A Few of My Favorite Apps for My iPhone

I thought it was time to share a screen­shot of my iPhone to help those of you who are won­der­ing what apps I use and why. I use my iPhone and iPad pri­mar­i­ly for busi­ness and a lit­tle plea­sure. I rarely play any games, so you’ll notice my main screen is most­ly for busi­ness with a few per­son­al apps sprin­kled in too. The most-used apps you’ll find at the very bot­tom. The ones at the very top are the sec­ond most-used, with the ones in the mid­dle get­ting used a lit­tle less. All oth­er apps are on the sec­ond screen, which I’ve not includ­ed in this blog. Those are all misc. apps that I use from time to time or am test­ing out. I can eas­i­ly access them through the iOS Spot­light menu when I need them. 

So, what are the above apps and why do I use them?

Best iOS I Use for My Busi­ness & Per­son­al Life

• Phone
• Wun­derlist: I have been using Apple’s Reminder App for sev­er­al years, but I recent­ly switched to Wun­derlist. The main rea­son for switch­ing was rather sim­ple: I want­ed to be able to assign tasks and sub­tasks to oth­er peo­ple (del­e­gate), and to be able to com­ment on those tasks. I find Apple’s Reminders very cool and sim­ple to use, but it lacks the col­lab­o­ra­tion aspect that can be so valuable.

• Gmail: I rarely use Apple’s Mail. I don’t like the inter­face. I also just like to avoid any Google and Apple sync­ing issues. So, because I use Google Apps for work, I pre­fer to use Google Appli­ca­tions when­ev­er pos­si­ble. It just works! I also like that I can send emails from my device and it will include my desk­top or mobile sig­na­ture. I can also set my away mes­sage from the Gmail app. Final­ly, I can attach and save files to Google Dri­ve, which I use everyday.

• Cal­en­dars 5: I have been using Cal­en­dars 5 for about 2 years now. It real­ly is per­haps the best Google Cal­en­dar app out there. It is very easy to use and looks great. I also select­ed this because I have few­er sync­ing prob­lems and don’t have to rely on Apple’s Cal­en­dar pro­gram. Read more about Cal­en­dars 5

• Base: I’ve also been using Base CRM as my go-to cus­tomer rela­tion­ship and sales tool. Although I like oth­er CRMs like Pipeline Deals, Sales­force and Zo, I have set­tled on Base as my CRM of choice. It works won­der­ful­ly for mobile users. Learn more about Base

• Ever­note: This nifty pro­gram helps me remem­ber just about any­thing! I save all sorts of fun things in Ever­note. Ever­note even allows you to add extra secu­ri­ty on more impor­tant notes, docs and receipts. If I need to know what type of water fil­ter I used for my refrig­er­a­tor, I can find it in sec­onds using Ever­note. Or if I want to find a VIN num­ber for a cer­tain car, Ever­note does the job!

• Vox­er: I have also been using Vox­er for prob­a­bly 3+ years. It has been my go-to app for Walkie-Talkie-like fea­tures. It is a fast and easy way to get quick mes­sages to my co-work­ers, cus­tomers and fam­i­ly mem­bers. Addi­tion­al­ly, it can be used as a sin­gle mes­sag­ing app or with large groups. On the oth­er hand, Vox­er’s same fea­tures can be found on the new iOS 8 soft­ware in iMes­sage. So, while it’s still handy, I am slow­ly using Vox­er less and less.

• Safari: Although I’ve tried a half dozen oth­er browsers, even Google Chrome for iPhone, I still like Apple’s Safari the best. Very easy to use.

• Weath­er: I have set­tled on two weath­er apps: Apple’s built in appli­ca­tion as seen on my screen, and WeatherBug.

• Business/​Fin: You’ll see I have some oth­er apps that are busi­ness or finance relat­ed. I’ve put these in a Group Cat­e­go­ry. In here I have my Bank, Van­guard, cred­it card apps, pass­word apps, Pho­to Markup app, and so on. They are fre­quent­ly used but not quite as often as the stand-alone apps.

• Base­camp: I have tried many of the most pop­u­lar Project Man­age­ment apps on the mar­ket, includ­ing Yam­mer, Google+, Strike and oth­ers. Base­camp was one of the pio­neers for online project man­age­ment and has remained the leader. Although some­times their updates are not as fast and cool as new­er prod­ucts out there, I still will con­tin­ue to use Base­camp. If you learn how to use it, it works very well both for inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions as well as for when you need to bring a cus­tomer into the mix. Many of my cus­tomers have set­tled on Smartsheet for more than project man­age­ment. I’ve writ­ten about that here.

