The Icon Factory App Suggestions

Whether you know the name The Icon Factory, you probably heard of one of their biggest apps Twitterrific. Now that might be due to the unfortunate twitter news that’s come about. This was my third party Twitter app of choice for many years and now that it is gone, I thought it might be a good time to highlight their other fine work.

Linea Sketch

Linea has also been a long-time favourite of mine. I think it might have been the first sketching app (or at least first for me) that really got right. It felt so smooth and unlike drawing on a computer screen. Certainly compared the many apps at the time and those that came after.

I don’t feel the UI gets in the way either and it’s visually appealing.

Triode

Triode is an app for internet radio. I’ve come to this one late. I used to use a variety of source (primarily the NPR app) but as I’ve become more of a radio user, the NPR app alone just can’t do it all. That’s where this app comes in. You can stick with using it for free. It will work fine as is but there are some subscription options and a one-time fee. If only for being able to favourite things, I’d suggest considering one of those options. The search is fast and useful so you can get a lot from it for free. I felt this was good and made it easier to truly test it. I was very happy with it so I feel it’s worth paying some money for it in one way or another.

Tot

Tot is a visually appealing, minimalist note taking app that works across all of Apple’s platforms (including the watch). You might notice there’s a pattern appearing on how they design their apps. Their style definitely works for me. Anyway, this one might be the most contentious as note taking apps are something I feel no one app can do it for everyone. Some want something very simple, some want something more like Drafts.

The t hing that might catch people by surprise is that you can only have up to 7 notes. You’ll notice there are 7 coloured dots, so you get a quick, simply system for switching between notes. It has iCloud support, a useful custom keyboard and I really like the theming of the notes bad on the colour of the dot. On the Mac, the ability to access it via the menu bar is a really nice touch which adds a lot to the “note” feel.

So far as note taking apps go, this works more like physical notes rather than behaving like a paired down word processor. I suppose whether that’s what you want or not is up to you but you can try it for free on the Mac. If it does it for you then I’d go all in and buy the iOS app.

WorldWideWeb

This one is a free app but that doesn’t mean it’s a lesser app and like their other apps it does exactly what you want. It’s a personal web server. The obvious use-case for this is testing web content on an iOS / iPad. You can also access it with other devices.

The Icon Factory have other apps but these are the ones I’ve used and can vouch for. While this clearly isn’t an in-depth review of each one, I hope by highlighting them you find a new app that helps you out in some way. These people have been developing for iOS (among other things) longer than most others and it shows in the quality of their apps.