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My Must-Have iPhone Apps, 2013 Edition

Must-Have iPhone Apps 2013

Must-Have iPhone Apps 2013

For the past three years, I’ve been running a series called “My Must-Have Mac Apps” that, once a year, would list the apps that I found indispensable on my Mac. This year, considering the changes that I went through from a workflow perspective, I thought it would be appropriate to start focusing on iOS as well. The first installment was about the iPad; then, I covered the Mac; today, I’m going to conclude this year’s series with the iPhone.

Like many others, I don’t use the “phone” part of the iPhone much. The iPhone is my portable computer. And I have lots of apps on it.

My workflow has changed a lot over the years. I used to have a MacBook Pro and I later got an iMac and replaced the MacBook Pro with a MacBook Air. I thought that I’d always need the Air but then I was forced to work from an iPad and I didn’t like it. As I kept trying, I ended up liking my iPad setup so much that I turned it into a tool more versatile than my Mac and wrote a book on it. But the way I use my iPhone has never changed: the iPhone is the computer that’s always with me. If anything, the software that runs on it has evolved through the years, with apps getting more powerful, inter-connected, and, in some cases, “desktop class”. And then, earlier this year, iOS 7 happened.

As expected, iOS 7 provided a fantastic opportunity for developers to reimagine and redesign their apps to take advantage of Apple’s new OS features and design language. Three months into iOS 7, I think that the developer response has been remarkable, but the results are very much still in flux. For the apps that I use on a daily basis, I’ve seen a few major relaunches of apps rebuilt from the ground-up for iOS 7, apps that still have to be optimized for it, and a lot of “compatibility redesigns” that brought lighter color schemes and translucencies without substantially altering the way an app works or is structured for iOS 7. As Apple itself is still trying to fully understand their own new design language, I think it’s fair to assume that third-party developers will need more time to really “get” iOS 7.

As I thought about the apps I wanted to include in this year’s last installment of the Must-Have Apps series, I realized that there was a good mixture of software that was built before and after iOS 7. As usual, my goal was to mention apps that I consider must-haves for my daily workflow, and for this reason you’ll find a mix of brand new iOS 7 apps, minor iOS 7 design updates, and a few pre-iOS 7 apps too. When it comes to having the best tool for the job, I value utility over fashion, and I cherish an old app if it still is the best for me.

The list below includes my 50 top picks and is organized in four sections: Main, for apps that I use several times every day; News, for discovering links and staying on top of RSS; Entertainment, for media consumption; and Utilities, for single-purpose apps that I use often but not heavily every day. Each app is listed with its App Store link and, at the end of the article, you’ll find my iPhone app of the year.

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My Must-Have Mac Apps, 2013 Edition

Must Have Mac Apps 2013

Must Have Mac Apps 2013

For the past three years, I’ve been running a series called “My Must-Have Mac Apps” that, once a year, would list the apps that I found indispensable on my Mac. This year, considering the changes that I went through from a workflow perspective, I thought it would be appropriate to start focusing on iOS as well. The first installment was about the iPad; today, I’m going to talk about the Mac.

As I wrote when Mavericks was released, I don’t need my Mac as much as I used to. I can do most of my work from iOS (particularly from my iPad mini), but that doesn’t mean that I don’t need a Mac for some tasks or that I’ve stopped using it altogether. I still have to use a few OS X-only apps and tools to get work done – stuff that wouldn’t be possible on an iPad, no matter how hard I try.

I may not be covering new Mac app releases on a weekly basis anymore, but, honestly, 2013 has been the year of iOS 7, with thousands of third-party developers shifting their focus to Apple’s mobile platform in order to update and redesign their apps in time for September. And the fact that Mavericks didn’t bring a radical new design or groundbreaking user features didn’t help either, as developers of Mac apps chose to release updates that focused on under-the-hood improvements and general optimizations.

