According to Statista, there are close to five million apps and games available for download on Apple’s App store. Of that 5,000,000 available apps, I think I use about 0.001%, and of those 50 apps, I regularly use ~10. Of those 10 apps, I wanted to highlight a few, and very briefly discuss some features I like and what I think could be improved. By no means is this an exhaustive list of praise and critiques, but maybe something on this list could help you hone your next great crossword or bike training app!
Dark Sky (RIP, in advance)
Dark Sky is a popular app that specializes in hyper-local forecasts that has been my go-to weather app for years. Recently, the company was purchased by Apple, and the app’s features are starting to roll into Apple’s own Weather app, with the standalone Dark Sky app set to retire in 2023 (RIP).
What I like…
- Almost everything on screen is relevant information or for navigation. There aren’t any distracting backgrounds or superfluous buttons. The UI is very clean.
- The use of color and relative locations is intuitive throughout the app. It does a great job of marrying numbers with visual representations.
- Any relevant alerts are always brought to the top of the page when the app is first opened. As someone who lives in an area with strong storms, flooding, and fires, this is a welcome highlight.
- In areas with more predictable weather, the actual minute-by-minute predictions are fairly reliable! In the chaos of Colorado’s front range, the accuracy isn’t as strong.
What could be improved…
- Finding more “in-the-weeds” weather metrics like UV-index, humidity, or air quality requires a bit more side scrolling and hunting for small buttons than some other apps, like Apple’s Weather.
- As more of a weather geek, I would definitely like to see under the hood a bit more on how the short-term weather predictions are being made. Is a given prediction more radar-based, or nearby station-based via precipitation and pressure measurements?
Reminders
Apple’s own Reminders app is a straightforward reminders app that I often find myself doubling as a note-taker. Similar to Apple Maps, Reminders has constantly seen improvements in terms of features and integrations within the Apple ecosystem over the last half decade that have turned it into a must-have for those of us entrenched in Apple products.
What I like…
- Reminders are easy to group and share with other iPhone/iPad users.
- No part of this app is designed to do anything besides setting, tracking, and visualizing reminders and to-dos. There are downsides to this (see below), but this singular focus makes that process seamless and there are no visual or process distractions.
- There is just enough visual and organizational customization to make the app bend to your aesthetic and operational desires.
- The app has pretty flawless synchronization of reminder status across all of your own Apple devices. I have rarely, if ever, had sync issues with devices that are online.
What could be improved…
- Any time there are nested dates within your phonetic reminder (e.g. “tomorrow, remind me to schedule to a hair appt. for Thursday), the system can get confused and will opt to schedule for the second date.
- Siri automatically pulling in reminders from messages has been hit or miss— usually not all the relevant details are captured.
- The in-browser Reminders interface on iCloud is very lacking in features, and I would likely recommend a different app if you are trying to track tasks and reminders across multiple digital ecosystems (e.g. Android and Windows).
- More complex integrations with calendars and timelines are not available yet. Google tasks in the G-suite have this feature and help centralize all planning and logistical efforts.
Concepts
Concepts is a digital drawing/art app that (to me at least) specializes in product design and architecture sketching. I don’t think it’s the digital art app for everyone, but would highly recommend it for anyone looking to upgrade their product design sketching or workflows.
What I like…
- Specifically for product sketching, the app’s ability to automatically layer pencil and pen/marker lines is incredibly useful and makes the experience more seamless when iterating a drawing.
- The infinite canvas is very useful for activities like mind-mapping and shotgun sketching, where you ideate as you draw.
- Exporting to different file types is incredibly easy, and just as easy is sharing them to other devices (particularly Apple ones) [for some reason my JPG exports have been a bit pixelated recently though].
- The brush and color interfaces are super easy to use, and are definitely optimized for drawings that have only a few different brushes and colors. This is great for early-stage product sketching.
- Cutting and pasting drawings within the canvas is super useful for scene sketches or products with repeated features.
