The App Store on the iPhone and Mac was overflowing with new apps this year. It is up to every editor to choose one favorite. In this round-up, we’ve collected the best apps of 2018.
Round-up: the best apps of 2018 according to the editors
Last week, each editor wrote an article about his or her favorite app of the year. Below we have listed these favorites in random order.
Fortnite
Erwin kicked off the week with Fortnite. There was no game bigger and more important than this game from Epic Games in 2018. The game was already a success on PC and game consoles, but was also released for iOS in March this year. At first you could only play with an invitation, but later the doors opened to everyone.
The cool thing about Fortnite for iOS is that it is the full game. This not only ensures that you play the same on every system, but also that you can play against each other. Add to that the fact that the game looks and plays great, and you have a new standard for how good games on smartphones can be.
Read more about why Erwin thinks Fortnite is the app of the year.
Adobe Premiere Rush
Florence has chosen Adobe Premiere Rush. This is a simple video editing program, but it has everything needed to edit a movie in detail. In her eyes that is also the strength: if you are not an experienced editor, you have put together such a beautiful video because of the simplicity.
Editing is very intuitive. You tap and drag to move, shorten or, for example, change the color balance. Thanks to the clear bar at the bottom, the developers were able to add a lot more functions than you see in iMovie on iOS.
Also easy to edit videos? Read how Adobe Premier Rush works.
Pixelmator Pro 
Graphic designers will no doubt disagree with Lars, but he hadn’t used Photoshop for years, but the original Pixelmator for all things image editing. The app was regularly updated with useful new features, and had everything it was looking for without cluttering it with menus and buttons.
The big difference between Pixelmator and Photoshop is that the former is specially and exclusively designed for the Mac. As a result, not only does the appearance fit with macOS, but the program also runs on Apple’s Metal 2, so that it runs optimally on the GPU in your iMac or MacBook.
Read more about Lars’ choice for Pixelmator Pro.
Stoop 
Michel’s 2018 app is anything but spectacular. In fact, compared to all the hip media forms of today, it is very old-fashioned. Stoop is a newsletter app. However, this one does approach it in a modern way. All your newsletters are collected in a central place, which means that you can unsubscribe at the touch of a button.
Stoop ensures that all your newsletter subscriptions remain transparent. This way you can read the latest editions directly from the home screen. Moreover, it is a pleasant way to break through your ‘filter bubble’. The app collects all kinds of interesting publications, which you can subscribe to directly. Stoop can therefore be compared to a podcast app, but for newsletters.
Find out more about Stoop.
Kingdom Rush Vengeance 
Wouter is not a very fanatic iOS gamer, but he likes to make time for the Kingdom Rush series. The tower defense genre is not very popular anymore, but luckily the Kingdom Rush series keeps this up. The game principle has not changed very much, although Vengeance brings a nice twist. You now play as the bad guys, taking on the characters from the previous three Kingdom Rush games.
That doesn’t have a huge impact on gameplay, and that’s okay at all. You still work strategically to put the correct towers in the right places to prevent the enemies from reaching the end of the road. In the beginning this is fairly simple, but it quickly becomes a lot more spicy. Kingdom Rush Vengeance is a challenging game and with all the different towers, powers and enemies you will never get bored.
Read more about Wouter’s choice for Kingdom Rush Vengeance.
What is your favorite app of 2018? Let me know in the comments.