(Lightning Reviews are back! This time courtesy of — Badmofo63 who gives us a look at Pageonce (FREE at the iTunes Store). Want your Lightning Review elevated to our front page — with a tasty 25% TiPb Store discount prize to top it off? Get the details, choose and App, and make with the reviewing! And if you’re looking for a good example for what kind of reviews we like, this is a great one!)

Take it away, Badmofo63: Like many of us, I conduct much of my business online whenever possible. The beauty of the iPhone is that is can facilitate so much of that business with the embedded apps and its exceptional Safari browser. But let’s face it, on my original 2G iPhone, it’s excruciatingly slow to check bank balances, check bills, check on friends, and whatnot. Even on Wi-Fi (or 3G for you lucky stiffs) that’s a lot of page browsing.

Enter Pageonce. This app is a lifesaver for me. With one click, I can see the status of nearly all my online accounts. There are a large number of companies supported and nearly all the popular ones, like MySpace, eBay, most banks & financial institutions, etc. There is a tremendous amount of information displayed such as transactions and amounts, friend updates, phone usage and billing data, etc. The app was very stable on my 4GB 2.0.1 iPhone (stop making fun of me!!).

I found about 90% of my online accounts. The updates feature shows changes to the previous day, which is very helpful in watching credit cards and bank balances. However, you can only VIEW the data from your accounts; you cannot manipulate or change it.

Setting up the application is easy, although the majority of it has to be done on the Pageonce website, not in the app. The data is kept safe using military level security including 256-bit data encryption, including the data transferred between the Pageonce server and your iPhone.

What’s good: its one stop for many shops and you can quickly see recent changes that occur from day to day. The security of your information is enhanced by not having to login multiple times and the encryption protection of the data itself. Should you lose your phone, you can block access from mobile devices.

What could be improved: While I found 90% of my information to be available, I want 100%. I expect that this will occur over time and Pageonce does have a means to suggest additions and notify you when it is available. Also, since you can’t make changes to the accounts, if you do need to go to the provider website, a link would be helpful for single click access to it.

All in all… terrific app. I love it and use it frequently. The cost was FREE!!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Lightning Review: Pageonce – A Personal Assistant

(Lightning Reviews are back! Back again! And with one of our fav forum members — cjvitek giving us a look at Brain Challenge ($9.99 at the iTunes Store). Want your Lightning Review elevated to our front page — with a tasty 25% TiPb Store discount prize to top it off? Get the details, choose and App, and make with the reviewing! And if you’re looking for a good example for what kind of reviews we like, this is a great one!)

Take it away, cjvitek:

My wife and I just bought a Wii a few months ago. Recently, we just purchased the game Big Brain Academy for it, and we love it. I bought the game Brain Challenge hoping it would be similar to the Big Brain Academy game. And I wasn’t disappointed.

Read on for more!

Brain Challenge presents itself as a “brain strengthening” game. The idea is that you engage in mental excercises to learn to use all of your brain (as indicated by a brain use percentage). As you perform better on the daily tests, your brain percentage increases. You can also practice the various tests, and as your performance improves, various other games are unlocked.

The tests are grouped into one of five categories: Logic, Memory, Math, Visual, and Focus. Each category has five tests that you can do (or practice). When you start, just one is unlocked. In addition, there are bonus categories – I have only unlocked one game in the “creative” category called cubes.

Leading you through the exams is your mentor/guide, one of two authority figures that you choose. You can also take a stress test, which is the same tests but conducted under “stressful” conditions. You can practice those tests as well, presumably to lower your stress level (or at least respond better while under stress).

In reality, I don’t know how much these games help your brain power. Much like the Wii game, you simply learn to respond quickly to the test, learning what to look for, and how to interpret the results. Having said that, you can see clear differences in ability between two people – some people do really well at the memory games, while others may excel in logic.

