Golden Ear for iOS

iPad, iPod Touch and iPhones are great for listening to mp3s and other popular compressed music format, but still, for those who care, nothing could compare to the joy of listening to high fidelity loseless audio. Some iOS music apps developers boast that their apps play loseless audio format, for instance FLAC and APE, but none can handle CUE files properly.

With Golden Ear, audiophiles' dream can finally come true. Golden Ear, as sweet as its name, plays common loseless format, including FLAC, APE, WAV, AIFF, and ALAC. Not just that! It even plays CUE files, which would be convenient for music lovers. The developer claims that the app can support up to 24bit/96KHz lossless audio, which is totally amazing! There are 3 play modes available: a) continuing in order,  b) shuffle, c) Loop one track. Another awesome feature is that you can control Golden Ear directly from your lock screen, just like how you control your iTunes. 

Verdict: I have both my favourite albums "Colour to The Moon" and "Tsai Qing Classic" loaded in the app and it sounds great. The $7.99 USD price tag, though pretty heavy for many of us, could still be acceptable for fellow audiophiles who really care about their tunes and would want to get the best out of their i-Devices. 

Real Steel: Control Your Noisy Boy!

I'm kind of surprised when I got to know that I can grab "Real Steel" for iOS in just $0.99 (USD). I've watched the movie and was dreaming of having the chance to train my own robot for a serious battle like Hugh Jackman. This game practically make my dream come true. You are free to select whichever robot you desire, and also pick the venue of your battle. All the venues and characters are exactly the same as the blockbuster, it's awesome. The battling concept is similar to classical arcade game such as "Streets Fighter", making it a simple but fun game to play. After winning every battle in the tournament, you can upgrade your robot to be stronger, faster or tougher. The only thing that I'm not happy with is that in app purchases have to be made in order for you to get the two big guys, Atom and Zeus. Overall, the game is a hit and it's totally a worthy investment for your lazy afternoon.

ArtRage: The best painting experience, right on your iPad!

There are a lot of apps out there bragging that they provide the best drawing and painting experience to iPad users, but seriously, none of them come close to beat ArtRage. This app is simply fabulous. It's equipped with so many useful tools that somehow I just refuse to believe that I am actually drawing on a tablet. This app, believe me, is not a toy, you can really paint with it. The customizable colour palate is easy to use, and switching between different tools can never be easier. One more thing, this tool is precise, even without the help of your stylus. I've been using this app couple of times to do some random sketches with my finger, and it feels good. You can even produce beautiful calligraphy with the brushes available, just by using your finger!

ArtRage for iPad is priced at $6.99. Though it might sound expensive, but trust me, it really worth the price, once you get hold of it. ArtRage is also available for iPhone ($1.99), Windows and Mac OSX (Studio: $29.90, Studio Pro: $59.90)

 

 

Percussive: Unleash Your Inner Talent

I'm not a musical type of person myself, even with Garageband, which is known as one of the greatest innovation in the app development history. I just can't enjoy the real excitement of having that $4.99 app in my iPad, besides faking my talent through the "smart" instruments included. Well, today I found something, an app that really mean a lot to me, and it's called "Percussive". I know there many more great applications out there, but this app is amazing, at least for a non-musically gifted person like me. With a moderate price tag of $1.99, this app is what you need as a kick start to awake your inner talent! The paid full version gives you 5 types of percussion instruments, including Glockenspiel, Marimba, Vibraphone, Xylophone, and Kalimba. THE BEST thing that these instruments offered are the notes (in the form of alphabets) clearly crafted on every piece of key on each instrument. This helps ordinary people like me to arrange the notes into a proper piece of music.

Verdict: The only drawback I found from this app is its inability to record the music that I played. In order to produce a sample of the music I played, I've to use a mini microphone attached to my laptop instead. For your information, there is also a free but limited version with only 1 instrument available, for those who want to tryout before purchase, you can do so.

Here is something I've done for fun using this app together with a cheap microphone, hope you guys enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoy playing it. :)

Volt HD for iPad

One of the reasons iPad is impractical for college undergraduates is its incapability to open certain webpages which requires Internet Explorer. But don't worry, our "app"mosphere just get better everyday! This web browsing app is called Volt HD. Designed specially for iPad, this app can pretend to be many popular web browsers, through its powerful feature known as "Browser Poser". It is able to pose as browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Opera Mobi, and Internet Explorer. We have yet to try everyone of them, but the Internet Explorer mode did work well in our test while we try to open the MOE (Ministry of Education) website.

This app is available for free in the AppStore for iPad.

Happy Chinese New Year!

It's only 1 day before our Chinese New Year's eve, "My Tech, My Life" would like to wish all of you, a happy, healthy Chinese New Year! Here's a simple gift for all our readers, done using Evernote Skitch, hope you like it :)

Tiles: Apps Organizer for Windows

Remember the time when you get frustrated while trying to find the important documents from your cluttered desktop and folders. "Tiles", is a new innovation by Stardock Corp. It is a sidebar which help you organize your running applications and shortcuts. All you need to do is to click on an active application, and drag n drop the application to the sidebar. Besides that, you can also find your files and folders easily by drag n drop your important files/folders to the sidebar to create a shortcut. You can customize and personalize your sidebar by right clicking the sidebar, and click on "Configure Stardock Tiles" to view additional options.