Quick Takes on Five Apps #10

This is the tenth [installment](https://brooksreview.net/tag/quick/) of the Quick Takes series, where I look at five apps and tell you my thoughts on them.

### [World War](http://www.storm8.com/games/world-war/) (iPhone) ###

This is a game that, from the icon and splash screen, makes you think that you are getting a first person shooter. Then you get into the actual game and you think you are playing something more akin to Risk. Except that there is no description for what this game is and overall it is just not that great. It can be addictive if you have friends that you can form an ‘alliance’ with, but you can’t discover that in app. Leaving you to type in these random alliance codes. Overall I’d pass on this game. The game play is a lot of automatic button pushing with a slight amount of strategy applied to what you “spend” your fake money on (unless you use in-app purchase to turn your real money into fake money).

### [Evernote](http://www.evernote.com/) (iPhone) ###

It’s been a long time since I last used Evernote (Aug 2009), but after seeing how far the mobile app has come I decided to give it another try. While it’s really not for me (text files FTW), Evernote has done a fantastic job revamping their mobile offering. If I was someone who took a lot of pictures of text (white boards, labels, papers) then I don’t think there really is a better option than Evernote. It is much quicker and much better looking (aside from the icon) than past versions. Worth a look if you left Evernote because of the poor mobile offering back in 2009 — I really like the Loren Brichter styling on the new note entry fields.

### [Flight Track Pro](http://www.mobiata.com/apps/flighttrackpro-iphone) (iPhone) ###

This is an oldy, but goody. I have been using it for quite some time now and you can’t beat this app for tracking your flights (or those of people you are picking up from the airport). The best feature: the ding-dong sound it makes when sending you push notifications, love that identical to that ‘fasten-seatbelt’ chime you hear on the plane. I have found that the data for when the flight landed (not the time it will land, but whether it is landed already) is always wrong. Always.

### [Easy Release](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/easy-release/id360835268?mt=8) (iOS Universal) ###

If you are a photographer that ever needs to get a model release or location/property release — you might want to give this a look. It’s not the best UI, in fact it really sucks. But it gets the job done without paper. Both people can sign on the device and have a pdf emailed to them. I can’t speak to how strong the contract is from a legal perspective — but this app has saved my butt quite a few times when I forgot to bring a model release with me. I also like that the models info is saved in the app for quick creation of a new release when needed. Good stuff. (Again the icon and app itself needs a lot of love from a designer.)

### [Mactracker](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mactracker/id430255202?mt=12) (Mac) ###

Did you know that the Macintosh Centris 660AV was released July of 1993 for a price of $2,300 and weighed in at 14lbs? I didn’t either, but Mactracker does. Sure you can get some of this info from Wikipedia, but having it all in one place for every Apple product is quite awesome. It’s also a free app so you really can’t go wrong. A great thing to play with is the timeline view to see what Apple launched on a year by year basis. Neat stuff to play with, especially if you write about Apple.

*If you liked this installment be sure to check out the other [installments](https://brooksreview.net/tag/quick/).*