I just bought this game yesterday, so I have not unlocked all the secrets or hidden games. During the practice levels (where you can choose easy, medium, or hard), the game gives you a letter score to see how you did. My guess if you score well in everything, other games get unlocked.

You can set up multiple profiles, so many people can play the game. Unfortunately, there is no two player interaction. You can’t take a test, and then have someone else take the same test. That is one strong plus feature of the Big Brain Academy games – you can have a cooperative mode where you are helping each other, or a race mode to see who finishes first, or even a puzzle mode where you compete to get points on a puzzle board. Features like that would give this game a 5 out of 5 rating. As it stands, I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. It is a complex game, and can be played many times if you are the kind of person who will want to try to push yourself to get better and better.

The game costs $9.99, so it isn’t one of the cheaper ones out there. When I bought it and was playing it while listening to music, it kept crashing. I have since played it without sound, and without music in the background, and it seems to run fine. Hopefully if there is a bug, it will get fixed in an update.

Redux

After having played it a few more times, while I can’t be certain, it does appear that the brain use percentage is not actually calculated, but instead is simply increasing on a set pattern. I just completed a test where I deliberately got at least half of the questions wrong. While my brain use percentage didn’t increase, it only went down by 2%. In addition, in the various categories, while my score was horrible, the brain use percentage in each category was still well above the first time I took the tests (when I know I did far worse in the most recent tests).

One thing I did notice is that if you seem to be doing poorly, the tests seem to get easier. And if you do well, they seem to get harder.

This is somewhat annoying. While obviously using a percentage value to indicate your level of brain use is not realistic, I was hoping that your progress was accurately being tracked based on some algorithm combining speed and accuracy. This does not appear to be the case. Your brain use percentage MAY be a cumulative score, but even that is not ideal, as your score should be based on each time you take the test.

The games are still fun and challenging, but there doesn’t seem to be any real measure of progress or improvement.

Pros:

• Involved gameplay, many different games and levels

Cons:

• No multiplayer options
• brain use percentage is not actually calculated

Score:

4/5

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Lightning Review: Brain Challenge

Lightning Reviews are back with a flash (get it?). Today’s review: a review of Absolute Fitness ($14.99 in the App Store) by smileyboy. Smileyboy will receive a 25% off coupon to our iPhone Accessories Store. Want to win just such a coupon yourself? Find out how here. The folks at the store tell us that their selection of iPhone 3G cases is really ramping up now — just be sure to select what kind of iPhone you have in the upper-left to ensure compatibility.

One of my favorite things to do is to workout. I love staying in shape and using technology to do it. Before the iPhone, there were various Palm and WM apps that I would use. The process became very tedious. Sometimes the device would reset, the programs were incomplete at times and so on.

I stared using the iPhone and I went back to my notebook and a pencil at the gym, because there were no apps. That is until the 2.0 software and the AppStore came out. The first app I tried was Fit 1.0. I can’t even begin to explain how incomplete this app is. I began another search. I found Absolute Fitness.

This App is perfect. Read on to see why!

App Store

Setup

First off. I have all of my workout/exercise apps in one row as you can see. This keeps everything organized and I am able to find my apps quick and easy.

During the set up of this app, you are first asked about your sex, DOB, Activity level, Height, Weight measurement system, Weight goal, target weight, Daily value calculation and Daily Value Reduction %. All of these settings help set up this app so that it can effectively help you accomplish your goals of loosing weight, gaining weight or staying the same.

The next step, is this app will give you a video tour of how to best use Absolute Fitness. The video loaded very fast and was very informative. There is also a User Guide that is available to look at too.

Diary

The diary keeps track of all your food and exercise. In the diary, you can add items according to the time the were eaten, you can modify the quantity of food you eat, you can choose food as a favorite so that you can save it for the next day. I love this feature. Especially sine I have Starbucks, coffee with 4 pumps of toffee nut with room for cream, gronola and yogurt or scrabled eggs and wheat toast every morning. I also do a 45 min spin class and run 4 miles a day. In this way, I don’t have to select the foods through the database each time. I just go to the favorites and select the item. It makes it real quick to add my daily foods and exercises.

