Apps I Can't Live Without
It's 2023, and at this point it would be really difficult to run my day business in the lending industry, as well as being able to manage Bowers Voice without a few stellar apps. These are the apps that support my efforts.
For Writing
Ulysses
Previously using a competitor app, I realized how much I had missed Ulysses. The Library feature, the Markdown flavor of writing, and the organizational abilities using Sheets (with the ability to glue them together) is just a necessary set of features to get my writing done. I wrote GTD With Things 3 in Ulysses in 2017, and it really made it easy to produce an e-book. I am currently in the midst of writing my novel and the folders, projects, and general feel and options to export and view your writing make working within Ulysses as a one-stop shop for writing a breeze.
For Task Management
OmniFocus
See this post if you want to know why I am excited about the eventual release of OmniFocus 4. The app has gotten some really great attention, specifically on this iOS/iPadOS platforms which will bring it more in line with its macOS counterpart. The developers at The Omni Group are always hard at work making their suite of apps better, and they listen to their users. Some real benefits to OmniFocus (over say, another great competitor app like Things 3 are:
- Defer dates of tasks
- Task time estimates
- The unparalleled "Review" feature for checking in on your various projects periodically
- The Apple Watch app, which (as of OmniFocus 3, the current public release version), allows you to see the current view from your iPhone right on your watch. Say I only wanted to see those tasks tagged with "Home" on my watch, since I am at home. I can leave my phone charging as I go around the house and check off items that can be done in the house
- The community that The Omni Group fosters. Have a question that regular support can't answer? The Omni Group forums are a great way to connect with like-minded users of all of their apps to ask questions and get (and give!) answers. Things is great, but if you need the true king of task managers, it's OmniFocus.
For Time Management
Fantastical
I have used Flexibits' Fantastical as my go-to calendar since 2015. It has natural language parsing when entering events, so that you can write "Meet for coffee at 2pm tomorrow at Starbucks" in the even entry field, and the app will create an event for that time with the name "Meet for coffee", and since you said "at", will ask which Starbucks (using your location) you want to choose. You can, of course, search for the very precise location of your meeting and the app finds it. Some great features are:
- The Apple Watch app
- Natural language parsing
- Fantastical Openings. This is similar to a service like Calendly, which allows you to send a link to a person in order for them to choose a time to meet with you, using your predetermined schedule availability. I literally use this several times per day.
- You can integrate your work calendar services, your personal services, and even subscribe to "Interesting Calendars" (I use the latter to get the official MLB feed for my beloved New York Mets, to determine when I should next be watching them play!).
- Excellent customer support Fantastical is just a dream app for time management.
For Relationship Management
Cardhop
Made by Flexibits, the same team that brought Fantastical to us is Cardhop. Cardhop expands on the natural language parsing of Fantastical in an ingenious way.
Remember how difficult it is to enter details in Apple's built in Contacts app? You have to edit each field - name, phone number(s), address(es), etc. With Cardhop, I can type "Darrell Jones, 212-555-1212 123 Manhattan Way, New York, NY 10001", and it will parse the name, phone number, and address into the appropriate fields! Pro tip: you can even copy a signature from a professional email and paste it into Cardhop and it will instantly add all of the items into a new contact. The same filed serves as a search field, so you can type (or use Siri to say), "call Darrell Jones", and the app will do just that. Cardhop probably gets used 100 times per day, easily. So essential.
Numbers
We have been looking at third-party apps above, but look no further than the free Numbers, by Apple. It is an excellent alternative to the bloated likes of Excel, and has gotten super powerful over the years while retaining its classic Apple beauty. I use this to run the numbers of my businesses - revenue, customer dates of introduction, and partners who referred them.
For Idea Generation
MindNode
I once wrote a feature for MindNode where I talk about how I use it to mind map my novel. I use it for several other things too, like planning out projects in OmniFocus when I am just not sure of the steps. When you mind map, you are shaking loose all of the ideas in your head and jotting them down and making sense of their connections later. No app does this better digitally than MindNode. They have made updates to the app so that you can even use it as a proper outliner, which is very handy for those left-brain types who want to see an outline listed vertically, rather than connected circles on a page.
OmniOutliner
Made by The Omni Group, this amazing outliner allows you to beautify and arrange your outlines like no other. It almost goes hand-in-hand with MindNode for me, as you can blurt out your ideas into MindNode, and then export them into OmniOutliner for further fleshing out. You are able to rearrange and notate all lines in the outline and really make your story or presentation shine. It even has a built-in audio recording engine for when you want to take notes (say, in a class) for further reflection later. Second to none, OmniOutliner is the best way to outline.
Tot
Ah, Tot. It's post-it notes on steroids. There are 7 bullets that you can post in, and on the Mac it lives in your menu bar. It's a very simple way to just get something down (like a confirmation or phone number) so that you do not lose it. It syncs with its iOS and iPadOS counterparts. The Iconfactory (makers of the now retired Twitterrific - that's a story for another day) makes beautiful, whimsical, artistic apps, and Tot is no exception. I just love it.
For Audio
Triode
Another Iconfactory home run, literally the first thing I do each weekday is fire up this app and listen to a live feed of CNBC for market news. I can also listen to NPR, MSNBC (news junkie, much?!) and even my hometown's alt-rock station. You can enter the audio feed for any station and even give it an icon/picture for visual distinction, and, if recognized, the playing song on the internet radio station that you are listing to can be added to Apple Music. It is my favorite live-broadcast app, hands down. My one lament: no Apple Watch app for when I am working out!
Overcast
Marco Arment develops this great app, which features a full feature Watch app, iOS, iPadOS, and, if you have an Apple silicon Mac, a macOS app. It syncs your last played point in each podcast and the audio engine is superb. Marco frets over every detail in the app and has a great ear, and you can hear it in the way that Voice Boost and Smart Speed have been implemented.
Others of note
- For calculation: PCalc. James Thompson is like a mad scientist who develops the world's best calculator for every Apple platform.
- For journaling: Day One. This is the app that, besides OmniFocus, I have used longest on this list, going back to 2012.
- For pomodoro-style timing: Focus. The app has task integration with OmniFocus, and was recently redesigned to have a wonderful watch app, which is where it is extremely useful, too.
- For background noise while focusing: Dark Noise. Charlie Chapman has put a ton of care into the design and usability of this noise-generation app. I even have a customized sound set that mimics a scene in my upcoming book, The Mayor of Blackout County. If I were watching this scene in a movie, I would hear these sounds in it. It really puts me in the mood to write!
If you have any questions about how I use these apps, you can always contact me.
Here's to a very productive new year!