Category: I-phone

Any tech savvy Windows user is familiar with the term backdoor trojan; either they’ve been infected with one themselves or know someone who has. Now, it’s time for Mac users, especially those who work for entities that are targets for corporate or military espionage, to become more aware of this threat says a report in Ars Technica.

According to Ars who spoke to Jaime Blasco of security firm Alien Vault, two backdoor trojans that infect Mac computers have been discovered in the wild. These trojans target the employees of several non-governmental, pro-Tibetan organizations and exploit a security hole in Microsoft Office and Oracle’s Java framework. The holes have been patched, but apparently the security fixes closing them were not applied in this infection.

Once installed, the trojans send user and domain information to a central server owned by the people who created the malware. The trojans then sit in the background awaiting instructions. This is only one report of such targeted attacks, but Blasco believes this won’t be last. As companies and governments move from Windows to Macs to avoid security problems with Windows, it only makes sense that Macs will become the next target.

Macs are being spied on just like Windows machines originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rdio has begun spreading across Europe and other parts of the world, as the streaming music service now available in Germany, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, and Denmark. After that, it’s expected to head to Asia.

Rdio’s Scott Bagby told paidContent that the service will have an uphill battle against established juggernauts like Spotify and Deezer in Europe. However, if anyone could handle the expansion, it’s Bagby, who was behind the international expansion of Skype.

[via MacStories]

Rdio to launch in “all countries” in Europe within a few months originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Who doesn’t love a good bobblehead? They’re often whimsical, sometimes silly and occasionally realistic enough to be creepy. If you’ve always wanted to create your own, but lack the materials to do so, then you should check out Bobbleshop. It’s a bobblehead-creating app that’ll keep you busy for hours and leave you in stitches.

The app launches with a basic bobble that you can name and modify. You can change the head, the hair, the eyes, the nose and more. There are clothes and accessories like glasses and necklaces. My favorite was the iPad. My bobble looked great holding it. Almost everything on the bobble can be tweaked to your liking. If you have enough time, you can create a bobble that closely resembles your friends and family. And you don’t have to work on one at a time, you can create and store an entire collection.

When you’re done creating your bobble, you can share it with other people via email. If they own Bobbleshop, they can import the bobble’s “DNA” and play with it on their device. You can also tweet your bobble or post it to the gallery on Bobbleshop’s website.

If you enjoy bobbleheads or just like being silly, then Bobbleshop is worth a download. It’s a bit pricey at US$2.99, but the app has a lot of customizations. There are dozens of hair pieces, a dozen different glasses, several eyes and more. Once you start digging into the app, you’ll understand why Bobbleshop’s not a free app.

I tested Bobbleshop on the iPhone, but prefer the iPad version because it’s easier to manipulate the pieces on the larger screen. Bobbleshop is a universal app that’ll work on the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (4th generation), iPad 2/3 Wi-Fi, and iPad 2/3 Wi-Fi + 3G. It requires iOS 5.0 or later.

Daily iPhone App: Bobbleshop lets you create and share bobbleheads of your friends originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone 4 owners who didn’t accept a Bumper case as part of a class-action suit regarding the device’s antenna are now eligible to receive US$15 from Apple, AppleInsider reports. Apple initially offered free Bumpers in 2010 for a brief period.

Those eligible for the settlement had to have been the original owner of an iPhone 4 before February 17. The settlement offer is good through August 28.

iPhone 4 owners who refused a free bumper case can now claim $15 settlement originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook is in China, and he is making the most of his trip. Earlier this week, he went to an Apple Store in Beijing and met with the mayor of the city. He then met with Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang. A Thursday morning report from Reuters now shows him touring a Foxconn facility in Zhengzhou.

Creditors for Proview, the company battling Apple over the iPad name, are not happy with this visit and at least one group is calling Cook’s visit a “political public relations campaign.”