The food selection is vast and there is everything in the database from Water to twizzlers, from Chicken to Herring. The exercising selection too is complete. There are a lot of exercises as well. With both food and exercising I am able to add custom meals and exercises that are not part of the the database. I can add these items to my favorites to be used on a regular basis.

Results

The best part of this app is that you can go back and see you progress, or lack there off. Absolute Fitness lets you see your Calorie intake, Cholesterol, Sodium, Potassium, protein, Total Carbs, Sat fat etc….

Hands down this is the best fitness app and I have found and I recommend it. I have lost 5lb by keeping track of everything an I don’t know where I’d be without it.

Thanks for reading

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Lightning Review: Absolute Fitness

(cjvitek is back with a review of Units ($.99 at the iTunes Store), a straightforward unit conversion app. It’s currently sitting pretty at #4 on the bestseller list, but does it belong? Read on to find out!)

On my old Treo, I had a great conversion program which I used frequently. When I switched to the iPhone 3G, I was hoping to find a similar program. The best I have found so far is “Units”.

Units is a conversion program that allows you to convert currencies, length, area, temperature, energy units, volume, time, speed, and weight. It has a simple, straightforward interface. First you select the mode you want to convert (say, currency), then the “from” units, then the “to” units. You select these options be repeatedly tapping on the “mode”, “from”, and “to” buttons until you get the selection you want. Then, using the calculator style interface, you type in the number you want converted. While I haven’t used the currency converter yet, the currency values are updated daily (automatically) or you can update them yourself manually.

The program also comes with three “quick launch” buttons that are customizable, so you can choose the three conversion types you do most often (including setting the default “from” and “to” units). In addition, it also has a “switch” button on the main screen, so you can quickly switch the “to” and “from” options.

A secondary screen gives you a little more control. You can choose the mode and units from a list, rather than repeatedly tapping on a button to find the one you want. In addition, this is also where you can customize the shortcut buttons.

All in all, I found this to be the best conversion program available so far. The interface is clean and easy to use, and it offers a wide array of conversion options. I do with it had a greater number of units to choose from. For example, while it does list liters under volume, it doesn’t list microliters or mililiters. Some of the units it does offer are useful and unexpected – for example, under temperature it includes kelvin (most programs simply have F and C). Eventually I also hope to see a greater number of units to choose from, and potentially more modes (for example, a shoe size mode would be great when travelling abroad).

At $0.99, this program is priced right,and well worth the cost for anyone who will find themselves in need of converting units on a regular basis.

Pros:

• Cheap,
• simple interface, easy to figure out

Cons:

• Repeatedly tapping to choose mode or units can be tiresome,
• some modes a lacking some units

All in all: 4 out of 5 stars.

Please note, this is the program from Crossroad Solutions. There is another program named “Units” from Ben Spratling. I didn’t find this one as easy to use.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Lightning Review: Units

Today’s Lightning Review comes from FoilTape, a review of Midomi, free on iTunes. Most people have been raving about Shazam for identifying music, but Midomi seems to work better with humming and the like. Let’s see what FoilTape thinks!

Midomi calls itself “the ultimate search and discovery.” It’s a FREE, cool and engaging app that definitely has scored ‘wow’ points with me. Midomi is a song recognition program that you can sing to, hum to, talk to, or type to. You can even hold your iPhone up to your car stereo to capture the sound. Midomi then searches its database and tries to decipher your best karaoke attempt and gives back likely matches.

I tried it a few times and rate its accuracy at around 70%. Chances are that you’ll get your title back in the list of responses. For these screenshots, I help my iPhone up to laptop speakers playing the opening lines of ‘John Deere Green’ (guitar and drums only, no singing) and Midomi found the result right away (3rd img). From the result screen, you can buy the song on iTunes and search YouTube for related video (4th img).

