May the apps be with you!
May is here and so are many of our Apple Watches. Many of you have been hard at work to make sure us early adopters don’t have empty watches. The first raywenderlich.com tutorial-driven Apple Watch apps are here!
This month we’ve got a full roster of apps:
- A Mac app we can all appreciate
- Apps for your Apple Watch
- Some apps to get us out and about
- And of course, much more!
Read on to see a portion of what the community is building this month.
LinuxDocs
As developers man pages have a special place in our hearts. The time inevitably comes when we need to sprinkle some incantations into the terminal and hope for the best. But those commands don’t need to be a mystery, LinuxDocs is here to help.
LinuxDocs brings a huge collection of manpages right to your iPhone. They’re stored offline so you never have to worry about being without. You’ll be able to easily search and filter them. But if you just need a quick fix, cheatsheets are the tldr version build right in the app with common commands and combinations shown.
- Author: Praveen Gowda I V @praveen_vvstgy
- Most useful tutorial: Dynamic Table View Cell Height in iOS 8 and Swift
- App Store Link: Check it out!
Bit Journey
Bit Journey drops you into a huge open world filled with opportunities and enemies. The world is filled with travel vortexes spawning endless enemies seeking to dominate the world. You’re left to survive as long as you can against the army of enemies filling the world.
You can command one of three heroes to survive the world. Choose from a ninja, soldier, or medieval warrior. Everything is destructible. Burrow into the ground to avoid enemies but be careful, skeletons lurk below. Conquer secret bases, accomplish difficult missions, and improve your character’s skills.
- Author: Marcos Morais
- Most useful tutorial: Sprite Kit Tutorial: How to Make a Platform Game Like Super Mario Brothers – Part 2
- App Store Link: Check it out!
Paste
Copy and Paste as a longtime feature on Macs hasn’t changed much over the years. Paste is a powerful clipboard manager for your Mac that teaches your computer some fancy new tricks.
Paste saves a history of all the things you’ve copied for later. A simple keystroke shows everything you’ve copied in a beautiful fullscreen interface. You can select individual copies to paste them or even share them with other applications You can search your history by content, type, and application it was copied in.
- Author: Dmitry Obukhov @paste_app
- Most useful tutorial: Swift Language Highlights: An Objective-C Developer’s Perspective
- App Store Link: Check it out!
Moon Tunes
Moon Tunes is a Music App replacement designed specially for kids. Rather than relying heavily on text that requires children be able to read, Moon Tunes relies entirely on color and symbols. Parents can easily add music to the app from their iTunes libraries, selecting a color and symbol for each song they add.
Kids easily mentally link their favorite songs with colors and symbols and can quickly find the song they’d like to listen to in one of three interactive music players. The music players feature additional sound effects to spice up the music and cute graphics. Kids will love listening to their music in Moon Tunes.
- Author: Paddy Donnelly @paddydonnelly
- Most useful tutorial: iOS 7 Multitasking Tech Talk Video
- App Store Link: Check it out!
QR Studio Pro
QR Studio Pro is a full featured QR scanner and generator. QR Studio Pro lets you generate a variety of QR codes with various colors and layouts making them instantly sharable.
QR Studio Pro is also a powerful QR scanner with extra fast decoding. You can decode from the camera, imports, and Copy/Paste. There is also an iOS extension so you can use QR Studio Pro within other apps when QR scanning is needed.
And with support for the Apple Watch, you’ll be ready to present your QR codes anytime, anywhere. And Pan was nice enough to share some promo codes for everyone. So snag em quick! XYYJFJ374T9L, JWKEX47FJF97
- Author: Pan Yunqian
- Most useful tutorial: WatchKit FAQ
- App Store Link: Check it out!
WebWatch
Checking websites for status updates is a fact of life in today’s world. Sports scores, order statuses, price changes, daily content, etc are all things we check everyday, often many times a day.
WebWatch makes it easier than ever to track your favorite website. Simply navigate to your favorite website then crop the section you’d like to see. Every so often, WebWatch will automatically refresh the site and snap a screenshot.
WebWatch will sync up to 6 websites to your Apple Watch for quick checks. WebWatch also has a today widget for quick checks on the iPhone as well.
- Author: Nicholas Chan @komocode
- Most useful tutorial: WatchKit FAQ
- App Store Link: Check it out!
Curve Run
Curve Run is an addictive minimal arcade style game. As you roll along the track, you’ll have to dodge the obstacles while collecting as many stars as possible. The controls are easy to learn, hold left to ride the left side of the track, hold right to ride the right. releasing your touch will leave you in the center of the track.
While its easy to learn, its certainly difficult to master. Obstacles become more difficult while the track becomes faster. See how your scores stack up against the world and friends on the GameCenter leaderboards. Challenge friends and strangers in realtime over GameTime for the endurance race of your life.
- Author: Xiaolei Niu
- Most useful tutorial: The iOS Apprentice
- App Store Link: Check it out!