Tim Cook tours a Foxconn facility in China originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 29 Mar 2012 08:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dark Meadow is a title that’s gained quite a bit of attention on the App Store since its release. It’s a horror adventure game of sorts, though not that scary — “dark fairytale” is what it calls itself — with some really excellent graphics and pacing. If you’ve been turned off by the US$5.99 price in the past, good news: the title is going to be going free, kind of. There’s a new content update headed to the game tonight that will include support for the iPad’s Retina Display and a lot of new content and features for the title.

At the same time, there’s a version coming out subtitled “The Pact” that will be free to download but won’t include all of those new features and content. In short, if you want to play the game for free, you can. But if you want that new content, you’ll have to buy the game. Current users will of course get the update for free.

Though we here at TUAW are naturally much more interested in iOS, if you happen to have an Android device and want to play the game, Dark Meadow’s also coming out on that platform. That version will be updated to work specifically with the Tegra 3 processor, which we guess is all right. It’s still got nothing on the A5, though.

Dark Meadow getting an update and free version, coming to Android originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 29 Mar 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Simon Oliver’s Handcircus studio was one of the biggest winners in the early days of the App Store. His game Rolando was originally published by Ngmoco back before the company went completely bonkers with social and free-to-play casual games. After Rolando 2 sort of sputtered out into the marketplace, hamstrung by Ngmoco’s own strategy, Oliver and his company strayed away from iOS and created a game called Okabu for the PlayStation Network.

Oliver is coming back to iOS, according to The Guardian. The company has been working on a new mobile title set in the same universe as Okabu that will again be free-to-play. But before Rolando fans worry, don’t forget that the app market changed a lot in the few years since Rolando was released, and Oliver himself has changed as well. “When Ngmoco decided to go free-to-play, I didn’t know how to make games like that,” he tells the Guardian. “But ideas have been bubbling away for the last couple of years.”

I’m interested to see what Oliver gets up to. He suggests that Handcircus still may use a third-party publisher to get the game out, which is a little bit worrying. But it’ll be good to have one of the biggest original iPhone devs back on the platform with a new release.

Handcircus set to return to iOS with free game based on Okabu originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 29 Mar 2012 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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 25–26 May • Melbourne, Australia

One More Thing isn’t a traditional programming conference. It’s a meeting for iOS developers, designers and those who just want to come along for the ride. You won’t directly learn to code better. Your UI probably won’t improve either. But you will leave with more confidence in your abilities as an iOS developer or designer.

A finite state machine is really the simplest AI you can build for a game character.  You define all the character character states, and what state the character is in when a specific event occur.  A fancy sounding name for a really simple concept.

That being said it can be extremely tedious to program a finite state machine with a good number of states in a language such as Objective-C as you’ll likely wind up with many nested conditional statements making things difficult.

That’s where SMC (the State Machine Compiler) providing a simple syntax for defining your state machine, and generating the appropriate Objective-C code.

Raúl Uranga has written a tutorial showing how to create an AI controlled character (a caveman) from the ground up using SMC and Cocos2D.

Here’s a video of the caveman doing his thing:

You’ll learn how to define the walking, clubbing, and attacking states, generate the Objective-C code and integrate it into the Cocos2D framework.

You can find the tutorial on Raul’s website here.

Looks like a nice technique for creating AI Controlled characters.

Added to the Cocos2D tutorial page, thanks to @raulraga for the submission.

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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ARC has been a great addition for developers using Objective-C almost completely eliminating any need for the dealloc method.  That being said if you employ the observer pattern you need to unregister before you release your observer object or suffer unwanted consequences.

That’s where this very useful collection of submitted categories come in.  These categories provide automatic removal for observers when the observer object is deallocated.

What’s really nice is that there is no need to change your code simply include the categories in your project, and you are good to go.  The categories work in both ARC and non-ARC apps.

The library is SFObservers from Kryzystof Zablocki and can be found on Github here.

