In a year that saw Apple finally pass the one million milestone in terms of live applications in the App Store, it’s fair to say there’s a deluge of file-managers, smart calendars, budgeting tools and funky cameras to sift through to get to the real gems.
Here’s a quick snapshot of some of the more notable apps and services to launch for Apple’s mobile platform in 2013. For the most part, these are all available globally, though a handful are restricted to certain markets – these are clearly marked.
So, in no particular order…
PRODUCTIVITY: GET THINGS DONE
Cal
2013 may have been the year of the snake according to the Chinese calendar, but from an app reviewer’s perspective it might just have been the year of the calendar itself. Well, the smart calendar that is.
Readdle relaunched a fully re-imagined Calendars app that packed a punch, while Sunrise and Tempo had compelling propositions of their own.
To-do list startup Any.DO also spun out a brand new calendar app called Cal, which represented the “first in a suite” of standalone apps from the Israel-based company. More to come from them soon, we expect.
It’s worth noting that although it is indeed a ‘standalone’ app, insofar as it’s a separate entity to Any.DO, there is actually a fairly tight integration between the two apps – so you will be asked to sign-in using your Any.DO credentials.
Cal syncs with all the major calendars on your iPhone, including Google, Exchange & iCloud, but it’s when you start adding items to your calendar where things get interesting.
It asks to use your current location, so it can deliver additional details for each entry. For example, if you enter a location name such as ‘Concert at Finsbury Park’, Cal detects it. It will even plot it out on a map for you and offer to help you navigate your way to any event.
➤ Cal
Recordium
Recordium was one of my favorite iOS apps of the year, serving up a powerful audio-recording tool that lets you highlight, tag and edit clips on the fly.
You can ‘edit’ the audio as you go along – so as the recording is taking place you can click the little highlighter icon to mark specific segments that you may wish to revisit later – this could be a particularly intriguing quote, demo or anything. By hitting the little ‘cross’ icon, you can also choose to add notes, pictures or tags.
You can revisit any clip and see all your annotations – clicking on each one reveals its contents. You can also move each annotation to a different part of the audio, say, if you want to mark the beginning of a key announcement.
Recordium also features a very easy-to-use trimming tool to carry out audio snips on the fly – you can create entirely new files based on these snippets, moving any associated annotations with it. Or if you want to trim out that annoying video demo or audience Q&A, you can do so.
A really terrific app.
➤ Recordium
Mega
Following the introduction to Android back in July, Kim Dotcom finally launched Mega for iPhone four months later.
The cloud storage service lets users manage and move files, as well as upgrade accounts with more storage space via a Mega Pro subscription, costing $10.99 per month or $119.99 per year. Mega Pro provides 50GB of storage and 1000GB of bandwidth transfers.
➤ Mega
IFTTT
IFTTT finally launched for iOS back in July, bringing a set of new channels specific to Apple’s platform and a sweet mobile-focused service for building and using its automated actions.
IFTTT, if you’re unfamiliar, is a utility that you can use to hook multiple Web services together to perform automated actions for you. Want a text message every time you get an email from a friend? Care to have your photos automatically shipped off to SkyDrive as they’re shot? There’s a ton more stuff you can do too.
➤ IFTTT
Atlas
A Launchpad LA accelerator company, Atlas is geared towards helping users take control of time and be better at collaborating with their colleagues.
Atlas makes it possible to display a person’s calendar publicly (with key details hidden) and invite people to send up to three available slots when they could potentially meet. The invitee receives a notification on their mobile and can accept or decline as they see fit.
Atlas syncs with most calendar platforms (e.g. Google Calendar, iCal, Yahoo, and Outlook), including the native one on Android and iOS devices, and the newest ones like Tempo, Sunrise, and Fantastical. The company tells us that any calendar set up on the phone will have read and write privileges.
➤ Atlas
Quickoffice
Google launched Quickoffice for iOS this year, making it available gratis for all its Apps for Business customers.
Google’s Quickoffice is meant for business users that have to share files and collaborate with users who don’t yet use Google Docs. “From Word to Excel to PowerPoint, you can make quick edits at the airport or from the back of a taxi and save and share everything in Google Drive,” said Google.
➤ Quickoffice
Composite
Composite might just be the ultimate iPhone app prototyping tool for Photoshop, which connects with your Photoshop mock-ups and converts them into fully interactive prototypes in seconds, with no need to do any exporting or anything else.
With Composite, all you need is Photoshop (CS5+ or Elements 10+), the $9.99 iPhone app, and you’re good to go.
