Some final thoughts...

It's been quite a ride for more than 6 years starting when Lead Editor Mike Rose invited me to come aboard after reading some things I had written. The iPhone had been out for less than a year... the Mac was selling but seemed destined to lose the desktop wars. Now Apple is the darling of Wall Street, and has revolutionized mobile communications as surely as it revolutionized home computing with the Apple II in 1977. After almost 700,000 words in almost 2,000 posts, it's been fun and inspiring to watch Apple grow. To have in the palm of your hand a device that can wake you in the morning, bring you the news about anything you are interested in, steer a telescope, take your pulse, introduce you to new people, guide your travels, then put you to bed at night with your favorite music or the sound of the sea is a pretty amazing device, one we take for granted today. My Mac helps me create memorable photos, lets me view the universe from my desktop, and keeps me up to date with family and friends. While not perfect, it is light years beyond my small collection of Windows PC's that never delighted in the way my MacBook Air and MacPro do. TUAW, for lots of reasons beyond our control, has no future, but Apple's burns brightly. It's been great writing about these growing technologies, and seeing and testing apps -- some that were great and some that fell short. All of us here tried to tell the story of Apple and its offspring of hardware and software companies and tell it straight; the good along with the sometimes ugly. It's been a privilege to share my thoughts, whether they reached you at your desktop, on your lap, or in your hand. I loved it when readers would appreciate a tip on a great app, and I loved to hear from developers who got a bad review, took it to heart and made some changes in the inevitable next version. Thanks to all our readers, and thanks to my many colleagues here at TUAW who always went the extra mile to make our little corner of the Apple universe a place worth stopping by.

Yahoo updates its news and lifestyle app with more interactive features

Yahoo has a bunch of apps for iOS, including Yahoo Mail, Weather, Finance and others. The primary Yahoo app (free) is what has just received an update. This app features a blend of news with Yahoo's interactive lifestyle magazines. The Yahoo app has been slightly retooled visually, and there are some nice features that let you swipe across the screen looking at before and after photos, mainly in the lifestyle sections. The new app has more visuals than before. You can turn off any sections you don't want to see. I find the Yahoo News Digest app more useful. The newly designed Yahoo app does a pretty inferior job of mixing ads with content, and the format is just the same. At first glance, ads look like news, making the app more difficult to use than it needs to be. Yes, it says "sponsored" on each ad, but the format is identical to a news story. There are also some just plain awful bugs. The edit page where you decide which content you want displayed is all white, with white on white text. Needless to say, it is very difficult to navigate (see screen shot) or to exit. Someone wasn't paying attention when this update was being tested. Still, Yahoo has a wide range of content and it's all attractively displayed. I think the Yahoo Weather and News Digest apps are better, but if you want a wider barrel of content, this app will be adequate. Lose the deceptively formatted ads and fix the bugs, and this app will be even more useful. The Yahoo app is universal and requires iOS 7 or later. It is optimized for the latest iPhone hardware.

