations. So how does it fare? Read on to find out! (more…)
A long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away) when iPad AppStorm wasn’t even its own site, we looked at one of the most popular productivity apps for iPad, Things, and we gave it a highly praised 8 out of 10. We liked its stylish interface yet didn’t particularly like its expensive price tag back then, which seemed a little excessive for just a simple productivity app.
Well, a lot has changed with Things since then, so let’s revisit the app to see whether it can still live up to that 8 out of 10 score. (more…)
Transferring items from your Mac to your iPad has never been easy. The act of emailing items to yourself seems archaic and is not a good solution for users who try to enforce techniques such as Inbox Zero. With email being the default fallback, what are the other options out there?
Users could and might rely on note syncing services such as Evernote and Simplenote, but this process can get tedious when trying to force sync repeatedly. That is where myPhoneDesktop aims to fill the void of easily getting data from your Mac to your iPad. You might not be able to easily think of when this might be useful, but if you are trying to get certain urls to your iPad without having to search for them or use another service it can be really useful. (more…)
I’m reluctant to total up how much I’ve spent on to do apps from the App Store. But I don’t use any of them on a regular basis. So when I came across Task Pro I wasn’t sure whether to take a look or not.
There is one one particular feature available in Task Pro that made the decision for me. It’s a feature that sets it apart from the majority of other to do apps. Read on, and I’ll explain what it is.
