My Top 7 Favorite iPhone Apps from 2017

As 2017 comes to an end, I am also wrap­ping up my 8^th year using the Apple iPhone. Besides mar­ket­ing ser­vices, I spend a lot of time help­ing and rec­om­mend­ing apps and soft­ware to my paint­ing clients that make them more pro­duc­tive in both the field and their office spaces. Below you will find the ones I used the most in 2017 and why I liked them.

Base­camp 3 — Project and Task Management

I start­ed using the orig­i­nal ​“Base­camp Clas­sic” prob­a­bly around 2005. I am pret­ty loy­al to soft­ware com­pa­nies that pro­duce a qual­i­ty prod­uct and have excel­lent cus­tomer ser­vice. When the newest ver­sion of Base­camp was released in 2015, it became one of my favorite pro­duc­tiv­i­ty apps for the desk­top and iPhone. This is also the first year where many of my paint­ing clients have begun to adopt Base­camp 3 for their office and field employ­ees. Try it free for a month.

Things 3 — ToDos and Reminders

I don’t know why my two favorite, most used, apps this year are ​“3” ver­sions. I tried Things sev­er­al years ago, and it was just too bor­ing and clunky. I like easy-to-use apps that look awe­some too! Things 3 is a ToDo app that is based on the book ​“Get­ting Things Done” by David Allen. I use Things pri­mar­i­ly for per­son­al and misc. busi­ness tasks. I do not use it to run projects — that is where Base­camp takes the cake. What I real­ly like about Things 3 is that it does not remind you how ter­ri­ble you are for not get­ting a task done that day. It just gives you a clean list of what you’ve got com­ing up Today, Tomor­row, Next Week, or Some­day. I also use it as a brain dump. This is pow­er­ful. My mind is always think­ing of things to do, to try, to explore, and so forth. In order to stay focused, I quick­ly move inter­est­ing arti­cles, emails, and ideas in my head into the Inbox. When I have a few min­utes at a lat­er time, I’ll review my Inbox and decide when to accom­plish the tasks at hand. The only down­side to Things 3 is the price. In a world where many apps are free, this one is any­thing but free. If you want it on your desk­top, it is around $50. If you want it on the iPad, it is $10 bucks. iPhone, shell out anoth­er $10. Is it worth it? Every pen­ny! Read more about things on their website

Base CRM — Cus­tomer Rela­tion­ship Management

There is no bet­ter-designed and easy-to-use CRM (that I’ve tried) than Base CRM. Sor­ry, Sales­force. I have been using Base for many years now, and each update just keeps get­ting bet­ter. The lat­est one with iOS 11 (as I write this arti­cle) is stun­ning. I can do just about every­thing on the iPhone that I can on the desk­top. And, it looks beau­ti­ful on the iPhone X.

Google Cal­en­dar

Google final­ly released Google Cal­en­dar for the iPhone in 2015. This past year, the App has got­ten eas­i­er to use with many more func­tions. If you haven’t noticed, the desk­top ver­sion got a whole new design this fall which now mim­ics the iPhone ver­sion very well. There are still things I would like to change about Google Cal­en­dar for iOS, but it is bet­ter than Apple’s stand­alone cal­en­dar. I like the ​“list” view, as it is very clean and makes view­ing my events for the day easy. Google is just a lit­tle slow on mak­ing updates, so for those who do have the iPhone X, it does not look great on there just yet!

Spark and Gmail

Spark by Read­dle has done an awe­some job cre­at­ing an email app. It takes just a few min­utes to type in my Google login, update my sig­na­ture and a few set­tings, and I’m off and run­ning using Spark for send­ing and receiv­ing email. I have been using the stand­alone Gmail App for many years. Gmail is per­haps the best email app I’ve used for sim­ple send­ing and receiv­ing — no bells or whis­tles. It just works and mim­ics my desk­top Gmail for busi­ness. Spark is a few steps ahead of Gmail in sev­er­al ways: the abil­i­ty to delay send­ing emails, snooz­ing emails to a lat­er time, and hav­ing emails return to your inbox if you do not receive a reply with­in a cer­tain win­dow of time. This can be done with the Gmail desk­top app with the help of pre­mi­um third-par­ty inte­gra­tion (paid plans). Spark offers these key fea­tures free of charge. Spark also works with most pop­u­lar email sys­tems: Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and iCloud. Learn more about Spark

Keep­er — passwords

Every­one needs a place to store pass­words and remem­ber user­names and so forth. I have used Keep­er by Call­pod for close to a decade. It is super sim­ple and easy to use. You can cre­ate a com­pa­ny account and eas­i­ly share infor­ma­tion to oth­er users with view only or edit rights. The cost for per­son­al use is $29 a year. Learn more about Keeper

Google Dri­ve — File Shar­ing and Storage

If you are still using Drop­box but have a GSuites account, you need to make the switch. Just use Google Dri­ve. It works won­ders! I am a heavy user of Google Dri­ve on my desk­top, iPad, and iPhone. I use it to share and edit docs, col­lab­o­rate with my team, and store files, fold­ers, and pic­tures as well. There you have it. These are the top 7 apps I use on a reg­u­lar basis to help me stay pro­duc­tive. Here are a few hon­or­able men­tions I use for busi­ness and per­son­al use as well: Apple Music, Google Keep (includ­ed in GSuites and replaces Ever­note), Sonos, iMes­sage, Bible, Ama­zon, Pan­do­ra, Google Maps, and Face­book Pages for busi­ness. Love to hear about your favorite 2017 apps.