A new iPad or iPhone right out of the box is already an impressive
piece of hardware. It's an oldcliche by now but well worth repeating:
the computing power in your Apple gadget is about a million times more
powerful than the computers that flew astronauts to the moon and back.Yet for all that awesome power in the palm of your hand controlled by the slightest touch of your fingertip, you need more than what came in the box with your iPad or iPhone. You need apps! But fire up Apple's App Store on your screen and prepare to be overwhelmed.
At last count, the App Store featured 1.2 million titles all just begging for your download attention. By the way, if you tried to download an app every hour around the clock, it would take you nearly 140 years to try out every title in the App Store.
Perhaps you might consider narrowing your search to something more specific like "photography." Great! Now you only have 30,000 apps to sift through. With so many, many choices, what's an Apple fan to do to find fantastic, amazing apps that are worth your time and effort? Relax. I've already done the leg work for you.
Today, I want to show you my latest five favorite apps that take full advantage of iOS' amazing power. I found a couple of amazing photo apps, a beautiful graphics app with stunningly gorgeous visuals, plus my new favorite idea-sharing app and the easiest way to deal with passwords.
First, let me show you the photo apps. With every new model, Apple's cameras keep getting better and better. These days, the back-facing camera on current Apple gadgets rivals nearly any point-and-shoot camera. But there's something your iPad and iPhone can do that's well beyond the point-and-shoots.
Paper Camera
While both point-and-shoot cameras and iOS gadgets take great pictures, the apps we can install on Apple gear take photography to a whole new level. Paper Camera is an app that does an amazing job converting your snapshots from traditional photographs to incredibly convincing hand-drawn, sketched or painted versions.Sure, filters like these have been around nearly as long as Photoshop, but Paper Camera does it with ease and delivers incredible results. That's why Paper Camera makes my list of Wow apps. Here's an original iPhone 6 photo along with a couple of Paper Camera treatments.
Litely
If cartoon or sketch effects on your photographs are not your style, then check out Litely to transform your photos from average into the dramatic or dreamy.
Now ready for something really amazing? Your Apple gadget can render graphics in real time that would have required a super computer not that long ago. So get ready to "wow" your friends with this impressive display!
Epic Zen Garden
Epic Zen Garden is not exactly a game. There are no opponents, scores or time limits. Instead, it is a vivid 3-dimension animated environment that you can explore to your heart's content. Throughout the app are stunning visuals of textures, reflections, fluttering cherry blossoms, swimming fish and flying birds.
After you have properly impressed friends and family with your gorgeous Apple screen, let's get serious with an equally amazing yet very practical and handy app. This one also uses your gadget's camera, but it helps you organize your ideas and even shares them with others.
Post-it Plus
Ideas can be fickle little rascals when you are trying to wrap your brain around one and especially when you try to explain them to others who just can't see that which is so vivid inside your own head. That's exactly where this amazing little app comes in.I know lots of folks use sticky notes to jot down ideas and arrange them into some sense of order. Depending on how complex your concept, these sticky notes could cover a board or even an entire wall. Which is fine, as long as you do all your work and thinking time right in front of your sticky note collection.
But we're mobile! We have gadgets with rechargeable batteries! Who wants to be stuck indoors just because that's where your "idea wall" is? Here comes Post-it Plus to the rescue. Post-it Plus is from 3M, the inventor of the little sticky Post-it Notes. This app gives you dramatic options for capturing, rearranging, sharing and carrying around your sticky note based ideas.
It all starts with a simple snapshot of your sticky note collection of up to 50 individual notes. But the magic of this app is what comes next. You can name, tag and rearrange individual notes plus add to the collection from other photos, all from your iPhone or iPad screen. Post-it Plus allows you to share and collaborate with others through other services including Evernote, Dropbox and Tumblr. You can also export versions to other file types like PowerPoint for presentations and such.
Now for one last app that will not only make you say "wow," it may just help you sleep better at night. No, it's not one of those sleep monitoring apps, it's something that will help you feel safer, more secure and wonder how you ever got along without it!
1Password
2015 is already predicted to be "The Year of the Hack," as online crooks pull out every trick in the book to invade your privacy, steal your personal information and haul off your money. Your very first line of defense against the bad guys is using a strong password. There are several common mistakes that most people make when picking passwords. Find out what they are and how to avoid them.Because you can't control which sites might get hacked and expose your passwords, you really need a different password for every single online account. I know it's a pain, but trust me, for your own safety, security and peace of mind, you need to do this.
Realistically, though, how's a person supposed to remember dozens or more different passwords, each with wacky combinations of letters, numbers and symbols? That's where the free 1Password app comes in. 1Password creates strong, unique passwords for every site, remembers them all for you and logs you in with a single tap.
When shopping online, it fills in your credit card numbers and identities without any additional typing. The built-in search function lets you easily and quickly find any of your stored information. Best of all, everything in your 1Password vault is protected by a Master Password that only you know. So instead of risking reusing old passwords or trying to remember dozens, just remember your one, single password to unlock all of your accounts.
