When I purchased my first iPhone in late
2009, I had high hopes that it would somehow transform me into a more
productive person — the kind who procrastinates less, multitasks more
and accomplishes tasks while on the go.
It didn't exactly turn out that way. Email apps only let me accumulate more unread mail in my inbox, to-do list apps simply encouraged me to build longer to-do lists and even the best calendar apps were generally too clunky for me to enjoy using on a daily basis.
In recent months, though, this has started to change thanks to a few innovative startups who have taken lessons from what did and didn't work with productivity apps during the first five years of the App Store's existence. Suddenly, there is a suite of email, calendar, to-do list and personal assistant apps designed based on the needs and usage habits of smartphone users, which make most of the apps that came before seem dated.
If there was ever any doubt that email apps on iPhone fall short of what users want, Mailbox proved it by amassing a wait list of more than 750,000 people. Mailbox, which started to be rolled out earlier this month, lets you sort and schedule incoming emails with intuitive swipe gestures so you can better manage your inbox while on-the-go.
"One of the primary uses for email on the phone is triage," Gentry Underwood, CEO of Orchestra, told Mashable in a previous interview. Many smartphone users, myself included, just want a quick way to deal with the never-ending torrent of messages while away from their desk or home. "It really is different than desktop," he says. "For the most part, apps that exist have tried to cram an existing desktop experience into a mobile phone. That's not a very effective way of building a good tool."
If you search for "calendar" in Apple's App Store, it will bring up more than 4,500 results. Until very recently, though, even the best calendar apps available on the iPhone stuck to the design and functionality of a traditional printed calendar. As with Apple's default calendar app on iPhone, these apps were a little clunky to update, didn't really integrate much with other platforms and lacked the kind of design flourishes that would compel you to play with the app on a regular basis.
Any.DO launched its sleek to-do list app on iPhone in mid-2012, but it was an update to the app this week that really caught my attention. After tracking how its user base — now in the millions — engaged with the app, the Any.DO team realized that user engagement drops off if they create a giant to-do list because it becomes too much to tackle. With that in mind, Any.DO released Moment, a daily reminder that prompts the user to take a moment to schedule the tasks on their list for that day.
It didn't exactly turn out that way. Email apps only let me accumulate more unread mail in my inbox, to-do list apps simply encouraged me to build longer to-do lists and even the best calendar apps were generally too clunky for me to enjoy using on a daily basis.
In recent months, though, this has started to change thanks to a few innovative startups who have taken lessons from what did and didn't work with productivity apps during the first five years of the App Store's existence. Suddenly, there is a suite of email, calendar, to-do list and personal assistant apps designed based on the needs and usage habits of smartphone users, which make most of the apps that came before seem dated.
If there was ever any doubt that email apps on iPhone fall short of what users want, Mailbox proved it by amassing a wait list of more than 750,000 people. Mailbox, which started to be rolled out earlier this month, lets you sort and schedule incoming emails with intuitive swipe gestures so you can better manage your inbox while on-the-go.
"One of the primary uses for email on the phone is triage," Gentry Underwood, CEO of Orchestra, told Mashable in a previous interview. Many smartphone users, myself included, just want a quick way to deal with the never-ending torrent of messages while away from their desk or home. "It really is different than desktop," he says. "For the most part, apps that exist have tried to cram an existing desktop experience into a mobile phone. That's not a very effective way of building a good tool."
If you search for "calendar" in Apple's App Store, it will bring up more than 4,500 results. Until very recently, though, even the best calendar apps available on the iPhone stuck to the design and functionality of a traditional printed calendar. As with Apple's default calendar app on iPhone, these apps were a little clunky to update, didn't really integrate much with other platforms and lacked the kind of design flourishes that would compel you to play with the app on a regular basis.
Any.DO launched its sleek to-do list app on iPhone in mid-2012, but it was an update to the app this week that really caught my attention. After tracking how its user base — now in the millions — engaged with the app, the Any.DO team realized that user engagement drops off if they create a giant to-do list because it becomes too much to tackle. With that in mind, Any.DO released Moment, a daily reminder that prompts the user to take a moment to schedule the tasks on their list for that day.
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