One of the industry’s most prestigious technology website & magazine, Mac|Life, reviewed Zen Viewer today and gave us ★★★★½ (Rated: Excellent).

While I know we have an incredible product, reviews always tend to make me anxious. Talk about a waste of good anxiety. We received an awesome review from them. Here’s an excerpt from the article “MacLife: Review: Zen Viewer HD, like a Swiss army knife for ebooks, audio, video, and more on your iPad.“:

With a simple, eye-pleasing design, Zen Viewer HD from The Skins Factory succeeds impressively in format capabilities. Microsoft Office, Apple iWork, PDFs, CBR/CBZ, EPUB, it’s all here and it all just works. There’s no blurriness and no odd rendering; everything fits on the pages perfectly.

Unfortunately the reviewer had the previous build and didn’t realize that we had all ready launched the AirPlay and ‘Open In’ features for Zen Viewer. He also mentioned that he found our tips to be a bit too much. However, we all ready knew some people might not want to have their hands held and put a tip kill-switch in the Settings panel.

Wanted to give a special thanks Susie Ochs for taking the time (and interest) in Zen Viewer. She was instrumental in getting our app in front of the reviewer. Thanks Susie!

To read the review, please go here.

One of the most well-known Mac blog sites, Cult of Mac, reviewed Zen Viewer today and gave us ✭✭✭✭ out of 5 stars!

Here’s an excerpt from the article “Seek Enlightened iPad File Management With Zen Viewer“:

The app is fast and responsive, a wonderful showcase for the iOS touch navigation platform, with its colors and graphic elements lending a rich gravitas to the otherwise mundane realm of file management. Audio and video playback are flawless and the recording feature should be a boon to anyone still having trouble with the touch keyboard.

To read the review, please go here.

I had the first generation iPad on Day One, thanks to pre-ordering at Apple.com and fast shipping. One of the very first apps I installed was AppAdvice. AppAdvice delivers the latest app reviews, news, apps that have gone free and a ton of other features. When it comes to apps, it was one of the best purchases I’ve made and one of the few I check daily.

During Zen Viewer’s development, I kept telling myself that I would keep bothering them until they gave us a Review. And I did. And they did. And here’s an excerpt from the article “Enlightened File Management With Zen Viewer HD“:

Zen Viewer HD, ultimately provides a single app solution, a gorgeous one at that, for those who carry and share a lot of data and docs. It makes finding your files simple, even pleasant, and the robust search function is always there to help.

To read the review, please go here.

Zen Viewer HD was reviewed by one of the largest Apple tech blogs on the internet – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).

An excerpt from the article “Zen Viewer, Great-looking Document Management for iPad“:

Zen Viewer’s interface and capabilities have made it one of my new favorites in this category. There’s some stiff competition, but I wouldn’t hesitate to suggest that anyone who needs a great solution for document transfer, access and management give it a try.

Special thanks to: Brett Terpstra for taking the time to review Zen Viewer HD.

To read the glowing review, please go here.

Zen Viewer was recently reviewed by MacStories.net in a review called Zen Viewer: iPad File Manager With A Unique Design. While it’s fairly comprehensive on some of the features we’ve included in Zen Viewer, there is an inaccurate statement that I wanted to clear up:

The statement says:

…but there’s one thing I really miss: drag & drop support between columns.

Drag and drop functionality is alive and well in Zen Viewer. While in Manage Mode (Gear icon on the Library/Files toolbar) all files and folders have the ability to be individually selected or selected via the Select All button.

Once you have selected the file or files you want to move, all you need to do is TAP, HOLD and DRAG one of the selected files by their GRIP icon and drag them over to the folder of your choosing.

If you have selected multiple files, you only have to drag one of them and all other selected files will travel with the file you’re dragging.

UPDATE: MacStories has now updated the review to include the fact that we Zen Viewer does indeed have drag & drop capabilities. Thanks Federico!

To read the review click here.

