New Apps
Adobe Comp CC (free) — Adobe’s new composition app lets iPad users wireframe ideas with actual assets by quickly laying down images, text frames, and shapes, and then transferring the project as a native file directly into the CC versions of InDesign, Photoshop or Illustrator to finish up. The app provides an infinite version history to provide a complete, step-by-step timeline of the entire workflow process. Over a hundred free, high-quality TypeKit fonts are provided right in the app, and Creative Cloud subscribers can access any other fonts available to them as well, while multi-app integration allows you to pull in graphics from Photoshop or Illustrator, drawing from Photoshop Sketch and Illustrator Draw, and captured content from Shape CC and Color CC.
Adobe Slate (free) — Another new entry from Adobe, this app allows users to create unique designs and layouts for content such as newsletters, reports, and more, essentially turning them into full rich media stories. Words and images can be put together and then animated with fluid and elegant motion effects, with photos selected from the iOS photo library, Lightroom, or Creative Cloud files, and action buttons can provide links to allow readers to respond, donate, subscribe, or more. A variety of magazine-style themes provide some very polished designs to choose from, and the finished story can be easily shared on Twitter, Facebook, via e-mail or text message, or embedded on a web site, in formats designed to look great on everything from an iPhone to a full desktop display.
Office Lens (free) — Microsoft adds to its iOS Office toolbox with this newest app that lets users take a picture of any document, picture, or whiteboard and turn it into an editable Word or PowerPoint file or static PDF. This goes beyond the camera-based scanner apps that have long been available on the App Store by providing full optical character recognition and direct Microsoft Word and PowerPoint export all with a few taps on the screen, making this free tool a really handy way to turn a paper document into something that you can then work with and modify as needed.
Riff (free) — Facebook adds to the game of video-based social media services with a new app that allows users to record and publicly post video clips online that other users can add to and pass on to their friends, who can then add their own clips, and so on, as a sort of crowdsourced or “flash mob” movie project, depending on how you choose to look at it. There are none of Facebook’s oft-unclear privacy settings involved in this one either — everything is simply public. In other words, the videos you post on Riff are there for the world to see, and add to, although contributions remain somewhat anonymous unless you actually post them onto your Facebook timeline.
Updates
Evernote (free) — The latest update to the popular digital memory app adds some nice improvements for capturing notes using your device’s camera, with an auto-capture feature that will automatically detect and grab an optimal shot of whatever you’re pointing the camera at, LinkedIn integration to grab more info when scanning in business cards with the camera, and the ability to more easily review images and crop or rotate them before saving them into a note. Additional enhancements include suggested notes in the Today screen widget, as well as the ability to mark reminders complete or snooze them directly from the notification banners.
OmniFocus ($30) — This latest update brings all of the functionality of OmniFocus for iPad to the iPhone in an updated, universal app. OmniFocus iPhone users can now get access to features that were previously unavailable in the iPhone-only app, including review, perspective editing and creation, grouping and sorting, project perspectives, and support for all custom perspective settings from the Mac and iPad versions. Landscape mode is also now supported on the iPhone, and iPhone 6 Plus users will particularly appreciate the new iPad style interface, including a split-screen landscape mode. The app also adds a few other nice new general enhancements, including a customizable Today Extension which can now use any custom perspective, a tiled home screen that can be be customized and rearranged, and some nice improvements to the extension architecture. iPhone users who already own the iPad version get this as a free update, while those who have only purchased the iPhone version should be able to take advantage of an upgrade pricing arrangement that Omni is expected to be offering.
