By Jill Emmer
What happens when you think of summer? Perhaps you visualize a lake at sunset, road trips by wide-open prairies, soft blue skies with puffy clouds, or brightly colored carnivals and dripping ice cream. You picture the joyful faces of your friends and family. Often, we remember the past through images.
By Chris Molnar
iPhones and iPads allow you to access the internet, create presentations, type a paper, read a book, whatever you want. But we all know the truth about why these things were invented and why they are must-haves for everyone. It's because of the games! Preferably the free, mind-numbing games that suck you in for hours or days. In this roundup, I'll take a look at five of the best free games for iPhone and iPad in the App Store.
By Kate Palbom
While your iPhone makes it easy to find recipes and plan meals with your iPhone, there’s a world of food apps out there that can help you go beyond the daily food grind and elevate your gastronomy experiences.
From finding the best restaurants mixing up your snack regime, this list of the best food apps for iPhone and iPad is sure to make even your iPad start working up an appetite.
By Mike Riley
2017 is shaping up to be the year of the board game digital conversions, with the very popular Terra Mystica ($9.99) being yet another physical board game making the leap to the virtual digital realm. Does the game capture the essence of the source material while taking full advantage of gaming on iOS? Read on to find out.
By Conner Carey
The iPhone calendar icon has mysteriously disappeared for some users. If your iPhone is running iOS 10 or later, the question of what happened to the iPhone calendar app is a fairly simple solution. It’s likely you accidentally deleted the Calendar icon, which is an easy mistake to make. But if you want to get the Calendar app back on iPhone, we’ll need to re-download the Calendar app from the App Store. If you’re certain you haven’t deleted the Calendar app, we’ll also cover how to search for apps using Spotlight search. Here’s how to get the Calendar app back on iPhone if it’s disappeared.
By Jordan Sweeney
Technology has become a crutch for everything we do: eating, working out, listening to music, and so on. One of the most important technological tools we rely on is GPS apps. We use navigation apps to travel everywhere. Very seldom do people use physical paper maps to get from point A to point B; it’s all about the apps. However, not every iPhone user loves Apple Maps. These alternative iPhone maps apps can help us do anything from using public transportation to driving our own vehicles and everything in between. They can tell you how long your trip will take, where to get gas, and even where to stop and eat along the way. Here are a few of my favorite free navigation apps that I use all the time.
By Mike Riley
In the Spring 2017 of iPhone Life magazine, I wrote a roundup of HomeKit-compatible home-automation gear, which included Elgato's Eve Room indoor temperature and humidity sensor, its Eve Door & Window wireless contact sensor and the Eve Energy electricity toggle switch. This brief post reviews two more members of the Eve family, the Eve Motion ($49.95) wireless motion sensor and the Eve Weather ($49.95) wireless outdoor sensor.
By Paula Bostrom
Mindfulness has officially become mainstream. So much so that Apple’s latest iOS updates feature meditation and breathing exercises with the Breathe app for the Apple Watch and the Health app for the iPhone—both of which encourage mindfulness as a way to overcome stress. But what is mindfulness? Basically, it’s slowing down and paying attention to what is around you. It’s focusing your awareness on the present moment (e.g., the sounds you hear, the feel of the earth beneath your feet, the taste of your food, your breath.) This mental state sounds simple, but with our busy lives and minds so filled with chatter, it’s not always easy to achieve.
By Nate Adcock
Years ago, you could buy headphones that allowed you to adjust volume levels or balance for each ear. Though there are still some options out there, adjustable headphones are not common. In case you were wondering what the big deal is, most people do not have the exact same hearing ability in each ear (studies show most of us in the louder digital age suffer some form of hearing loss). Though we may perceive that we have perfectly balanced hearing, the truth is usually much different. Enter Aumeo ($199). Not only does it Bluetoothify your music, but also processes it according to a specific profile tailored to your unique left and right hearing ability. The result is actually pretty impressive.
By Mike Riley
With Apple's release of its HealthKit API, the company has put the spotlight on its customers' health and wellbeing. Doing so has also encouraged manufacturers of third-party health-management devices to utilize the iPhone as a data hub, assisting users and even medical practitioners with monitoring and supporting healthy initiatives. One such device is the QardioArm Smart Blood Pressure Monitor $(99).
By Nate Adcock
Sleep deprivation in our always-on, social media-saturated world is a problem that is only growing as we add more tech to our homes. It affects our performance on and off the job and can result in significantly adverse health effects, particularly as we age. I have dealt with my share of sleep issues over the years, due to regularly traveling and working different shifts at my job. Although I don't have any magic-bullet solutions, I can offer what I’ve found to be the most helpful apps, gear, and tips for lulling you to sleep.
By Mike Riley
While surveying the iOS health device monitoring landscape, I came across an inexpensive and somewhat compelling body temperature thermometer from Kinsa. Called the Smart Stick Thermometer ($19.99), this non-Bluetooth-enabled device uses the audio port on pre-iPhone 7 iOS devices to capture and record temperature.
By Donna Cleveland
While there are more than 2 million apps in Apple's App Store, most of us have found a select few we simply can't part with. Whether photography, gaming, traveling, fitness apps are your thing, we want to hear from you. If you've found a new app in a category of its own, even better!
By Sarah Kingsbury
In the 55th episode of the iPhone Life podcast, the team discusses the pros and cons of reading on your iPhone. Other topics include tips for searching your photos using facial recognition and whether Apple Maps or Google Maps is the better navigation app.
By Mike Riley
Building on the success of the initial Rome Total War iOS conversion, the first expansion for the series, ROME: Total War - Barbarian Invasion ($4.99), has also made its way to the iPad. Has developer Feral Interactive struck gold again with its latest effort? Read on to find out.