Yahoo app for iOS

Hydra: A powerful and innovative iOS app for High Dynamic Range photography

I've seen so many High Dynamic Range (HDR) apps, some of which have been good, some not so good. Hydra (US$2.99 on sale) from Creaceed is a well thought out and terrific performing photo app with solid features that will improve your images in challenging lighting conditions. It's just been released to the App Store today. Unlike most HDR apps, Hydra can capture video as well as stills. It also has a low light mode that takes up to 40 images and stacks them to reduce noise. A hi-resolution mode claims to give you a 32 MP image from the iPhone's 8 MP camera, and a zoom mode does some fancy pixel manipulation to give you a 2x and 4x zoom that looks quite presentable. Let's start with the HDR mode. HDR is designed for taking pictures with bright highlights and deep shadows. Apple offers an HDR feature built into the Camera app, but it is not as dramatic as what third-party apps can produce. Hydra is automatic. I pointed it to a bright window surrounded by a darkened room and the app quickly decided on 12 exposures. They were quickly assembled and I had a great picture that captured the bright outside details while rendering the shadows inside. One the image is assembled, you have a choice of how far to push the exposure, so I used the medium preset. The video mode also worked well, giving me better exposures than I got using the video mode in the Apple Camera app. The low light mode was really astounding. The app took 20 pictures and stacked them, and the sensor noise was almost completely gone. The original photo without the stacking looked like a blizzard of grain and noise. The zoom mode was also impressive. The app can't break the laws of physics, but every digitally zoomed image I did looked good, and far better than with any other digital zoom I've used. Upscaling images using the 16 MP and 32 MP option also gave finer details than I was seeing in the 8 MP photo. The app lets you save both versions for comparisons. A couple of things to note. You want to hold your camera really steady to avoid the possibility of blur. The Hydra software will try and do the best with what you give it, but a mini tripod or bracing the camera will give you better results. Shooting handheld still produced excellent images, however. I have a few photos attached so you can see how the camera did. Didn't have much sun today, but you can see the improvements in dynamic range and noise. Hydra is a breakthrough HDR app, that adds extra features like HDR video, a decent digital zoom, and amazing noise free low light photos. It's an excellent deal while it is on sale at 40% off, and iOS photo buffs will want this app. You can get some technical details on the app and see some sample images on the Hydra website. Hydra requires iOS 8.1 or later, and it supports the screen resolution of the latest iPhones. Hydra is a universal app and it worked fine on my iPad Air 2, but the best images were with my iPhone 6. Recommended.

Hydra HDR for iOS

Wrise is a new and specialized word processor for Mac

There just aren't too many new OS X word processing applications appearing these days, with Microsoft Word and Apple's Pages ruling the roost. So it was with some interest that I took a look at Wrise (US$29.99 introductory pricing at the Mac app store), which certainly provides a fresh take on word processing. Like most word processors, Wrise gives you editing, font choices and background colors, as well as spelling and grammar correction. But it also has some very unique features: Pre-sets for fonts and page colors to quickly select or change for easy reading The app can read aloud what is on screen, and you can adjust the reading speed and the voice Text can be saved as an audio file and exported to iTunes or an mp4 format Wrise can read multilingual texts with automatic language detection The app contains 15 predictive dictionaries for English and use with other languages I gave Wrise a try, and found it easy to use. I liked the ability to have it read aloud any text I've written or imported. While Apple provides a similar feature as part of OS X (usually under Edit > Speech in many apps), there is more control over this function in Wrise. The app can open PDF files, plain text and Word documents, but it could not open Pages files, which would have to be converted to Word format before importing. The "speak as you type" function was very useful as a proofreader. The layout of the pages and text makes for really easy reading, more than with other word processors. If you change the font and page colors, it doesn't change the actual document, it just changes the display for easier reading, which is a nice feature. Another unique feature is support of tags. You can add tags inside a document to control reading speed, voice, language and even the volume. Documents can be password protected, and sent for comments in a read-only mode. Wrise supports Apple's dictation feature, so you can turn speech into text, then have the app read it back to you. Wrise allows export in RTF or TXT formats. I'd like to see the app export PDF, Word and Pages. The app is designed to make reading and writing easier, and I think it succeeds there. The developers also think it helps comprehension and composition, and it can be extremely useful for people with dyslexia. Wrise is an interesting and unique product that is going to be of interest to people looking for a different approach to writing and reading. It's not a page layout app like Word or Pages. It's designed for text, and it accomplishes its mission. The $29.99 half-price offer is good until February 15. Wrise requires OS X 10.9 or later and a 64-bit processor.