Block Racer
Block Racer is a retro racer thats beautiful in its simplicity. Just tap and hold to speed up, release to slow down. The race track spans just one screen.
There are of course obstacles in your way. Don’t jump the ramps too quickly or risk falling apart. Avoid the acid drips as they fall from the sky. Watch out for the menacing spike traps. And be prepared for cannon fire and time your jumps accordingly.
There are 50 levels to battle through. And GameCenter leaderboards will make sure your friends know how whose the best.
- Author: John McManus @appyappster
- Most useful tutorial: Sprite Kit Animations and Texture Atlases in Swift
- App Store Link: Check it out!
Monster Trucks for Babies
Monster Trucks is perfect for the iPad’s youngest fans. Perfectly suited for 1-4 year olds, Monster Trucks is advertisement and in app purchase free so kids are free to play.
There are twelve awesome monster trucks to choose from and seven color race tracks. There are ramps, tire stacks, traffic cones, and of course cars to run over. Controls are super easy to get your monster truck roaring down the track. And just to make sure you have plenty of fun, there are rockets attached so your truck can do more than roar.
- Author: Fabio Bassan
- Most useful tutorial: Sprite Kit Tutorial: Space Shooter
- App Store Link: Check it out!
Born 2 Bike
Born 2 Bike is purpose built for anyone taking advantage of bike rental services. If you’ve got a bike rental service in your city, Born 2 Bike might be for you.
Born 2 Bike is in more than ten countries and fifty cities. Born 2 Bike will show you the nearest stations so you can pick up a bike fast. Stations will show you the number of available bikes and open parking slots. You can favorite your frequent stations or share them with friends. Then you can use Born 2 Bike to keep track of time and avoid late fees. You can also see bike stations along a map so you can find a drop-off zone on your way.
- Author: Josep Gonzalez @j_gonfer
- Most useful tutorial: Custom View Controller Presentation Transitions with Swift
- App Store Link: Check it out!
Simply Smoothies
Simply Smoothies is perfect for keeping track of your favorite and in progress smoothie recipes. Simple Smoothies has more than 100 greens, fruits, veggies, nuts, proteins, sweeteners, and other ingredients to build your smoothies from.
Simply Smoothies will help guide you to appropriate amounts for each ingredient to ensure a balanced, delicious smoothie. Simply Smoothies will even calculate Nutrition Facts for your smooth recipe.
To top it off, Simply Smoothies has an Apple Watch extension so you can access your smoothie recipes write from your wrist.
- Author: Nathan Hodge @smoothiesapp
- Most useful tutorial: What’s New in Swift 1.2
- App Store Link: Check it out!
AnyTrail
AnyTrail is an easy to use trail recorder sitting right in your pocket.
AnyTrail will plot and save your path as you go. Its easy to see your past expeditions, retrace your steps, or share favorite trails with friends. You can add photos and videos to your trails. Take notes based on location to avoid any pitfalls the next time.
AnyTrail also has all the essential trail recorder information such as trail length, trek duration, start time, average speed. If you enjoy hiking this is a worthwhile app to have in your pocket.
- Author: Victor Gao @AnyTrailApp
- Most useful tutorial: How To Make an App Like RunKeeper: Part 1
- App Store Link: Check it out!
Honorable Mentions
Each and every month I get more submissions than I have time to review. I download every app and see what its about, but I can’t write about them all. I love seeing all the apps submitted by readers like you. Its no a popularity contest or even a favorite picking contest. I just try to get a glimpse of what the community is working on through your submissions. Take a moment and checkout these other great apps I didn’t have time to showcase properly.
Division Z
Car Parking free
Line Duel
Space Troubles
Weasel&Bird
Tenorshare Card Data Recovery
Battery Adviser
MosaicImage
Hexaplay
Snappy Word
Dodging Asteroids
Make Your Song
Custom Conga
QuickSchedule
Brainess
Todoly Reminders
Rhyming Words Target Shooting
Periodic Table Investigator
Bubble Pop Letters Numbers Colors and Shapes
BlastRPG
Bouncing Bird: The Bird’s Adventure
Read To Me World
hooploopn
Hexiz FREE
RGB 9
Chess Meister
Walk Me Alarm Clock
Run2Earth
Redacted
Where To Go From Here?
Each month, I really enjoy seeing what our community of readers comes up with. The apps you build are the reason we keep writing tutorials. Make sure you tell me about your next one, submit here!
If you saw an app your liked, hop to the App Store and leave a review! A good review always makes a dev’s day. And make sure you tell them you’re from raywenderlich.com; this is a community of makers!
If you’ve never made an app, this is the month! Check out our free tutorials to become an iOS star. What are you waiting for – I want to see your app next month!
Readers’ App Reviews – May 2015 is a post from: Ray Wenderlich
The post Readers’ App Reviews – May 2015 appeared first on Ray Wenderlich.