My Top Tens of 2010: Apps
And now for the second part in my “Top Tens of 2010” series. If you want, you can check out the first part, Albums.
There’s no doubt that the mobile world is dominated by Apps these days. And even I, sometimes, forget that “Apps” were what I’ve had on my desktop for years. With the advent of the forthcoming Mac App Store, we may see these worlds merge a bit more than they have been before. But rather than wait, I thought I’d come up with a combined list of my favorite Apps, both on iOS and the Mac. So here it goes:
#1 Dropbox
If there was one piece of software that I would live and die by, it’d be Dropbox. The day I installed it on my first Mac was the day I stopped worrying about losing extremely valuable information.
Dropbox is an app that sits in the background of your computer, and syncs the stuff you put in a folder to the cloud, and then to other computers if you have them connected to the same Dropbox account (or through a folder share). This means that every time I have an internet connection (which is most of the time these days), all of my computers are in sync. I have my work iMac, my MacBook Pro that I do the heavy lifting on, and my MacBook Air that I travel it. And I never have to worry about them being out of sync with each other.
Now only if they could let me purchase more space, I would store my iTunes Library on there in a heartbeat.
Platforms: iOS, Android, Mac OS X, Windows, Web
Dropbox Website | Dropbox on iTunes
#2 Sparrow
Sparrow is a brand new (still in beta) mail app that has completely changed my mail behavior, as well as my productivity. It’s a best-in-class mail app that’s been designed from the ground up to be different than the rest of the mail clients that are out there and available on the mac.
Right now it only works with Gmail accounts, but they’re working quickly to be able to put regular IMAP accounts in there. It’s got intuitive keyboard shortcuts and plenty of slick UI to make working with my inbox a pleasure. To top it off, the developers are very active in their support community, always quickly fixing the bugs that people are finding. If this is just a beta, I can’t wait to see 1.0.
Platforms: Mac OS X
Sparrow Website
#3 Reeder
Similar to how Sparrow has changed my mail experience, Reeder has dramatically changed my news feed behavior. Years ago, I used NetNewsWire as my news client of choice. But when Google Reader started getting a better web client and nice keyboard shortcuts, I jumped ship.
Reeder was first released for iOS and was quickly named the go-to news feed client for the platform. Now, they have also released it for the Mac platform, and it’s even better there. Besides the typical news reading capabilities, they make sharing articles, and storing them in Instapaper a dream. Subscribing to over 100 feeds has never been so easy.
Platforms: iOS, Mac OS X
Reeder Website | Reeder on iTunes
#4 Instagram
What would a “Top 10 Apps of 2010” list be without Instagram? I’ve practically seen it on every single App list yet. So what is it? Simply put, it’s a app that allows me to share photographs with people.
But Instagram goes a little deeper that. It has a great user experience (though not the best UI) that means that photos load fast, commenting and “liking” images is easy and spiffing up that otherwise mundane photos is a breeze.
While some would argue against its usefulness, I’ve really enjoyed seeing all of the photos that my friends have taken, no matter how mundane or cat-filled they might be. Pictures speak louder than words.
Platforms: iOS
Instagram Website | Instagram on iTunes
#5 Aperture
Continuing on with the photograph theme, I knew I had to include one of my most important tools in my arsenal, Aperture. It’s hard for me to imagine what my work flow would be without Aperture. It’s an app that helps with the organization, management, editing and sharing of photographs, designed for photo amateurs and professionals alike.
Any time I get done taking some photos, I drop in the memory card into my Mac and Aperture automatically opens. Photos are downloaded, and immediately I’m able to start editing them. The options to edit RAW images (think of them as digital negatives from more pro cameras) are pretty great. It’s not as extensive in editing options as say, Photoshop, but it sure gets the job done.
Two of my favorite other aspects are the photo sharing and geolocation stuff (go figure). When you get done adding some photos, you can pick some out and upload them directly to Flickr or Facebook quickly and easily. It even syncs the faces that you tag in Facebook back with Aperture, allowing you to see the same faces in other photos you’ve taken. The Places options make organizing my photos by location really easy, and it’s fun to look back where I’ve taken them.