You can read Kryzystof’s methodology in developing the categories on his site here.

This is extremely useful, as thanks to ARC and this category the need to create a dealloc method is now nearly eliminated.

Thanks to Krzystof for the submission.

©2012 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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Do you know how many people there are in New York? Can you define what makes a SaaS-Service interesting to potential customers? What about the history of The Church of Our Lady in Germany — do you know it? If you don’t know the answer to one or all of those questions, there’s no reason to despair. In our world of continuous information overload and ever-changing facts, it’s hard to stuff everything into one’s head and then recall it.

For most of today’s relevant information, there’s this nifty website called Wikipedia and I bet all of you have profited from it at some point in the past. Unfortunately, the web interface doesn’t really rock on the iPhone screen. To remedy this and provide you with a thoroughly enjoyable reading and research experience, meet Wikibot, an awesome Wikipedia App for the iPhone.

Just Find What You Need

When first opening the app, you’ll be greeted by a quick how-to screen easing you into the different options. It’s not hard to find your way around, but there are really many, many options which are easily overlooked among the plethora of functions.

Since Wikibot is about making you smarter, the search bar is prominent at the top. Simply enter what you’re looking for and the Bot will start its work. Possible hits for your search query are being updated live as you type (even via 3G) and enable you to pick whatever is closest to what you’re actually looking for.

Welcome to Wikibot, your mobile Wikipedia companion.

Now that we’ve found the city of New York, let’s look at how the information are presented. As on the regular Wikipedia website, you see links to possible other meanings at the top, followed by a New York button and then the text starts.

The inconspicuous grey NY button actually hides all the information usually presented in the right hand info box on the website. It would be nice to have some visual indicator as to what that button does; as it is, you have to learn by trying.

Left: Infobox content as on right side of Wikipedia article // Right: Call up the table of contents to quickly jump to a certain passage in the text

Now, the article itself is quite long and scrolling through all of it, especially if you’re looking for something specific, will be a test of your endurance. Instead, just hit the arrow icon in the lower part of the screen. It will bring up an options panel and from there you can pick “Table of Contents”.

It’s a very smart way to help users on mobile devices. The wealth of information is being broken into chunks and you can pick exactly the chunk you want. The text is presented in a simple layout and images are scaled down to fit into the text flow. With a simple tap on an image, it will be brought up full screen, with any explanatory text at the bottom.

Images can be viewed inline or separately

Links within the text to other articles or bits of information open by default in the same window, but when you hit the back button, you’ll always be taken back to the exact position within the article you just left. Alternatively, long-press a link and have it open in a new tab.

Getting The Most Out of Wikibot

Yes, I did mention tabs just now. Let’s take a look at some of the nice features that Wikibot offers you and which are not all apparent.

First of all, you can have multiple windows within the app with separate searches. It works just like mobile Safari.

Use tabs to store searches for later use

If you’re conducting some extensive research or stumble upon something you can’t read right away, but want to later, add it to the Read Later section by long-tapping any link and pressing the read later button on the bookmarks screen. Of course, you can also simply bookmark stuff for later use.

Save articles for reading them later

In the bookmarks options you will also find your history (what you’ve researched this far), categories, you can call up a random article from all of Wikipedia or you can read something about your immediate surroundings via Nearby.

That’s one of my favorite features: you must allow Wikibot to use location services and it will display articles about things in your immediate area. If you’re visiting a new town or a part of your own area you haven’t been to before, it’s a great way to learn something new. And I’ll never again have to dread showing friends around my town with all the historical facts this easy at hand.

Wikibot calls up Wikipedia articles about things in your immediate area

For those versed in another language Wikibot also offers to change the language of an article, of course only to those languages which are available (not every article on Wikipedia is available in every language). Articles written in the native tongue of the subject are often more detailed and longer than translations.

And lastly, Wikibot integrates with social networks, allowing you to share your newfound knowledge with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or via Twitter.

