Review Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Daily iPhone App: Spice Invaders

by Mike Schramm (Feb 9th, 2012)

If you're tired of tower defense games, I don't blame you. Feel free to skip this post, but let me say this before you go: I wouldn't spotlight yet another tower defense game if it wasn't special. That's why Spice Invaders has made the cut. The standard tower defense tropes are in place. Build and ...

Daily iPad App: Tweetbot emerges as a top Twitter client for the iPad

by Megan Lavey-Heaton (Feb 8th, 2012)

I admit I was late to the Tweetbot bandwagon. I was tempted by the initial reviews, but wasn't keen to spend the money. Yeah, it was $2.99. But, if I wanted to spend money on a Twitter app, I wanted to buy one and have that be it for awhile. The free native Twitter app, which evolved from Tweetie, ...

Daily Mac App: PopClip brings iOS-style copy and paste to your Mac

by Kelly Hodgkins (Feb 8th, 2012)

PopClip is a lightweight Mac utility that improves your ability to work with text. It sits in the menu bar and gives you an iOS-style popup that lets you cut, copy and paste text. You can also search for the selected text, open text links, correct spelling, and more. It's a real time saver once ...

Daily iPhone App: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective scares up some fun

by Mike Schramm (Feb 8th, 2012)

I've been waiting for this one for a while. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is a title that won accolades on the Nintendo DS last year, and it's now arrived on iOS in a universal version (that's free to download to boot). The idea is that you're a ghostly "phantom detective" who must solve his own ...

VooMote Zapper universal remote for iOS: A first look and a rant

by Steven Sande (Feb 7th, 2012)

Zero1.tv has released its new VooMote Zapper (US$69.95) universal remote for iOS devices into the wild, and it's also now in your nearby Apple Store. I had an opportunity to try the new device out over the last week, and while less expensive and smaller than the VooMote One remote we mentioned at ...

WiebeTech Drive eRazer Ultra provides super-secure drive wiping

by Steven Sande (Feb 7th, 2012)

For Mac repair shops, enterprise tech support teams, and consultants who need to wipe all data off of hard drives before selling or recycling old Macs, there's now a fast way to erase those drives without tying up a machine for a long time. WiebeTech has a new device called the Drive eRazer Ultra ...

Daily Mac App: Book Palette adds ten new templates to iBooks Author

by Steven Sande (Feb 7th, 2012)

That didn't take long. Only a few weeks after Apple's iBooks Author app debuted, template publisher Jumsoft began shipping Book Palette (US$2.99), a collection of ten professionally designed templates for iBooks Author. I had an opportunity to try Book Palette, which is packaged as a Mac app. Once ...

Daily iPhone App: 7 Little Words will cast a spell on you

by Mike Schramm (Feb 7th, 2012)

Puzzlejuice adds all kinds of bells, whistles and fun to the "word game" genre. The equally excellent 7 Little Words (free) goes in the opposite direction, boiling wordplay down to its core. It offers just seven words and a series of letters (in groups of two or three at a time) to spell them ...

Mike Daisey's "The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" is funny, forceful agitprop

by Michael Rose (Feb 6th, 2012)

If you're looking for coverage of working conditions at Foxconn and other Apple manufacturing partners, there's plenty to go around. The drumbeat of sharply critical stories continued today with CNN's interview of a Foxconn worker; this follows a scathing New York Times story from late January ...

Daily iPad App: Monster Wars is a great addition to Legendary Wars series

by Mike Schramm (Feb 6th, 2012)

I first saw Monster Wars a little while ago at Macworld as Liv Games was just publishing it, but the title has been out for a little while now and I've had a little longer to play with it. Monster Wars is not only another huge content pack for Legendary Wars, with tons of new stages, modes and ...

Daily Mac app: Droplr

by Mel Martin (Feb 6th, 2012)

Do you want to share files easily and quickly? Then take a look at Droplr, which has been around for some time and recently hit the Mac App Store in an improved version 2. Droplr is free and easy way to share images, documents and other files. You can run it from a web browser or the Mac app which ...

Daily iPhone App: NFL Flick Quarterback

by Kelly Hodgkins (Feb 3rd, 2012)

If you want to pass like Tom Brady from the comfort of your living room chair, then you should grab a copy of NFL Flick Quarterback for the iPhone. The app is a flick-style passing game that lets you take on the role of an NFL quarterback. The game isn't a full-fledged football simulation like ...

Friday Favorite: Optimal Layout brings app switching and window controls to your fingertips

by TJ Luoma (Feb 3rd, 2012)

Optimal Layout is a great utility that fundamentally alters the way that I interact with my Mac. In short, it gives me the ability to use my keyboard to quickly change between windows. That might sound like what you're been doing with ⌘ + Tab, but there are a few important differences. The first ...

Daily iPad App: Remarks for iPad tops the class in note-taking apps

by Megan Lavey-Heaton (Feb 3rd, 2012)

Two of the things that enchanted me most at Macworld | iWorld 2012 was the Jot stylus and a preview of Readdle's Remarks app. I've spent the past week looking at different note-taking apps to use with my new Jot Pro while waiting for Remarks to come out. The preview held not one, not two, but three ...

Daily iPhone App: Lingibli

by Kelly Hodgkins (Feb 2nd, 2012)

Learning a new language can be challenging, especially when you're not in an environment where that langue is predominant. Lingibli is an iPhone app that'll bridge that gap by helping you learn vocabulary and basic phrases from native speakers. The app will teach you the top 100 words which ...