These are my "good" apps:
- Spotify: everyone loves music. Put it on speakerphone. Dance and sing silly while you cook.
- Shazam: discover music. Exactly what apps ought to be.
- Google Maps: Does what it does.
- Google home: setting my lights to match the time of day / mood / or movie.
- Google Authenticator: 2FA is good
- "Justin Guitar", a simple guitar tuner, and a metronome app: I've been learning guitar
- Duolingo: my wife and I have been learning Spanish together.
- Apple Books, Libby, Kindle: I use Books for PDFs and epubs I "find" online or get through Humble Bundle. With Humble Bundle you can get a TON of books for super cheap. Libby for getting ebooks from the library. Finally, Kindle for books I purchase b/c I couldn't find them anywhere else.
- Audible: for audiobooks, which was more important when I had a commute.
- Stranger "Things to do": very specific to Seattle, but connects me to my community by giving fun events and activities to check out.
- Carbon: also specific to my interests, this is the best life-tracker app for Magic the Gathering Commander games. Worth the $5 upgrade.
"Mixed" apps:
- Discord. At best it keeps me connected with my friends. It was invaluable during the pandemic and strict quarantines. But can be addicting, toxic, and net-negative.
EDIT: from a comment below, I also realized that everything on the Control Panel is a Good App: airplane mode, low power mode, add note, add audio recording, alarms, timers, stopwatch, calculator, flashlight, Apple Pay, Shazam, and camera.
- Spotify: everyone loves music. Put it on speakerphone. Dance and sing silly while you cook.
- Shazam: discover music. Exactly what apps ought to be.
- Google Maps: Does what it does.
- Google home: setting my lights to match the time of day / mood / or movie.
- Google Authenticator: 2FA is good
- "Justin Guitar", a simple guitar tuner, and a metronome app: I've been learning guitar
- Duolingo: my wife and I have been learning Spanish together.
- Apple Books, Libby, Kindle: I use Books for PDFs and epubs I "find" online or get through Humble Bundle. With Humble Bundle you can get a TON of books for super cheap. Libby for getting ebooks from the library. Finally, Kindle for books I purchase b/c I couldn't find them anywhere else.
- Audible: for audiobooks, which was more important when I had a commute.
- Stranger "Things to do": very specific to Seattle, but connects me to my community by giving fun events and activities to check out.
- Carbon: also specific to my interests, this is the best life-tracker app for Magic the Gathering Commander games. Worth the $5 upgrade.
"Mixed" apps:
- Discord. At best it keeps me connected with my friends. It was invaluable during the pandemic and strict quarantines. But can be addicting, toxic, and net-negative.
EDIT: from a comment below, I also realized that everything on the Control Panel is a Good App: airplane mode, low power mode, add note, add audio recording, alarms, timers, stopwatch, calculator, flashlight, Apple Pay, Shazam, and camera.