iPad By Davis: “Best apps, books, and games to enjoy this Holiday season” plus 9 more |
- Best apps, books, and games to enjoy this Holiday season
- Rock out with Santa during the holidays with Santa Rockstar for iPhone
- Debug 4: Dave Teare and 1Password
- iPad Basics: How To Identify Which iPad Model You Have
- How to search Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Wolfram|Alpha using Siri
- 2012 iMore readers choice awards
- Review — The Simpsons: Tapped Out for iPad
- iMore show 330: 2012 year in review
- How to track Santa on your iPhone and iPad
- Monday Brief: EiCs name their Best Devices of 2012
| Best apps, books, and games to enjoy this Holiday season Posted: 24 Dec 2012 05:26 PM PST
It's Christmas Eve! And in the mass craziness that comes with the holidays, sometimes a nice break with a good app, game, or book is what you need. That's where iMore is here to help! We've rounded up some of our favorite Holiday apps and games for you to enjoy during the holidays and your time off work and school. Santa Rockstar
Santa Rockstar is a Guitar Hero-style game featuring rock 'n roll versions of popular Christmas songs and Santa Clause. You must help Santa deliver presents in the Merry Christmas Stage sled by touring around the world with the Reindeer Band. If you like Guitar Hero and Tap Tap Revolution type games, rock music, and Santa Clause, then Santa Rockstar is a must-have.
Cut the Rope: Holiday Gift
Who doesn't love the adorable little Om Nom -- in a Santa Hat? Cut the Rope: Holiday Gift is the popular game with a fun, festive twist. If you're not familiar with the game, you simply cut ropes just the right way with the goal of delivering candy to the cute little Om Nom. But be careful, you must avoid spiders, spikes, and other obstacles in order to successfully get that candy to Om Nom.
Angry Birds Seasons
Here's another popular iPhone and iPad game with a holiday twist -- Angry Birds Seasons. In this version of Angry Birds, a new level was unlocked every day this month with Christmas Day revealing the last level. But even if you haven't been playing these levels since Dec 1st, you can still enjoy playing through them all now. Angry Birds Seasons marathon during Christmas Eve? Sounds like a plan!
Doodle Jump Christmas Special
And here's yet another popular game with a special Christmas edition just for the holidays -- Doodle Jump Christmas Special. In this special version of Doodle Jump, the goal is still the same, to get as high as you can, but the surrounding and enemies are now Christmas related. For example, you must watch out for the chill-breath monster that will freeze you, and avoid other scary monsters dressed up in Christmas gear. You can also purchase other festive characters with coins that you earn in the game (or buy as in-app purchases).
A Charlie Brown Christmas
A Charlie Brown Christmas is one of the most classic Christmas stories and you can enjoy it right on your iPhone and iPad as an interactive story. This flip-style book is extremely well made, fun, and engaging for kids and adults alike. In the story, you must help Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the rest of the Peanuts gang as they try to find the true meaning of Christmas.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Here's another great book too add to your interactive-iOS-books collection -- How the Grinch Stole Christmas! Embark on the tale of the grouch Grinch who hates Who-ville's holiday celebrations and plans to steal all the presents to prevent Christmas from coming with professional narrations and beautiful, enlarged artwork. For the little ones in your life, the words on the page will highlight as they are read so that
ElfYourselfYou're sure to create some holiday cheer with your family by creating fun videos with ElfYourself. Just watch the video above... enough said!
TextPics
Don't be one of the boring mass-texters that sends out a "Merry Christmas!" text to everyone in their contacts list. Instead, pick up TextPics and be the mass-texter (or not) that sends out a fun little text graphic in celebration of the holiday. TextPics includes many different options for Christmas and Hunukkah as well as other holidays and special occasions.
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| Rock out with Santa during the holidays with Santa Rockstar for iPhone Posted: 24 Dec 2012 03:36 PM PST
Santa Rockstar is a Guitar Hero-style game featuring rock 'n roll versions of popular Christmas songs and Santa Clause. You must help Santa deliver presents in the Merry Christmas Stage sled by touring around the world with the Reindeer Band. If you like Guitar Hero and Tap Tap Revolution type games, rock music, and Santa Clause, then Santa Rockstar is a must-have. Between five different stages, two of which must be unlocked, there are 21 songs included with Santa Rockstar. There are also a lot of different guitars, picks, pedals, and amps available to boost your performance and a special Rock Power skill that helps you rack up those points.
There are four different characters available in Rockstar Santa: Santa Rockstar, Genny The Gingerbread Guitar Legend, Rudolph the Rock Lord, and Santa Jaws. Characters and other items must be purchased in the store with coins that can be earned during gameplay or bought as in-app purchases. You can also earn more coins by connecting to Facebook and sharing your scores with your friends. Seriously, this game rocks.
