NEWS APPS FEATURE HOW-TO
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iPhone SWIPE
NEWS • REVIEWS • TIPS
Welcome
mag
A note from the editor If you were to say that the App Store was responsible for the most calming and visceral times of your life, we’d know you were lieing. As transformative and pioneering as Apple’s app platform is, it has some serious flaws – flaws that need fixing as soon as possible. In this issue of Swipe, we collate the most serious problems in the App Store and offer potential solutions to super-charge the platform. Hopefully someone at Apple HQ will give it a read and take heed... Elsewhere this issue we’ve pulled together five of the most serious arcade-style shooters on the market in a big old round-up review, while we also pass judgment on the likes of ‘dead good’ zombie game, Deadlings. Do you ever think you could be more organized? Want to spend more time or be more efficient? Well, after you’ve had your fill with the zombies, open up the How-to section because this month we give you a beginner’s guide to IFTTT (if this, then that). An excellent app that will help you become a highly-organized super-being. All that plus the latest news, views and rumors make this issue of Swipe pretty exciting – so go on, dive right in, and I’ll see you in 2 weeks.
Thanks for reading Andy Price Editor
Meet the team
Contributors Steve Jarratt Craig Grannell Joe White iOS, iPhone, iPad, AirPlay, AirPrint, iTunes, Safari, iCloud, iMessage, and any other trademark is a trademark of Apple inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Screenshots are for illustrative purposes only and all prices are correct at the time of publishing.
NEWS
iOS 7.1 response Battery drain blame
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he first full point update for iOS 7 landed this week with some relatively straight forward additions. The update included CarPlay functionality, which we covered in our last issue, but the welcome enhancements and bug fixes were overshadowed somewhat by reported battery issues. Response to the release was largely positive, and saw users hail the changes to the Calendar app which some the return of some iOS 6 functionality after concerns over its simplicity were voiced following the release of iOS 7. Tweaks to Siri, iTunes Radio and the Touch ID Fingerprint technology were also made, mostly to streamline the OS for iPhone 4, which runs the system on a less advanced processor.
Battery woes However, following the initial release, many found battery life reduced, taking to Twitter and Apple’s support forums to relay their dissatisfaction using an array of not-so-polite, and in some cases even-less-polite language. Following the outpour, Ars Technica ran some tests on battery drain.
+ Battery drain shown during Wi-Fi browser testing
As the above image shows, the majority of devices on iOS 7.1 had a poorer battery like than those still on iOS 7.0. While there was no word from Apple, battery issues have been experienced on updates before and a handful of solutions were put forward. These included performing a full restore through iTunes to avoid re-installing any corrupt profiles.
Is this iOS 8? Forget 7.1, it’s old hat
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o sooner has the dust settled on iOS 7.1, screenshots from what is purported to be iOS 8 have leaked online. The images were originally posted on Chinese microblogging service Weibo, and later backed up by 9to5Mac. It all looks pretty much the same - not that we’d be expecting an intricate design refresh on the relatively youthful iOS 7, but it does feature a few new apps, most of which will be familiar to those using OS X.
The Preview and TextEdit icons are currently identical to their Mac OS X versions
Firstly, we see the addition of TextEdit a text editor straight out of the Mac’s operating system, followed by Preview - an image and PDF/document viewer, which also features on OS X. The third new app is simply labelled ‘tips’, which could be in place to help users with menial set-up instructions.
An apple a day Healthbook also features and will presumably be the conduit to what is long-rumored already, which is that the next range of iPhones, and by proxy, iOS 8, will be tied closely to health and monitoring tools. Based on past trends, expect all to be revealed this September when Apple will likely announce the next generation of the iPhone.
APPS
REVIEWS
Deadlings Artifex Mundi
The Grim Reaper wants to seem less grim, so now he’s training zombies...
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eadlings finds the Grim Reaper exploiting the undead in bizarre experiments, in order to find acceptance in the greater world. We’re not sure this is the most amazing plan we’ve ever heard of, but it at least provides a set-up for an action puzzler that’s equal parts Lemmings and endless runner.
