What’s your favorite app?

What’s your favority app? Let’s approach this discussion question with a brief overview of the state of app development industry.

To say apps are proliferating exponentially may be an understatement. The growth extends from the multitude of startups kluging together the cheesiest games to cloud-based SaaS developers vying to serve enterprises of all shapes and sizes.

Then there are the distributors. The Apple App Store boasts over 1.2 million apps resulting in 75 billion downloads, and sees 300 million visits per week. As of June 2014, there were 9 million iOS registered developers, up 47 percent from last year. And that’s just Apple.

In the B2B space, companies like Barcelona-based GetApp provides a global marketplace for business apps with reviews, evaluations, categorization and exposure. The company now works with 2,500+ SaaS and Cloud software vendors since bootstrapping in 2010.

All that said, it’s amazing that comparatively few apps reach stardom like Instagram, Google Drive, Spotify, MyFitnessPal, and so on. And fewer still become our favorites, either for business purposes, pleasure, or both. So rather than the usual top-whatever menu, we’re asking you to answer in the comment field below: What is your favorite app and why?

apple best apps

BrainTrust

Discussion Questions

What are your favorite business, entertainment, personal, or whatever apps and why? Have any become integral to your career? Do you find yourself downloading and experimenting with new apps as they become available, or are you loyal to the apps you’ve found to be tried and true?

Poll

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Keith Anderson
Keith Anderson
9 years ago

I always recommend TripIt, which automatically adds travel itineraries (flights, lodging, ground transportation) to my calendar, keeping my family and team informed. As a bonus, it checks for fare drops on reservations I’ve already made, triggering notices that I may be able to recover the difference between the current fare and what I paid. That feature has more than paid for the $50 “Pro” fee I’ve happily paid for the last several years.

Secondly, Expensify has turned the loathed duty of filing expense reports into an afterthought. I snap a photo of each receipt on my phone (or forward e-receipts), and Expensify’s team efficiently codes the expenses according to rules I’ve set. In a past life, I spent at least three hours each month filing expenses. Now it’s a 15-minute routine.

Paula Rosenblum
Paula Rosenblum
9 years ago

It’s more than an app, but I LOVE Uber. I used it once in Boston, and it was OK. But when I used it in NY, I became a total convert.

I was waiting on the cab line outside the Waldorf Astoria and got tired of it. Ordered up an Uber-mobile, and from then on it was clear sailing. The app lets you know the face and license plate of your car, the exact position on the GPS and the approximate time to your location. Then the trip was pleasant, in a clean vehicle, taking the shortest, rather than most circuitous route. And it was not overly expensive.

No money changes hands directly.

What’s not to love?

We’ll talk about all the games I play another time …

Mel Kleiman
Mel Kleiman
9 years ago

As a shopper I love Retail Me Not. It has saved me a lot of money when I do go shopping. Clean and simple to use.

Ben Ball
Ben Ball
9 years ago

Google Now has practically ended the “I’m sure I’m right.” “No, you’re not!” conversations in my household. Now instead of reaching for the most spurious of justifications for a position blurted out spontaneously, everyone knows the right information is just a voice command away. This could be the answer to world peace!

Any of the navigation apps.

Spotify/Pandora (tie) for easy access to our favorite music.

And to throw in a couple for my spouse—Pinterest and SparkPeople.

Max Goldberg
Max Goldberg
9 years ago

My favorite app is Google, due to its superior voice recognition capabilities and ability to provide answers. Google has far surpassed Siri in both regards. In fact, Siri seems to have lost intelligence over the past few months.

Like most consumers, I regularly use only a small portion of the apps on my phone, and I don’t have many apps to begin with. If an interesting app surfaces I may give it a try, but few of the newer apps have become favorites.

Frank Riso
Frank Riso
9 years ago

Easy … Facebook. It keeps me closer to family and friends. It is a way to connect with classmates, old friends and distant family. Pictures, videos and lots of fun add to the reasons why I use it everyday, and many times a day.

Tony Orlando
Tony Orlando
9 years ago

Google Maps for sure. Never have a problem finding where to go on vacation or I’m in a car without navigation. Works awesome, and provides restaurants, lodging and many other things anyone would need when they are out of town. My Cleveland Browns app is cool too. It barks when any new reports come on the app, so I can stay current.

Ed Dunn
Ed Dunn
9 years ago

Recent research showed users preferred mobile e-commerce web sites over e-commerce apps. The majority of “best apps” are productivity apps that store data and track data for personal use, not commercial use.

The only app I use almost daily is my banking/credit apps to quickly access account information.

Kenneth Leung
Kenneth Leung
9 years ago

Looking at the front page of my iPhone—Google for searching, Waze for dealing with traffic, Evernote for note taking, Box for file sharing, Recordium for recording voice notes, then a folder with my social media apps, Instagram and Hootsuite being the most used. Shopping apps Wise, Amazon.com, Yelp and Opentable. I do try out new apps but I try to delete them if I don’t use them after a while.

Dan Raftery
Dan Raftery
9 years ago

Tripit and FlightAware for travel. Google Maps, The Weather Channel and FlashLight for obvious reasons. Amazon Cloud Player for listening to music I have purchased since forever.
Vivino for wine research. Happy Hours for finding a nearby watering hole. And I just discovered this cool app called “Phone.” Who knew?

J. Peter Deeb
J. Peter Deeb
9 years ago

My favorite app is my Golfshot GPS that has almost unlimited golf courses but better yet gives me yardages to every hazard, lay up distances and green dimensions. I may not play better but I definitely play smarter.

I have not found any go-to-business apps that I cannot live without.