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| Debug 4: Dave Teare and 1Password Posted: 24 Dec 2012 02:32 PM PST
Guy and Rene talk to Dave Teare, co-founder of Agile Bits and co-developer of 1Password for Mac, iOS, and pretty damn near everywhere else, about project management, killing features, customer support, the challenges of going cross-platform, and the motivational value of coding Java for HP. GuestHosts
FeedbackYell at us via the Twitter accounts above (or the same names on ADN). Loudly. 
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| iPad Basics: How To Identify Which iPad Model You Have Posted: 24 Dec 2012 09:44 AM PST There are a number of reasons why it might be important to identify which iPad model you have, or which iPad model you are considering buying. For starters, it might well influence what price you are willing to pay or can expect to receive when buying or selling an iPad. Luckily, it's a very easy [...]         Related Stories
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| How to search Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Wolfram|Alpha using Siri Posted: 24 Dec 2012 10:11 AM PST Complete guide to Siri commands for searching the web with Google and information with Wolfram|AlphaIf you need information, chances are Siri can help you find it. Apple currently enables Siri to search Google (or Yahoo! or Bing) for general information, and Wolfram|Alpha for computational knowledge. You can use Siri to find anything you would normally type into a web search box, only there's no typing needed. Just ask, and you'll get back everything from the latest celebrity gossip to the answers to that nagging math questions to a listing of the best free apps for your iPhone. How to search the web with SiriSiri can search the web using whichever search engine you've set as default in Settings, under Safari. Unless you've changed it, that's Google. Yahoo! or Microsoft's Bing are the other options.
  How to check alternate search engines with SiriIf you don't want to change your default search engine, but still want to check a different search engine, Siri can do that too.
 How to query Wolfram|Alpha with SiriSiri also has Wolfram|Alpha built right in. That means Siri can help you get answers to everything from basic equations to more advanced computations.
 How to get more help with Siri
If you still need help searching for information with Siri, or using any other Siri feature, head on over to our Siri Forum and ask away! 
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| 2012 iMore readers choice awards Posted: 24 Dec 2012 09:02 AM PST
The best iPhone and iPad hardware and software, news and events, apps and accessories of 2012 -- as chosen by you!We asked you to tell us your favorite iOS devices, features, news, events, apps, games, and accessories. The only condition was that had to have happened, or been introduced or majorly updated in 2012. Nothing old. Only new. And you told us by the thousands. Now the votes are in. The polls are closed. The results have been tallied. Your favorites have been named. And right here, right now, they'll be revealed... These are your 2012 iMore readers choice awards! iOS device of the year: iPhone 5
Starting in March with the first Retina iPad, the iPad 3, and the first 1080p Apple TV, the Apple TV 3, moving on to September with the 16:9, 4-inch iPhone 5 and iPod touch 5, and capping things off in October with another iPad, the iPad 4, and an all-new device, the iPad mini, Apple released an unprecedented amount of new iOS devices in 2012. The runner up, with almost 27% of the vote, is the iPad mini. The winner, earning almost 57% of the vote, available in white and silver or black and slate, with a bigger screen yet thinner and lighter at the same time, and blisteringly fast LTE networking, is the iPhone 5. iOS feature of the year: Siri
With iOS 6, Apple introduced Passbook and an all-new Maps app, enhanced Mail, Phone, and Safari, added Guided Access and better support for China, enabled Shared Photo Streams and let FaceTime loose on cellular, integrated Facebook, and brought and even more capable Siri to the iPad. And it's those last two that got your attention. The runner up, with almost 23% of the vote, is Facebook integration. The winner, earning almost 37% of the vote, is the iPad working, movie buffing, sports scoring, restaurant reserving, Siri. Biggest story of the year: The iPad goes mini
Not only did Apple update almost their entire product lineup in 2012, and most of it over the course of a month in the fall, they also updated the products themselves in equally unprecedented fashion. The iPhone 5 and iPod touch got taller screens. The iPad got an iPad mini-varient. All of them ditched the old-school Dock for the all-new Lightning connector, and the almost all of them went 4G LTE. If that wasn't enough, Apple CEO Tim Cook also shook up Apple's upper-management. So what was your biggest story of the year? The runner up, with almost 24% of the vote, is apple's management shake up. The winner, with almost 33% of the vote, is Apple introducing the smaller, thinner, lighter, non-Retina but still ridiculously popular iPad mini. Biggest failure of the year: Apple Maps
