I’ve been a fan of iOS since I got an iPod Touch to manage my to do list and it ended up managing my life and my work with it. I’ve found several amazing apps for my iPad/iPhone/iPod over the years. Here are my top ten iPhone apps:
10. Phone
Yes, I occasionally use my iPhone as a phone. My preferred method of communication is email. Call me old fashioned. I’ve banished the phone icon to a folder that sits on my tray so it’s always two clicks instead of one click to make a call. That’s fine because I don’t make calls that often and when a call comes in I get interrupted and can click to answer.
9. PowerPoint
As a road warrior who is constantly connecting to other people’s projectors, I’ve found that iOS devices are the most reliable for displaying slides in PowerPoint or Keynote. I plug in my iPad or iPhone and it works. I plug in my PC or MacBook Pro running Parallels, not so much. It really does depend but when things were flaky and that costs time so having a backup of all my slides on my phone I can use if my main computer fails has saved me many-a-time. Plus, you should see the look on the faces of Microsoft engineers when you project their course material on an iPhone.
8. Pomodoro (replaced by Flat Tomato)
This is a simple little timer program that I find myself returning to again and again. It simply starts a variable timer whose intervals go: 25 minutes work and then a 5 minutes break, which repeats four times and then you take a 15 minute break. Each 25 minute work session is called a Pomodoro (after the red timer, I think) and a good day of work is completing eleven of them. I find that when I get up and move around during those five minute and fifteen minute breaks I can work for much longer periods of time without getting tired or burned out.
7. SleepMachine
When I am tired and ready to rest I use Sleep Machine to unwind and relax. It was one of the first Apps I bought for my iPod and I love having a range of high quality environmental sounds that I can mix and play in the background. I actually have several similar apps: Brainwaves, Binaural Beats, Relaxing Melodies, etc. And I find them really helpful, especially sitting at O’Hara Airport on a Friday night waiting to get on my flight home. At times like that it’s nice to remember a tranquil stream with birds chirping and water gurgling.
6. Kindle
I recently discovered how great my iPhone is for reading books. I never tried the Kindle app because my wife bought a PaperWhite and found it hard to read. But the Kindle app on my iPhone is awesome, easy to see, easy to hold in my hand for hours, and easy to extract quotes from. I now love reading on my iPhone.
5. ProMovie
This app turns the iPhone X into a 4K video recorder with several professional features. This camera shoots Hi-Def and even 4K video with stunning clarity. It has an excellent control panel display and a range of manual override settings. Most notably, this is the only video app I found that allows you to override the auto-level control on input audio for sources you can plug in.
4. Google Maps
Like most people, my phone serves many purposes and GPS is a critical one for me because I have a bad sense of direction. I forgot all about my clenched fists around the steering wheel trying to read a map while driving. Turn-by-turn, and now with realtime traffic updates makes driving much more bearable. I like Google Maps much more than Apple Maps. Sorry Siri.
3. Camera+
Now that I have an iPhone X with its 12MP dual cameras and 4K video capability, I’ve been doing a lot more photography. This is something that consumed me in my youth. Now that I have such awesome equipment in my pocket everywhere I go I expect to get some amazing pictures and HD video. Camera+ from Tap Tap Tap is one of the many camera apps I use to give me fine control over the pictures and videos I shoot.
2. Dictate and Connect
Now we’re getting down to it. These next two apps were almost tied for first place. I still use my iPhone as a phone, occasionally, but my phone icon is buried in a folder. The icon that sits in the lower right of my tray is Dictate and Connect. It is the best dictation software that I’ve found. It doesn’t do transcription, just recording but it does recording really well. It’s an integral part of my writing process.
1. 2Do
2Do is a task manager that offers some advanced features. I use it to manage all of my tasks. I’m not quite sure how people manage their work and their lives without a tool like this. To do lists and stickies definitely don’t cut it for me. At any time, I can be working on several projects and I have to be able to manage each one efficiently, 2Do let’s me do this.
Moving from my iPad for most of my writing back to my MacBook Pro and to my iPhone X for everything else that I used my iPad for is working great. Having a desktop computer in the palm of my hand sure is responsive and for the times I have to be away from my MacBook Pro it’s good to have a back up device I can carry in my pocket.
How about you? What’s your favorite iPhone apps?
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