Best new apps of the week: Horizon 3 and NYT Now 2.0

Every week, our staff will handpick an app from the past two weeks that we believe is a must-have download for your iPhone or iPad. These apps will always be from various categories, but they are chosen because our own staff members love it and have been using them daily. So here are this week’s picks! Enjoy!

Don’t get rained on during your next picnic with our App of the Week.

Need a calendar that tells you what the weather is going to be like on the day of an event? Then worry no more with our App of the Week, Horizon Calendar 3.0 by Applause Code.

This slick app originally came out a couple of years ago, but just got a major revamp to bring the app in line with modern iOS aesthetics. While the app has received a fresh coat of paint, it remains as minimal as ever, while giving users the vital information they need. The main view is an agenda list that has all of your upcoming events neatly organized chronologically. A feature of Horizon is the fact that you can’t go to days before today, so it focuses on the now and future. All events are color coded by calendar, have the duration on the side so you know what your schedule is like with a single glance, and the weather info is on the right side. Month view can be accessed by tapping on the month tab at the bottom, and then jumping to the day you want to see.

What makes Horizon stand out from the competition is how neat everything is, and the fact that the app provides the overall temperatures for the day and even individual conditions for each scheduled event.

The Smart Search engine that is introduced in 3.0 allows you to search your calendar with natural language input. This means you can find things like “Next free lunch,” “Available for dinner,” “Next open two hours,” or whatever else you need. You can even search for the last time you did something, like “Last doctor appointent,” so you can see if you’re due for another checkup or not.

Creating events in Horizon is easy too. There is support for natural language input for event creation, and Horizon will highlight location and times in their own syntax color. At the same time, Horizon brings up the location on a map view and fetches the forecast for that time as you type it in. If you go for the Pro in-app purchase ($4.99), you can get weather change alerts pushed to your device if there are any changes so you can plan accordingly. There is also the option for regular input event creation as well, in case you need to fine tune some details. Horizon even has full invite support for received invitations and ones that you send out.

In addition to the weather change alerts, the Pro upgrade gets you ad removal, driving times, and a dark mode.

We’ve been using Horizon 3 for our scheduling needs over the past few days and are pleased with the app. If you need a calendar that tells you what the weather is going to be like on a selected day, then Horizon 3 is for you. It is available on the iPhone App Store for free with an in-app purchase of $4.99 for Pro features.

For a more in-depth look at Horizon 3, don’t miss out on my full review.

Need to get your fix of the news from The New York Times, but don’t want to pony up for a digital subscription just yet? Then you’re in luck with our Honorable Mention this week, which goes to the updated NYT Now app that has been updated to 2.0 last week.

For those who are unfamiliar with the NYT Now app, it is a news app that brings you the best content from The New York Times curated by the editors around the clock. Each story that shows up in the app was hand-picked by an editor, and the app gives readers complete article summaries and bullet points that help you get caught up quickly. There are different “editions” throughout the day, giving you the most important stories in easy-to-digest chunks.

With the latest 2.0 update, NYT Now has removed the subscriber requirement, so now anyone, subscriber or not, can get free, unlimited access to the NYT Now app. This means everyone can get things like the popular Morning Briefing report without any restrictions, and the app can alert you every day when it’s ready to view. All content in the app is updated regularly, with newest stories at the top of the feed.

We enjoy the content on The New York Times, so we’re happy to see them open up access to unlimited content in the NYT Now app — now anyone can enjoy the news. You can get NYT Now on the App Store as a universal download for free.

For more about NYT Now’s 2.0 update, check our original article.

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