Tech, mostly Apple, from Lex Friedman.
24 pieces tagged “Apps I Love”
63 apps, many of them free, all of them thoughtful utilities
Sindre Sorhus makes a slew of apps. His site puts the count at 63. Most are simple, which I mean as a legitimate compliment: They’re singularly focused, do what you expect, and are straightforward to use. Sorhus is a full-time open-source developer. He quit…
A classic iOS line-drawing game is long gone. So I made a new one — in space.
I have a new game in the App Store. It’s called The Universe, Controlled, it’s free, and you should go download it right now. You can read the rest of this later while nodding vigorously in agreement. I stole that last line from myself. I’ll explain. The…
James Thomson is my friend. He’s also an insanely talented developer and former Apple engineer. He is meticulously focused on making and keeping his apps awesome. You probably know about some of them. Maybe even all! But let’s celebrate James’s greatness…
App Store Connect has all the numbers, but App Store Connect is also painful to navigate. Who’s Got All The Money? pulls your sales and finance reports and puts the answers on one screen: what you made yesterday, this week, this month, this year, and all time…
Turn your Plex, Jellyfin, or Emby library into a classic cable experience
“When we got everything we wanted, we lost something.” That’s what Carter Fort told me when we had a conversation about Coax, his first indie app. He’s been writing software a long time, but Coax is his first solo app. It’s in the App Store, for Apple TV…
The classic iOS game of world domination is all-new — and also extremely familiar
I’m now the very proud developer and owner of Strategery, the classic iOS game. I just released a brand new version of the app, available now in the App Store. You should absolutely check it out. But I’d love to tell you the backstory. Playing the game In…
There are other utilities for seeing what time it is everywhere. This one is mine.
My day job is working as a consultant for a slew of companies. I have clients in the United Kingdom, in Spain, in Chicago, in Los Angeles, and in Tel Aviv. I have family in Tucson, which doesn’t observe daylight savings time. I never know what time it is…
Look, I know the focus today is on Apple’s event, where they’ll announce a bunch of things Mark Gurman spoiled several hours early, the foldable iPhone Duo chief among them. But I still have things to share, and I’m definitely not above shameless…
My friends and followers know that over the past couple years, I made a concerted effort to get in better shape. They know because I often won’t shut up about it. Although my weight loss (shedding 65 pounds!) involved a real-live human trainer (whom I only…
First of all, Bjango is fun to say. What a great name for a company. If you’re struggling to place how you know the name Bjango, you likely have familiarity with their long-beloved app iStat Menus. They call it “the ultimate system monitor,” and it is. When…
Today’s update to Indigo is a real juicy one. We’ve got a bunch of big improvements across the app and a new pricing option for single-network users. Ben and Aaron really built a beautiful app for posting to and browsing from both Bluesky and Mastodon.…
Air quality in the US is much better than it was decades ago — but wildfire smoke is threatening and even reversing some recent gains. Worldwide, air quality is improving over time, overall… But that’s mostly thanks to some huge countries in Asia making…
In a surprise to no one, I like word games. (I offer Lex.Games, Cryptograms by Lex.Games, and Tile & Error, which are all the kinds of apps that word game nerds get intrigued by.) I recently stumbled across Retrogram, and it’s fun as heck, with deliciously…
Greg Pierce makes apps for nerds and power users — but also for everyone else. Pierce is the developer behind Agile Tortoise, a name so good you might get shellshocked. If you’ve spent any significant amount of time nerding out over iPhone automation, you’ve…
Marc Palmer’s framing app goes native on the Mac, adds privacy redactions and Magic Import, and stops charging for the basics.
As a person with a growing number of apps in the App Store, and now one with a tech site, I take a lot of screenshots. Like many of you, I know Apple’s keyboard shortcuts for taking screenshots by heart, and I use them frequently. Shareshot upgrades…
“It’s not really entirely mine anymore.”
Marco Arment launched Overcast in 2014. It was and remains a standalone podcast app. I’ve used it ever since, even while working at companies (like Stitcher and Amazon Music) that made their own podcast apps. Overcast’s approach to podcasts matches my brain’s…
Plus you’re eliminating food waste. Doing good and eating well? A dream.
I’d like to tell you about an app I love: Too Good To Go. Too Good To Go, available and functional worldwide, helps you get discounted “surprise bags” of foods from local restaurants and supermarkets, so that those establishments don’t have to let food go to…
I am lightly annoyed with Casey Liss. Let me be clear: I respect and admire Casey Liss. I appreciate Casey Liss. I genuinely think Casey Liss is a great dude. But I am annoyed with him nonetheless. There are a few reasons for this annoyance. First and…
One of the reasons I launched Lex On Tech was to highlight independent developers more often. Today the spotlight goes to Europe, and to Ben Rice McCarthy, who has been designing and shipping iPhone apps for more than a decade. I’m a big fan of Ben the human…
Although I love podcasts, I’m not a regular audiobook listener. I’ve been meaning to change that — although I’ve been meaning to do so for years, so I’m not sure when it’ll happen. (I struggle with what to listen to when I’m debating solely between music and…
On This Day Rewind breaks my heart on the daily, in the best way. It’s an app that does one thing, and it does it beautifully: Launch the app, and see all the photos (and videos) you took on this day in years past. Fun fact: My kids used to be younger. I love…
My dear friend Brian Warren built an app because he needed it, so of course it’s beautiful and works perfectly at doing one thing: Tagging MP3s. I love these bespoke apps that solve a hyper-specific need. Perfection.
I understand folks who feel hesitations regarding Gmail. I do. But Google offers an insane amount of storage, the search is incredibly fast, and I’m a Gmail dude. I accept this about myself. I can’t pinpoint exactly when I began hating Apple’s default…
I still love Pocket-Run Pool. Game developer extraordinaire Zach Gage (alongside Denver Coulson) originally released the game in May 2018. That’s… a long time ago. It remains fun, it remains eminently replayable, and it remains a go-to game for me on my…
