Preserve Your Memories: Digitize Analog Photos, VHS, Cassettes, Music & More
By Tamlin Day
Hurricanes. Floods. Fires. Disaster can strike at any moment, and our most precious memories are often the most vulnerable. Recently, I started going through my old photo albums to scan and upload my pictures and negatives to a hard drive for safekeeping. Of course, it’s not just photographs that we want to preserve. Vinyl albums, cassette and VHS tapes, analog photography, and even old diary pages are subject to the ravages of nature, storage space, and time. Fortunately, new technologies make it possible for us to preserve and protect our memories in the digital realm. From USB-equipped turntables to flatbed scanners large enough to copy an entire sleeve of images, the means of archiving your most precious memories are only limited by your imagination. But don’t worry, we imagined for you and have a list of devices and apps we think you’ll love.
8 Best Habit Setting & Goal Tracker Apps for Your iPhone
By Hallei Halter
Do you have new habits you would like to create, but don’t know how to begin? Feel like you start working toward a new goal only to find that you can’t quite keep it going or reach a finishing point? Here are our picks for the best apps that can help anyone with forming and tracking a habit or setting and completing a goal.
Featured iUser: How Magician & Clown Brandon Baglivo Uses His iPhone
By Leanne Hays
In every issue of iPhone Life magazine, we feature the iPhone Home screens of people from different walks of life, so our readers can see how they use iPhone apps to meet a variety of needs. In our Spring 2019 issue, we featured magician and clown Brandon Baglivo, who uses his iPhone for researching magic tricks, planning publicity, and even setting up family activities. If you have a story and apps you'd like to share, email me and we may feature you in an upcoming issue of the magazine!
10 Best Apps for Language Learning, Brain Games, Math & More
By Kenneth Boshell
Education doesn’t have to stop once you're an adult; we should continue learning and growing so we can evolve and adapt as human beings. Whether you choose to play brain games from Lumosity, pick up some new math skills from Kahn Academy, or learn Spanish language vocabulary from Duolingo, lifelong learning has many benefits. This sort of personal bettering can increase positivity, help out at home and abroad, and result in fiscal rewards through our jobs as we demonstrate further education and better-developed skill sets to our employers. Let's go over ten of our best picks for free and paid apps that will help you on your lifelong learning journey.
7 Apps for the Writer, Painter & Musician in Us All
By Melanie Newell
Looking to add more color, creativity, and self-expression to your life with your iPhone? I’ve sifted through a sea of choices to find this lineup of creativity-boosting apps geared toward the writer, artist, and musician in us all. Try using any of the following apps to turn up the fun in your life with drawing, painting, singing, journaling, and even karaoke!
Review: Play Drums Anywhere on Anything with Senstroke
By Todd Bernhard
The Senstroke Drum Sensors (starting at $190) could have helped back when I had a roommate who played the drums. France-based Senstroke sent me its virtual drum kit sensors and I have a new appreciation for the drums. Instead of bothering others, you can play drums on just about any surface and "hear" the percussion from the companion Senstroke iOS or Android app, including via headphones. The app supports Basic and Expert modes, with the advanced option allowing customization of your virtual drum kit.
Wedding Planning Made Easy: Best Apps & Top Websites
By Kenneth Boshell
When planning our wedding, I began noticing my then-fiancé seeming stressed out all the time; I offered to help offload the work, and soon learned she’d been doing most everything by hand. I knew there had to be a better way, so I started playing around with apps to see which ones I liked the best (spoiler, it’s Trello!). Most other apps perform about the same; it’s just a matter of investing in one, whether that be the Knot, the WeddingWire, or Pinterest. Wedding planning can be difficult, but you’ll make it through by following this guide!
Tropico for iOS Game Review
By Mike Riley
In addition to creating its own games, Feral Interactive has established itself as one of the preeminent PC to iOS game port developers for iPhones and iPads. Whether its Feral Interactive's own Rome: Total War games or high speed racing games like GRID Autosport, the company's proven porting track record has set the bar for other companies intending to bring classic PC games to iOS.
Review: PureGear's Cellular-Enabled Dash Cam Delivers
By Todd Bernhard
I have used a number of dash cams and they tend to fall into two categories; namely a sufficient low-end forward-facing camera that, if it connects to to a smartphone at all, does so using a clunky interface; or a high-end, app-enabled, multi-camera, high-resolution device. The PureCam 4G LTE Dual Lens Dash Cam ($249.99) is the high-end kind. PureGear loaned me the device to try and I found a number of distinguishing features.
10-Minute Apps for Exercise, Meditation, Journaling & Brain Fitness
By Melanie Newell
We all want to be healthy, and we want it to be easy, effortless enough to work into our busy lives jobs, errands, and other important tasks we pursue daily. Here's a selection of exercise, journal, gratitude, and meditation apps, some free, some paid, for you to use to meet your self-improvement goals. I’ve downloaded (and subsequently deleted) countless apps while researching this article. I’m proud to say the apps I settled on can and (probably) will improve your health and well-being in 10 minutes or less a day.
Tivoo-Max: The Cute Bluetooth Speaker with a Custom Pixel Display Goes Big
By Todd Bernhard
Recently, I had the opportunity to review the Tivoo from Divoom and I really liked it. My only request was for a larger version. I love it when a plan comes together! Divoom sent me the Tivoo Max ($99), which is available as an Indiegogo campaign currently. The Max is a larger version that also enhances audio with 20 watt stereo speakers and a 20 watt active subwoofer.
How to Customize Your iPhone Share Menus
By Hallei Halter
You can customize your iPhone's Share menus by selecting apps like Messenger or Mail and rearranging the icons to make sharing images, web pages, and other media from your iPhone more efficient. To edit the icons in your Share menu, you'll need to open the Share tab and tap the More icon to the right of your share options to access the edit menu. Here's how to add Messenger and other apps to your Share menus.
Guide to iOS Apps: How to Download, Update, Delete, Organize & More
By Leanne Hays
Do you have questions about how to find, download, open, close, organize, delete, and otherwise manage iOS apps on your Apple device? Here's your roadmap to the App Store, and how to navigate all the applications you discover there. Whether you're wondering how to find a specific type of app, how to delete apps you no longer need, how to organize your Home screen so you can easily find the apps you're looking for, or even how to fix an app that's frozen or crashing, we have you covered. Dive in to our apps guide and find the information you need to get the most out of your apps.
iOS 13, iPadOS, watchOS 6 & More: Everything Apple Announced at the WWDC Keynote
By Leanne Hays
The Worldwide Developers Conference 2019 keynote event has come and gone, leaving us with an array of updates, reorganizations, additions, and hardware to assimilate into our mental map of Apple products and services. Rumors were flying about the death of iTunes, new iOS, watchOS, and Mac features; now let’s go over what really happened, and what it means for both Apple developers and customers.
Get Focused: 8 iPhone Apps for Staying on Task
By Tamlin Day
Do you have trouble staying focused? Yeah, me too. In fact, while researching this article, I found myself drifting off to other tasks that definitely needed to be done right away (plot twist; they did not, in fact, need to be done right away). It’s hard to say how much time we waste just worrying about how much time we waste. If, like me, telling yourself, “I have to focus!” feels more abusive than it does helpful, you’re probably dealing with an interruption to one of your executive functions. And while your smartphone use can be a symptom of an attention problem, it can also become part of the solution.