Platforms: Mac OS X
Aperture Website
#6 1Password
Similar to Dropbox, 1Password has really changed the way that I interact on the web. Most all of my passwords now that I use on the web are 10+ characters, and all of them different from each other. This is simply the best way to secure yourself online.
1Password makes this really easy by keeping a locked and encrypted database of all of your passwords in one place. It goes the step further by integrating into web browsers so that you don’t have to launch the app every time you want to log into a website.
It also comes in handy on the go, in the form of an iOS app, when I can’t seem to remember a password that I used on a website, mail account, or other stuff.
Platforms: iOS, Mac OS X, Windows
1Password Website | 1Password on iTunes
#7 Evernote
While I’m not the Evernote fanatic that some people are, it’s done a really great job of keeping my notes and other important information organized. Evernote is a really simple app that either allows me to write stuff, take pictures of things, or scan documents in. They automatically do character recognition on photographs and scans, and indexes that information along with the images themselves. This means that if I took a picture of a receipt, I’d be able to do a text search later on for the restaurant name, and be able to come up with that exact receipt.
I’ve been using it to store important docs, like the traffic ticket I just got for a fender bender, or my health insurance cards. Evernote makes searching for this info super easy, and I can know that I’ve alwasy got a digital backup of everything now.
Platforms: iOS, Android, Mac OS X, Windows, Web
Evernote Website | Evernote on iTunes
#8 Google Chrome
It’s pretty hard to miss Google Chrome these days. It’s a best-in-class browser, a forthcoming OS, and even a comic book. I’ve held out hope for a long time that Safari would be a killer browser, but the truth is, it’s just not quite there yet.
Chrome has got some really cool features under the hood that make it a pleasure to browse with. Not the least of which is its Javascript rendering engine, V8. It works by making each individual tab that’s open its own separate process on the computer. In English, that means that if one browser tab starts to hang or crash, you can still use other tabs without any issues.
Something that’s also a fairly new development is the Google Chrome Web App Store. The idea is similar to the iOS App Store, but specifically for “apps” that are built to work within Chrome. It shows a lot of promise and I’m excited to see what they do with it in 2011.
Platforms: Mac OS X, Windows, Linux
Google Chrome Website
#9 Camera+
It should come as no surprise that three of the top ten apps for me are photography-based. I’m a photo fanatic, so I’m always looking for the next coolest app that’s going to make my picture taking life better, easier, more awesome. Camera+ would probably have been a bit higher on my list, but because I’ve only had a few days to play with Version 2, it’s hard to really make that judgement.
So what makes Camera+ different than any other camera app out there? Think of it like adding SLR-like features to the iPhone. There’s all kinds of nifty stuff that it can do that the native iPhone camera can’t do, and that you can’t edit after the fact. One of those things is exposure adjustment. When you focus with the standard iPhone camera, the exposure of the image is based on what you’re focusing on. This doesn’t always make for the best image, so Camera+ introduced a way to have a different exposure as the focus, and the results are pretty cool.
Keeping in line with the other popular camera apps out there, they also include filters and different photo frames. I personally like how they approach it because I can choose different filters and frames, and come up with the exact image that I intended.
Platforms: iOS
Camera+ Website | Camera+ on iTunes
#10 Cloud App
I just couldn’t live this app off the list. It’s super simple and doesn’t do much, but the one thing that it does has been really helpful in IM conversations that I’m having with friends or co-workers. Cloud App is basically a little tiny app that sits in the background and collects things, storing them in the cloud (hence the name), and then putting a link to that item into your clipboard, so you can paste them elsewhere.
Whenever I take a screenshot of something, it automatically uploads the image, and copies a link to that image. This helps a ton when I’m trying to explain something through images rather than words. Now granted, I could go to the trouble of uploading those images through a web service and getting a link that way, but Cloud App just makes the process so damned slick.
Platforms: Mac OS X
Cloud App Website
Conclusion
As with my 2010 Albums choices, 2010 was an awesome year for Apps. They’re getting more useful, more beautiful, and certainly more usage with the advent of the various App Stores. I’m excited to see what apps jump out in 2011. Who knows, maybe next year there’ll be some new apps on this list that haven’t come out yet, that change my life just the same as the ones above.