➤ Composite
Write
If you own an iOS device, there’s no shortage of apps available to help you jot down text-based notes; Evernote, Byword and Simplenote all do a pretty decent job. Write for Dropbox deserves to be added to that list though.
It’s an incredibly quick and elegant solution that uses natural navigation and extensive sharing features to optimize your productivity.
➤ Write
Documents by Readdle
In January we called Documents by Readdle a lean but powerful file-management app for iPad, one that supports document-viewing and media playback. It later arrived for iPhone/iPod touch too.
In a nutshell, the app lets you read, listen, watch, annotate and download almost anything you want to your iOS device.
➤ Documents by Readdle
Viz
Viz lets you create quick charts and graphs directly from an iOS device.
The app allows users to easily create charts by inputting data and selecting the type of chart they’d like to use from a choice of Bars, Pie, Cloud, Scrapers and Parliament.
Once chosen, the user can then tweak the color scheme before confirming the changes and being presented with the option to either share it via a social network (Twitter, Facebook or Instagram) email it to someone, or save it as an image file (JPEG).
➤ Viz
Codecademy
All this talk about apps might make you feel like building one yourself – but to do so, you’ll need to learn how to code, right?
The How to Code app by Codecademy targets total newcomers with the basics of computer programming. Its relatively short repertoire covers the absolute basics, such as how programs are written and a few examples of what can be achieved with just a few lines of code.
The lessons cover strings, operators, and many other building blocks associated with computer science. You won’t be publishing an app once the 60 minutes are up, but it’s a brilliant taster that should get students and teachers alike interested in the subject.
➤ Codecademy: Hour of Code
EMAIL
Mailbox
Mailbox was probably one of the biggest email-client success stories of the year. We loved it the moment we set our eyes on it – so did Dropbox, so much so it gobbled Mailbox up.
Mailbox takes advantage of three main actions – for every mail item, you’re able to move it to your archive (check it off), delete it or postpone it until later. Much like a list of items that you can complete, remove or time shift until you’re ready to deal with them. The time-shifting mechanism allows you to choose between general times like later today, tomorrow morning or this evening, or specific dates that you choose.
Available initially for iPhone only, it eventually arrived for iPad too. And though it was Gmail-focused to begin with, it now also supports iCloud, me.com, mac.com, and Yahoo Mail accounts.
➤ Mailbox
Yahoo Mail
Believe it or not, Yahoo is still one of the more popular email services in some countries – particularly the US. So its arrival for iPad this year will have been welcome news for many.
As you’d expect from any tablet-optimized app, Yahoo Mail has a full-screen ‘reading mode’, meaning you can use the device’s full real estate when reading emails or viewing photos. One tap, and you’re there.
You can also scroll through email messages like turning the pages of a book – no need to exit back to your main inbox (via the gift shop).
➤ Yahoo Mail
Cloze
Cloze brings together all your relationships from email and social media into a single view.
Prior to last February, it was only available as a web-client, but with the roll-out for iOS, it ramped things up considerably and broadened its appeal.
The basic premise behind Cloze centers on three core ideas: unite contacts, email, and social data under one area, create less noise through smart filtering of “non-humans and those you don’t know well”, and place people first; the channel and time come second.
➤ Cloze
Molto / Incredimail
More than ten years after Incredimail first launched its email client for Windows computers, it finally moved beyond Microsoft’s omnipresent desktop operating system and into the modern touchscreen, tablet-centric era, kicking off with the iPad.
As we wrote on its launch, Incredimail for iPad is more than an email client and could become the ultimate unified messaging app. It later rebranded as Molto and arrived for iPhone and Android tablets too.
The app is designed to deliver your messages from any of your existing email accounts with a social feel that emulates social networks and mobile messaging apps.
➤ Molto
Swizzle
Swizzle for iOS promises to clean up all your email offers into one simple digest.
Download the app, enter your email address and it’ll redirect you to authorize Swizzle to scan your mail. It will identify the junk and offer emails, a process that’ll take anything from a few seconds to a few minutes depending on how much email you have.
Once it has done its thing and picked up on all the senders that seem to contact you with newsletters, offers, vouchers and all sorts of other promotional content, you’re then presented with a list of offers.
➤ Swizzle
Sift [US only]
Similar to Swizzle, Sift turns your mass of email deals into a catalog-like magazine.
Sift also now includes a Shopping Circles feature that lets users create a virtual wishlist from millions of items across thousands of stores. The appeal for consumers here is that the seas of offer emails become easy to browse and genuinely useful. On the downside, however, it is still limited to users in the US.
➤ Sift
MONEY
DollarBird
This was actually one of my favorite apps to launch in 2013, and perhaps hasn’t had the level of fanfare it deserves.
