Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Make it Manageable’s productivity picks for iOS in 2011 (not necessarily anything new here). These are the apps which I will be considering as ‘essential’ in 2011 for those who want to get things done on their iOS device, and get it done with relative ease. Without further ado, let us begin.
Dropbox:
I consider Dropbox not just a staple iOS app, but as a staple for productive computing full stop. Dropbox equals wireless cloud syncing between computers, relatively effortless (essential) file backups, and the iOS app will allow you to view your synced files on the go. It will cache a certain (user settable) amount of data on your device for offline viewing (for your iPod touch or 3G-less iPad) and is a sturdy, reliable application. The app (and a 2GB Dropbox account) are free.
Pastebot:
Pastebot is a neat little utility which acts as a more spacious clipboard for your iOS devices cut+copy+paste functionality. You can sort your clippings into different folders should you wish to, and if you use the Pastebot Sync utility for Mac OS X, you can paste items from your iOS device to your Mac, and copy items from your Mac to your iOS device. The app is $2.99, while the sync utility is free.
Schoolbook:
Schoolbook is an incredibly simple, no-frills timetable application for high school students, coded by my good friend George Caley. You set the number of weeks in a cycle, the number of periods in a day, then you fill in the information for each lesson. The no-frills nature of the app means it opens in a flash, and I’ve never had it crash on me once. What’s best about it is that it’s free to download from the App Store.
Evernote:
Evernote is another great internet-syncing application, with a difference. You can create text, audio, photo and other notes from any device, be it a Mac, a PC, an iPhone, a BlackBerry, whatever(!) and upload it to your Evernote account for viewing on any of your other devices! For free you get a small amount of free uploads a month, but for $5 you can upgrade to a premium account with a far higher upload limit.
HHYPN:
This app’s name is actually Hidden, a Simplenote syncing app from Coding Robot’s, whose appeal is in the fact that it allows you to hide certain notes from view. You could download the Simplenote application itself for free (and get a free simplenote account), but sometimes you have things (password lists, for example) that you just don’t want people to find. The app is US$1.99 on the App Store.
Expenditure:
While Expenditure isn’t exactly a productivity application, I’ve hypothesised that keeping track of expenses outside of receipt collection might make tax time easier for some, and so I present this app to you. It’s a clean, elegant way to monitor your budget, with password protection, image and text notes to append transactions, and other nifty features. Expenditure is US$1.99 on the App Store.
Things:
Things is a vintage iOS app, trusted and used by many hundreds of thousands of iOS device owners to make and maintain their tasks lists. You can create many projects and areas of responsibility which will span across different task categories (such as Today, Someday, Scheduled, etc) and the clean, simplistic UI makes it fast and easy to use. This great app is just US$9.99 on the App Store.
