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Nominate your favorite iPad social networking app for TUAW's Best of 2011
During December and January, The Unofficial Apple Weblog is soliciting your nominations and votes for the best products for Mac, iPhone/iPod touch, and iPad. We'll start with nominations in a category, and then tally your votes for the top-nominated products a few days later. The winner in each category receives the highly-coveted title of TUAW Best of 2011. In the next category for the TUAW Best of 2011 awards, we want to know what you consider your favorite iPad social networking app. You've got a lot of choices in this category. One of my personal favorites is the Tapatalk Forum App (US$2.99) that makes working with online forums a piece of cake. Maybe you like making Skype (free) calls, posting on Facebook (free), or looking for the love of your life with the eHarmony (free) app It's up to you to tell TUAW about your favorite iPad social networking app. Leave your nomination in the comments below. Voting will start soon! Nominations close at 11:59 PM ET on December 29, 2011.
Navigon finds itself atop TUAW Best of 2011 voting results
The results of our reader poll for the best iPhone navigation app of 2011 are in. Navigon's iPhone navigation products lead the pack with 46.7 percent of the votes, besting second-place TomTom with only 21.7 percent. Navigon's products include regional, national and continent-wide GPS navigation apps. Starting at US$19.99 for the Navigon U.S. West, Central or East apps and going up to $69.99 for the complete Navigon Europe, these apps are full-featured. They are easy to set up and run, give understandable voice turn-by-turn instructions, show the lane that you're supposed to be in for turns off of major highways, include a 3D map display, and can even provide pedestrian navigation in major cities. Congratulations to Navigon for coming out on top in this highly-contested category in the TUAW Best of 2011 voting.
TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for the best iPad accessory
The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you -- the readers -- and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We'll be announcing the winner in just a few days. Vote early and often! TUAW is asking for your votes for the best iPad accessory of 2011. Some of our readers apparently didn't read the nomination post closely, as we received nominations for cases (a separate category) and apps. As a result, the nominees are: Bubcaps (4 for US$5.00) by Paperclip Robot, which are tiny caps that are used to keep toddlers or special needs kids from hitting the home button and changing to another app; the iKlip ($39.99) from IK Multimedia, a microphone stand mount for musicians using the iPad; the $99.95 iProp, a very flexible stand for hands-free use of the iPad; Pix & Stix ($24.95) which includes two capacitive drumsticks and one guitar pick; and iPad Kicks ($11.95) from Bluelounge. And now, let the voting begin! The results will be announced on December 30, 2011. %Poll-72358%
Nominate your favorite iPad photo and video apps for TUAW's Best of 2011
During December and January, The Unofficial Apple Weblog is soliciting your nominations and votes for the best products for Mac, iPhone/iPod touch, and iPad. We'll start with nominations in a category, and then tally your votes for the top-nominated products a few days later. The winner in each category receives the highly-coveted title of TUAW Best of 2011. After a Christmas Day respite in the TUAW Best of 2011 nomination process, we're back in business. In the next category for the TUAW Best of 2011 awards, we want to know what you consider your favorite iPad photo and/or video app. While the iPad 2 isn't the best mobile camera unless you want to look and feel like a complete dork holding it up to shoot photos or capture video, it is a wonderful device for editing your images. Snapseed (US$4.99) is a relatively new photo editing app that won the iPad App of the Year award in its category in Apple's App Store Rewind 2011 awards. For iPad video editing, Apple's own iMovie ($4.99) is an extremely popular and easy to use app. Pocket Pixels has had a winner for several years with Color Splash for iPad ($1.99), while the Master Your DSLR Camera app ($9.99) uses a multimedia approach to teach you how to make the most of your Digital SLR camera. Serious photographers may want to get a Newsstand subscription to Popular Photography magazine (free for the app, most issues $2.99). It's up to you to tell TUAW about your favorite iPad photo and video apps. Leave your nomination in the comments below. Voting will start soon! Nominations close at 11:59 PM ET on December 28, 2011.
TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for the best iPad case
The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you -- the readers -- and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We'll be announcing the winner in just a few days. Vote early and often! TUAW is asking for your votes for the best iPad case of 2011. Very few iPad owners seem to keep their devices "naked," instead choosing to wrap them in a case of some sort. Much to my surprise, all of the cases were folio type cases, with the "book style" case being the most popular. Our nominees for this are the Twelve South BookBook for iPad (US$69.99), the Portenzo cases (Customized, Composition, Italian Bonded Leather and Premium Genuine Leather -- $59.95 to $124.95 depending on model, options not included), San Francisco's own DODOcase ($59.95), the Bear Motion folio ($59.95 MSRP), and the Zaggfolio keyboard case ($99.99). And now, let the voting begin! The results will be announced on December 29, 2011. %Poll-72320%
1Password: The best iPhone utility app in TUAW's Best of 2011
If you just got a new iPhone for Christmas, there's one handy utility app that you might want to purchase right away. It's 1Password for iPhone (sale priced at US$5.99) from Agile Bits Solutions, and it was named the best iPhone utility app in reader voting in TUAW's Best of 2011 awards. The app is a favorite of the TUAW staff, and it's obvious from the voting that 1Password is used faithfully by many of our readers as well -- the app pulled in 49.7 percent of the votes, thoroughly trouncing the other nominees in this category. It actually comes in two flavors -- the iPhone-only version linked to above, and the universal 1Password Pro (currently on sale for $8.99) that synchronizes with 1Password on Mac and iPad. Apple had the runner-up in this category. Find My iPhone (free), an amazing app that has reunited many lost or stolen iPhones with their owners, nabbed 32.3 percent of the votes. Congratulations to Agile Bits for their win, and thanks to all of the TUAW readers who took part in the nomination and voting process for the utility category in the Best of 2011.
TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for the best iPhone music app
The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you -- the readers -- and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We'll be announcing the winner in just a few days. Vote early and often! TUAW is asking for your votes for the best iPhone music app of 2011. There are six nominees in this category. The first, while technically a game, has you dress up pugs in hats to make music (I am not making this up). Pugs Luv Beats (US$2.99) was a surprisingly popular nominee, followed closely by the much more musically-oriented Hexaphone ($2.99). Hexaphone uses simplified musical scales, drum loops, a motion filter, and recording tools for real-time performance and improvisation. For those who want to wirelessly control music and video between iPhones, iPads and iPod touches, Tango Remote Control Media Player ($4.99) is a powerful tool that captured the imagination of many TUAW readers. Smule's free Magic Piano was a big hit with readers as well, especially for gamers and those who just dabble in music. Musicians appreciated Nano Studio ($14.99) enough to launch it into the final voting for the TUAW Best of 2011 award for an iPhone music app, while Spotify (free) captured the final spot in our voting. And now, let the voting begin! The results will be announced on December 28, 2011. %Poll-72288%
Dropbox is the top iPhone productivity app in TUAW Best of 2011 voting
Merry Christmas! Although today is officially a holiday and we're all spending time with our families and friends, the voting elves at TUAW have been working hard to continue the coverage of our TUAW Best of 2011 awards. Today's winner is an app and service that should be on everyone's iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, and PC -- Dropbox. The Dropbox iPhone app (free) pulled in 38.6 percent of the votes from TUAW readers, topping Evernote (free), which came in second with 28.0 percent. Dropbox provides 2 GB of synced cloud storage to everyone at no cost, 50 GB at $99.99 per year, or 100 GB at $199.99 annually. There are team account options as well. Congratulations to the Dropbox team, and we look forward to more from this astoundingly good productivity app in the future.
TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for the best iPhone navigation app
The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you -- the readers -- and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We'll be announcing the winner in just a few days. Vote early and often! TUAW is asking for your votes for the best iPhone navigation app of 2011. The readers have spoken, and the nominees for best iPhone navigation app are (in no particular order) Motion X GPS Drive (US$0.99), Navigon ($29.99 for Navigon USA), the popular and free crowdsourced nav app Waze, and TomTom ($39.99 for TomTom USA). All of these apps have one thing in common -- they provide point-to-point navigation to points of interest. Another app that uses the iPhone's GPS capabilities but doesn't provide directions to anything except virtual treasure gathered a nomination as well. Traveler's Quest ($0.99) is a virtual treasure hunt that has been around for a few years but is constantly adding in-app purchases for new maps and treasures. And now, let the voting begin! The results will be announced on December 27, 2011. %Poll-72282%
Nominate your favorite iPad game app for TUAW's Best of 2011
During December and January, The Unofficial Apple Weblog is soliciting your nominations and votes for the best products for Mac, iPhone/iPod touch, and iPad. We'll start with nominations in a category, and then tally your votes for the top-nominated products a few days later. The winner in each category receives the highly-coveted title of TUAW Best of 2011. In the next category for the TUAW Best of 2011 awards, we want to know what you consider your favorite iPad game app. This is a huge category, with many deserving apps ranging from action titles to word games. Maybe you're addicted to FIFA Soccer 12 (US$0.99) or spend time in meetings at work playing Grand Theft Auto III ($2.99) with the sound turned off. Are you the Dark Knight playing Batman Arkham City Lockdown ($5.99), or do you prefer to play classic board games like Scrabble and Monopoly (both sale priced at $0.99) with the family ? It's up to you to tell TUAW about your favorite iPad game app. Leave your nomination in the comments below. Voting will start soon! Nominations close at 11:59 PM ET on December 26, 2011.
Tweetbot wins TUAW Best of 2011 voting for best iPhone social networking app
The team at Tapbots is going to get an early Christmas present today -- their Twitter client Tweetbot (US$2.99) was voted the best iPhone social networking app by readers in our continuing TUAW Best of 2011 polling. The app, which launched in April of this year into a crowded Twitter client market, quickly became a favorite of many iPhone users. How popular was it in our voting? Tweetbot pulled in 56.7 percent of all of the votes from over one thousand readers. As with the rest of the Tapbots product line, the user interface for Tweetbot shows that a remarkable amount of thought went into the design. Moving between timelines is fast and easy, there are configurable gestures to perform certain actions, and even the sounds and animation in the app are designed to give Tweetbot personality that doesn't get in the way of communicating with the world. Congratulations to Mark Jardine and Paul Haddad, the brains behind Tweetbot and the other great Tapbots apps. We can't wait to see what you have in store for 2012.
TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for the best iPhone utility app
The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you -- the readers -- and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We'll be announcing the winner in just a few days. Vote early and often! TUAW is asking for your votes for the best iPhone utility app of 2011. Since a majority of nominations were from the wrong categories, and some were even for the wrong platform, a straw poll of favorite iPhone utilities was taken with a sampling of Web luminaries and makes up our list of candidates. The nominees are Flashlight (sale priced at US$0.99, regularly $1.99), Apple's Airport Utility (free), Skyfire Web Browser ($2.99), 1Password for iPhone ($5.99), and the app that has saved a lot of iPhones, Apple's Find My iPhone (free). And now, let the voting begin! The results will be announced on December 26, 2011. %Poll-72269%
Nominate your favorite iPad accessory for TUAW's Best of 2011 awards
During December and January, The Unofficial Apple Weblog is soliciting your nominations and votes for the best products for Mac, iPhone/iPod touch, and iPad. We'll start with nominations in a category, and then tally your votes for the top-nominated products a few days later. The winner in each category receives the highly-coveted title of TUAW Best of 2011. In the next category for the TUAW Best of 2011 awards, we'll take a look at iPad accessories other than cases. We opened nominations for iPad cases yesterday, so if you get a chance be sure to throw your proverbial iPad case hat into the ring. What are we talking about here? Just about anything that works with an iPad that isn't a case. Think of things like docks, adapter cables, health interfaces (like the Withings Wi-Fi Body Scale or Blood Pressure Monitor), the ION Audio Piano Apprentice or other musical instrument interfaces. TUAW wants to hear from you -- what's your favorite iPad accessory? Leave your nomination in the comments below. Voting will start soon! Nominations close at 11:59 PM ET on December 25, 2011.
