There’s no denying it: the holidays are upon us. Christmas is finally here, and all of you last minute holiday gift shopping procrastinators are just about hosed. To mark the occasion and make the season just a little bit brighter, we here at Mac|Life have put together a list of our favorite Christmas flavored iOS apps sure to make the season bright for die-hard yuletide sentimentalists and humbugs alike.
Thats’ right folks: it’s the 12 apps of Christmas, without the annoying, repetitive music.
If you’ve left your Christmas shopping to the last minute, you’re going to love Christmas Gifts List. This jaunty holiday-themed iPhone application lets you set up a gift list for each of your friends and loved ones and includes the ability to set up a shopping budget for each person you plug into the app. You can track your shopping by what purchases have been made, who’s left to shop for, how much money has been spent on each person and how much cash you have left to finish your shopping with.
Once you’ve bought one of the gifts on your list, simply check it off to remove it from the list and deduct the cost of the present from your holiday shopping budget. Christmas Gifts List is so easy to use it almost makes you want to head to the mall on December 24th to shop some more. Almost.
What would the holidays be without some great eats? The fabulous and free epicurious application for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad makes cooking up a scrumptious seasonal feast a breeze. Loaded with creative and delicious meal, snack and dessert recipes that are sure to be a hit with your guests. In addition to allowing you to navigate thousands of tempting gastronomical treasures, for a small in-app fee, epicurious will also allow you to save any number of your favorite recipes to a cloud-based recipe box that syncs between your various iOS devices. You’ll never go hungry for want of a recipe for Rosemary Rubbed Side of Salmon again!
While you’re waiting for that bird in the oven to finish cooking, you’re gonna need something to keep you busy. May we suggest spending some quality time with Angry Birds Seasons? Sure, this iOS favorite first made the scene back in October for Halloween, but it’s been updated with some challenging new levels featuring a snowy, gift and Christmas tree seasonal bent that’ll keep you snickering for hours at a time.
Best of all, once Christmas has come and gone, you can rely on the game’s developers to crank out additional holiday themed updates. Angry Birds Seasons is a gift that just keeps on giving.
You’re gonna need a tree to put all those presents under, but with more people living in cramped urban apartments than ever before, who has the room? We’ll tell you: anyone with an iPhone or iPod touch. Christmas Tree Decorator is a great way to get your tree on, no matter where you are--just select the decorations you want to deck out your tree’s branches with, tap the spots where you want them to go and before you know it, you’ve got yourself a pocketable tannenbaum-to-go.
If you’re not thrilled with the layout of your tree’s decorations, Christmas Tree Decorator has your back: all of the decorations can be moved around or removed entirely. You can even scrap the whole thing and start over. Once you’re happy with your tree-based work of art the application will let you plant it in a number of settings, complete with blinking lights, falling snow and festive music.
What’s better than magical reindeer prancing their way across the sky? Why, a robotic unicorn decked out in Santa swag blasting its way across a frozen Christmas-themed tundra of death, of course! Adult Swim’s addictive Robot Unicorn Attack’s holiday make-over will keep the your inner gaming masochist running, jumping, blasting--and yes, dying--across a frozen wasteland of awesome. Add in a bit of the game’s hilariously hard-rocking soundtrack and some friends to share the fun with, and you’ve got a great recipe for some holiday win.
Taking the initiative to actually go outside so that you can mail a letter to Santa is so last century. Thanks to Letters to Santa Gold, anyone with an iPad or iPhone can jot off a letter to the Jolly Old Elf and send it from the comfort of their own home.
After answering a few pointed questions as to your age, name, and whether you’ve been naughty or nice this past year, the application provides you with a bit of parchment and encourages you to write out your Christmas wish list. Once it’s done, send it off to Santa in the hopes of securing enough commercially fueled joy and happiness to keep you going for another 365 days. No matter whether you’ve been naughty or nice, in a few hours, Santa will send you a response, letting you know what your chances are of seeing that wish list fulfilled.
While Letters to Santa Gold is a load of whimsical fun for kids of all ages, the application, while advertised as being free does come with a price. Every time you log into the application, you’ll be prompted to consider the in-app purchase other iOS applications made by the developer. With that being the case, we’d advise supervising your wee ones while they use Letters to Santa Gold in order to avoid any unwanted charges to your credit card.