Verdict

If Wikipedia is a source you use regularly, you should take a closer look at Wikibot. While it doesn’t add anything to the quality of information, of course, it greatly enhances the experience of using the huge knowledge database. It has distinct advantages over simply surfing the website and power users will appreciate them.

What’s your favorite way of using Wikipedia on the road? Do you prefer any other apps or are you content with what the original mobile version of the website offers?

The original version of the Oregon Trail was released in 1981 for the Apple II. Twenty years ago, at the ripe old age of five, I first played this classic on the Macintosh; it remains among the first video games I ever played, according to my memory. It seems only fitting then, that twenty years later I am playing The Oregon Trail on what is arguably the current pinnacle of Apple platforms: the iPhone.

If you aren’t yet familiar, The Oregon Trail is a game where you take up the role of a traveler leading your family across the country on the — you guessed it — Oregon trail. The end goal is to settle in Oregon, but you’ll have to protect your family from the harsh elements, treacherous terrain and dysentery along the way. Push onward past the break to find out more about this retro game update.

Preparations

When you launch the game, you’ll have to sit through a series of screens giving you a rundown on how to play. But don’t get nervous, for you aren’t without help.

This exceptionally burly man will be your guide. Don’t you feel safe?

Prior to setting out, your captain will instruct you on the basics of the game’s various systems, including the store, bartering and mini-games, as well as how quests and objectives work (more on all of those later).

As with the original game, you’ll want to make preparations for your journey based on how you intend to play the game. If, like me, you’ll charge ahead at full speed and ford rivers with reckless abandon, you’ll probably want to stock up on extra wagon parts, oxen and medical supplies for your inevitably ill family members. However, if you think slow and steady wins the race, and you’ll purchase a ferry to cross every puddle of water you come to, then saving up your cash might be the better option.

On The Trail

Once prepared, it’s time to hit the trail. This is where the game gets fun.

Rabbit speed! Anyone who can’t keep up is getting left behind. I’m ruthless.

The most obvious part of journeying is choosing a speed. The game keeps track of your schedule and how far ahead or behind you are, so if you suffer a series of hold ups, you may need to pick up the pace in order to stay on time. Be aware though, faster speeds mean less caution, and expose you and your family to higher chances of misfortune.

Along the trail, you’ll have to participate in various types of mini-games, though most of the different types serve the same purpose of acquiring a stockpile of food for your (oh so needy) family. Hunting, fishing and berry-picking mini-games, while redundant, help to add levels of depth to The Oregon Trail, because it’ll be a long journey without something fun to do. Some mini-games serve other purposes, like repairing broken wagon parts.

I always appreciate a good mini-game, but Oregon Trail is no Mario Party.

Along the road, you’ll encounter various historical figures such as Samuel Morse or James W. Marshall. These figures will likely impart a quest on you, which I found to usually consist of meeting them in a town further down the road. To complete these quests, you’ll have to check the map and make sure that you take the right routes.

Fun Fact: James W. Marshall was the first to discover gold in the American River in California, which eventually led to the California Gold Rush.

Checkpoint!

Village life is full of cheery locals wandering around with question marks above their heads.

There are many towns along the Oregon Trail. Arriving in one gives you a chance to rest, mingle, and restock on supplies. You’ll be able to walk around and meet people who can give you quests and missions, as well as visit the shops the town has to offer.

The dual currency system and in-app purchasing is undoubtedly a swing-and-a-miss for Gameloft.

While you can shop and barter anywhere along the trail, doing so in towns is considerably cheaper.

The shopping system, in my opinion, is the biggest downfall of The Oregon Trail for iPhone. The system is comprised of two types of currency: gold and dollars. Gold is the currency that you get for selling items in-game or completing quests. Dollars, on the other hand, are a type of currency that you can only acquire through in-app purchases involving real-world money.

