MacLife - USA (2020-09)

58 SEP 2020 maclife.com

App Life

SEEK BY INATURALIST

Free Made for iPhone, iPad and

iPod touch

Half the fun of a nature walk is spotting

plants and wildlife, even more so if you

actually know what you’re looking at.

This app can identify plants, animals,

fungi, bugs and so on from a picture you

snap. It creates records of what you saw,

and can suggest other things you might

find in your area, so it can turn spotting

nature into a game of completing the

collection for kids.

VIEWRANGER: HIKE, RIDE OR

WALK

Free (IAPs) Made for iPhone, iPad and

iPod touch

If you’re heading into the great outdoors

(or even the more minor outdoors), it

helps to know where you’re going. This

app makes it easy to find routes you can

walk or ride, and has an AR view that

points you in the right direction and

highlights landmarks. It can also track

your own custom routes, and maps can be

saved to your device for offline navigation.

GARDENIZE

Free (IAPs) Made for iPhone,

iPad and iPod touch

Want to pretty up your yard with flowers

or grow your own produce? This app

makes it easy to stay on top of what

you’re doing. You can take photos of your

plants and add notes for care instructions,

and even draw on your photos to mark

where you’ve planted seeds. Info is

collated into a diary, and you can also get

inspiration from other people’s profiles

as well as sharing your own.

RADARSCOPE

$9.99 (IAPs) Made for iPhone,

iPad, iPod touch and Apple TV

Okay, we all know plenty of great weather

apps that give you rain warnings and

similar features. We won’t bore you with

those — no, we’re going to get serious.

Unleash your inner meteorologist with

an app that enables you to follow radar

readings in detail so you can make your

own judgments about whether your bike

ride is going to be hit by bad weather. For

tracking storms, this is unbeatable.

ROUNDUP

Being outdoors is something of

a contentious issue right now, and

there’s certainly still a lot of danger

from the pandemic if you head out

into crowded municipal areas.

However, being outside in the

wilderness, far away from other

people, is one of the safest places you

can be. We’ve got six apps here that

can help you make the most of going

outside, whether you’re heading for

nature hikes, taking a bike ride, or

even just Ľxing up the yard. Some are

designed to give you new ideas for

what you can do, some will help you

keep track of what you already like

to do, and one is guaranteed to turn

you into a weather geek...

Great weather is here, so get out into the wilds

6 apps to

enjoy the outdoors

Image rights clockwise from top: DTN, Gardenize AB, Augmentra Ltd, California Academy of Sciences.