A fun bonus…when you sing or hum your song, Midomi will let you hear other’s singing and humming the same song! (5th img) That’s sure to get a laugh. I cracked up when I heard some Asian ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’.

If the program didn’t crash my iPhone the first time I used it (it’s been fine since then) I’d give it 5 stars.

Pros

• WOW factor
• Intuitive and simple
• FREE

Cons

• Crashed my phone on 1st use
• Accuracy only about 70%

Rating: 4/5

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Lightning Review: Midomi

(Today’s Lightning Review comes from BaLLi5t1c, a full review of the awesome Pandora Radio app (available on iTunes for free!). BaLLi5t1c gets a 25% off coupon to the iPhone Blog Accessory store. Want one yourself? Post a review in our forums — full details here)

This is my first time writing a review for an iPhone app, partly because I just received my 16GB Black this past Friday and partly because I’ve been basking in the glory that is the App Store, and I couldn’t think of a more deserving app than Pandora Radio to review.

For those of you who have never heard of Pandora Radio, I’m sure you’re wondering what it is exactly and why I would make such a bold statement in my title. Allow me to enlighten you.

To put it lightly, Pandora Radio is a heaven-sent program/application that will allow you to stream music that you’ve never heard of but probably should have, music that you listened to many moons ago but somehow let slip into obscurity with those passing moons, music that is probably still in your current rotation in iTunes, and anything in between. Not too shabby, eh?

You might ask, “BaLLi5t1c, how does it do all of that without me hand-picking all of the artists and songs that I want to hear?”

(Disclaimer: This initial section is just to give would-be users an idea of how great this program works from a real-world/user perspective. I have a “Functions” section below that details what you can expect from the menus and features of the app itself. Feel free to skip to that portion if you just want to find out the basics/technicalities of Pandora Radio.)

The logistics are anything but simple and I won’t even pretend to understand all of the intricacies but if I were to hypothesize, I would have to guess that it boils down to old-fashioned voodoo magic. Ok, I admit I’m no scientist and my hypothesis is far from accurate but if you do want more detailed information on this truly spectacular process I would advise checking out Pandora Radio – Listen to Free Internet Radio, Find New Music for an overview and FAQ for an in-depth explanation (other than voodoo) of how it all works.

As soon as I installed the app, I clicked on “Create a Station” and typed in Three Days Grace as the artist I was interested in. The first song that played was, as you might have guessed, by Three Days Grace. I enjoyed that song so I hit the “thumbs up” icon but wanted to delve further into what this handy-dandy app could offer. I hit the “next track” button and a song played that I had not listened to since back in 2006 when I played it several times a day for at least a month (10 Years – Wasteland in case anyone was curious). By that point, I was seriously intrigued but wanted to see what else this puppy could do. I hit “thumbs up” and then went to the next track and I couldn’t believe my ears. Disturbed – Stricken fired right up which coincidentally happened to be the artist whose newest album had been playing in my car non-stop since I purchased it several weeks ago. That was when I thought to myself, “Get out of my head,” then after realizing what I had stumbled upon, immediately retracted that thought and clicked “next track.” I’ve not looked back and I couldn’t be happier. The icing on the cake? It’s ABSOLUTELY FREE!

Functions:

The layout is pretty straight-forward and I don’t anticipate anyone having issues navigating the menus/using the app itself but if you do and don’t feel like perusing through the site or FAQ for your concerns, I’ll do my best to answer any questions you might have right here. As you can see in the screen shot below, all of your current stations are listed (determined by what you search for using the “+” in the left-hand corner) and there’s a “QuickMix” station which basically melds all of your tastes together and samples them accordingly (Note: Stations included in the “QuickMix” can be edited from the site listed above).