And yet, in spite of a new design direction and several changes to built-in apps, iOS 7 still doesn’t come with valid alternatives to the stuff OS X is great at: a filesystem with easy management of files that can be opened by multiple apps, precision editing with a cursor, command line utilities, system-wide automation tools, and more. For as much as the iOS ecosystem is maturing and changing at an incredible pace, I haven’t stopped using my Mac and there are some things that can only be done on OS X. And therefore, like every year, I have put together a list of the apps that I consider my must-haves – apps that I install every time I set up my Mac and that I use regularly.

This year, I’ve simplified the list and gotten rid of extra layers for apps that I’m no longer using. You can compare the 2013 list to last year’s one and follow links from there to go back to previous years. You also won’t find last year’s section for price and Mac App Store stats at the bottom: developers often make price changes and release new versions of their apps outside the Mac App Store, so, ultimately, those stats couldn’t be properly contextualized over time.

The list below is organized in four sections: Main, for apps that I use several times every day; Writing, for tools that I employ to research and craft articles for MacStories; and Image & Video Editing, listing apps that allow me to put together screencasts, GIFs, and images for the site. Each app is listed with its App Store/website link and, at the end of the article, you’ll find my Mac app of the year.
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My Must-Have iPad Apps, 2013 Edition

Must Have iPad Apps 2013

Must Have iPad Apps 2013

For the past three years, I’ve been running a series called “My Must-Have Mac Apps” that, once a year, would list the apps that I found indispensable on my Mac. This year, considering the changes that I went through from a workflow perspective, I thought it would be appropriate to start focusing on iOS as well. I’d like to start with the iPad.

I’ve been working primarily from my iPad for the past 15 months. For a variety of personal reasons that I’ve discussed before, I found myself unable to work from my Mac every day, so I decided to try and see whether the iPad and iOS could be viable OS X replacements – not just companions. I ended up enjoying the iPad as a work device and, eventually, as a primary device powered by terrific apps that allow me to be more efficient on iOS.

From a high-level, conceptual standpoint, this isn’t a new topic for MacStories readers or listeners of The Prompt. In the end, though, it all comes down to the apps – the software that I use on my iPad for work and play, for productivity and entertainment.

Hence, “My Must-Have iPad Apps”. I consider this the first installment, even though it technically isn’t: I published similar articles in 2010 and 2011, but I skipped 2012 – the year when I really got serious about working from the iPad. This year’s installment is a reboot of the iPad series, which I’m going to publish regularly from now on; if you want, you can check back on the old articles linked above to see if there are apps that I’ve been using for three years (spoiler: yes).

The list below is organized in four sections: Main, for apps that I use several times every day; News, for discovering links and staying on top of RSS; Entertainment, for media consumption; and Utilities, for single-purpose apps that I use often but not heavily every day. Each app is listed with its App Store link and, at the end of the article, you’ll find my iPad app of the year. Read more

Plex Cloud Sync

I like Plex. I mostly listen to music on Rdio, but I like to keep Plex on my Mac mini for albums that aren’t available for streaming[1], movies, and TV shows. I’ve reviewed the Plex apps for iOS over the years, and the improvements Plex has made to the media server for OS X are impressive both visually (I use Plex/Web every day) and technically.

Last week, Plex released a public beta of Cloud Sync, a feature for PlexPass subscribers that, essentially, lets Plex users turn online storage services like Dropbox and Google Drive into Plex servers for those times when a primary Plex server is offline. In short: if your Mac is your Plex server but you can’t a) keep it always online or b) access it outside of your local network, now you can sync content to other sources and stream it with Plex clients even if your main server is unavailable. Read more

IFTTT for iPhone: A Different Kind of iOS Automation

IFTTT for iPhone

IFTTT for iPhone

I used to heavily rely on IFTTT for my daily automation workflows that involved appending bits of text to files in my Dropbox, forwarding tweets to my OmniFocus inbox, generating PDFs, or archiving Instagram photos to my Dropbox account. IFTTT, acronym of If This Then That, is a web service that lets you connect other web services together to create automated workflows that run every time a piece of data is triggered: by leveraging a variety of APIs from compatible channels (such as Facebook, Dropbox, Evernote, Feedly, and more), IFTTT lets you automate the web in powerful (and sometimes unexpected) ways. Browsing Popular recipes on the IFTTT website can give you an idea of the scope of web automation that’s made possible by the service, and we’ve covered IFTTT in the past on MacStories as well.[1]