Apple is featuring Zen Viewer HD in New & Noteworthy in the Productivity section of the App Store. We also have an almost flawless 5-Star rating. As I write this, there are twelve 5-Star ratings and one 4-Star. Not too shabby.

Meanwhile, the response around the web has been great:

“arguably one of the best file manager apps which you can get for iPad” – iPad Arena

“gorgeous” – Stylish iPad Apps

One of my favorites Apps for iPad/iPhone news is App Advice. App Advice delivers news, reviews, rumors and more. It’s one of the few apps I check daily. We partnered with them yesterday for a Promo Code giveaway of Zen Viewer HD. The response was nothing short of stellar and you can read the comments here.

Help spread the word about Zen Viewer on Facebook, Twitter and Forums. Send them to: Zen Viewer on the App Store

Thanks Everyone!

Seven iPad wallpapers based on the Zen Viewer promotional images I shot during it’s development. All images were shot with a Canon EOS 7D. The wallpapers use the standard 1024 x 1024 resolution, so they’ll work perfectly in both portrait and landscape orientations. I’ll be working on creating Mac + PC desktop wallpapers shortly, so check back soon.

You can download them here. Enjoy.

Please note: You may not alter, modify or distribute these images.

All Images © 2011 The Skins Factory, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Not for Commercial Use.

Welcome to Everything’s Zen. This page will serve as the news hub for all things Zen Viewer-related. From development news to reviews, interviews, and other interesting Zen Viewer happenings. This will be a great way for us to communicate directly with you, however, if you need tech support, please use the site’s navigation to be routed to the proper page.

I should probably begin with why we created Zen Viewer in the first place…

My ritual after I power up a new computer, tablet or phone for the first time, is to promptly transfer of all my content to the new device. After all, it’s not truly yours, until all of your stuff is on it. For my iPad, some of that content meant all of my user manual & guides for the various gadgets I own. Storing them on the iPad meant I was no longer tethered to a computer when trying to come up with a tech solution while on the other side of the house. But there was one issue when dealing with PDFs on day one of the iPad launch…

All the file readers that were available on the Apple App store lacked something. Either they looked okay and functioned poorly or they functioned okay and looked like crap. There’s nothing worse than looking at the stunning industrial design of the Apple iPad and using a sub-standard app. It dilutes the entire experience for me.

So I emailed the company who created the “best” of what the App store offered and made a proposal…

The Skins Factory would redesign the user interface and interaction elements of their app and in exchange, they would charge a dollar more on top of what they were all ready charging and that would cover our compensation. My proposal meant the other company would have no out-of-pocket expense, lose zero revenue in the process and in return, would now have an app that not only functioned well, but looked and acted exceptionally. I was also planning on discussing with them the possibility of adding themes.

For iOS apps, themes offer something for both the end-user and developer. For the user, themes give the user a chance to customize the experience by keeping it “fresh”. For developers, it offers us a chance to not only generate goodwill by offering free themes, but also to generate additional revenue with premium ones. We offer our Zen Viewer users 5 color variants besides the default theme for free and an additional 6 premium themes for purchase. We’ll be releasing more themes in the weeks and months to come.

Shortly after I sent my proposal I received a response. They inquired about the costs to redesign their app, but dismissed the profit-sharing idea. I wasn’t looking for a “work-for-hire” deal, I wanted The Skins Factory to take an active part in the ongoing development of an app. My response was “Thanks, we’ll build our own”. And so we did.

Zen Viewer took one year to develop from start to acceptance into the Apple Store. So why did it take so long? The simple answer is Zen Viewer is an extremely complicated app. Hachisoft, the code developers for Zen Viewer, basically created a Windows Explorer-type folder system from scratch, while making sure all the viewers functioned well beyond the status quo. I think Zen Viewer is going to excite users and show them that you don’t have to settle for function over form – that both can exist in harmony.

We have a lot of plans for Zen Viewer. So stay tuned…