Once you’re actually listening to a station, you’ll be looking at a very eye-catching screen with various options allowing you to manipulate and refine your experience even further. In the screen shot below, you can see the “thumbs down/up” buttons which are pretty self-explanatory meaning that you either like the song or you don’t and WILL have an effect on future choices presented to you through this application (read more on the impact your actions have in the FAQ listed above). There are also options to bookmark the song and/or artist and even purchase the song via iTunes which can be accessed by clicking the little up arrow between the “thumbs down/up” buttons.

If you are curious as to why a particular artist/song was chosen for your listening pleasure, you can click the button in the right-hand corner (kinda looks like a few bulleted lines) and it will bring up an in-depth explanation that may or may not go right over your head but it’s comforting to know that the selections aren’t just lucky guesses.

To ensure that users are actually rating the music/not just browsing for the sake of browsing, you’re limited to six (6) skips/next track selections per station per hour. So, if you have multiple stations with similar artists you can workaround this in a sense because you get six (6) skips on each per hour.

Note: If you hit “thumbs down” on a song, it will stop playing and go to the next song. This is considered a “skip” and will count towards your allotted six (6) per hour.

Pros:

• Accuracy with which it picks and chooses artists/songs based on your tastes is simply astonishing.
• Quality of the streams is definitely above-average and will please practically anyone utilizing this incredible app.
• Speed of streaming is quite impressive. My first encounter with the app as recounted above was on the EDGE network and the load-times were definitely tolerable then. On 3G and Wi-Fi, you’ll be going through songs at almost the same rate as you would by clicking “Next” in iTunes.
• Cover-Art/aesthetics when you’re actually listening to a song is top-notch.
• Easy-to-navigate menus and two volume controls based on your access to the device (on-screen slider and dedicated volume keys on side of the device).
• Seamless integration with your account via Pandora Radio – Listen to Free Internet Radio, Find New Music and the ability to access all of the same features and then some while on the site.

Cons:

• Playback volume leaves a bit to be desired when just listening via the external speaker making it difficult to entertain multiple people in the same room without huddling around the device.
• The initial menu where all of your stations are listed is almost too simplistic visually. It’s not that it doesn’t do the job but it pales in comparison to the view you enjoy once you’re actually listening to one of your stations.
• Inability to edit/remove bookmarks and re-name stations unless using the online portal (Pandora Radio – Listen to Free Internet Radio, Find New Music) slightly tarnishes the otherwise brilliant experience.
• Makes you want to worship your shiny Apple toy more than you already do!!!

Overall Rating: 4.5/5 – Highly Recommended

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Lightning Review: Pandora

Masseym drops our latest Lightning Review, for MLB At Bat ($4.99 at iTunes), which we publish today even though masseym clearly was trying to play this Minnesota boy’s heart by using a Twins game in his screenshot. We’re publishing Lightning reviews of iPhone apps nearly every day, write your review in our forums and you’ll get a chance to win a 25% off coupon to our iPhone accessories Store. Click here for full details!

As an avid baseball fan (ok, just the Mets) living in Texas, I was excited when MLB announced their app. I could see the strike/ball/out counts live and then watch highlight clips from anywhere in the world! What an exciting application.

Well, after $4.95 I am disappointed. The app refreshes only once per minute, so there is no “live” update to strike count. It does have a small “on base” display, but again, only updates every minute. No box score or other stats.

I was most excited about the highlights. On my wifi connection, the highlights are AWESOME! 30 to 45 second clips of the “exciting” parts. They are delayed about 2-3 minutes after the actual action, but that involves the encoding of the video on MLB’s end.

On 3G and EDGE, the video is a different story. They are TERRIBLE. You can’t even make out who the players are since MLB compresses the video so highly. I can somewhat understand on EGDE, but 3G too? Come on.

Pros:

• Wifi highlights
• $4.95 for the rest of the season
• Baseball anywhere I go and have a signal

Cons:

• TERRIBLE video on EDGE and 3G networks
• 1 minute refresh rate isn’t instantaneous for balls/strikes/outs
• NO additional data (i.e. box scores, etc)

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Lightning Review: MLB At Bat

Next up: a review from iPhoneMilk: Texas Hold ‘Em. It’s a very well made game and (surprise!) it’s developed by none other than Apple, Inc. You can but it on iTunes for just $4.99.

