Readers’ App Reviews – May 2015

May is here and so are many of our Apple Watches. Many of you have been hard at work to make sure us early adopters don’t have empty watches. The first raywenderlich.com tutorial-driven Apple Watch apps are here!

This month we’ve got a full roster of apps:

• A Mac app we can all appreciate
• Apps for your Apple Watch
• Some apps to get us out and about
• And of course, much more!

Read on to see a portion of what the community is building this month.

LinuxDocs

As developers man pages have a special place in our hearts. The time inevitably comes when we need to sprinkle some incantations into the terminal and hope for the best. But those commands don’t need to be a mystery, LinuxDocs is here to help.

LinuxDocs brings a huge collection of manpages right to your iPhone. They’re stored offline so you never have to worry about being without. You’ll be able to easily search and filter them. But if you just need a quick fix, cheatsheets are the tldr version build right in the app with common commands and combinations shown.

• Author: Praveen Gowda I V @praveen_vvstgy
• Most useful tutorial: Dynamic Table View Cell Height in iOS 8 and Swift
• App Store Link: Check it out!

Bit Journey

Bit Journey drops you into a huge open world filled with opportunities and enemies. The world is filled with travel vortexes spawning endless enemies seeking to dominate the world. You’re left to survive as long as you can against the army of enemies filling the world.

You can command one of three heroes to survive the world. Choose from a ninja, soldier, or medieval warrior. Everything is destructible. Burrow into the ground to avoid enemies but be careful, skeletons lurk below. Conquer secret bases, accomplish difficult missions, and improve your character’s skills.

• Author: Marcos Morais
• Most useful tutorial: Sprite Kit Tutorial: How to Make a Platform Game Like Super Mario Brothers – Part 2
• App Store Link: Check it out!

Paste

Copy and Paste as a longtime feature on Macs hasn’t changed much over the years. Paste is a powerful clipboard manager for your Mac that teaches your computer some fancy new tricks.

Paste saves a history of all the things you’ve copied for later. A simple keystroke shows everything you’ve copied in a beautiful fullscreen interface. You can select individual copies to paste them or even share them with other applications You can search your history by content, type, and application it was copied in.

• Author: Dmitry Obukhov @paste_app
• Most useful tutorial: Swift Language Highlights: An Objective-C Developer’s Perspective
• App Store Link: Check it out!

Moon Tunes

Moon Tunes is a Music App replacement designed specially for kids. Rather than relying heavily on text that requires children be able to read, Moon Tunes relies entirely on color and symbols. Parents can easily add music to the app from their iTunes libraries, selecting a color and symbol for each song they add.

Kids easily mentally link their favorite songs with colors and symbols and can quickly find the song they’d like to listen to in one of three interactive music players. The music players feature additional sound effects to spice up the music and cute graphics. Kids will love listening to their music in Moon Tunes.

• Author: Paddy Donnelly @paddydonnelly
• Most useful tutorial: iOS 7 Multitasking Tech Talk Video
• App Store Link: Check it out!

QR Studio Pro

QR Studio Pro is a full featured QR scanner and generator. QR Studio Pro lets you generate a variety of QR codes with various colors and layouts making them instantly sharable.

QR Studio Pro is also a powerful QR scanner with extra fast decoding. You can decode from the camera, imports, and Copy/Paste. There is also an iOS extension so you can use QR Studio Pro within other apps when QR scanning is needed.

And with support for the Apple Watch, you’ll be ready to present your QR codes anytime, anywhere. And Pan was nice enough to share some promo codes for everyone. So snag em quick! XYYJFJ374T9L, JWKEX47FJF97

• Author: Pan Yunqian
• Most useful tutorial: WatchKit FAQ
• App Store Link: Check it out!

WebWatch

Checking websites for status updates is a fact of life in today’s world. Sports scores, order statuses, price changes, daily content, etc are all things we check everyday, often many times a day.

WebWatch makes it easier than ever to track your favorite website. Simply navigate to your favorite website then crop the section you’d like to see. Every so often, WebWatch will automatically refresh the site and snap a screenshot.

WebWatch will sync up to 6 websites to your Apple Watch for quick checks. WebWatch also has a today widget for quick checks on the iPhone as well.

• Author: Nicholas Chan @komocode
• Most useful tutorial: WatchKit FAQ
• App Store Link: Check it out!

Curve Run

Curve Run is an addictive minimal arcade style game. As you roll along the track, you’ll have to dodge the obstacles while collecting as many stars as possible. The controls are easy to learn, hold left to ride the left side of the track, hold right to ride the right. releasing your touch will leave you in the center of the track.

While its easy to learn, its certainly difficult to master. Obstacles become more difficult while the track becomes faster. See how your scores stack up against the world and friends on the GameCenter leaderboards. Challenge friends and strangers in realtime over GameTime for the endurance race of your life.

• Author: Xiaolei Niu
• Most useful tutorial: The iOS Apprentice
• App Store Link: Check it out!

Block Racer

Block Racer is a retro racer thats beautiful in its simplicity. Just tap and hold to speed up, release to slow down. The race track spans just one screen.

There are of course obstacles in your way. Don’t jump the ramps too quickly or risk falling apart. Avoid the acid drips as they fall from the sky. Watch out for the menacing spike traps. And be prepared for cannon fire and time your jumps accordingly.

There are 50 levels to battle through. And GameCenter leaderboards will make sure your friends know how whose the best.

• Author: John McManus @appyappster
• Most useful tutorial: Sprite Kit Animations and Texture Atlases in Swift
• App Store Link: Check it out!