Jason Goldberg
Jason Goldberg
9 years ago

LastPass: What if I told you I have credentials to log into over 1,600 websites, and each password is completely unique, random, over 10 digits long, and I never have to remember a single one of them? That’s what LastPass does for me. It creates highly secure passwords for every site I use, securely stores them all for me, and with plugins and apps for every device and browser, it enters them for me. LastPass is a great solution to our growing password security problem.

Evernote: Is my brain on the internet. I use it to store meeting notes, lists, photos of whiteboards, scanned documents and (using their excellent web-clipper plugins) articles I find interesting on the web. All are completely searchable (including images of handwriting, which are indexed with optical character recognition). Today, I have over 15,000 notes that are available on every device I use.

Both are great examples of tools that have become indispensable to my work and my personal life.

Shep Hyken
Shep Hyken
9 years ago

Isn’t amazing that we’re having this discussion? Not that many years ago nobody even knew what an app was—at least in this context. My favorite apps make me more productive:

TripIt and any other travel apps—especially from the airlines and hotels where I can make a reservation, check in, track flights, etc.

Love the Mail app on my iPhone. Can’t live without it.

We have a phone system that allows my cell to be an extension of my office. The app is 8×8.

Love knowing the temperature in my home town as well as all of the places I have to travel to, so I love the Weather Channel app.

To get the latest and greatest updates in sports, I enjoy SportsCenter by ESPN.

And the short articles in the USA Today app give me a quick overview when I don’t have time to sit down and read the entire paper.

Gajendra Ratnavel
Gajendra Ratnavel
9 years ago

Favorite apps is a loaded question. The ones used for business on anyone’s phone are probably, in order, Email, Phone, Contacts and Calendar. I don’t think anyone really thinks of these as apps anymore since they are core functionality of the device.

As for others, my most frequently used are probably Withings Baby Monitor, My bank’s app, YouTube, Skype, Facebook and Google Tasks.

All others are transient apps that have relatively short life spans on my phone.

Lee Kent
Lee Kent
9 years ago

My oh my, where do I start? What I use the most? My GPS then IHeartRadio so I can listen to 24/7 Comedy in my car, Scoutmob cause I love a deal, Voice Record so I can record meetings and not have to carry my laptop everywhere, FourSquare so I can check in everywhere, Last Pass for all my password management, Flashlight.

Then some that I really like having include Grocery IQ so my husband and I can both update the grocery list, Uverse so I can record shows when I’m away from home, Sidekick so I can keep up with who has opened my email messages or clicked a link, SeeClickFix so I can report broken stuff and trees down in the neighborhood, Mozy to give me access to all my docs on the computer, and the list could go on.

And that’s more than my 2 cents!

Peter J. Charness
Peter J. Charness
9 years ago

Maps has a great gps. And Google, who after snooping through my emails, knows my flight times, delays, gates and changes sometimes even before the airlines do. And the sneaky way it seems to get through gogo inflight to update even when I haven’t logged on.

Ralph Jacobson
Ralph Jacobson
9 years ago

Although I work in a tech company, I actually don’t get drowned in apps all that much… other than email and Google search and maps, that’s really about it. Pretty sad, huh? I only tweet, etc. for work. Free time is spent on digital detox!!!

James Tenser
James Tenser
9 years ago

The smartphone app that’s most important to my work life is probably TimeClock Pro, which lets me track my billable hours and expenses for multiple clients, then export the data for invoicing.

I rely on Dropbox and Evernote to keep tabs on files and notes. I configured my phone’s camera to save all photos and videos to a Dropbox folder, which makes them easily accessible from other devices.

The New York Times app is also a pleasure (free with my Sunday print delivery subscription). These days I most often view it on a 7″ Nook, which has the Kindle app and Google reader installed so I can read ebooks from any source.

Finally, my bank’s mobile app gets a fair amount of use for transfers, monitoring my balances, and (increasingly now) mobile check deposits.

My pet peeve: Apps that insist on storing a complete duplicate of my (rather large) contact list, using up valuable memory and slowing down the device.

Karen S. Herman
Karen S. Herman
9 years ago

Apps are vital to my work, business development and communication. I have my favorites, to remain confidential, and use them often.

In my personal life, I’m finding that favored apps change often due to that “need to know, now” mindset that appification has brought about. Last summer, it was realtor.com because I was househunting. Last month, it was Facebook. Last week, it was Twitter and this week, it has been Edline.

This weekend, my favorite app will be simonmalls.com because it is loaded with great information, including maps, deals, and stores, and I’ll be finishing holiday shopping. Can’t wait to use it!

Vahe Katros
Vahe Katros
9 years ago

Yes, I have favorite apps. Some are mentioned here and rather than list them I thought I would share a growing conversation regarding apps or “All those little chiclets on your screen.” It’s been around enough that this isn’t breaking news but I thought to throw it in.

The initial “chiclet” meme forked into talk about the declining influence of the web, with some going as far as saying the web is dead and apps are killing it.

The fear is what the article addresses, the growth of finite, “intention” based application-silos that lack the organization (hyperlinks vs. deep linking) of the web but deliver services the way we (people) want. The predictions include how this silo’d world will play out around app aggregation facilitated via notification streams, but I’ll stop now because no doubt someone has shouted bingo as in buzzword bingo. Oh and Apple (the new Microsoft) gets 30%.

David Sandusky
David Sandusky
9 years ago

By far the app I use most is the Etsy Seller app. Managing orders, communication, customer service and managing listings became significantly easier and faster. In late 2013 Etsy improved the app for shoppers, that coupled with timing in increased mobile shopping has been huge. Mobile is now the second leader to traffic and conversion to our Etsy shop AND trending to local users calling and finding our physical location.

I also use Daily Evernote and Daily Yoga is impressive.