In technology, you'd be forgiven for thinking that all good ideas originate in Silicon Valley, San Francisco. That's not the case. You may have heard of Silicon Roundabout, London, or even Silicon Glen in Scotland.
What may come as a surprise is the number of digital technology companies and app producers in Germany.
In the first part of this tutorial series on German software developers and tech companies, I looked at some of the apps and developers from Germany, listed A-M. It's not designed to be a comprehensive list, just a list highlighting the significant German contribution to the world of computer technology.
In this, the second part of the series, I'm listing some of the apps and developers, N-to-Z, that have popped up on my computing radar.
German Developers and Apps, N-Z
NCODX ProType, Hanover
In their own words, NCODX is a dynamic company based in Hanover, Germany, which designs wonderful software for the best platforms on the market.
NCODX is notable for ProType 1.0, a third-party product bringing a familiar full-size keyboard with advanced features to iPad.
It is designed for coders, writers and anyone wanting a real keyboard experience on the iPad, being crafted to look, feel and behave just like a physical Mac keyboard.
NotePlanApp, Berlin
NotePlan is an interesting markdown-based app for getting things done by managing daily tasks, notes and calendar, developed by Eduard Metzger.
Numerical Audio, Stuttgart
Kai Aras and Markus Teufel say they're a small team of engineers, designers and synth heads that like to tinker and make stuff.
They make the things we want to use themselves, on iOS and OS X, do them extra well and make them available to everyone.
objc.io, Berlin
Founded in Berlin, in 2013, by Chris Eidhof, Daniel Eggert and Florian Kugler, objc.io is intended as a platform for in-depth technical topics relevant to all iOS and macOS developers.
Between June 2013 and May 2015, objc.io published 24 monthly issues containing some 125 articles from 67 different authors
objc.io went on to publish its first book, Functional Swift, in late 2014 followed by Advanced Swift and Core Data in 2015.
The firm now publishes regular online content with weekly videos for building projects in Swift.
Ole Zorn, Berlin
Zorn is the developer behind two iOS apps and open source software.
Editorial is a plain text editor for the iPad with powerful automation tools and a beautiful inline preview for writing Markdown. You can combine a large selection of simple text processing actions into your very own workflows.
Pythonista is an integrated development environment for writing Python scripts on iOS. You can create interactive experiments and prototypes using multi-touch, animations, and sound—or just use the interactive prompt as a powerful calculator.
AppSales allows iOS and Mac App Store developers to download and analyse their sales reports from iTunes Connect on the iPhone.
Paymill, Munich
Since 2012, Paymill has been on a journey to develop software and services to improve online payment systems for European entrepreneurs.
They have worldwide availability for subscription, mobile and web payments with built-in fraud protection. Combine this with easy integration options and integrated payment analytics.
Peter Maurer, Southern Germany
It's independent developers, like Maurer, who come up with some of the best Mac apps out there. Simple but ever so useful. They do this without the big marketing budgets or press coverage of some of the well-known Mac software houses and that is precisely why finding apps made by small developers is so rewarding.
The app, of Maurer's, that I have in mind is Moom. Moom resizes windows to predefined sizes and custom sizes. That's it. It's really useful.
Synium, Mainz
Synium Software is a 20-person team that has been developing software for Mac, iPhone, and iPad since Mac OS 8 in 1998.
Synium is known for its first product, genealogy software MacFamilyTree, along with a number of other apps that they've developed.
Telegram Messenger, Berlin
Telegram is an innovative, cross-platform messaging app that provided encrypted end-to-end communication way before players such as WhatsApp considered the importance of privacy.
Developed by Pavel and Nikolai Durov. Pavel supports Telegram financially and ideologically while Nikolai's input is technological.
The Durovs are Russian but the app has no links to Russia being as it is developed by the brothers in Berlin.
Telephone, Berlin
I love this app; I've written about it previously.
Developed in Berlin by Alexey Kuznetsov, Telephone is another example of an app that does one thing and does it so elegantly and beautifully.
A lightweight software SIP client, Telephone enables you to use a Mac as a telephone line.
Ideal for working on world e-commerce domination from a beach in The Bahamas whilst pretending I'm working from a European office. Well, that's the Internet dream, after all.
How to Set Up and Use VoIP on Your Mac
Advanced VoIP: Making and Receiving Landline Calls on Your Mac
Textastic, Bad Kissingen
Alexander Blach is an iOS developer based in Bad Kissingen, Germany.
Bleach has developed a number of apps, notably Textastic. Textastic is an advanced code editor for iPad with support for syntax highlighting, (S)FTP and Dropbox.
Things, Stuttgart
The Cultured Code team say they're passionate about productivity, simplicity, and beautiful design.The popularity of their product, Things, bears out that claim.
Things is their award-winning combination of these three interests into one fine product; it runs on Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch.
Tower, Stuttgart
Tower is an app from fournova, a small team from Stuttgart established since 2010.
Tower helps over 70,000 customers in companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, and Twitter to easily and productively work with the Git version control system.
Ulysses App, Leipzig
A one-stop writing environment on any device, for Mac, iPad and iPhone, Ulysses was developed for creative writers, including novelists, students, journalists, and bloggers.
It's powerful text editor for Mac, iPad, and iPhone. The clean and uncluttered designed is optimised for writing without distraction. Ulysses empowers writers with tools to be productive during every phase of the writing process.
In 2016, Ulysses was picked as an Apple Design Award winner
Whisp.ly, Augsburg
Hardly surprising that, with their privacy laws, that it's a German firm leading the way this.
The team behind Boxcryptor, Secomba, has developed Whisp.ly, a browser-based method of transferring files via a cloud service with end-to-end encryption technology.
ZenMate, Berlin
The internet is restricted due to location. And it's not secure. ZenMate makes you anonymous so you can safely browse websites and unblock sites from other countries.
Co-founder Simon Specka's experience of insecure public Wi-Fi gave him the drive to simplify the world of online security and privacy; to make it accessible to everyone.
His vision is that even his mother can use it. If my mother can use it, then he really has achieved his goal.
6Wunderkinder, Berlin
Christian Reber, Founder & CEO, heads up 6Wunderkinder, a young and innovative software startup that was founded by six friends in Berlin, Germany, on 30 August 2010.
6Wunderkinder designed and develops a cloud-based, cross-platform productivity application called Wunderlist that was first launched in November 2010.
It was a predecessor to Apple's iCloud and gave Mac and iOS users the ability to synchronise information across devices via the cloud.
Wunderlist was acquired by Microsoft in June 2015 and is one of the most popular productivity applications in use by millions of people around the world.
Make Wunderlist Into the Ultimate To-do List
15 Business Productivity Apps to Work Better + Save Time
Conclusion
In these two tutorials, I have highlighted just a small part of the significant contribution that is being made to computer technology and app development by German developers.
There's some real gems of software in this list, that I have known and used for sometime. Likewise, there are some big-name players, some that I didn't, before, appreciate were German.
I hope you've found these two tutorials interesting and enlightening to the fact that not all good ideas, in computing, come from San Francisco.
