July Apps
July’s app highlight covers: Audm, News+, Lake, & Agenda.
There are four applications that I wanted to highlight in the July edition of a new series I’m starting highlighting some of my favourite applications across the Apple ecosystem. The apps featured this month are Audm, News+, Lake, & Agenda.
Audm
Audm is a monthly-subscription service available for iOS where renowned audiobook narrators read long-form articles from many top publications, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Wired, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and many others.
Audm helps me stay on top of many of the publications that I access through News+ by giving me the option of listening to articles in places & times when I would otherwise be unable to read them - out for a walk, driving, working out. Also, the narrators are exquisite!
The app syncs between iOS devices, though, like Instagram, the app itself hasn’t yet been optimized for the iPad.
Audm is available for a $6.99 month or $59.99 yearly subscription.
News+
News+ may have received a colder reception than I was predicting, but I’m still enamoured by the service. Dovetailing with what I wrote above, many of my favourite publications are available through the service. Having access to more high-quality journalism than I could possibly hope to consume each month is incredible. With News+, I’ve dramatically increased the amount of reading I do, and will easily breeze through 100+ articles each month. Apple’s Family Sharing also grants my family members access to the periodicals that match their interests under one subscription.
I wish that News+ synced where I last left off in an article, but rumours point to that featuring possibly coming in a future OS update. Should Apple add narrated pieces to the service, News+ cement itself even more solidly as one of the most used applications.
Apple News+ is available for 9.99 month.
Lake
Winner of an Apple Design Award in 2017, Lake is a digital colouring book for the iPhone/iPad. The app has hundreds of illustrations created by dozens of artists and is updated regularly with new works & artists.
Each print comes with a custom colour palette and an intuitive colour wheel for more customized control. A variety of brushes - from spray-cans to water-colour brushes to paint buckets - gives you tons of control over how you’ll want to spend your time colouring.
I’ve loved using Lake to relax, either as a sole activity or while listening to music or podcasts. Works you begin on one device sync across other devices, which is handy if you start on a phone and pick it up later on an iPad.
Lake is available for $7.99 monthly or $59.99 yearly for iPhone & iPad. Recently Lake also reduced some of their yearly prices during the pandemic, so check it out to see if those deals are still active for you.
Update 2020.07.03: Looks like Lake is still offering a yearly subscription for $19.99.
Agenda
Agenda was a 2018 winner of an Apple Design Award and is the newest application on my Home Screen. My purpose for seeking out Agenda is that I wanted a single application that was a hub for rich-text editing, scheduling, and to-do list management. In the early days of use, Agenda seems to be fitting all these needs quite nicely.
I’ve been using Agenda primarily for planning articles for this website. The application allows me to jot down ideas, add reminders, paste snippets, & assign dates and deadlines for my writing tasks. Tasks can also be pinned, marked as completed, dated or collapsed to adjust their prominence as I work through them.
Agenda is available a $14.99 yearly purchase that unlocks premium features across iOS or a 34.99 annual purchase that unlocks features across all iOS & macOS devices. Unlike other subscription models, users retain all the premium features released during their subscription period, even if they choose not to renew their subscription. I can't overstate how much I love this model!
