iOS – JAMES MICHIE

There’s an app for that… [iOS Edition]

This is the second of two posts where I am sharing the apps that I use on a day-to-day basis to get the work done. In yesterday’s post, I discussed the apps that I use on my MacBook Air. Today I am focussing on the apps that I use on my iPhone.

Just glancing at my iPhone’s home screen, I realise that I have a lot of apps installed. However, there are a number that I do not use on weekly basis, let alone on a daily one. Therefore, I am just going to write about the ones that get regular use. Also, I have structured the post based on the folders that I use on my iPhone home screen…

Dock

Fantastical – Unlike on the desktop, I have found a calendar app for my iPhone which truly suits my needs. Rather than offering the traditional calendar views, Fantastical places emphasis on your agenda as well as providing an intuitive way to quickly look backwards/forwards to different days/weeks.

Wunderlist – As I said in my previous post, I would like to be using Any.DO but the lack of a desktop/web app is making me stick with Wunderlist for now. However, Any.DO is worth checking out. It has the most intuitive input for a todo app that I have found.

Chrome is also my browser of choice on my iPhone. Although there was some initial friction, many of the apps that I regularly use now allow you to open links in Chrome rather than Safari. As such Apple’s built in browser has been relegated to a ‘Sometimes’ folder on the second screen.

Launch Centre Pro – I am still training myself to use this app. As I have moved to organising all of my apps within folders, I wanted to be able to quickly launch them without having to go into folders all of the time. LCP allows you to launch actions rather than apps reducing the number of clicks needed. For example, with LCP open in one click I can be in the new email window of Sparrow, or the new event window of Fantastical. The more it becomes ingrained in my muscle memory the more efficient my use of the phone is becoming.

Folders

*A note on my folder structure. Each folder is named using a verb of the action that the apps are used for. They are also positioned on the screen based on the amount of use they get. As I hold the phone with my right hand, the folders with the apps that I use most frequently are positioned on the right hand side of the screen. The folders with the apps I use less often are on the left hand side. You can see this structure in the image at the top of this post.

*I am going to work through the folders in order of most used to least used…

Communicate

Perhaps unsurprisingly the most used apps on my iPhone are the ones I use to communicate with other people. This includes the Messages and Phone (Contacts) apps. I have Skype and Google+ installed although I rarely use them on the iPhone. My most used apps in this folder are…

Sparrow – Where I have managed to adapt Mail on my MacBook Air to be more aesthetically pleasing and user friendly, the same can not be said of the built in mail app on the iPhone. As such, even though development on it has been stopped, I am still suing Sparrow. It matches most closely the experience I get with using Mail on my MacBook.

Tweetbot is my Twitter client of choice. It was the first app that I installed when I bought my iPhone. It is a power-user client offering a huge range of features including people, keyword, hashtag and client filters. It offers a range of retweet styles, in app profiles, search, retweet information and also the ability to create and edit lists. With this app there is never a need for me to access Twitter via its web interface.

Read

Reeder is my RSS app of choice, like its desktop counterpart, it offers a beautiful reading experience, and offers a multitude of services allowing you to share what you are reading. I have mine set up to easily share to Twitter, Pocket and Delicious.

Pocket is where I read all of the stuff I haven’t got to yet. Although, progress is slow at the moment (check out the unread count on the folder!)

The Kindle app has had a significant impact on when I read and how much I am reading. As I have my phone with me at all times I can pick up and read whenever time allows. Moreover, due to small screen size and keeping the font at a reasonable size, I find that I am reading in bite-size chunks. I am not sure of the science behind this (and I could just be imagining it) but it certainly feels as though I am powering through books at a far quicker pace than I did with the printed page.

Write

Drafts deserves its own post, to be honest. It is so integral to my workflow that this post is significantly out of date now. I use Drafts to take notes during meetings, draft longer emails, capture ideas, and to write blog posts. It works with Markdown, meaning that I can be very efficient with my typing. However, the power of Drafts comes from the way that it leverages x-callback-urls allowing you to send the text that you have captured to a seemingly endless array of apps and places. I have it set up to share directly with my notes folder in Dropbox. It can be customised to follow any naming/tagging systems that you use. I have been so impressed with it, that I rarely use Byword anymore. I tend to only use it now to access and update existing documents in my notes folder. Most of the time I capture text in Drafts and push it straight out as an email, tweet or to…

Poster which is a beautiful blogging application for WordPress. It allows you to write, edit and publish posts/pages to multiple WordPress blogs. It parses Markdown meaning that when I push a draft post from Drafts I don’t need to do anything, apart from add images if appropriate. It has a clean and minimal UI which is pleasing. However, it is the ease of use that makes this such a great app. I have tried a variety of mobile blogging apps and have never been satisfied with them, usually due to a level of friction that they imposed on the writing/publishing process. Poster, on the other hand, makes the process seamless.

