I play with new apps a lot trying to learn about them and find things that can improve my productivity and happiness. I review the ones I put on my home screen pretty often as well because otherwise they’d end up cluttering things up (I have lots more than this but they’re filed in folders on Screen 2). So I thought I’d write up what I think of the current crop. Let me know if you think I’m missing out on better ones.
- Calendar — still haven’t found a better one than the standard Apple app, although I would like something easier to use
- Clock — usually as an alarm clock but occasionally as a timer (for boiling eggs)
- Camera — for taking photos I don’t want to share
- Settings — to manage wifi mainly
- WhatsApp — texting friends in other countries
- Skype — occasionally for international calls although I usually use a laptop for those
- Kindle — doing a bit of reading on the tube but prefer iPad or kindle for proper reading
- Chrome — looking things up to settle pub arguments
- Google Maps — getting around
- iPlayer Radio — listening to live BBC radio and iplayering comedies
- Flickr — uploading iphone photos to flickr. It’s annoyingly buggy though and often crashes
- Basecamp — checking what I have to do. I used to use Things but we’ve got much better at using Basecamp at BGV, so now I just use that
- Feedly — Much improved RSS reader that really does work on the small screen and syncs across platforms
- 1Password — More important on a desktop but I also use it for important but secret notes
- Twitter — for time wasting
- Lift — for (good) habit forming. I’m a recent convert so we’ll see how that one goes
In the dock:
- Messages — for texting
- Phone — not used that often to be honest
- Gmail — pretty phenomenal and much better than the Apple app in my opinion. I use it for managing email much more than I do for writing it though