Dollarbird is what you get when you cross a smart calendar app with a budgeting app. Indeed, it uses a familiar calendar layout to help you track and forecast all your spending.
An absolutely imperative feature here too is the ‘recurring’ tab. This is often missing or well-hidden in expenses apps, and it’s useful to be able to tap this when setting up an expense, so that it automatically populates your calendar for future weeks/months.
There’s also a reminder/alarm function, which will ping up a message whenever you’re due to pay something. This can be set for up to four days prior to it coming out of your account.
Two dollars well-spent.
➤ Dollarbird
BUDGT
BUDGT is another beautifully designed app that helps you keep to a budget and manage expenses on a monthly basis.
BUDGT automates all of the associated maths and routine calculations, while making the process of documenting expenses a little less soul-destroying. On both counts, it really does succeed.
➤ BUDGT
BillPin
BillPin is a handy little app for splitting bills between friends and tracking who owes what.
Yes, it’s perhaps aimed primarily at social butterflies, those who regularly rack up bills eating out and getting merry, but it can be used for splitting accommodation expenses and generally manage cashflow between multiple people.
The app syncs a device’s address book and uses Facebook to discover friends and tag them into bills, even if they haven’t downloaded the app.
➤ BillPin
Level [US only]
Level is a real-time money meter app that wants to be your Fitbit for personal spending.
The services inks up with your bank accounts to deliver real-time metrics on your spending, savings and general financial standing. Available for the US market only, Level gives a snapshot of all your available ‘spendable’ income for that day, week, and month.
Level isn’t about sticking all your purchases in categories, such as ‘travel’ and ‘groceries’ – there are other apps for that. It basically analyses and calculates a user’s total income, recurring bills and recommended savings each month. Based on this, it delivers the ‘spendable’ balance broken down by day, week and month. And every time a transaction is complete, these numbers are updated accordingly.
➤ Level
Currency
Currency conversion apps exist in something of a saturated market, but that doesn’t mean there’s not room for one more. Indeed, a new app called Currency launched this year, and it’s a beautiful thing.
The app comes replete with more than 160 currencies, so it likely has you covered. It also has an offline mode, but obviously for you to have up-to-date conversation rates, you will need to connect from time-to-time.
However, Currency is all about the interface and usability – trust us on this one.
➤ Currency
Google Wallet [US only]
Google Wallet finally arrived for iPhone this year, exactly two years to the day after it launched on Android.
You can scan your debit and credit cards into the app, and use them to send money to anyone in the US who has an email address, and you can store credit and debit cards, loyalty programs, and more. It can also be used to pay for things on Google Play, and shop on some mobile websites.
➤ Google Wallet [US Only]
BillGuard [US only]
Launched in the US back in April 2010, BillGuard sells itself as the world’s first ‘people-powered antivirus system for bills’. However, it was an entirely Web-based endeavor until it hit iPhone a few months back.
BillGuard’s predictive algorithms alert users of unexpected charges such as hidden fees, billing errors, scams and fraud on credit card bills. It also issues alerts when a similar dubious charge has been flagged by other users, or receives a complaint elsewhere on the Web. As such, the ‘BillGuard brain’ becomes more accurate over time.
➤ BillGuard
TRAVEL, NAVIGATION AND LOCATION
What3words
Available for iOS, Web and Android, What3words lets you find and share very precise locations via Google Maps with just 3 words. Say wha’? Read on.
It sells itself as a new universal address system, designed to make it easier, and more accurate, to describe exact locations anywhere on Earth.
The UK-based startup has basically partitioned the whole planet into 57 trillion 3m x 3m squares, and assigned each square a unique 3 word address. This will work anywhere that’s searchable on Google Maps – parks, monuments, buildings, residential addresses and everything in between. So, rather than saying “I’ll meet you at The Fox & Hounds pub, 29 Passmore St, London, SW1W 8HR” – or any shorter/longer variant – you would plug these details into What3words to learn that “Dimes Random Tunnel” are the three allocated words for this precise location.
These are the three words you would use to tell people where you’re meeting, which could be over the telephone, by Twitter, Facebook or email – all channels What3words makes it easy to share through.
➤ What3words
Banjo
Banjo launched an iPad-optimized version of its location-based service to help people get involved in events happening around the world from the comfort of their own home.
The company kicked off by using the service during the National Football League (NFL) playoffs, for those who like or follow the sport, but it’s not limited to sports — it can work with any live event. It integrates all the usual social networks to serve up an an on-the-ground view of what’s happening at any time, and lets you see where your friends are and what they’re doing.
