Rostami Magic tries its hand at wowing Macworld crowds

Another thing I wasn't expecting to see at Macworld/iWorld 2013: a magic show. But that's just what I got when visiting Rostami Magic's kiosk at Appalooza this week. The developer was showing of its suite of magic apps for iOS and, unsurprisingly, an expo like this made an excellent venue for showing what they can do.

The US$2.99 iForce was up first. This app is billed as being able to make astonishing predictions and it delivered on the show floor. Designed to look like a drawing app, it lets you make predictions about various things -- someone's favorite food, for example -- which will be revealed when you turn your phone over. I saw it "predict" that a show-goer was going to produce a $100 bill from his wallet, and that another would get tails on three coin flips in a row.

iPredict+ (also $2.99 on the App Store) was perhaps even more mesmerizing. To demonstrate this app, a show attendee was asked to pick a card -- any card -- from a standard deck and show it to the rest of us. Then, another onlooker was instructed to call a psychic on her own iPhone, using a number from the magician's Address Book. We listened as the call went to voicemail, but the message accurately pegged the card that'd been drawn.

Rostami's magic apps seem like a perfect, fairly low-cost way to amaze people at parties and other social gatherings and I have to say that I was genuinely impressed by the results they delivered during the demo. They didn't seem simple in the least -- these are high-quality tricks for the digital age, and definitely worth a look.