ZoomNotes isn’t the most beautiful sketching app but it sure is the most functional. It’s also one of the most updated, with regular fixes and new features delivered just about every month. The best feature is the zoomed sketching which makes it really easy to add detail to a large sketch without much effort. The design still leaves a lot to be desired but it’s functional where other apps are fluff.
Copied is a new clipboard capture and syncing system for iOS and Mac. It’s quite well designed and there’s some extremely thoughtful features. The iOS version has a nice Today widget and 3D Touch actions and can also automatically capture the clipboard while the app is active.1
The iOS version is free to try but costs a buck to enable the iCloud syncing. You read that right. Syncing is through iCloud which is working well for this small amount of data.
Mindmeister is one of my favorite collaboration tools on the internet. It’s incredibly easy to share maps with a group of people but also provides granular edit and view permissions to control it. We keep the Nerds on Draft podcast outlines and show schedules in Mindmeister.
Version 6.5 is out this week for iOS and it adds some nice enhancements. Notably for me, it adds split view support for the iPhone 6 Plus.
The today screen in iOS is one of those dividing features that you either love it or you forgot about it. I love it.
My most used features of the Today and Notification screens are the widgets provided by apps like Fantastical and Drafts. By far my most used widget is from an app named Launcher (see this previous overview).
The latest version of Launcher extended the relatively simple app launch actions of version 1.
Taskmator continues to be one of the best all-in-one iOS apps for working with TaskPaper formatted lists. Version 3 brings some great new features to the party with saved filters and integration with Reminders.1
Now I can create a saved filter for any TaskPaper search which means quick and easy access to just the information I want. Tapping a saved filter applies it instantly but it also populates the search field so I can tweak it if I need to.
Home looks like a really nice HomeKit based app for controlling hardware. This review by Ari Jay Comet provides a compelling argument for the app.
As more developers rollout 3D Touch, I’m getting excited about the future of iOS. Today iThoughts received a big iOS 9 update and I love the new “Quick Thought” 3D Touch option.
This is a shortcut to a specific map and node. Trigger it and the app opens right to that spot with a new entry ready to go. It’s so fast!
Here’s the bit that caught me up. Craig Scott, developer of iThoughts, helped me with this in about an hour of my initial email.
Tweetbot First up is Tweetbot for iOS. It’s a new app but right now it’s $5. Checkout the typically great review on Macstories. Twitter is unusable for me without Tweetbot because it has terrific filters that sync across devices. I also love landscape mode on the iPhone 6S Plus because I get my timeline and I get to people watch other weirdos like me.1
I also like the nice new Safari web views that presumably use the ad blocking filters.
It’s nice. It’s noticeably faster at almost everything. 3D Touch is interesting but confusingly inconsistent. TouchID is ridiculously fast.
It all comes down to a single question: Do you want a new pocket computer?
There you go.
I’m really impressed with iOS 9. Not only is it the most stable major iOS update I’ve used in a while, but it’s added functionality that is useful in surprising ways. The Notes and Reminders apps perfectly encompass the small focused set of features that have become a solid toolkit for getting things done with iOS 9
The trick for me was to realize that now Reminders and Notes are siblings.