Evernote – As I mentioned in my previous post, I am using Evernote to organise my M.Ed. I use the mobile app for two specific tasks. The first is to capture notes during lectures and seminars. The second is to photograph sections of books, adding notes and tags. I stole this workflow from Doug Belshaw, which he write about here.

Listen

Beyond using my iPhone to get the work done, I use it to listen to music and podcasts a lot. In terms of music, I use the built in app. However for podcasts I use Instacast. The recent update to Apple’s own podcast app looks great but I’ve been an Instacast user since I bought the iPhone. It is looks great and is feature rich. The way that it displays and lets you work with show notes/links is particularly useful. Moreover, it offers a lot of customisation in terms of how you organise your subscriptions and playlists. I’m not going to list all of the podcasts that I listen to here but I recommend that you check out Back to Work featuring Merlin Mann and Enough featuring Patrick Rhone. They are both excellent and have really helped me in terms of focus and productivity.

Utilise

Dropbox – After Tweetbot this was the next app that I installed on my iPhone. I don’t think I really need to explain this one, see yesterday’s post.

Delicious is where I bookmark everything. While I could access my bookmarks via the web interface in Chrome, this app offers a far more pleasing and efficient way of searching them.

Calcbot is a beautifully designed calculator. If I am honest, it does not offer a great deal of functionality over the built in calculator. However, I am a huge fan of Tapbots’ applications and I use this one a lot. While I know there is a calculator built into OSX, I much prefer to do calculations on my phone. I guess this is the result of habit, having used a calculator so regularly in school.

Similarly, Convertbot is another Tapbots app. It offers a wide range of conversions including area, length, time, data size and currency. Like Calcbot it is beautifully designed with all the usual bells and whistles that you find in a Tapbots app.

Shoot

Although the iPhone comes with a very good Camera built into it, I only use it occasionally make use of it. I simply don’t take a lot of photos, I never have. However, I do use it to take photos from time to time. Usually, this is to capture a mind map or chart that I (or mu students) created in class. Sometimes, I use it to capture students’ writing so that I can put it up on the whiteboard for discussion. And occasionally, I do see something interesting when I am out and about that I think is worth sharing. The few photos that I do take are simply organised in the Photos app. I use the share function from with the app to send photos to my email account. I have Tweetbot set up to upload images via CloudApp when I tweet them out for the same reasons I explained in yesterday’s post.

Watch

I don’t watch a lot of anything really on my iPhone due to the fact that I feel the screen size is too small. However, occasionally I do use the YouTube app to browse for a music video. Invariably, I end up listening to the video I have found rather than watching it.

And there you have it. As with yesterday’s post, if you would like me to elaborate on how I am using any of the apps above, leave a comment or send me a tweet.

Why this Apple fanboy loves his Android phone

Some of you will know that I am quite the Apple fanboy. I currently own a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro (my second one) and an iPod touch. Having blogged twice about the apps I have installed on the iPod (during the early days of this blog), I felt it was time to confess to the fact that the iPod has been relegated to the status of ‘portable entertainment centre’. It now gets charged and used on long journeys mainly having been replaced by a HTC Wildfire – my ‘productivity centre’. Even with my deep love of all things Apple, I am not missing the iOS user interface one bit. The Android UI is just as pleasing and the phone was half the price of the iPhone 4.

Mobile phones and I

While I am a self-confessed technophile I resisted owning a mobile phone for a long time. I love technology but I felt that having a mobile phone would be too big a distraction and would put me in a situation where I am too contactable. I did not want to feel guilty if I was called and chose to ignore it. I knew that I would because I view my time as being extremely precious. However, I found myself frustrated using the iPod touch due to the lack of 3G connectivity. I didn’t want to text or make calls but it was highly frustrating to have to rely on finding a wifi signal when I was out and about. The Wildfire was my compromise then, not invoking a terrible cost to my pocket, I set up a PAYG account with Orange and away I went.

I have kept myself sane by putting in place a number of rules as to how I use the phone. All notifications are switched off so that I am not distracted. If I am doing something really important, I turn the phone off completely. I do not give out my number; only a small number of people have it. And finally, I only reply to text messages if it is really necessary. The people who do text me know this about me so I don’t feel any guilt if I forget to reply.