• Dri­ve: For years I used Drop­box for file stor­age and shar­ing. It was the best cloud file app ever. Google Dri­ve has been hard at work to make their prod­uct just as good if not bet­ter than Drop­box. Late in 2013, I switched over to exclu­sive­ly using Google Dri­ve for my doc­u­ment cre­ations, col­lab­o­rat­ing on files, shar­ing and stor­age. I can store pic­tures, google files and even microsoft Word and Excel docs.

• iOS Mail: Def­i­nite­ly my sec­ond choice for email­ing and check­ing mail. I do leave it on here and keep my per­son­al email separate.

• Face­book & Google+

• Hang­outs: This is a prod­uct by Google. It is their Chat pro­gram for any­one using Gmail. I can also make phone calls and do video con­fer­enc­ing with peo­ple. This could be a good tool if you want­ed to have a mul­ti-call with sev­er­al employees.

• Ama­zon

• Fresh­books: Per­haps one of the eas­i­est invoic­ing and light account­ing soft­wares on the mar­ket. I’ve used it for 5+ years. I know most use Quick­books, but my accoun­tant is fine with me using this pro­gram. My cus­tomers think it is easy to use too when they pay their bills. Learn more about Freshbooks

• Scan­ner Pro: I’ve used Tur­bo Scan and Scan­ner Pro. They are basi­cal­ly the same prod­uct, but I have set­tled on Scan­ner Pro because I like the com­pa­ny that devel­ops the app: Read­dle. They make my favorite Cal­en­dars 5 app too. If you want to snap a pic­ture of a receipt and quick­ly upload it to Drop­box, iDrive, Google Dri­ve, or Ever­note, Scan­ner Pro makes this easy. It looks like a scanned copy. If you need to get loose papers or signed con­tracts quick­ly emailed or saved, Scan­ner Pro works per­fect­ly for this. You can scan mul­ti­ple pages and make it 1 doc­u­ment. Learn more about Scan­ner Pro

• Maps: I go back and forth between Google and Apple Maps. Apple’s Map has got­ten sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter in recent months. On a few trips late­ly, I noticed Apple Maps per­form­ing a tad bet­ter than Google. So as of fall 2014, I’ve moved Google Maps to the sec­ond screen of my iPhone.

• Spo­ti­fy: I have used Pan­do­ra and Apple’s Music quite a bit and find Spo­ti­fy to be the best music app on the mar­ket. I recent­ly tried BEATS App but still pre­fer Spo­ti­fy. If you use some­thing like Spo­ti­fy for $10 a month, you real­ly don’t need to down­load a bunch of songs onto your device, ulti­mate­ly sav­ing space.

• Ligo­nier RSB: RSB stands for Ref­or­ma­tion Study Bible, and this is my go-to Bible app. If I want to lis­ten to the Bible while dri­ving, how­ev­er, I’ll use You­Ver­sion.

• Mint: I use Mint for my per­son­al finances. It is super easy to use! I can have instant access from any com­put­er or device. Mint is owned by Intu­it and has always been free. I’ve used it almost since day one of its release (near­ly a decade!).

• Pho­tos: I use the iCloud Pho­to Shar­ing quite often these days. I have a few com­pa­nies that send me their job pho­tos too. I can com­ment and like pho­tos that are shared and pro­vide feedback.

• Mes­sages: I’ve left this app in the orig­i­nal loca­tion since I first got my iPhone. Because of the new iOS 8, I now use iMes­sage even more for group discussions/​chats and short audio text. With group chats now, a com­pa­ny can see where their employ­ees are locat­ed, which is a real­ly cool fea­ture. You can also opt out of a group (snooze) if you are receiv­ing too many texts.

• Set­tings

• Keep­er: This app is used for stor­ing my hun­dreds and hun­dreds of usernames/​passwords and oth­er impor­tant info. There are a lot of good pass­word keep­ers out there, but Keep­er has been a fan­tas­tic app that I’ve used since I first got my iPhone, if not ear­li­er. It works on all devices I use.

So there you have it. These are my go-to apps, used per­haps every­day. What are your favorite busi­ness apps? I’d love to see them and learn why you like them. Hope­ful­ly this helps you to be more pro­duc­tive too!