Apps That ACTUALLY Make the iPad Pro Worth It 2021

This video is sponsored by Muse, a unique spatial canvas that's your tool for thought. Hey, it's Chris. This isn't another video that's gonna tell you about apps you already know about, like Notion, Notability, Pixelmator, or Bear. This is a video where I'm gonna share some iPad apps that should be basically brand new to most people that own an iPad. And of course, I'll make sure to link these all up down in the description, but don't forget, you have a pause button and you can use it if you feel like I'm going too fast. But just to make sure that everybody's as caught up as possible, let me just briefly recap a few of my favorites from previous episodes. MindNode is still my favorite mind mapping app for iPad, Mac, iPhone, and yep, even the Apple Watch. Numerix is an app that lets you design gorgeous custom dashboards in minutes to beautifully display all the data that matters most to you. And both of those apps came from the first episode in this series back in 2019, which now has over a million views. Previously, I also shared an app called Ferrite Pro, which is my favorite podcast and audio editing app for the iPad, which is from another episode in this series that has over 2 million views. I don't know, it's gonna be a tall order to try to outdo the views in this episode, but I'm giving it my best effort. And then there's Endless Paper, the infinite canvas app that literally lets you keep writing and sketching in any direction for infinity, and TaskHeat, the app that marries a flow chart with a to-do list, both of which came from the third episode in this series. Now, I'm gonna link these episodes up in the description so when you're done watching this one, you can go back if you're new here and catch up. Also, if this sounds interesting so far and if you like iPad stuff, get yourself subscribed because I don't want you to miss out on all the cool iPad accessories that I unbox and review here. But also, you gotta be prepared for the frequent Andy Minio and Nitro coffee mentions, which happen a lot too. And just like adding a paper-like screen protector to your iPad really changes up the whole experience for the better, today I wanna introduce you to a handful of extra useful apps. But as a bonus, before we even get to those heavy-hitter apps, here's just a quick rapid-fire list of a few interesting apps that I bet you've never heard of before that will just kinda be like an appetizer before the main course. If you like to use your iPad alongside your Mac, you might like to have the Not Boring Apps bundle on deck for a timer, a calculator, or a weather experience that looks like candy tastes. Scan Thing is an app that will literally let you scan any thing, and it'll give you a perfect cutout that can be pasted anywhere, you can trace it, or you can use it in a million different creative ways. Now, if you wish you actually knew how to draw so you could put your Apple Pencil to good use, then check out Shadow Draw. And check this out, what if you can send messages to your future self from your present self? If you're intrigued by that concept, then check out Time Caps. It's kinda like a future diary. And if you edit video on your iPad, you might hate that your favorite video editing app doesn't have built-in stabilization. Well, Emulsio to the rescue. You can now stabilize footage on your iPad. iPadOS, of course, now has widget support, which is great, but if you need more than the built-in widgets, then you can create your own using Flex Widgets, which will let you design widgets your way. And the last of the appetizers, but certainly not the least, if you need some help hitting your goals, then check out Thrive. It's an app that can actually help you get your life together. All right, are you getting some value out of this video yet? I know you are, but now it's time to get into the stuff that you came here for, the paradigm shifters. But before we do, let me take one second here to just thank Muse, the sponsor that has made this video possible in the first place. Muse is such a great fit for this video. Definitely an app that makes the iPad worth owning. Muse is a spatial canvas for your research notes, your reading, your sketching, your screenshots, your bookmarks. If you're doing some deep thinking at your iPad, and if you don't wanna be constrained to linear documents of mostly text, and if you wanna move stuff around and bring new ideas in and easily cull irrelevant material, and maybe even get a little messy in the process, then Muse is definitely the app for you. Now, before Muse was even a sponsor, I had already featured them in another video because I just love the features, like being able to add anything to a Muse board from photos, to tweets, to files, and more. And I also really love how sketching isn't restricted to a dedicated space, so I can write right on top of things without any restrictions or boundaries. I think you owe it to yourself to consider trying Muse out. All right, you probably heard me say over and over again that the Magic Keyboard is my favorite iPad typing experience of all time, because it is. But the hardware, that is only part of the equation. You also have to pair it with some really great software to complete the experience. And that's why I think you should check out Spaces, a new minimal writing app that really stands out from the crowd. As you can hopefully notice, there's absolutely zero clutter when it comes to this interface. And if you look closely, you'll realize there's no toolbar anywhere to be found. Instead, it uses Markdown to do things like make text bold or italic, so I can put an asterisk on each side of a word and it will turn italic. Most markup applications leave those symbols there and just kind of clutters everything up, but this gives you a truly minimalist writing interface. But one thing that I really like is that you can mark a note as unread, then you know, oh, there's something there that I need to revisit. Now, there's a lot of so-called minimalist writing apps out there to choose from, but I've never seen one that so thoroughly cuts down the interface while also thoughtfully leaving you with the functionality that you need and want. It's really a magic combo, I would say, for your magic keyboard. Now, the iPad has a touch interface and Macs don't, at least not yet. So in my mind, it makes sense to use a task manager that takes full advantage of the iPad's touch interface, something like Magnetic. Magnetic is a list manager whose superpowers lie in hotkeys and gestures. So watch this area of the screen. This is where the magnet resides. True to the name, if you tap on items, they get pulled down to the magnet down here where you can then easily manage them in bulk, which is so much faster than having to individually mark items as done or individually delete items or individually move items to other lists or individually schedule items. Magnetic is such a beautiful app and it really shines here on the iPad, or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe the iPad shines because of Magnetic. Now, whereas Spaces, the app I mentioned earlier, was primarily a writing-first app, HyperNotes