In brief
These 10 Mac and iOS apps can help with work, study and leisure. The February 2020 article covers Mac settings, window management and network monitoring, alongside maths solving, photography, music, free photos and a humorous golf game.
As the Lunar New Year holiday draws to a close, employees and students will soon return to work and school. To work and study more efficiently in the new year, here are some highly practical apps worth knowing about. Based on reader feedback, an overseas technology publication selected last year's five best macOS apps and five best iOS apps to help us through tasks large and small this year.
The following are technology website MacRumors's picks, based on reader feedback, for the five most useful macOS and iOS apps in each category:
macOS Apps
1. One Switch: This productivity utility comes from TualatriX, a well-known independent development team in mainland China. From the menu bar at the top of the Mac screen, users can control numerous computer settings with a single click, including hiding the desktop, switching to night mode, maintaining screen brightness, quickly activating the screensaver and enabling Do Not Disturb, without having to open settings.
One Switch must be downloaded from its official website. It offers a 7-day free trial and costs US$4.99 for a single device, approximately NT$145.
2. Stack: This is currently the only app on the market offering an “unlimited split-screen” feature. Describing itself as an “internet OS”, Stack lets users open an unlimited number of apps within a single app, including Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, YouTube and Google Drive. These apps appear as icons on the left side of the screen. Users can categorise and stack the applications opened through Stack to organise their own workspace or entertainment space.
Stack currently offers free macOS and Windows versions. A paid Stack Pro version with additional features is planned for the future, but no release date has been set.
3. Pock: This simple, practical app primarily extends the functionality of the Macbook's Touch Bar, allowing users to switch apps or find files in folders more quickly. Pock also lets users customise or add Touch Bar options, such as a music control widget or indicators for laptop battery level, WiFi connectivity and other statuses.
4. Moom: This app makes it easy to resize windows and offers functionality similar to the Mac's Split View. It provides 5 preset size and position options, and users can also draw a grid to create custom window sizes, making multitasking easier.
5. Little Snitch: This information security app monitors all traffic on a Mac, allowing users to see which apps are sending data and where it is going. Essentially, it makes all connections visible and lets users approve or restrict the content being sent from their Mac.
iOS Apps
1. Spotify Stations: This standalone app was launched by music streaming platform Spotify early last year, offering a lightweight way to experience Spotify's services. It works like a music radio app, but playback is not random. Once a user creates a station for an artist, Spotify automatically recommends music and inserts it into the station's playback.
2. Microsoft Math Solver: This exceptionally convenient maths-solving app is officially provided by Microsoft. Users can enter problems by typing, writing on the screen or scanning them with a photo, and the app automatically helps solve them. Answers include detailed solution steps and vector graphics. It supports various types of mathematical problems, including quadratic equations in one variable, factorisation and exponent calculations. It can also calculate means, medians, standard deviations, permutations and combinations. It is powerful and completely free.
3. Halide: Created by a former Twitter engineer and an Apple app designer, this camera app is popular among dedicated photography enthusiasts because it gives users full manual control over shutter speed, exposure, ISO and white balance.
Halide has many other features, including Quick EV for more intuitive exposure adjustment by dragging, Focus Peaking for focusing on multiple subjects in real time, grid and tonal level settings, and a histogram for adjusting exposure. It also supports RAW files and is a favourite third-party camera app among many professional iPhone photography enthusiasts. The app currently costs 190 dollars on Apple's App Store.
4. Unsplash: This app lets users share copyright-free photos. It offers more than 1 million high-resolution photos that users can download for free as phone wallpapers or for other purposes.
5. What the Golf?: This humorous, physics-based anti-golf game lets players hit anything as if it were a golf ball. Its courses feature all kinds of surprising, unusual environments, from spectacular and lively settings to utterly absurd ones, making it highly entertaining. The game is available on Apple's game streaming service, Apple Arcade.
Original article URL: http://bit.ly/37RNIBp