Amidst the storming sea of consumerism most of us are doing our best to avoid at this time of year, it’s a relief to find some joys to partake in that cost nothing. VSMCarol Christmas Sheet Music Lite is a brilliant app for your iPhone or iPod touch that’ll cost you nothing but will give you the gift of music. And that, folks, is a gift worth sharing with the people you care about. Boasting both the sheet music and lyrics to some of the most popular secular Christmas tunes out there, the application is pocketable Christmas miracle, that’ll help you and your caroling buddies singing and playing on key.
Who says you can’t teach an old favorite new tricks? No one we can think of, which is probably what led the developers at LoudCrow Interactive to piece together this gem of an application.
Viewable on all current iOS devices, The Night Before Christmas is perfect take on a Christmas classic. The application can be set up to read to children too young to do so themselves or with the tap of a finger, can help a reader overcome a word they’re having difficulties with.
In addition, just about everything else in book is interactive as well. By tapping or swiping at The Night Before Christmas’ excellent hand-drawn illustrations, readers will be rewarded with some surprising results that will keep your inner child full of glee from cover to cover. There’s little doubt the obvious care that LoudCrow Interactive baked into this one will pay off in dividends both for the development house’s bottom line and the amount of joy it’ll being to readers of all ages.
It’s Doodle Jump! With Christmas stuff! Need we say more? Well, just in case we do, we will. With its adorable characters, fast gameplay and light-hearted premise, Doodle Jump is arguably one of the most addictive games available on any platform, let alone iOS.
This time around the game’s developers have upped the stakes for Doodler, Doodle Jump’s protagonist. No longer content with simply moving ever upwards and not falling, Doodler now quests for The North Pole, fighting off baddies, crumbling platforms and gravity along the way. With free updates to both the original game, and this Christmas version on the horizon, If you’ve never taken the time to play Doodle Jump before, ’tis the season to be starting.
You’d have to have a heart a two sizes too small not to dig this one. Dr. Seuss’ Christmas classic has made the jump to Apple’s iTunes Store, and let us tell you it is glorious. With options for the app to read the contents of the book to gleeful little scrooges, let them read it themselves or play the tale of the Grinch and Whoville as a motion comic, this one’s sure to appeal to fans of Seuss’ yuletide masterpiece no matter their age or reading comprehension level.
Best of all, The Grinch That Stole Christmas will run like a champ on just about any iOS device you install it on, making sure that your preferred Apple mobile device remains free for you to use while the little readers in your family get their ho-ho on with something less essential to your lifestyle--like that iPod touch you bought three months before picking up an iPhone 4.
There’s a lot of ways to keep track of the whereabouts of Santa these days on your Mac these days--Google Earth with tracking information supplied by NORAD chief among them. However, your options on the go are somewhat limited. If you can’t fight the urge to stalk Father Christmas until you get back to your computer, you may want to consider adding Santa Tracker HD to your yuletide creeping arsenal.
Not only will the application let you keep tabs on the Jolly Old Elf’s current location through a number of high-tech methods, users can also send Santa a text message, take a look at his Naughty/Nice list and spend some time reading his blog. Sweet!
The lead up to Christmas can feel like anything but a holiday. After a long day of reading, singing, cooking, gaming and shopping, there’s no better way to wind down than by relaxing in front of a cozy fire--even if it’s a virtual one. If you’re in the mood for a bit of fireplace face time without an increase to your insurance premium, FirePlace is the way to go. Just tap the app to life, sit back and enjoy the soft glow that only a roaring fire or an iPad screen can provide.
More than just a bit of eye candy, FirePlace also lets you time your fire to turn off, play some included seasonally-themed music, or cast a few tunes from your personal iTunes music collection. When you’ve had as much fireside time as you can stand, there’s no clean up, need for a chimney sweep or need to close the damper.
Now that we’ve armed you with 12 new ways to get your geek on as festively as possible, get out there and enjoy all the merrymaking, warm feelings and joy that this holiday season has to offer. Merry Christmas one and all!
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