The Week in iOS Apps: Diamond edition
This week’s roundup of iOS apps will help you find a cup of coffee, get in shape, take notes, and finally discover what happens when pigs fly. And, oh yeah: Neil Diamond makes an appearance.
Already this week, Macworld brought you guides to the best apps featuring celebrity chefs and disaster preparations. We noted the launch of Drafts for iPad, a significant update to Facebook’s iOS app, and gave you a hands-on look at the new Quark DesignPad app.
Here are other new and updated apps that caught our eye this week:
CaptureNotes 2/Projectbook: We really liked the first version of the $1 CaptureNotes note-taking app for iPad when reviewing it earlier this year, saying that it heralded “the golden age of premium note-taking applications.” The app still offers great voice recording and note-annotation features, but this week’s debut of version 2.0 adds a number of features, including increased options for sharing your notes by letting users export notes to Evernote, iTunes, or Dropbox. You can also now easily share chosen segments of audio recorded while taking notes. The developers have also created a separate “highlight” tool to help users organize their notes, and said that they’ve also improved the app’s performance in handwriting mode. Meanwhile, the $2 Projectbook note-taking app for iPad also saw an update this week with new wireless printing capabilities, the ability to save notes as PDFs or to Dropbox, and many other features.
FitPal: This $2 exercise guidance app for iPhone works by first determining your capacity for exercise. We hadn’t realized that the camera on the phone can be used to take your pulse, but that’s exactly how FitPal measures your fitness; just place your finger over the camera lens for two minutes while sitting and standing, and the app determines what level of exercise your body can handle. You can also use the app during exercise to check that you’re achieving your desired workout intensity.
Ham on the Run!: If, instead of exercising, you feel like putting a pig through its paces, then the free Ham on the Run! game for iPhone and iPad may sate your porcine desires. It’s a little bit like Tiny Plane, one of our favorite iOS games, only the object is to keep the pig airborne and in motion. There are more than 150 missions to complete; the game is free, but you can improve your odds with in-app purchases of “veggie baskets” that will power your pig to ever greater heights.