You can't have the sweet without the sour, the good without the bad. 2012 saw Apple struggle to keep their online services online, with repeated outages for iMessage, Siri, Game Center, and iCloud. Apple also remained mired in patent litigation, settling with HTC but still feuding across geographies with Samsung and [Motorola](http://ww. Unbelievably, even though Apple could push the iPhone 5 across the world at a lightning pace, they somehow couldn't manage to get Lightning adapters into stores to connect them. And while Siri reliability gave Apple headaches last year, iOS 6 Maps gave them a black eye this year. Yet Apple wasn't the only one with failures on their record -- Twitter screwed over the developers that brought them to the dance, Google's "don't be evil" got even more laughable than ever, and even Instagram started putting their interests before ours. The runner up, with just over 9% of the vote, is Apple's failure to get Lightning adapters into stores at anything approaching a reasonable timeframe. The Social app of the year: Facebook 5.0
In the beginning, developer Joe Hewitt made a great (for it's time) Facebook app for iPhone. It was, and remains, one of the most popular apps on the platform. Then Hewitt grew disenchanted with Apple's policies and left the project. Then the problems began. Facebook for iPhone became buggy and stayed buggy. It's website-in-a-thin-app-wrapper architecture became slow. It's throw-every-feature-in-the-sidebar layout became unwieldy. It's the-iPad-isn't-mobile soundbite rang hollow. And then something remarkable happened... Facebook woke up. They pushed support out to the iPad, and they rebuilt the iPhone app entirely, and natively. Facebook 5.0 might not be perfect, but it's lightyears ahead of where it was, and it finally looks like it's going in the right direction. The runner up, with almost 25% of the vote, is Twitterrific 5. The winner, with just over 60% of the vote, is the new, native, still unwieldy but now at least usable, almost enjoyable, Facebook 5.0. iOS education app of the year: iTunes U
Unlike the massive, almost monstrous iTunes desktop app, Apple has always had separate apps for iOS: iTunes Store, App Store, and iBookstore. However, podcasts and iTunes U were originally shoved into the iTunes Store app. No longer. At the education event that added textbooks to iBooks, Apple also announced an all new, all separate iTunes U app. The runner up, with just over 19% of the vote, is Khan's Academy. The winner, with almost 65% of the vote, is the education packed iTunes U. iOS music app of the year: Podcasts
Read all that about iTunes U? The same applies to Podcasts. Originally part of the iTunes Store app, Apple split Podcasts out in the late summer and gave it its own, dedicated app. Unlike iTunes U, Podcasts got off to a rocky, buggy start. Apple's been steadily improving it over the intervening months, and while it's still far from perfect, it's become very, very popular. The runner up, with almost 24% of the vote, is Rdio 2.0. The winner, with just over 42% of the vote, is Podcasts. iOS photo app of the year: Instagram 3.0
It's been quite a year for Instagram, everyone's favorite social photo filtering and sharing network. They attracted a huge user base, diversified to Android, got acquired by Facebook for $1 billion, cut off support for Twitter cards, and then modified their terms of service to alienate a percentage of that huge user base. And through it all, they kept updating their app, adding new features and filters, altering and improving their user interface. The runner up, with almost 40% of the vote, is Camera+ 3.0 The winner, with almost 52% of the vote, is Instagram 3.0 iOS productivity app of the year: Gmail 2.0
If there's any lesson to be learned this year, it's that giant social services companies giveth and taketh away. 2012 saw Google release their first really good set of native apps on iOS, and in general. They redesigned to be better looking and re-architected to be better working, and perhaps none more so than Gmail 2.0. It provides multiple account support, yet another implementation of the ubiquitous hamburger-button-and-basement-sidebar interface, and overall a very quick, very usable experience. Yet no sooner did it come out than Google announced they're abandoning ActiveSync for regular Gmail accounts, and won't be supporting any new connections on new devices. But, hey, Gmail 2.0! The runner up, with over 16% of the vote, is Fantastical for iPhone. The winner, with over 42% of the vote, is Gmail 2.0. iOS reading app of the year: Pocket
In 2012 Read it Later re-invented itself as Pocket. While it's original name was incredibly informative, the new one was a stronger brand, and exemplified the service's new focus on more than just reading, especially video. Their focus on multiple platforms, including Android and Mac, let people who owned both iOS devices and non-iOS devices keep their content synced between them. Since then, Pocket hasn't slowed down. They've continued to announce updates, integrations, and partnerships, improving both their service and their experience. The runner up, with over 25% of the vote, is the New York Times app. The winner, with almost 30% of the vote, is Pocket. iOS kids app of the year: Curious George at the Zoo
Kids identify with what they know and like. That's the reason kids television is filled with beloved characters, some of which have stood the test of not only time, but of generations. And those same characters and franchises, the ones that transitioned from books to video, have now transitioned to multitouch, interactive devices as well. Including Curious George. In this particular case, the inquisitive little simian and his yellow-hatted friend are here to teach kids about animals. It works and it works engagingly and delightfully. The runner up, with over 29% of the vote, is Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: Mickey's Wildlife Count Along The winner, with almost 33% of the vote, is Curious George at the Zoo iOS action game of the year: Modern Combat 4: Zero HourGameloft has made an incredibly successful business out of taking hugely popular console gaming genres and adapting them for mobile. Modern Combat 4 is their best effort yet, taking the first-person shooter (FPS) and modern military setting, and polishing it up for the iPhone and iPad. It's getting to the point where their only limitations are the multitouch format of the devices themselves. It's adrenalin armed and armored, and the only real question we have left is where can Gameloft take the Modern Combat series next? The runner up, with over 17% of the vote, is Dead Trigger The winner, with almost 33% of the vote, is Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour iOS strategy game of the year: Angry Birds Star Wars