Now, I’m not denigrating in-app purchases in general. But some of the items in the shop can only be purchased with dollars, and they’re intermixed with the items that can be purchased using the in-game currency. Furthermore, some of the items purchasable with dollars are almost essential, making the in-app purchasing system feel less like “functionality added” and more like Mass Effect 3 DLC.

The Verdict

I found Oregon Trail to be a mostly faithful reproduction of the classic game that I grew up on. I am generally in favor of in-app purchases in iOS apps, because I think that it’s a good way to add functionality to your software for those who are willing to spend the extra cash. However, the implementation of in-app purchases in The Oregon Trail feels a little bit too much like the developers trying to strong-arm the user into spending more money, which proved to be more than just a minor frustration. And interestingly, a quick browse through the iTunes review suggests that this is among the very few problems that the rest of the userbase has with the app as well.

If you can get past all of that, The Oregon Trail is fun to play and easy to navigate, and certainly instills that heartwarming feeling of nostalgia associated with any modernized classic.

The iPhone can be a professional writing platform. Yeah, I get these looks a lot when I say that, but it’s true! Granted, the larger iPad screen and keyboard are more comfortable, but if you don’t have a tablet or for some reason, you can make do with the iPhone quite nicely (and if you do have a tablet, check out this same comparison on our sister site, iPad.AppStorm).

Today we’ll take a look at two writing apps who stand for a very minimalistic approach in both their design and feature set, but are still powerful enough to serve the needs of even professionals. Byword and iA Writer have both long been popular Markdown editors on the Mac and have become available for the iPhone only recently. Let’s compare the two and see which one fits your requirements best.

The Premise: Minimal & Markdown

Neither one of these editors is stuffed with functions as you might expect them from Pages or any other word processor. In fact, that’s one of their appealing features — to leave out everything that you don’t absolutely need to allow you to focus on your writing instead of the writing tool. Of course, conversely, this also means that if you’re looking for something to lay out your text, arrange it in tables and insert images, these two apps are not necessarily made for you.

But, and it’s a huge but, you’re not left without any options; both Byword and iA Writer use the Markdown method to format text. It’s an easy to learn method to use symbols to create headings, lists or even more advanced styling. So, let’s see how they let you do that.

The Interface

Both apps get completely out of your way when writing. Each of them allows you to use both landscape and portrait orientation while entering information, with the keyboard displayed on the bottom and an additional set of keys arranged on top of the normal keyboard.

LEFT: Byword // RIGHT: iA Writer

As you can see, Byword leaves some more room for the actual writing area by narrowing the row of additional keys. iA Writer, on the other hand, removes the chrome completely; meaning that the app fills out the entire iPhone screen, removing even the top bar with the clock.

Both apps allow you to name the current document you’re working on right from within the file itself by tapping the upper info bar. This bar, which also allows you to navigate to the document overview or to export a file, is hidden while writing. To access it in iA Writer, you grab the three horizontal lines in the middle of the additional row of buttons and pull it down.

In Byword, you have to hit the “Hide keyboard” button, which is not always visible and that can lead to confusion at times or become annoying if you’re not in the right view.

Additional Keys

Now that I’ve already mentioned those additional rows of keys, let’s take a closer look at them.

In iA Writer, all the available keys are visible at once. The arrow keys at the far left and right allow you to navigate one letter at a time; the other keys are punctuation signs which are most often used when writing text.By arranging them in an extra row of keys, you are spared from changing the normal keyboard back and forth all the time. It’s quite convenient, once you get used to it.

Extra keys in iA Writer

Byword, on the other hand, offers several sets of information and additional keys which you can access by swiping across the additional row on top of the keyboard. There are three different views:

• word count (which iA Writer doesn’t have at all)
• often used keys
• formatting keys

Extra key-sets in Byword

The first key-set includes a tab key (which is still lacking from Apple’s standard keyboard), two types of brackets and also the star, which in Markdown is used to create lists. On the right side of the row you find an undo key, the same arrow keys as in iA Writer and the option to hide the keyboard.