is a note-taking app, but it's mind-bendingly different and more useful. It's just on a whole different level. That's because it's very similar to Roam Research, which you might've heard of, or Obsidian, except that it has this beautiful native app here so you don't have to use the web interface. Now, instead of having a traditional file or folder structure, you instead just write out your thoughts and then reference different pages and blocks. So in HyperNotes, everything is connected using these bi-directional links. So you can see those showing up here with these hashtags, and if I tap on this one that says pages, it takes me to pages. If I tap on this one that's hashtag blocks, I'll go to blocks, which is a different page. So if I look on the left here, I see pages, table, and graph. If I tap on graph, I'll actually get this really interesting knowledge graph of everything that I've stuck into the app, and I'll be able to see the relationships of everything that's linking to each other. There's just so many ways that you can dissect your information, and you'll end up seeing some patterns and connections that you just normally wouldn't. And if that sounds complicated, I promise it really isn't. If you spend 60 seconds within the app and check out the tutorial, you'll get it in a snap. Now, an incredibly huge part of owning and using an iPad remains web browsing, and for most people out there, that still means using Safari. So we visit websites, and we take in all this information. Sometimes we try to save those websites. We bookmark them. Everybody has a different method, right? Some people use the built-in bookmarks. Some people have a list, and they copy and paste URLs into that. There's dedicated bookmarking apps. But whatever the method is that you have been using, there's a great chance that most of the websites you wanna remember, you never even go back and revisit. You forget they even existed. And that is where the app called DoMarkz comes into play. It describes itself as the to-do app for bookmarks. Now, subscribers already know that I absolutely love, I mean, love, an app called MyMind, which is where I store all the stuff that I come across, that I find, that I want to remember and reaccess at some point, whether it's a product or a website or an article or a tweet or a picture. It all goes into MyMind. Unfortunately, there's no native app. The only problem is, I end up saving a bunch of stuff in there and then forgetting about it, even though MyMind has such an amazing, powerful, incredible search function like I've never seen any other app even have. You can type blue, and all the things with blue in the photos will show up. You can type tweets, and every tweet that you have will show up. It's really cool. It's just, I don't go searching for stuff all that often. Saved, but not searched. DoMarkz, though, will let you save URLs or websites as to-dos, which essentially just makes your bookmarks actionable. It's a really unique and useful approach. And the icing on the cake here for iPad users is that you can come in and actually just drag and drop websites right into your DoMarkz app, and then they're labeled for you, and you can come in and you can do things like add a category or an action. So I can come in and say, read, watch, listen, buy, eat or drink, or do. So here's one I made for Uncrate. If I click on it, it will open. I can actually browse around and do whatever it is that I wanted to do, come back into the app and check it off, and it's done, and it disappears. I can go back and see recently completed or even deleted, so it's not like I lose that website. But isn't this just a cool way to actually work through the stuff that you wanted to remember, the websites? I think so. Now, I mentioned an app earlier called Flex Widgets, which basically lets you design the look of a new widget. But compared to an app like Charty, Flex Widgets kind of ends up looking like Child's Play. That's because Charty lets you create charts directly from shortcuts and stick those charts in your iPad's widgets. And what does that do? It lets you create some really cool data-driven widgets, several different kinds that you can choose from. They're just waiting for you to populate with your data. I can do my heart rate today or my weekly energy, weekly steps. There's a bar chart or a pie chart that I can just use for whatever. I can look at my weight in a weight chart. I can compare distances or maybe do some moving averages or stacked monthly expenses. If you have a treasure trove of data, which if you have an Apple Watch, you definitely do, or maybe you've got a spreadsheet that you've just packed full of interesting personal information and data, this will let you display it on your iPad's home screen. This is the last app we're gonna talk about today. Looks kind of like a blank screen, doesn't it? Well, you're not too far off. It's called Danger Notes. And basically what it is, is an app that's for you procrastinators out there or for anybody who's just suffering from writer's block. Whether it's an email or a speech or a term paper that you have to get started on and get into the flow of and get done, but you just don't know where to start or maybe you don't wanna start, this is the app that's gonna give you the boost or the kick in the pants that you need to actually get something down. Let's pretend I'm writing a book here. Chris's Amazing Adventures as an Apple Reviewer. If I stop typing, it's gonna erase everything that I've typed already, which I definitely don't want. I wonder what I should talk about next here. I don't know. Oh, no, fail. It's erased everything that I wrote, which was already a masterpiece, clearly. So if you had, I don't know, 2,000 words written, or 1,000 words, 500 words, and they were perfectly crafted words, you would be pretty motivated to not let this happen to you. You don't wanna see the red fail screen. Now, what you can do is come up here and set a timer so it kind of defaults to five minutes. You could have it be one minute or 20 minutes, whatever block you wanna really make yourself stick to and get some writing done. But that's it, that's the app. I mean, sometimes you just don't feel like doing something or you don't know where to start, and oftentimes the advice is just write. And then once you have something at least down, at least out of your head, you can edit it later. But it's that getting it out part that's a little bit tricky sometimes. I already really like this app. We're gonna be good friends. Wow, that's it for this episode. I don't know if this is episode three or four, whatever it is. This is a yearly thing that I'm gonna do. So it's been going for a few years. If you wanna catch next year's, make sure you're subscribed. And seriously, if you're new around here, I've got a ton of iPad content. This is gonna take your iPad ownership to the next level. I'll link up some of the best down below, or you can just search Daily Tech, Daily T-E-K-K, iPad, or iPad Pro, iPad Air, whatever it is. Check out the review, the unboxing, or the tips, the apps. There's a lot to choose from. Thanks for watching today. I'll catch you guys in the next one. Later.