Hello everyone this will be my first review of an iPhone app, More reviews are to come to stay tuned =)

First off, What’s the App?- Texas Hold’em!

This is a must buy for you poker fans! I myself often love to go out and play poker in real person and I always try out the occasional poker game for any device/pc just to see what it’s like, but this game has me coming back for more!

Let’s Start off with the features (which you can see here on the Home Screen)

Of course, you’ve got your single player mode, which when you play it it almost feels like you are progressing through a singe player game. You start off with $0 and have to work your way up through each “board” or “Map”. Basically they are just different locations and they all go up in cost of “buy in” in order to play. Starting off you can only buy in to the Garage. I thought that was funny and cool myself =). Each board goes up in buy in as i said and Naturally the prize money goes up, allowing you to play higher up in more boards. (of course this is assuming that you are doing well.

The cool thing about single player is it saves your money so you can continue and come back to play.

The Single player does have one Con, and one con only. There is a bug when you have money, it’s happened to me twice already, basically if you try to buy in to a higher board sometimes it will flash then take you back to the Board screen. The problem is it takes your money from you and you don’t get to go in and play. If this happens to you my advice is to close the game and re open it. Don’t worry it saves your money!

Here’s a Screen of what it looks like when you’re broke and also when the bug occurs.

Next up we’ve got Multiplayer and Tilt Features! and Character Choice!

The Tilt features are very impressive! (this works on both single and Multiplayer! Basically depending on how you are holding your iPhone you will get a different view of playing Poker, and this helps out for Quickplaying or if you just want a “Cooler” view. Personally i like the over the head view myself for Quicker play and also to just see everything better, but the cool paer is depending on what view you choose will depend on how the game feels while playing!

This is what the over the head view looks like

The first person view is very cool in which while you are in it the character’s Actually move, like a little video animation. so you can see the dealer actually dealing the cards =)

A Screen is below of the First person view.

The other cool thing about this game is the Character choices. There’s a TON that you can choose from. This is basically how you want to look. I have tested this in both single player and multiplayer and when you are in Multiplayer the other players actually do see you as the character that you choose which is cool!

One great thing I would like to note about playing this game is your on an iPhone so the Devs of the game made it feel “cool” when playing poker. What i mean by this is Chips and Cards (If you fold, you drag your finger on the cards and throw them on the table, or if you want to go all in? Just touch your chips and throw them All in. It’s great!

About the Multiplayer. You will quickly notice that when you try to connect nothing will happen. This is because they designed it so you only play with anybody else within your “Local network” or Wifi network that also has the game. They did not design in an Over the internet system, or Servers that you can connect to to play other players… maybe in an update? =( This is why i will be docking the game 1 point.

Summary / Pros / Cons

Pros

1. Lot’s of replay
2. Great Graphics and effects
3. Realistic feeling of throwing in chips and cards with touching
4. Tilt views
5. Cool sounds, good music in the background – Chill poker music
6. Character choices
7. Saves your money!

Cons

1. The multiplayer needs an Internet option to play more players (docking one point because of this
2. The money bug when trying to go to higher boards
3. That’s it!

Scoring in at 4 out of 5!! A Must Buy!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Lightning Review: Texas Hold ‘Em by Apple, Inc

(The Lightning Reviews are coming fast and furious — our next one comes from a game we’ve been eyeing as a potential Bejeweled-killer, but new things are scary. Fortunately, cjvitek is not afraid of new things and brings us this review of Trism, $4.99 at iTunes)

I am a big Bejeweled fan, and I love similar games. Trism bring that idea to a whole new level.