The second key-set allows you to quickly format text even without any knowledge of Markdown whatsoever! The “H” key creates headings by inserting hash keys. The chain symbol inserts a link, followed by a key to insert images an finally the option to create lists.

Options – Adjust To Your Needs

Both apps being stripped of all unnecessary features, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Byword actually had a preferences option. iA Writer doesn’t, it comes as it is.

Customize away in Byword

Byword allows you to specify a font, various correcting options and TextExpander integration. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot, but I found it very handy to be able to change the font face to something that appealed more to my eyes. I wish though, that Byword would also offer to invert the screen colors as it does in its Mac counterpart. To write on a dark screen is especially comfortable when it’s dark outside.

Another option exclusive to Byword is Preview Markdown. While writing, you only see the markdown in its raw state: hash keys, underscores, asterisks and so on. The preview option allows you to see your text as it would look like in a fully formatted state.

Exporting and Synchronization

Both iA Writer and Byword support three types of file storage:

• locally (on the iPhone)
• iCloud
• Dropbox

In Byword, you have to choose between iCloud and Dropbox. If you want to switch, you have to log out of one service to use the other. But, and that’s something that I didn’t see in iA Writer, you can actually search your files in Byword, while in iA Writer you have to scroll through the entire list.

LEFT: Byword // RIGHT: iA Writer

iA Writer, on the other hand, allows you use both services at the same time, even though you have to decide where to create the document — either in iCloud or in Dropbox — but you don’t have to log out of one service to use the other. iA Writer also only saves .txt files and allows export to email as an attachement, text or you can copy or print the text.

Byword goes one step further. While you can also print directly from the app, the other export options are more numerous: you can export to HTML, you have the same export options to email as iA Writer but with an additional Rich Text option and you can copy the HTML to the clipboard for quick re-use in other apps.

Many export options in Byword

Verdict

With both apps being excellent, there is no actual right or wrong, no bad or good app. Both are tailored to writers who don’t want or need a full word processor and both do a wonderful job. I myself prefer Byword because of the additional export options (especially HTML), the included word count while writing and the ability to change the font types. But until Byword came along, I used iA Writer on the iPad and for one week on the iPhone and I was completely happy and satisfied.

It all depends on what is important for you. And, don’t forget, both apps are Universal so they are available on the iPad as well (read our comparison here) and of course both are originally Mac applications. So, if you try decide which one to use, don’t forget to check out how they work on other devices. One might fit your workflow better than the other.

Byword in the App Store ($2.99)

iA Writer in the App Store ($0.99)

Do you use any of these two apps or another markdown editor? How did you choose the app? Let us know in the comments.

Okay, so you’ve got your amazing new “resolutionary” iPad and you’re looking for the best way to show off the powerful display. I mean really, you’re going to want some breathtaking wallpapers and backgrounds that are the same resolution as your new iPad to go along with the device – so that people can see how great it is. Well you’re in luck, because I’ve managed to gather 100 of the best iPad Retina-optimized wallpapers, saving you all the work of searching the entire World Wide Web for them.

After the break, you’ll find everything from retro pixels and abstract patterns, to breathtaking views of New Zealand and flying birds, so you’re not going to want to miss this!

If you also have an iPad and would love some new wallpapers and backgrounds, head over to iPad.AppStorm!

One of the flagship features on these iDevices is the music-playing capabilities. Of course, if you listen to music as much as I do, you will be on the constant search for some new tunes. This is where Discovr Music comes into the picture. This nifty little application allows you to find new music literally in a tap.

Let’s dive into it after the jump.

So Many Options

The first step to finding new tunes is learning how to use the application. Discovr Music uses a series of taps, motions and gestures to do different functions.