Angry Birds is one of the first successful multimedia, multimarket new franchises in years. They've been a sensation on the iPhone and iPad since launch, and the developer, Rovio, has made it a point to continuously add new levels, new characters, and new twists on the franchise. Over the course of the last year, the birds have even gone into space, and spun off their pigs into a game of their own. They also struck a deal with one of the biggest multimedia, multimarket franchises of the last few generations, and released Angry Birds Star Wars. The runner up, with 29% of the vote, is Letterpress. The winner, with almost 51% of the vote, is Angry Birds Star Wars. iOS strategy game of the year: Fieldrunners 2
Turns out you can make a great thing greater. Fieldrunners was a hugely successful, incredibly entertaining tower-defense game for iOS. Fieldrunners 2 takes all of that and multiplies it. More enemies. More weapons. More power. More peril. We've lost a ton of sleep to Fieldrunners 2 this year, and we don't regret it one bit. The runner up, with over 25%of the vote, is Hero Academy. The winner, with almost 33% of the vote, is Fieldrunners 2 iPhone case of the year: Element Sector 5I've always likened the high-end, aluminum bumper cases for the iPhone to hypercars like the Lamborghini Reventon or Aventador because that's precisely where they seem to draw their lines from. The Sector 5 case for the iPhone 5 by Element Case is certainly no exception. In fact, it continues just exactly that tradition from Element Case, bringing their trademark quality and corners to Apple's latest iPhone. Obviously you like it too. The runner up, with 27% of the vote, is the LifeProof frē The winner, with over 31% of the vote, is the Element Case Sector 5 iPad case of the year: Apple Smart Case for iPad
Apple released the Smart Case at WWDC 2012. It was odd timing, three months after announcing the iPad 3 and 4 months before announcing the iPad 4. It was also an odd case. Bulkier, it seemed, than necessary, with a design that made the magnetic latches that worked so well with the Smart Cover not connect or stay in place anywhere nearly as well on the Smart Case. Yet it provided better protection, covering the back of the iPad as well as the screen. And despite our qualms, you loved it enough to name it your favorite. The runner up, with 24% of the vote, is the Apple Smart Cover for the iPad mini. The winner, with 34% of the vote, is the Apple Smart Case Accessory of the year: Logitech Ultra-thin keyboardThe Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad is the sleekest, most sophisticated Bluetooth keyboard we've tested to date. It does add some bulk and some weight -- it is a keyboard, after all -- but given the Apple-esque aluminum shell and high quality plastic iterior and keys, it's remarkably svelte. Long before Microsoft made the Surface, the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover made a generation of iPad users far, far more productive. The runner up, with almost 30% of the votes, is the mophie power station duo. The winner, with 42% of the vote, is the Logitech Ultra-thin keyboard 
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| Review — The Simpsons: Tapped Out for iPad Posted: 24 Dec 2012 07:30 AM PST It's Christmas! One of my favorite times of the year. While I did see plenty of holiday-themed iPad games such as Super Mega Worm vs. Santa, I thought it would be best to take a look at a game that's not only good for the holidays, but year-round. Before I get into it, let me [...] Related Stories
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| iMore show 330: 2012 year in review Posted: 24 Dec 2012 07:02 AM PST Rene and Seth talk about Tim Cook's first year as CEO of Apple, all the iOS device launches, the maps debacle, iTunes 11, the iPad mini, and more.
Show notesHosts
CreditsYou can reach all of us on Twitter @iMore, or you can email us at podcast@imore.com or just leave us a comment below. For all our podcasts -- audio and video -- including the iMore show, ZEN and TECH, Iterate, Debug, Ad hoc, and more, see MobileNations.com/shows
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| How to track Santa on your iPhone and iPad Posted: 24 Dec 2012 06:48 AM PST
If you've got an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you and yours can keep an eye on Santa, and track his progress as he delivers presents to boys and girls around the world, then you're in luck -- Google Earth for iOS has a special Follow Santa tour ready and waiting. Simply swipe up from the bottom to open the tour tab, tap the Santa button, and watch him go! If you're on a Mac or Windows PC, you can follow Santa on the web: 
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| Monday Brief: EiCs name their Best Devices of 2012 Posted: 24 Dec 2012 06:08 AM PST | ||||||
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