5 iPhone apps I use every day
I’ve started using the iPhone around the time the iPhone 3G arrived in Europe, and according to Wikipedia, that should’ve been in 2008 (from the top of my head I would’ve guessed 2005 or something 😉 )

During those 8 years, I’ve come across a whole lot of iPhone apps already. Some of them lasted only for half an hour on my iPhone, but others I’ve been using for months or years in the meantime. Below I will give you an overview of the apps I use almost daily, and I am not talking about the obvious ones like Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest, but about some less obvious ones, such as email replacements.

 

  • Airmail Email client
    Airmail iPhone apps
    The standard Apple email client isn’t bad. It was bad, but it got better over the years. However, if you’re an avid email user like I am, and you want integration with a bunch of other apps, like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneNote and many others. It also has the ability to “Send to” a lot of other apps that you may or may not have on your iPhone. For me, the most used ones are Todoist (more about that one later), and Evernote.But one of the most important features is that Airmail has the possibility of using smart folders, and smart notifications!Using the Apple Mail app, I either don’t receive any alerts on my iPhone and Apple Watch, or I receive an alert for each and every email I receive. Even all the spam-emails or other ones I don’t want to be alerted for. Using Airmail (and I know Airmail isn’t the only one, Spark for instance offers the same functionality), I can create VIP-lists of email senders, for which I want to receive alerts, and all the others are received in silence.So why Airmail and not Spark? Because I prefer their interface, and because they also have a MacOs Desktop app which in which the accounts and settings can be synced over iCloud.
    Airmail iPhone App

 

  • Todoist: To-Do List & Task Manager
    Todoist iPhone apps
    The same here, I’ve used the standard Apple Taskmanager, but it fell a bit (a lot) short in my opinion. I’ve been trying a few others, and liked some of the, for instance Wunderlist, which I’ve been using for over a year, or MeisterTask, which I’ve been seeing a lot lately. I loved Wunderlist, I really did, but integration with other apps and tools made me switch to Todoist. And I am still loving it!
    Todoist iPhone App

 

 

 

  • Timepage by Moleskine – Calendar
    Timepage iPhone apps
    Apple’s agenda app is good, and I have used it for a ages, after I got it to work with multiple Google Calendars, which really was a pain in the early days. Later on, I switched to Fantastical, and loved that one even more.But then I received an email, talking about the Sunrise.app calendar app. Created by two Belgian guys, and it integrated a lot of other apps into its calendar, such as Facebook and Foursquare. And I loved it even more! But then came the sad news that Sunrise.app was bought by Microsoft. And a few months later the even more sad news that it would be discontinued…So the search for a great calendar app was back on. I switched back to Fantastical, still liking it. But after being treated so well by Sunrise.app, it fell bit short for me. And then I came across Timepage, and I love it again. It’s not as integratingly (I know, that’s not a word, but I like it 😉 ) doing things as Sunrise.app was, but it’s looking slick, and it is fairly intuitive. I still have Fantastical on my iPhone too, but I notice that everytime I need my agenda (like… all the time), I grab Timepage, and leave Fantastical in a folder on the second homescreen page, just in case I might just need it again.
    Timepage iPhone App

 

  • Numerics – Dashboards to visualize your numbers 
    Numerics iPhone apps



    I’m a numbers freak. I can’t help it, but I am. I reload my statistics about every 3 seconds, and want to watch every statistic I can get that has any relevance to me. Owning a gazillion website, twitter accounts, Facebook pages, and what not, that is a lot of data, and a lot of numbers to look up and refresh. Especially if you feel like doing that every three seconds…But there is Numerics to the rescue! Numerics lets you create different dashboards, each with its own widgets. And each widget can contain a number, or a statistic of many kinds. For instance: the number of followers you have on twitter. On which account? On any account you want. Or how many friends you have on Facebook. Or how many people YOU follow on Pinterest.Or do you need other types of statistics? For instance how much you’ve earned today on the Envato stores, or how well your Adsense implementations are doing on your websites. Or how many payments you’ve received via Paypal today.I think it is clear. Numerics crushes your numbers for you, and you can just sit back and refresh.

 

  • ProCamera + HDR & LowLightI take pictures
    ProCamera iPhone apps
    Not just sometimes, but a lot. And I am picky about my gear. I’m normally addicted to my Canon and Fujifilm gear, but unfortunately, I cannot take those everywhere I go (although I am considering putting the Fujifilm X-E1 in my back pocket).However, I DO carry my iPhone 6 everywhere I go. And yes, I do mean just about everywhere I go. And it has a pretty decent camera these days. Not as good as the latest iPhone 6S, or the Huawei P10, but it is good. And I always carry it.And again, same old story. It’s begin to get boring, but yes, the Apple Camera app is pretty ok. But not enough for what I wanted. So I went looking for other camera apps that would do well on my iPhone 6. Especially apps that allowed for more manual control of all the settings if I wanted to.And so it was, that I came across ProCamera. I’ve installed several other camera apps. And still have some of them on my iPhone, safely tucked away in a nice unrecognizable folder on page 2 (or 3). But ProCamera is the one I mostly use. I love it’s HDR pictures (as you might be able to tell), and I like it’s interface.Does that mean it is perfect, and I always use it? No. For quicks snaps, I still take the Apple Camera app, because it is very easily accessible, and loads pretty fast. And for night photography, I use NightCap Pro, which delivers excellent results. However, 80% off the time, it’s ProCamera (See image below for an example photo taken by me with ProCamera).
    Procamera iPhone App
HDR picture taken by Bjorn Beheydt with ProCamera on iPhone 6

HDR picture taken by Bjorn Beheydt with ProCamera on iPhone 6

Off course, this is just a beginning, there are plenty more apps that I use daily, or at least regularly, but I will most definitely make a few follow-up posts on this one. Some to extend this list, some to tell you a bit more about how and why exactly I use that app, such as Procamera.

Now, I’m not saying you need to install and start using each and every app I’ve listed here, but I hope I learned you some new ways of doing old things, with better, or prettier apps.

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