The Grim Reaper formulates his plan in the opening animated cinematic.
Each of the 100 multi-screen stages has you figure out a course of action with the help of a blueprint-style ‘strategy’ overview. You then select a zombie, switch to ‘arcade’ mode and attempt to get them to the exit or another objective, such as a switch. Each zombie has its own special power, used for overcoming specific obstacles — one can run and jump; another sticks to surfaces, leaping between them like a squelchy SpiderMan; a third can fly using expelled noxious gases; and the last will move on command and fall asleep when left alone. The trick is in figuring out which zombie to use at any given moment, thereby avoiding deadly saw blades, accessing switches, and collecting tasty brains.
The level map provides an overview of your task and can be returned to at any time.
The premise works well, and a typical three-star system details how you fared. You get one star just for finishing a level; the other two are gained when you grab all the brains scattered about the place and do so within a tight pre-set time limit. Successful runs also reward you with skulls that can be used to skip levels or buy extra zombies if you mess up when a level’s almost completed. Inevitable IAP also lurks, giving off a zombie-like stench, but can mercifully be avoided entirely. What cannot be evaded so easily is the overly precise nature of some levels, which are almost pixel-perfect in their demands. Coming a cropper time and time again on one of the much longer later levels can be particularly irksome. Fortunately, you can at least switch between the ‘arcade’ and ‘strategy’ views at any point, which is very useful on the lengthy final levels for each of the game’s four stages, which are more akin to running the gauntlet than solving puzzles.
Blue zombies stick to walls and ceilings, but they’re not huge fans of being impaled.
Regardless of its issues, a mix of charm, intuitive gameplay, and some smart innovative design later on (with some neat zombie co-op puzzles) is enough to ensure Deadlings will more likely give you a smile akin to Death’s toothy visage than the miserable gape of the undead. But for all its efforts, it’s still a fairly shallow experience – one we were happy to plough through once, but that we don’t feel compelled to return to. VERDICT
DEAD GOOD “An amusing, entertaining action-puzzler with a well-considered blend of planning and action, but it lacks longevity”
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Globo Marco Torretta
A world clock? How about a world alarm clock and virtual measuring tape? Now that’s more like it!
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lobo comes across as a really nice idea housed in a sleek, modern interface, but taken as a whole it’s not quite fully baked. At its core, Globo’s a world clock, and you can define a list of locations, each of which displays its parent country and local time. Colored bands represent daylight, from a pale peach sunrise through to a deep red late afternoon and a mauve nighttime. The banded effect is clear in its minimalism; however, the white text isn’t that easy to read on the yellow backgrounds used for early morning, and, bafflingly, the clocks are always sorted alphabetically so if you like having your world clocks listed by timezone like all banks and travel agents, you’re out of luck. Learn a location’s time-zone, DST status and even how far away it is.
Fortunately, Globo has further tricks up its sleeve. Tap on any location and you’ll see its time-zone, whether or not daylight savings is in effect, and the time in relation to your reference location. Smartly, any location can be redefined as the reference point, meaning even if you’re based in New York, you can easily enough find out how far ahead Sydney time is to London, assuming you’ve defined relevant locations within the app. The four-icon toolbar that appears when you tap a location provides access to further useful tools. There are details regarding latitude, longitude and the distance from the reference location, and you can set alarms. The latter of those features might just be Globo’s smartest: if you work with clients worldwide and someone asks for a meeting at 10am their time, you can use Globo to set that alarm; if a relative lives overseas and they’re home from work around 8pm their time, you can set that alarm. It’s a very intuitive system, and beats figuring out your own equivalent local time for such events.
A bit more polish and Globo could become best-in-class on iOS. The foundation is there, as is the style, but even in its current state, with some suspect color choices and fixed clock positions, it’s worth considering if you regularly need to contact people who live around the globe – especially given the low cost.
You can set alarms using the time of each location.