A simple music map (Left); navigate using various gestures, motions, and taps (Right)

To start, just search up a band of your choice — I looked up one of my favorites, the Freelance Whales. Six similar bands will branch out from your selection. So for Freelance Whales, we have awesome bands like Death Cab for Cutie, Matt & Kim, and Foster the People stemming out from the original band. From each of these groups, you can tap once to spawn an additional six related bands (i.e. if I tapped on Matt & Kim, six new bands similar to Matt & Kim will appear on the screen).

Say I wanted to learn more about a particular band I discovered. By double-tapping on the band’s photo, users are greeted with a new page with tons of information on the artist. By tapping and holding the band’s photo, you are greeted with a few other options such as playing the artist’s top tracks, playing similar artists, or even looking at the artist’s profile in another music app like Rdio.

Over time, your music map will grow rather large. Luckily, by pinching in and out, you are able to see the map in its entirety or just focus on certain parts of it. Or, you can just start fresh by shaking your device.

Wait, Who Are These People?

Choose a band. That’s right. Any band. No matter how obscure they are, you will find them in Discovr Music’s servers. Quite honestly, this is a great feature as it allows you to find bands that you would never have found otherwise — which I suppose is the point of this app in the first place.

Discovr Music makes it very easy to learn more about the bands you have discovered.

Learning about these new bands is as easy as, well, a double tap. As mentioned before, by double-tapping on an artist, you will be greeted with a page with all the information you would possibly want to know about it. Everything from the band’s biography, blog posts, reviews, tweets, and other social links are available from this page.

I found that two features from this page could use a little bit of work. Both the Songs and Videos features are not all that great. Videos are pretty new to the app, so, like all new features, it needs some work. Depending on how videos are tagged and how well known the band is, the suggestions may not be accurate. In some instances, none of the videos that were associated with the artist even had their songs in them, which is obviously a problem.

The Songs section of the application does what you think it does — it plays previews of the artist’s songs. However, I have found that the previews are often pulled from the beginning of the song; thus, you will only hear the first thirty seconds of each track. That being said, you will get some pretty crappy previews more often than not, and may not even get into the actual song.

Judging by the Cover Art

Although it is common in universal apps for the iPad app to be better than the iPhone counterpart, I feel as if Discovr Music’s iPhone app is far superior to the iPad application, design-wise, that is. The developers really did use the small amount of space they had to work with to their advantage.

The interface is simple yet effective, and photos of artists add a nice pop of color to the app

You could tell that the designers really thought that “less is more” while designing this application. This idea was definitely pulled off. A greyscale color scheme and the use of Helvetica give the application a very basic yet professional look. Plus, it directs your attention towards the bands themselves instead of other aspects of the user interface. The photos of the bands also give an extra pop of color which always looks nice.

Where this application really shines is on the artist pages. All of the different content layers are separated into their own individual pages, which allows you to really focus on one thing at a time. This also keeps these pages clean, simple, and uncluttered. It’s also impossible to get lost because of the navigation bar on the bottom, and all of your social features are displayed clearly on the top of the page with neat little icons.

Be the Groupie

Discovr Music boasts several features to help support the new artists that you have found. For one, the app allows you to purchase the band’s music from several different places such as iTunes or Amazon. They also give links to sites or services like MySpace, Last.fm, or Spotify so you can listen to their music in-depth.

The application also has features to share the great new music you have found. You can easily send messages containing the band you have found through Facebook, Twitter, or Email. However, it does not provide a link to the particular artist, which is a little bit of a flaw.

The Verdict

Overall, Discovr Music is a great way to find some new tunes. Their music library is huge and even contains bands so underground that you can feel the Earth’s core. Music suggestions are fitted to your taste, and the application makes it really easy to buy new tracks. The awesome design is another big plus as well.

As with every other application, Discovr Music is not flawless. Cruddy song previews, unreliable video sources, and flawed sharing services detract from the quality of this application. Regardless, I recommend this application because never before has finding new music been as simple as a tap.