I don’t consider myself to be one of the people that are always testing new apps, and getting to the next hip thing as soon as possible. There are certain categories of apps where I am constantly looking for something that will better fit me, and I will switch to a new thing in a heartbeat (migrating my data like it ain’t no thang), but the rest of the time I like to get the most out of the standard, built in apps; whether it’s my desktop computer, or my phone.

Productivity Apps

I am a to-do list freak. You only need to lose your mind once over a million things that you need to get done, before you start obsessively filing every little thing into some kind of a system. Trust me. I consider myself to be pretty acquainted with this type of software, so I can kind of tell if an app will fit my personal workflow or not really quickly. I’ve also helped design one that’s pretty cool if I can say so myself.

To–Do lists are definitely a category of apps in which I will try out anything that promises to fit my—extremely simple—personal task management system. When I got the new iPhone 4S I was really pumped about the Reminders app, and it turned out to be shit. Typical for Apple’s native apps (I’m looking at you, Notes). Then I found Pocket Lists for iPhone and I can say that I am really happy with how it works. The location based reminders are what did it for me. It’s a killer feature, and I’m beyond ecstatic that it’s even possible to do things like that in this day and age. Also, the natural language features are great; being able to write “Buy milk mon 12:30pm” and the app remove the “mon 12:30pm” bit from the task name and schedule it for me is nothing short of amazing.

A major plus is that it syncs with Google Tasks (and now even Toodledo), but now I need to find another app for my desktop computer that will let me handle my tasks comfortably while at the computer as well.

Another category of apps I am always on the lookout for are note taking apps. I was a sworn user of Simplenote, but I’ve moved on. I feel like the developers are putting their efforts somewhere else (maybe it’s text synchronization?) instead of improving the service. I’m now using Evernote, but I would be happy to move on to something else since this still feels really clunky. I’ve even ventured into making my own app but that ended as a disaster, so I’ll stick with other people’s software for now.

Food & Health Apps

Recently I’ve made a big change in my life and got into exercising. I’ve also stopped shoving crap down my throat, and started watching what I eat. I’ve been looking for some way to track my meals, and tried out a couple of apps. Man, calorie counting sucks! It’s laborious, and requires much more discipline than I have, I’ll tell you that. Then I stumbled upon The Eatery—instant hit. It lets me snap a picture of my food, and roughly rate how healthy it is. That’s all I need! Additionally, other people can rate your food, and you can rate theirs as well, and the that flow has been designed is brilliant, it’s like crack cocaine. Hats off to the designers.

Fitness Apps

This is the one category where I think there still isn’t even an acceptable app, in terms of quality. Each and every app I have tried has me feeling like I’m doing chores when I want to log my workouts. I think there is room here for improvement, especially in the aspect of usability and user experience. I’d love to get a chance to take a crack at it (wishful thinking).