However, I stopped depending on IFTTT because, once I got more comfortable with my own Mac mini server as a remote automation assistant, I wanted to control the pipes of my personal data. I’m still using IFTTT for things like receiving an email if it’s going to rain tomorrow or a new SMS for press releases published by Apple (just an example of the power of IFTTT channels and recipes), but it’s not the primary system that I rely upon for automating daily tasks. The new IFTTT app for iPhone, which I have been testing and has been released today on the App Store, may make me (partially) reconsider my decision. Read more

The Omni Group Launches OmniPresence For Automatic Document Syncing

Announced in December 2012, The Omni Group has today started the public rollout of OmniPresence, their new free automatic document syncing solution for OS X and iOS. OmniPresence, based on open web technologies, is available inside OmniGraffle, OmniGraphSketcher, and OmniOutliner for iPad, and it also comes with a companion Mac app that runs in the menubar.

“The way we are doing it is not to hook it up into some backend proprietary service”, The Omni Group CEO Ken Case told us in an interview during Macworld|iWorld earlier this year. As a long-time user of Omni products such as OmniOutliner for the iPad and Mac, I was eager to see whether Case’s promises of a fast, reliable automatic syncing technology would grow into a stable product capable of fitting seamlessly into my daily workflow. After nearly two months of testing, I’m glad to say that, in some ways, The Omni Group has even exceeded my (already high) expectations. Read more

Simple Website Monitoring with Vigil

Vigil

Vigil

For the past four years, I have tried a number of different solutions to monitor my website. Some of them used email as a delivery service, others a Mac app, and none of them looked as polished and simple as I’d like them to be. Especially after our move to a dedicated Mac mini, I wanted a reliable, intuitive, nice-looking solution to always be up to date in regards to my server’s status.

Just after our move to a new host, I found Vigil thanks to a recommendation by John Gruber. Developed by Heirloom, Vigil is an iPhone app that does two things: it monitors websites and it sends you push notifications if something’s wrong with them. There’s a free 30-day trial, after which you’ll have to sign up for a $9.99 yearly subscription to continue using Vigil with an unlimited number of websites. I signed up immediately after a week of testing and I have been using Vigil since. Read more

Batch Resize Images On iOS with Reduce

Reduce

Reduce

I deal with two types of images on my iOS devices: photos and screenshots.

For photos, I’ve long settled on a Dropbox-based workflow that takes care of automatically archiving and sorting photos for me. For screenshots, the story is a bit more complicated.

For months, I used OneEdit, an iPhone/iPad app to batch resize images from the Camera Roll; OneEdit comes with a lot of features, including presets, Dropbox sharing, and FTP uploads. The downside is that the app’s interface is clunky and convoluted, with seemingly no intention from the developer to update it. In spite of that, however, I kept using OneEdit to resize multiple screenshots at once, save them to the Camera Roll, fire up Diet Coda, and move them to our FTP server. When we decided to move 4 years of image uploads off the FTP and onto a CDN (alongside new uploads on a daily basis), I asked our Don Southard to create a Hazel script that would monitor Dropbox for screenshots and upload them to the CDN. This is what I’ve been using in combination with some Pythonista scripts that would resize screenshots for me.

My iOS screenshot workflow is faster thanks to Pythonista and the Hazel script running on the Mac mini, but I miss the possibility of having a single app capable of batch resizing and uploading images to Rackspace Cloud Files.1 The latest Pythonista update made things dramatically better with the Photos module, but I still can’t pick multiple photos at once (and, obviously, I still have to deal with Python).

My “ideal” batch resizing photo app for iOS would excel in two different aspects: it would be Universal and have an elegant interface to pick multiple photos at once to batch resize them with presets; it would come with a plethora of sharing options built-in, including Cloud Files and SFTP support. Reduce is close to excellence when it comes to the first one.

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