Readers’ App Reviews – March 2017
Check out some apps released by fellow raywenderlich.com readers this March, including an app that sends messages in a real bottle! By Ryan Poolos.
Oslo
Oslo is a beautiful native client for the popular website Unsplash.
Unsplash provides tons of beautiful high resolution photos with a do whatever you want license. Its great for backgrounds, inspiration, or even commercial work like book covers and stock art.
Oslo takes the wonderful Unsplash photos and packages them into a great native app perfect for flipping through on the go. The photos look fantastic on the iPhone’s amazing screen. You can login with an Unsplash account to favorite the ones you like the most.
Oslo also makes it easy to download photos to your phone for wallpapers or other users. And you can easily share them to other services and apps as well. You can also easily check Unsplash stats like downloads and likes. Oslo will even show you camera information for each shot like exposure, aperture, camera model, and more.
If you enjoy Unsplash, download Oslo for a great native experience.
- Author: Ziyi Zhang @zzy0600
- Most useful tutorial: UICollectionView Tutorial: Getting Started
- App Store Link: Check it out!
Balloonimal Stickers
Sometimes you need a little whimsy in your life. This time, its Balloonimals!
Balloonimal stickers is a fun set of iMessage stickers featuring over 70 ballon animals. There are elephants, butterflies, swans, and more. Each in a variety of colors.
Spend the $1 and add a little fanfare to your iMessage conversations this week. You’ll no doubt be happy you did. :]
- Author: Jens Hagfeldt @Jeppe_07
- Most useful tutorial: iOS 10: Dynamic Sticker Packs in iMessage Apps
- App Store Link: Check it out!
MakeIcons
One part of building iOS apps that is never fun is making all those icons for the home screen. I know each one is important but once you’ve put all the work into your app, needing 20 icon sizes just feels like punishment.
Enter MakeIcons, a Mac app that can take your fullsize icon and generate all the sizes necessary with the proper names to make Xcode happy.
MakeIcons just takes your fullsize app icon and will generate every other necessary size in one click. It handles iOS, watchOS, and MacOS including 1x, 2x, and 3x copies. You can also do custom sizes if necessary. Great for websites and promotional materials or future Apple sizes that pop up without waiting for MakeIcons to update. It will even help you size our Tabbar icons at proper sizes based on Apple documentation.
- Author: Joao Frasco @joaofrasco
- Most useful tutorial: The iOS Apprentice
- App Store Link: Check it out!
Where To Go From Here?
If you saw an app your liked, hop to the App Store and leave a review! A good review always makes a dev’s day. And make sure you tell them you’re from raywenderlich.com; this is a community of makers.
If you’ve never made an app, this is the month! Check out our free tutorials to become an iOS star. What are you waiting for – I want to see your app next month.