TUAW Best of 2011: 360 Panorama and iMovie
The votes are tallied for the best iPhone photography and video apps, and the winners have been named. 360 Panorama from Occipital pulled in over a third of the votes (36.8 percent) for take the Best iPhone Photography App award for 2011, while Apple's iMovie grabbed the title for Best iPhone Video App of 2011 with 48.4 percent of reader votes. 360 Panorama (US$0.99) uses the gyroscope in your iPhone (also works with iPad and iPod touch) to stitch together panoramas in real time. Panoramas are GPS tagged and can be tweeted, posted on Facebook, or emailed, and share online. I personally use the app when I'm on vacations so when I get home I can enjoy the immersive experience of moving my iPhone or iPad around to view a stunning panorama. It's not surprising that Apple's iMovie ($4.99) app grabbed the top spot in the video category. It is totally magical to shoot 1080p video on an iPhone and then add a theme, titles, and transitions to raw video to create a digital masterpiece. Our congratulations go out to the teams at Occipital and Apple for their stellar work on these apps, and many thanks to the TUAW readers who nominated and voted for these apps in the TUAW Best of 2011.
TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for the best iPhone productivity app
The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you -- the readers -- and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We'll be announcing the winner in just a few days. Vote early and often! TUAW is asking for your votes for the best iPhone productivity app of 2011. Our readers provided a plethora of nominations in this category, but five apps really stood out. Springpad (free) captured the lion's share of the nominations for its easy to use interface, customizable notebooks, and ability to sync across platforms. A dark horse was ISMEStorage (US$4.99) a comprehensive cloud and local file manager that supports cloud services from Amazon S3 to Zimbra Briefcase and just about everything in between. The big guns weren't left out of the voting, though -- both Dropbox (free) and Evernote (free) were popular nominations for iPhone productivity apps. It was good to see OmniFocus for iPhone ($19.99) in the nominations, as it is a consistently popular and highly-rated productivity app. And now, let the voting begin! The results will be announced on Christmas Day, December 25. %Poll-72239%
Jetpack Joyride zooms to the top of TUAW Best of 2011 game app voting
Barry Steakfries has to be one happy camper today. The hero of Jetpack Joyride (US$0.99) from Halfbrick Studios was the runaway (or shall we say fly-away?) winner of the voting for the best iPhone game app of 2011. Barry's adventures trying out experimental jetpacks came away from the TUAW Best of 2011 voting with 39.2 percent of the votes, handily beating second-place winner W.E.L.D.E.R. That $1.99 word game was surprisingly popular as well, grabbing 26.9 percent of the reader voting. Many thanks to the TUAW readers who nominated their favorite iPhone game apps and then voted in the competition. Congratulations to the team at Halfbrick Studios for winning this category in the TUAW Best of 2011.
Nominate your favorite iPhone music app for TUAW's Best of 2011
During December and January, The Unofficial Apple Weblog is soliciting your nominations and votes for the best products for Mac, iPhone/iPod touch, and iPad. We'll start with nominations in a category, and then tally your votes for the top-nominated products a few days later. The winner in each category receives the highly-coveted title of TUAW Best of 2011. Today's category for nominations in the TUAW Best of 2011 awards is iPhone music apps. This is a huge area in the App Store, with apps that not only play music, but let you create music as well. This is also the last category for iPhone nominations. Apple's GarageBand (US$4.99) made it to the iPhone this year, turning your favorite phone (or iPod touch) into a music-making maniac. Smule's Magic Guitar (free) and Magic Piano (free) can make you a pocket musician in no time. Listening to music on Pandora (free) or Spotify (free) is easier than ever now, and Clear Channel's iHeartRadio (free) lets you listen to over 800 real radio stations from your iPhone. TUAW wants to hear from you -- what's your favorite iPhone music app? Leave your nomination in the comments below. Voting will start soon! Nominations close at 11:59 PM ET on December 23, 2011.