➤ Banjo
Field Trip (Google)
Google launched its location-aware Field Trip tour guide app for iOS this year, having launched initially for Android back in September 2012.
Field Trip runs in the background on your phone, triangulating positions via cell phone towers, and only notifies you when you get close to something interesting. This can include local businesses, historical facts, landmarks, art, and any cultural artifact.
➤ Field Trip
Babberly (formerly Jabberly)
Babberly (then called Jabberly) launched its iOS app way back in February, letting users ask questions about a particular location and get answers quickly from those on the ground.
So if you want to know what the top burger joint in your locale is, or where the best cocktail bar is Babberly’s worth a shout.
➤ Babberly
GAMES
Angry Birds Friends
A new installment of Rovio’s hit franchise arrived back in May with Angry Birds Friends, offering a Facebook-powered social twist on the game that pretty much every single person in the galaxy has played by now.
As with the version that has been available on Facebook since last year, the game lets you connect up your Facebook account to compete against friends to achieve the highest score on each level.
➤ Angry Birds Friends
Angry Birds Go
Rovio launched its Mario Kart-style Angry Birds racing game in December, hitting iOS, Windows Phone, Android, AND BlackBerry in one fell swoop.
The Angry Birds franchise is really growing arms and legs now, and based on our tinkerings with this game, it has another hit on its hands.
You’re best password-protecting this baby, as your kid could run up a fairly hefty bill through in-app purchases.
➤ Angry Birds Go
The Croods
Back in March, Angry Birds developer Rovio released a new video game, inspired by the then-upcoming DreamWorks Animation film The Croods.
Players take control of Grug, a prehistoric caveman who has to “survive the wild” by trapping and taming imaginative creatures such as the “Girelephant” and “Molarbear”.
➤ The Croods
QuizUp
QuizUp is striving to be the biggest trivia game in the world, and judging by its inaugural app (for iPhone) it stands a good chance of doing so.
Featuring 100,000 questions across 300 categories, QuizUp follows the likes of Words With Friends by letting you pit your wits against both buddies and strangers from around the world. It also includes one-to-one messaging, discussion boards, and localized leaderboards by city, state and country.
When you choose to play a stranger, it will eke out the most suitable candidate based on your playing history – so if you’re a noob, you’ll likely be put up against a fellow noob. From here on in, you’ll be fighting against the clock to answer each question, for which you have ten seconds for every one of the seven rounds.
It also offers in-app purchases to let you ‘level up’ faster – these XP (experience points) boosters cost $1.99 (double boost), $3.99 (triple boost) and $5.99 (quadruple boost), and means you’ll gain more XP when the boosts are on for each game you play.
➤ QuizUp
Pet Rescue Saga
King, the maker of the hit game Candy Crush, launched an iOS version of the popular Pet Rescue Saga that launched first on Facebook last October.
It calls on players to save animals from two evil snatchers by eliminating colored blocks from the board. Much like King’s earlier cross-platform titles, the game tracks progress and purchases between its mobile and Facebook apps.
➤ Pet Rescue Saga
Dots
Dots is a highly addictive mobile game created by Betaworks, landing first for iPhone before arriving for iPad later in the year.
The idea of the game is rather simple in nature — which probably is what makes it so addictive. Players connect dots in a linear fashion, meaning that you tap a dot of a specific color and connect it with as many dots of that same color.
➤ Dots
FIFA 14
Ahead of the FIFA 2014 World Cup in Brazil next summer, EA launched FIFA 14 as a free download for iOS and Android.
Though this year’s version is free (last year FIFA 13 cost $6.99), it’s targeting revenue from in-app purchases such as unlocking game modes and buying points to form your fantasy team.
➤ FIFA 14
Star Wars: Tiny Death Star
Disney unveiled its first Star Wars-themed game for mobile in November, in collaboration with game studio NimbleBit.
Star Wars: Tiny Death Star is an 8-bit builder game – players find themselves on the dark side of the force helping Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader build a fully-functional Death Star.
Of course Star Wars wouldn’t be what it is without the Rebel Alliance, so players must prevent Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and others from escaping.
➤ Star Wars: Tiny Death Star
Hatch
From the creators of to-do list app Clear comes Hatch, a Tamagotchi-like game bringing virtual pet cuddliness to your iPhone.
Hatch may exist within the App Store’s ‘Games’ category, but it doesn’t see itself as a game. Or an app, for that matter. It’s a living, breathing animal that needs love.
We first previewed Hatch way back in December last year, posing the question: What does it take to make the iPhone feel alive? The answer, it seems, is to transform your iPhone into a cuddly creature.
