Readers’ App Reviews – November 2016

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. For me, it was a chance to relax and be thankful to build apps on the best platform ever!

You all weren’t relaxing too much though. My inbox is full of apps from your fellow raywenderlich.com readers. I’ve downloaded them all and picked a few to share with you.

This month we have:

• An app to make you a rockstar sound mixer
• Some games you won’t be able to put down
• An app to find out whats going on around you
• And of course, much more!

Keep reading to see the latest apps released by raywenderlich.com readers like you.

Partly Sunny

We all have a favorite weather app, and my new favorite is Partly Sunny.

Partly Sunny shows the most important information quickly for each location you care about: highs, lows, current temperature, and conditions. Thanks to its integration with Dark Sky, it can also give great information for the near future. For example, it might tell you it will rain in 12 minutes, or snow will continue for 35 minutes.

When you tap a location, you can get a very detailed forecast. You’ll see the entire day hour by hour graphed with temperatures and conditions. Even more information is available like visibility distances, humidity, wind speed, sunrise and sunset times, and more. You can also swipe up past the hourly charts to see a chart for the next 7 days with temperature ranges and expected conditions. Each day also has a detailed view.

Partly Sunny is packed with even more features. It has a rain graphs that show upcoming rain based on strength. You can graph hourly wind speed estimations, humidities, precipitation and more. It even has a dark theme for those that really love a little less white.

If you’re looking to try a new weather app, give Partly Sunny a try. If you’re not looking for a new weather app, give it a try anyway, it just might change your forecast. ;]

• Author: Joe Hribar @joehribar
• Most useful tutorial: The iOS Apprentice
• App Store Link: Check it out!

MyRedBag

MyRedBag is the one stop shop for recipes and grocery lists.

MyRedBag lets you create and save recipes in an easy to manage index. You can even search recipes from other users to find new ideas for your kitchen. You can also easily add the ingredients from any recipe to your grocery list. MyRedBag even lets you schedule your meals in a meal planner. Then make sure you have a grocery list for everything you need to make it happen.

You can share your list with friends and family to make shopping a group exercise. And you can share your recipes with the community so others can taste your special creations.

You can even find stores in your area and submit grocery orders for delivery or pickup based on availability for the stores in your area.

MyRedBag is the one and only Recipe and Shopping app you should ever need.

• Author: Patrick Burgess @myredbag
• Most useful tutorial: iOS 7 by Tutorials
• App Store Link: Check it out!

iMonstickers

iMonstickers were painstakingly designed to help you express emotions… if your emotions involve vampires, ghosts, or mummies. :]

iMonstickers has a sticker for everything. It’s got sad stickers, surprise stickers, scared, shy, and more! iMonstickers were great for Halloween, but we all have a little monster in us year round. ;]

• Author: Daniel Devesa @dadederk
• Most useful tutorial: Collection Views video tutorial series
• App Store Link: Check it out!

hearEQ

hearEQ will help you learn, train, and perfect your ear for adjusting an equalizer.

The ability to adjust an equalizer effectively can transform music. Whether you’re a sound engineer, musician, or just an avid listener, a well tuned equalizer can take music to the next level.

hearEQ will help you understand how each frequency band can affect the music. You’ll be able to recreate popular effects or just balance music. hearEQ uses your favorite songs on your device to create custom ear training exercises that will teach you about individual frequency bands and then help you hone in your ear as you practice tuning. hearEQ supports both standard 10-band and 30-band equalizers like you’d find in iTunes or even professional boards.

There is also a quiz mode playing your song with random adjustments and letting you listen and guess the applied equalization. You’ll get 10 questions covering ten frequencies and a score to finish. As your score goes up, you should notice an improved ability to hear the difference in the music. Was the music sounding a bit hollow? Probably a 1000Hz cut. Was it too muddy? Probably a 500Hz boost.

hearEQ is great for beginners looking to get into sound mixing. But experts also appreciated the change to clearly control and quiz themselves to improve their sensitive ears.

• Author: Alex Andrews @leakywellington
• Most useful tutorial: MVVM Tutorial with ReactiveCocoa
• App Store Link: Check it out!

San Jacinto

The Battle of San Jacinto was an important battle in Texas history. This app brings the book “The Battle of San Jacinto” by James W. Pohl to life on the iPad and iPhone.

The original text is enhanced with pictures from the battle sights today as well as illustrations of how the site looked before. There are panoramic photos of the areas today. You can pan around with your finger or even move your iPad around to feel like you’re there. Zoom in for complete details.

There are also maps of the battlegrounds and surrounding area from the Southwestern Historical Quarterly by Jeffrey D. Dunn. You can get an idea of what the landscape was when the battle took place and how landmarks influenced the outcome.

San Jacinto is a fantastic historical reference and immersive learning tool.

• Author: Larry Ketchersid @josaramedia
• Most useful tutorial: The iOS Apprentice
• App Store Link: Check it out!

Can Knockout

Can Knockout is a classic carnival game right on your iPhone or iPad so you can play anytime.

Can Knockout shows a stack of cans and lets you flick a baseball to knock them down. You only get so many baseballs so you’ll have to aim carefully.

Each time you knock down a stack, you’ll get a chance at a new stack in a different challenging layout. As you work through levels you’ll even encounter some exploding cans.

Can Knockout is definitely addicting. My highscore is 55 if you care to try and beat it. ;]

• Author: Andrey Negovskiy @andreichn
• Most useful tutorial: Intermediate Swift video tutorial series
• App Store Link: Check it out!