What could be improved…
- As far as I know, you can’t save any of your drawings/pages to a cloud system. This puts your iPad as a single-point failure, and limits your ability to collaborate and share within the app itself. This is a big limiter for using this app in a collaborative work environment.
- No real iPhone integration, which is OK if you are drawing, but it would sometimes be great to be able to show someone a sketch on your phone easily.
- The layering, coloring, and brush system don’t seem to be optimized for actual artistic digital art. You end up doing a lot of clicks and motions when juggling more than a few brushes at once.
Zwift
Zwift is an app dedicated to being a digital indoor training platform for cyclists and runners, though I use the app exclusively for cycling. There are numerous types of bike trainers that work with the app, and it offers a more exciting stationary cycling experience than staring at a basic performance metric screen for hours on end (which I have also had the pleasure of doing on rowing ergs). I really enjoy this app, but it is the one I have the most improvement recommendations for…
What I like…
- The app seamlessly integrates with fitness trackers like Strava and Garmin Connect.
- I generally find the app to be fun, especially the races and events. It really does make the often mundane indoor cycling efforts more entertaining.
- Dynamic resistance on a bike trainer really is cool to experience. I was shocked at how well it works, and how much it breaks up the monotony.
- Integration of the app with your other sensors (power, heart rate, etc.) is very easy to set up and modify.
- The game has enough users to be a fun social experience, even if you aren’t talking directly to someone. It’s fun to try to chase down other riders, or hold them off while you are riding.
What could be improved…
- The pop-up menus that appear while you are riding, are not the most intuitive. They mainly consist of funny pictograms that require reading website articles to understand exactly what they do.
- Previously (this has since been fixed, thank goodness), you could not modify the look of your rider without starting a ride. This would end up requiring numerous button presses to get through all the menus, then leave them again.
- There isn’t a way to remove the actual in-world riding visualizations to focus purely on your workout metrics like time, power, upcoming workout sets, etc. In general, this information is fairly easy to find while riding anyways, but it could be more convenient.
- Joining races and events is sometimes very confusing, and it’s sometimes difficult to tell if you have correctly signed up for one, even while using the companion app.
- The upcoming road elevation profile is not very easy to see, unless you are doing one of the few climbs where there is a specific UI for the upcoming grades. This feature should be used more ubiquitously.
- This is a nitpick, but I really hate the gravel roads and other surfaces in the game. They slow you down substantially, and when your only way to get from one place to another is by a dirt road, it feels like a chore.
- There are challenges within the game that give the rider specific special gear, but they are difficult to find initially, and hard to track without entering the game. Not the easiest to find and access overall, especially for a feature that is meant to draw you back in.
NYT Crossword
The New York Times crossword app is probably the pinnacle of app-based word gaming. The app includes NYT’s entire catalog of crosswords dating back to the 1990’s, and does a great job of tracking user’s performance.
What I like…
- Whenever I open the app, it’s usually with the intention of playing today or yesterday’s crossword, and that takes either one or two clicks. The app puts the game at the forefront.
- It sounds trivial, but having no ads on an app created by a newspaper is definitely welcome, and makes the product feel more premium.
- It is easy to see your entire experience with the NYT crossword, whether it’s your record times on a given weekday puzzle, or your history of puzzle completion. You feel like you gain more by using it for longer.
- In general, the actual crossword presentation is great. Even on large puzzles, the squares and keyboard are clear. The only nitpick I have here is that the title of any given days’ crossword, which can often provide useful puzzle context, is usually not visible.
What could be improved…
- Entering rebuses can sometimes be confusing unless you know exactly what to do. It’s definitely a low-intuition action within the app.
- In some iterations, the keyboard for the NYT crossword app has been a very slightly different size than the normal keyboard, which often leads to clicking incorrect keys.
- The only social feature, the “Leaderboard” is currently limited to stats around “The Mini” crosswords. As someone with many friends doing the NYT crosswords daily, I would love to compete with them on finish times.
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