➤ Hatch
DrawQuest
Having initially been iPad-only, DrawQuest finally made the journey to iPhone and iPod touch in November.
DrawQuest is a social drawing app from 4Chan founder Chris “moot” Poole’s startup Canvas, and launched for iPhone with new features, including a zoomable canvas and the ability to create your own drawing challenges.
➤ DrawQuest
Drawp
Launched way back in February, Drawp threw its hat into the social drawing ring with a neat kid-focused iPad app that lets young ‘uns share their doodles only with those in their parent-approved network.
The founders say they created the app to help address “the need for parents, family, and friends to remain involved and responsive in all aspects of a child’s life.”
The app also works offline, which is good news for kids in transit or any scenario sans Internet connection.
➤ Drawp
Temple Run 2
Temple Run 2, the follow-up to the massively popular Temple Run, landed in the App Store way back in January.
The game follows the same form as its predecessor, with the main characters traversing across all manner of landscapes as they flee the dreadful temple beasts that chase them. It’s a simple concept but it’s one that works well, as players use swipe-based commands to jump, slide, turn and move out of the way of objects in their way.
➤ Temple Run 2
First
Okay, not a game as such, but if you’re into gaming, then First is a slick, 8-bit inspired community mobile app for discussing video games. A social network for gamers, in other words.
First is built around real-time conversations. Just like a traditional message board, it’s possible for anyone in the community to start a video game-related thread by posting either a headline, photo, URL or YouTube clip. The post will then appear within the app for other users to read and comment on.
➤ First
MEDIA & WEATHER
Readmill
Digital reading platform Readmill finally optimized its app for iPhone and iPod touch, almost a year-and-a-half after it first launched for iPad.
Readmill serves up a sweet, social way to read, letting you highlight quotes within a book and share these snippets across the social sphere. With that in mind, it also acts as a social network of sorts, letting you ‘follow’ other bookworms.
It supports most of the major ebook formats including ePub, PDF and Adobe DRM, and lets you buy and bring your books from stores such as Kobo and Feedbooks. Your whole library is stored in your personal cloud, with the reading experience synchronizing across devices, meaning you can pick up from where you left off last night in bed, while on the train to work.
➤ Readmill
ReadQuick
ReadQuick has been helping iPad users read quickly for a while already, but following August’s update, iPhone-users could get involved too.
ReadQuick taps the likes of Pocket and Instapaper to display your saved articles one word at a time – at a pace set by you. It also has a built-in browser that lets you access and save directly to ReadQuick, and tells you how long each article should take to complete based on the stipulated words-per-minute rate.
➤ ReadQuick
Oyster [US only]
Oyster launched a limited preview of its Netflix-style service for ebooks in September, offering unlimited reading of more than 100,000 titles for a set monthly fee. Launching initially for iPhone, it the all-you-can-read subscription service then landed on iPad too.
Oyster costs $9.95 a month and gives unlimited reading of its library – it removed the invite-only limitation of the service and added a 30-day free trial alongside its launch for iPad in October.
➤ Oyster
Spoiler Shield
If your favorite shows or sports are being ruined by Twitter and Facebook spoilers, try Spoiler Shield for iPhone.
You can choose from more than 30 pre-selected TV series including things like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones, to make sure you don’t read anything you’d rather not.
➤ Spoiler Shield
Paragraph Shorts
Paragraph Shorts is a curated iPad magazine, serving up a selection of hand-picked short stories in text, audio and video.
Each week, the guys at Paragraph Shorts select seven stories from the likes of The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The Moth, The Guardian and others, and present them in a beautiful magazine for the public’s consumption.
➤ Paragraph Shorts
Lettrs
Lettrs turns your iPhone into a personal writing desk, transcriber and post office.
The Web-based incarnation of Lettrs serves up a virtual writing desk to write your letter, with a slew of handwriting-esque fonts and paper-types to choose from. When you’re done, you can choose to deliver it digitally – email, Twitter, Facebook, or send as a physical letter.
Physical letters are dispatched from Lettrs’ base in the US, so it costs slightly more for non-US users. But, you can also print it out yourself and send if you’re so inclined.
The iPhone app mimics much of the functionality of the Web-based version, letting you create and deliver personal letters anywhere in the world. It also has a built-in spell-check feature that corrects your spelling as you go-along. Users can also tap their iPhone camera to upload a handwritten letter and deliver it via the lettrs system, though you will need to ensure this is done in clear lighting sans shadows.
Finally, there’s also a microphone feature, letting users dictate directly into the app which is then converted to text – this feature is only enab