TUAW Best of 2011: Vote for the best iPhone social networking app
The nominations are in, and the poll is ready to go! The TUAW Best of 2011 awards are all about you -- the readers -- and what you think is the cream of the crop of Apple or third-party products and software. To vote, select one entry from the top nominations made by readers. We'll be announcing the winner in just a few days. Vote early and often! TUAW is asking for your votes for the best iPhone social networking app of 2011. The iPhone is with you almost all of the time, which makes it the perfect device with which to let your friends and family know where you are and what you're doing. Social networking apps for the iPhone make this possible with a few taps. From the reader nominations come the following candidates for the TUAW Best Social Networking App of 2011: the newly rebooted Path (free), Facebook (free), IM+ Pro (US$1.99), Tweetbot ($2.99), and Voxer Walkie-Talkie PTT (free). As with the Mac video and photo apps, I've broken out the voting into two polls. Please feel free to vote for one video app and one photo app, and we'll announce the winners in a few days. And now, let the voting begin! %Poll-72195%
Apple TV 2 is the favorite iPhone accessory of TUAW readers
OK, we'll probably get a lot of comments for this award, but in our reader nominations and voting, the second-generation Apple TV consistently won out as the most popular iPhone accessory of 2011. As a result, it wins a coveted TUAW Best of 2011 award. Why did we consider the Apple TV to be an iPhone accessory? Because the device works so well with the iPhone. If you want to blast videos or photos that you've taken with your iPhone onto a large screen HDTV, the Apple TV is a fast, inexpensive (US$99) and wireless way to do so. The iPhone can act as a remote control for your Apple TV, although that almost turns the tables on the situation and makes the iPhone an accessory to the little black box. The readers have spoken: 46.5 percent of respondents in our poll agreed that the second-generation Apple TV is a perfect match to an iPhone, and voted it into the TUAW Best of 2011. In second place with 21.0 percent of the votes was a much more traditional iPhone accessory: the LifeProof case ($79.99) for iPhone 4 and 4S. This is a lightweight and relatively skinny case that offers incredible waterproof protection for your favorite phone. Congratulations again to Apple for creating a winner!
Nominate your favorite iPhone navigation app for TUAW's Best of 2011
During December and January, The Unofficial Apple Weblog is soliciting your nominations and votes for the best products for Mac, iPhone/iPod touch, and iPad. We'll start with nominations in a category, and then tally your votes for the top-nominated products a few days later. The winner in each category receives the highly-coveted title of TUAW Best of 2011. Today's category for nominations in the TUAW Best of 2011 awards is iPhone navigation apps. These are the apps that give you turn-by-turn directions as you make your way around town, and they've been getting better as time goes by. Perhaps you are a fan of the free crowdsourced nab app Waze, which has a 4 out of 5 star rating on the App Store with over 29,000 user reviews. Or maybe you love the TomTom U.S.A. app ($39.99) with its ability to guide you with celebrity voices (Homer Simpson, anyone?). GPS by TeleNav is another popular and free navigation app, and there's always the MotionX GPS Drive app ($0.99, with one year of Voice Guidance for $9.99). Maybe you're a geocacher who doesn't care about getting from point A to point B, but you do want to find all of the caches in your area with the official Geocaching app ($9.99). And then there's always Navigon, with a host of features like in-app purchases of Zagat information. TUAW wants to hear from you -- what's your favorite iPhone navigation app? Leave your nomination in the comments below. Voting will start soon! Nominations close at 11:59 PM ET on December 22, 2011.