Wrise Word Processor

The Lowdown meetings app for iOS is now free and improved

Lowdown (free) is an intriguing business app that provides briefings on participants and companies you are meeting with, helps you get to the meeting with location information, and tells you when others arrive. When you start you can integrate the app to other services like Linkedin (it's required to use the app), and Twitter. The app connects to your calendar, and lets you create invitations that include maps to the location of the meeting, profiles of the people attending and company info, both of which it draws from Linkedin. It then sends the invites out, using info from your address book When people arrive at the meeting they can tap a button to let others know they have arrived. If you use Google for email, Lowdown also searches relevant emails relating to the meeting. This is a clever idea that consolidates several functions all in one place. Lowdown used to charge a monthly subscription, but now it is free. The company says it will offer special enhanced pay services in the future. The app was easy to set up, and I did set up a couple of dummy meetings as I had nothing really scheduled over the next week. Everything worked as expected, and I thought the design of the screens was very attractive. I was easily moved from function to function. The only thing I didn't like was the absolute dependence on Linkedin. I understand the decision, but not everybody is on it, and some people detest it for all the junk mail and irrelevant material it bombards you with. It would be nice if the app could do some smart searches on Google to add to the information provided. Update: Although my tests didn't show any searches with Google, David Senior, CEO of Lowdown says the app does search Google, Crunchbase, Wikipedia, Facebook and other sources. More sources are coming in February, plus a meeting conformation system. Still, Lowdown is going to be a very useful app for anyone who spends time setting up and attending meetings. At a price of free, it's certainly worth a look, and I recommend it for people in its target audience. Lowdown requires iOS 7.1 or later. The app is not universal, but works fine on iPads. The app is optimized for the iPhone 5.

Lowdown for iOS

Pandora app updated with a load of new features

Pandora has been around since 2008, one of the earliest apps offered for the iPhone. With millions of listeners in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, the streaming music service has always been one the most popular music apps out there. After what seems an eternity, Pandora for iOS now has some significant feature updates. First off, Pandora has a new and more attractive user interface and design. There are animations and gesture-based movements that fit in well with iOS 8. There are new personalization controls, you can view songs you gave a "thumbs-up" rating to, and there's even a way to change your rating to "thumbs-down" if you decide it's not your favorite. Notification features have been enhanced in the new Pandora, telling you when new music has been added to the stations you've created. The app now, for the first time, supports the resolution of the new iPhones, including the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus Pandora has a lot of competition from services like Rdio, Spotify and iHeart Radio. Many people use the free Pandora service, and paying subscribers are only about five percent of total users as of last year. Free subscribers get a lot of ads. The new Pandora app is universal, and requires iOS 6 or later.

Pandora for iOS

iFixit gives you thousands of repair manuals in your pocket

The iFixit app (free) is a handy little app that gives your Do-It-Yourself repairs a big boost. This app comes from the teardown experts at iFixit, who delight in exploring the inner secrets of your favorite tech (or not-so-techie) hardware. The iFixit app helps you repair just about anything from toilets to garage door openers, cameras, cars, and of course, PCs and Macs. iFixit is divided by categories, or you can search by type of repair or brand name. When you get to Mac, for example, there's a choice of desktops, laptops, or other Mac hardware. You work your way down the list for a specific model, and then the repair options appear. The app tells you what parts you may need and any tools required. Repair steps are in short sections that you swipe to go to the next step and the instructions are usually accompanied by photos. The app reaches out to the internet for much of the information it needs, otherwise iFixit would be an unwieldy and huge app. If you like to do repairs yourself, saving money and extending the life of what you own, the iFixit app is a must. In addition to repair instructions, you can often download a PDF product manual. Any repair can be marked as a favorite for future reference. If you need to order parts, the app tells you where they can be purchased. You can even order tools from iFixit if you don't have them on hand. iFixit works well, and covers thousands of brands and repairs. The app requires iOS 6.1 or later, and it is optimized for the iPhone 5. The app is universal. Free is always good, and iFixit is a really worthwhile app to have.