Instead of having block, or sqaures, or jewels, trism simply has colored triangles. The trick is, however, you can move a row of colored triangle any direction (along a row). You can move a row to try to get three matching colors together – if you don’t, the row “snaps back” to the starting position. The rows wrap around, so if a triangle goes off the screen on one side, it reappears on the other side of the screen.

The other twist with Trism is that the blocks will fall based on how you rotate the iPhone. As you rotate, the block will always fall down – with “down” being indicated in the lower right corner (and if it changes, a grey arrows appears briefly showing the new direction – see my last picture). So as you are deciding how to move blocks, you ALSO need to decide how to hold the iPhone to achieve the best success. Hold it one way, and you will end up with empty triangles (making it more difficult), but if you had rotated it, something might have fallen into the empty spot.

You also have powerup and other special features that you can unlock as you play. To date, I have only unlocked a few of them, so I can’t tell you what they all are. There are three game modes, but I have only played “infinism”. “Terminism” and “Syllogism” ar the other two modes. I know one of them is timed, but I am not sure about the other.

I give this game 4.5 out of 5 stars for it’s unique gameplay and new take on an old game. The only problem with the game is the gameplay is sometimes not as responsive as I would like. It sometimes take a few taps for the game to “figure out” what row I want to move (or the game thinks I am trying to pause).

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Lightning Review: Trism

benji starts off our iPhone App Lightning Reviews and scores a %25 off coupon with a review of Beatmaker, which you can find with this iTunes Link and buy yourself for $19.99. We have plenty more reviews coming, but don’t forget you can submit your own in the forums for you chance to win a coupon yourself — full details here!

BeatMaker is one of the first in a higher league of iphone apps. In short, it is a music creation tool that picks up where the MooCow Music “Band” app leaves off…and improves in leaps and bounds.

Read on for the full review!

You create music from a 16-pad sample library that that can be loaded with an assortment of provided sample banks ranging in genres from Rock, Electronica, Funk, etc. There are also a few custom banks provided by DJ artists with their own special sounds. You arrange the samples into 4-beat patterns which can then be sequenced into a song.

Most of your time in BeatMaker is spent flipping back and forth from the “Pads” environment and the “Sequencer” environment. Beatmaker lets you either record your pattern on the pads, or manually enter the “steps” in the “Step-Sequencer” environment accessed from within the Sequencer environment (this app has depth!). Once you create a few patterns and start to line them up your song starts to take shape and the music creation/beat mixing madness begins!

Trigger the pads and manipulate samples.

Create your song by placing your patterns along the timeline.

Go in-depth and place the triggering steps on time for better precision.

As you can see, rather than defaulting to the SDK’s included GUI elements, BeatMaker presents its own completely original interface and branding. Fly-out tabs are placed at the top and bottom of the screen to help you navigate the programs various menus and functions with a touch.

You can save your songs out as a wave file and use a soon to be released free sync tool called BeatPack to sync your creations with your computer.

What’s this!? A saving and file management system?…I must be dreaming…

Many will complain that the downfall of this app is the $19.99 price, to which I respond that you honestly get what you pay for. In my opinion, the best and most comprehensive to-do list in the App Store is Omni-Focus (also priced at $19.99) and the best music creation tool (and best non-gaming app) so far is BeatMaker.

A lot of the apps in the App Store are simple in their design and function, but they get the job done….And that’s OK. But I want apps that take mobile applications to the next level like the iphone took mobile phones to the next level. Many of the current apps barely surpass the functionality and depth of a web-app!

BeatMaker takes mobile apps to the next level and should set the standard for future apps…If your into music creation, I highly recommend it.

Ratings (out of 5)

• Look and Feel: 5
• Navigation: 5
• Features: 5
• Reliability: 5
• Overall: 5

Pros:

• Intuive
• Looks awesome, sounds great
• Lets you save your songs and is suited for live performance!
• Included RSS feed for updates

Cons:

• A little pricy
• Crashes every once and a while, but this could be a 2.0 thing and not an app thing.

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Lightning Review: Beatmaker