What I have gained by owning the phone is immense. It is my personal productivity machine; fully integrated into my day to day life. To illustrate this I am going to talk through the 10 most used apps on the phone:

The five apps I can’t live without

Twitter for Android – The main reason I bought the phone was to engage with my Twitter PLN at any given time. I tried a few apps including TweetDeck and for a while Twidroyd but have happily settled on the official app. In my opinion as good as any third party and it’s OS and iOS equivalents. I can keep up with the various streams, tweet, retweet (new and traditional methods), DM, search, even manage my lists which you can’t do with Twitter for Mac.

Everpaper – As there is no native Instapaper client for Android, I experimented with a few third party apps. Everpaper is by far the closest in matching the experience of the web and iOS apps. It is feature rich while managing to maintain that all so important minimal UI. I save a lot of reading material to Instapaper – blog articles, essays, reports… the list goes on. If I am not reading a book I will catch up with my Instapaper during my journey to work. I will also read it while queuing at Costa Coffee or any other time where I am forced to be idle and do not have access to my laptop.

Kindle – I have been totally converted to the value of being able to sync the book I am reading across multiple devices. I mean, it makes so much sense right? So I now have the Kindle app on my MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Android phone. I don’t think it will be too long before I buy a Kindle as well. I use the Android app almost every weekday morning during my journey into work. So far I have read the entirety of the following books on it:

Focus by Leo Babauta
Poke the Box by Seth Godin
Keeping it Straight by Patrick Rhone
Out of our Minds: Learning to be Creative by Ken Robinson

I am about to start reading Learning Futures: Education, Technology and Social Change by Keri Facer.

Calendar – This is one of the few built in apps that I use. Synced with Google calendar; all appointments, meetings and urgent stuff are added with ease. It is the only app where, when necessary, I have the notification reminders turned on for urgent deadlines, meetings and appointments. Things that it would be absolutely detrimental for me to forget. However, I do not add my ToDo list to my calendar. My ToDo list is a text file which I keep in nvALT; synced with Simplenote. As a highly organised and motivated person, there is rarely anything in my ToDo list that I would forget to do any way.

Gmail – Again synced with my Google account I rely on this app to check my personal email at lunch time. I designate times for a number of specific tasks and this is the case with email. I check my work email first thing when I arrive at work and again at the end of the day. I check my personal email first thing in the morning and at lunch time. I try to avoid looking at email in the evening unless I know there is something urgent I need to reply to and did not manage to do so during the day.

The five apps which are useful at very specific times (but not essential)

Internet Browser – I use the pre-installed web browser. I use it mainly on an ad-hoc basis, for example, if someone shares a link in Twitter, it kicks me out to the web to view the image etc. Other than that I rarely use it.

Google Reader – As previously mentioned I allot specific times to a number of tasks. Task number one every morning is to catch up with the RSS feeds I subscribe to. I read the short ones and save the longer articles to Instapaper. I only use the Android app if that didn’t happen for some reason and on the rare occasions I am not reading a book and my Instapaper is empty – i may save this activity for the journey into work.

Evernote – As eluded to earlier, I am using Evernote to maintain my organisation as I work towards an Masters in Education. The mobile app has been used for two specific tasks. Taking photos of long extracts from books where I have not been able to access and electronic version and to take photos of slides at meetings/conferences. With the auto-sync it is a fabulous tool. See Doug’s post here about how he has used it.

mNote – As with Instapaper there is no native Simplenote app for Android. mNote is my app of choice. I occasionally need to update something and so will do it here. My use of this app has decreased since I bought my MacBook Air. Due to the Air being so light, I am tending to now take it to meetings – using nvALT to make notes instead.

Dropbox – This one needs little explanation. I want access to my documents at all times. My most common use is to read PDF files which I can’t access from Instapaper or the Kindle app.

The one app that I could live without but I’m glad I don’t have to

Swiftkey Keyboard – The built-in keyboard to the Android OS was not very good and this was one of the first features that I changed. It is the only app I have installed where I have handed over money but it was definitely worth it. Swiftkey has (IMO) the most accurate and useful predictive text I have experienced between using the iOS keyboard on my iPod touch, an LG touchscreen phone, and the built in Android keyboard. Part of the reason it works is that the keyboard’s UI is so clear and not over-sensitive that it is rare to make mistakes when typing. This combined with excellent ‘learning’ algorithms, Swiftkey predicts correctly most of the time.

iPod touch with 3G?

I have been asked by a few close friends who have had to endure me waxing lyrical about the phone whether I would buy an iPod touch, should it be released with 3G. After all, I make little to no use of the traditional phone features. To be honest, I don’t think so. I have become accustomed to the Android OS and until Apple includes something in iOS that is so revolutionary, it makes the Android OS obsolete, I will be sticking with what works for me. Besides, I’m a firm believer in the ‘one thing well’ philosophy. My Android phone does productivity really well. My iPod touch does entertainment really well. I’m happy with that.