There are so many amazing apps out there —way more than a single person could possibly use, let alone find helpful in any way — but I’m always stumbling across new ones that I try to incorporate into my daily life and my creative practice as an actor and filmmaker.
Here are four of my favorite apps that are only available to Apple users:
— Affinity Photo:
Don’t want to pay a monthly fee for Photoshop? Or, maybe, you only need to use Photoshop occasionally and don’t want to pay a monthly fee for such minimal use? Check out Affinity Photo. It’s available for a one-time fee of just $50. There’s also an iPad version of the app, too. Affinity is great because it’s non-destructive and can handle RAW. Though the app was initially only available on MAC, it’s now available on Windows, too (so this one is a bit of a cheat).
— Omnifocus:
I don’t know how I’d get things done without this app. When I first started using it, I began by following this video: https://inside.omnifocus.com/gtd. After that, I organized it all by the various goals I had for different areas of my life. There is a helpful Safari extension so if I’m at a website that I want to look at but don’t want to invest the time at that moment, I put it into Omnifocus. I bought the iPhone app, too, and synched it with Siri so that when I’m driving around and think of something — which always happens because I drive in silence most of the time -- I just hit the button in my car and say “Hey Siri, remind me to …” This gets put on the iPhone reminders list and then bounces over to Omnifocus. I like how I have to assign a project in order to clean up my inbox (which is a feature you can turn off, I think). My brain likes to categorize things, so that’s definitely a useful feature. You can also set up repeating tasks which can be really helpful. There’s so much that I love about Omnifocus that I could do a whole other separate blog post about it!
— Pages:
I liked Microsoft Office just fine and I didn’t even mind paying hundreds of dollars to use it for a long time before eventually upgrading. But, then they switched over to a subscription base, which I didn’t like as much. Again, don’t want to pay a monthly fee for Word? Anyone with a Mac or free iCloud account can use the web-based Pages app. I know that Google has a similar product but I really love the simple design of Pages. On top of that, the fact that you can just drag and drop pics makes it so easy for me to create proposals for my films.
— Apple TV app:
Before this came out, I was at a loss on how to keep up with all the amazing shows and movies out there. I had to search through all of the different apps just to see if there was something I wanted to watch. I’d look through Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO, NBC, ABC, Sci Channel… you get the idea. The Apple TV app centralizes that process. Want to watch a show or movie? Just search within the TV app and it will list the ways to watch. For example, you might get a result that says, “Watch in NBC, Hulu or buy in iTunes.” Then you can click your choice, that particular app will open and you can navigate to the show or movie. It lists nearly everything out there, so you will always find what you’re looking for — it’s just a matter of which streaming service it’s on or if you need to purchase it through iTunes.