iFixit for iOS

iFilebox is a nice improvement on Apple's notes app

iFilebox (US$0.99) is a well thought-out addition to your iOS bag of tricks. It lets you create folders, and write notes so you can get organized, and is a nice alternative to Apple's own Notes app. The app supports passwords on folders, keeping them extra private. Notes can be shared via email and the search function works well. The app does not support Apple's Spotlight search, at least for now, but that would be very valuable to add. This is a nice and powerful app. You get a lot of choices, like font selection, and notes can be entered with the keyboard of by voice. There is a pretty comprehensive help menu, but it didn't cover deleting folders. Actually the app follows Apple conventions, swiping a folder to the left gives you the option to delete it. Folders can be designated as favorites for quick access and any note can be bookmarked. The app is easy to use, and features are generally self-evident. As it is now, the app is not universal, and you need an iPad and an iPhone version, which I don't think presents the best deal for users. The two apps don't sync either, which is the way, I think, people with both devices would want this app to work. Having said that, iFilebox is very handy, and does a lot that Apple Notes doesn't do. I recommend this app for people who need an organized way to keep notes, and will hope that it will support Spotlight and syncing soon. At under a dollar, this app can boost your productivity. The app requires iOS 8.1 or later. It's optimized for the iPhone 5.

iFilebox

Get the weather and a joke thanks to Funny or Die Weather app

And now for something completely different. It's a nicely performing weather app, with weather sourced from Weather Underground, and along with the weather you get a joke or funny anecdote. The app, Funny Or Die Weather (free) has the usual stuff you want from a weather app, like current weather, a 5 day forecast, the UV index, sunset and sunrise times, moon phases and tides, but along with that are some nice animations reflecting the current weather and a joke. Sometimes it's silly, sometime a little profane or sarcastic, and it is sure to at least make you grin. It doesn't matter if the weather is good or horrible, a joke will always be there. If you like the humor, you can share it via text, email or social media. You can add multiple locations to the app by zip code or city name, and each city will have different humor when you access it. Funny or Die Weather is certainly unique, and it's free, with no in-app purchases or ads, neither of which would be truly funny. Funny or Die Weather requires iOS 8, and it is optimized for the new iPhones so you get full screen humor. Recommended.

Funny or Die Weather

RiLAXapp let's you relax from the stresses of the day

RiLAXapp is a US$0.99 app with one mission: to provide an audio and visual experience to help you unwind. The app features three different scenes -- one with water, another with a crackling flame, and a third with the aurora borealis over some mountains. There are animated visuals and ambient outdoors sounds, along with some faint music. Unlike many apps with relaxing sounds, this app lets you interact with the scene. Tapping on the screen might give you, for example, a bell sound, and drawing on the screen displays animated effects that follow your finger. I found the audio most effective on headphones, especially headphones that cut you off from outside sounds. The environmental sounds are realistic, and there is just a faint hint of music. On-screen controls let you hear just the music or the ambient sounds without the music. I would like to see sliders in RiLAXapp to let me create my own blend. I'm not sure how relaxing it is to watch the animations and play with the screens. My idea of relaxation is to close my eyes and turn off all visual stimulation, but everybody is different and the interactive images may be great for some users. People who like these kinds of apps should also check out Thunderspace and Naturespace. RiLAXapp requires iOS 6 or later and it is optimized for the latest iPhone models.

iPhone Market share taking off in Japan and Korea

That's the report from Counterpoint Research. According to the Counterpoint Research, global Apple iPhone sales grew 26 percent annually crossing 20 million unit monthly sales mark for the first time ever in November 2014. Apple's iPhone sales volumes grew across key countries with timely global roll out of the flagship iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models and was also helped by the relatively lower-priced iPhone 5s and 5c targeting prepaid users in emerging markets. The report adds: "Apple's iPhone market share soared and reached record levels in Japan and Korea markets. In Japan, one of the most premium smartphone markets in the world, Apple captured more than half of the smartphone sales in October as well as November. Japan has been one of the strongest market for Apple and it is becoming increasingly difficult for competition to challenge Apple's dominance in near- to mid-term. Apple will likely benefit from the upcoming Apple Watch with a growing and premium iPhone user-base in this highly advanced consumer market." There's no good news in Korea for Samsung, where the electronics giant has dominated the mobile phone business in its home country. Apple captured one-third of the total smartphone sales in Korea last November. Previously, no company had ever topped 20 percent on Samsung's home turf. In general, many analysts expect the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus to have blow-out numbers for the 4th quarter of 2014 when Apple reports financial results on January 27.

reLAXapp ambient sounds