This may have been a slow enough news week that our fearless leader gave away an iPad, which if you haven’t entered can be found here, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have apps for you. Yet another stock iOS app bites the dust when we show you a radical take on weather for the iPhone. A popular text editor for iPad gets a radical update that warrants another look at the app. There’s a utility that tweaks OS X for easier window control.
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iPhone/iPod Touch
Haze is yet another well designed utility app in the vein of Rise. (Another featured app here on Macgasm.) This is just a simple app that gives you the current temp and indicates the coming trend with a background animation. You get the upcoming five days along the top. You can swap to the likelihood of precipitation and sunrise time. If you’re looking for more info you can tap the temperature/percentage/time until sunrise/sunset to get more detail. There are several themes available when you open the app, and the app tells you that more will be added the more you use the app. Haze is $0.99 and available from the App Store.
iPad: iA Writer
iA Writer is among the best of the iPad text editors. A recent update completely overhauled the iCloud engine and improved the keyboard. You get a new row of keys above the on-screen keyboard that give you access to some frequently used symbol keys as well as easy navigation. iA Writer still has Markdown support and Dropbox integration, making this a pretty formidable contender for the best text editor on the iPad. The app is only $0.99 and you can download it here.
Mac: Right Zoom
If you switched from Windows, OS X can sometimes be a little alien. The lack of a Maximize command, outside of full-screen mode, can be the biggest stumbling block for new users. Right Zoom converts the green button in the “stoplight” to make a window fill the screen. There are tweaks to allow you to create a hotkey, whitelist or blacklist apps that are included in the behavior, or make it so that you have to alt+click to activate the Maximize effect. It’s a free app that you can download here.
Web: Mailstrom
Trying to keep your Inbox clean takes the sort of dedication to filing and deleting that most of us can’t muster. Mailstrom is a beta web app that scans your email daily, gives you some rough counts of the senders and allows you to delete or archive them en masse. You get a daily summary emailed to you in the morning, which may be a bit of an irony, and then you can log into the tool and get your maintenance on. This doesn’t replace your email client; this is simply for quick mass deletions. Mailstrom only works with IMAP accounts. It’s free and you can download it here.
Game of the Week: Sela the Space Pirates
If you’re a fan of old school arcade games, this will likely be right up your alley. Sela the Space Pirate emulates the old shoot ’em ups like Rtype or Geometry Wars. Sela is a loot crazed pilot killing every alien in sight and collecting the coins they leave behind. The coins then are used to upgrade the ship. It’s simple but effective, and should satisfy fans of classic arcade games.