VERDICT
ALMOST CLOCKWORK “A few more options and this would be a must-have; as it is, Globo’s still not half bad. ”
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FEATURE
Fixing the App Store Don’t we deserve better?
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o question the success of the App Store would be to question the existence of the human race. After all, it has been responsible for over 60 billion downloads, and continues to house over a million apps. But with great power comes great responsibility, and thanks to issues within the functionality of the App Store that was most recently highlighted by the Flappy Birds saga, it may well be time for Apple to start pulling its weight when it comes to nurturing its huge user-base and its thirst for new and innovative apps. As a little helping hand, we’ve assembled a list of the major issues within the App Store, and a little advice to Apple on how to approach fixing them, if it really wants to drag its aging shop front into 2014. For starters...
Personalization What’s the issue? Why is the App Store still a window into the preference of the masses? With over a million apps in the App Store the ability to view by your own taste is long over due. Currently, you either have to know what you’re looking for, or you trawl the top charts for the popular apps - an epic feat as those that found much beyond a Flappy Birds clone in the App Store a couple of weeks ago will attest to. The point is, the one-size fits all approach outgrew itself a long time ago. What can be done? Apple needs to take a leaf out of the Netflix book. Though it takes awhile, the site’s rating system allows you to influence your homepage to produce something that can eventually halfway match your personality. Digging a bit deeper, you can actually find scores of preference options that deeply personalizes the experience. If Apple were to implement a similar set-up, using a smartphone would be instantly transformed into a much more personal experience.
Because who doesn’t like their apps to be bawdy?
Improve Search What’s the issue? It’s now been two years since Apple took a bite out of the search market with its acquisition of Chomp, but many of the system’s key features are yet to surface on the App Store. Chomp was a search engine that allowed users to search for apps by category rather than just name or keyword, but despite the takeover and subsequent shutdown of Chomp, the App Store still lacks this functionality. The result is unpredictable and often sees wellhyped apps impossible to find. Results aren’t based on review score either making it hard for users to find the best app for their needs. What they should do: Apple is still sitting on a lot of that technology. While they implemented the card interface a trick was truly missed by failing to implement the search by category option. However, Apple still owns this technology so a solution might be closer, or certainly easier, than we might think.
Search results are shown on individual cards but it’s not very clear
HOW-TO
IFTTT setup Let your phone do the work
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FTTT (“If This, Then That”) is an ultrarobust web-based platform that can connect to an iPhone handset in order to link multiple Internet services together. Through the app, conditional chains of statements can be created and users of the service can turn Apple’s handset into a truly powerful personal computer. In this article, we’re going to walk you through the basics of IFTTT before using a series of examples to demonstrate how the platform can help make aspects of your life more productive, less repetitive, and – most importantly – a whole lot easier.
The Basics The premise of IFTTT goes like this: after selecting two different services from a list of supported “channels,” which can include anything from Facebook to Google Drive to iOS Photos, users can then create a “recipe” where “if this” occurs, “then that” happens as a result. The first part of this statement is called a “trigger” and the second part an “action” – you then link these alongside channel-specific “ingredients” to customize how your chosen two services communicate with one another. To learn how to customize your living, work, or virtual space – you’ll need to first download the free IFTTT app, then read on for a beginner’s guide...
Location IFTTT can use the “iOS Location” channel to perform actions when a handset enters or leaves a designated area, providing a useful way for office workers to automatically log their hours in a Google Drive spreadsheet. To do this, follow these steps:
Selecting a channel then provides users choose from.
1
In the IFTTT app, touch the “Recipes” icon and then “+” to create a new recipe.
2
For the “if this” trigger choose the iOS Location channel, select the “You enter or exit an area” ingredient, then search or drag the scope on screen until it’s hovering over your workplace.
3
To complete the recipe, for the “then that” action scroll along to the “Google Drive” channel and choose “Add row to a spreadsheet”. IFTTT will begin auto-logging your work hours in a new Google Drive spreadsheet; you can then customize the name and format of added rows by editing the recipe once it’s been created.
iPhone SWIPE
NEWS • REVIEWS • TIPS
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