Space on the iPhone has taken such a premium that games (with exception, of course, to Pokemon GO…. no surprise there huh?) have now been relegated to the iPad. But this begs the question, what third-party apps do I hold dear to (other than Facebook) even when storage management becomes a daily affair?
First up, there’s the Strava app. I use the service as a third party aggregator between my Fitbit (being an owner of a Surge) and Garmin (being an owner for the Fenix 2 and a bunch of bike sensors) accounts. While my Fitbit Surge is pretty decent at keeping track of runs due to its built-in GPS, nothing beats the Garmin Fenix 2 when it comes to battery life and tracking stuff like bike rides and swims. Strava is the place where all these details end up in. It is also very satisfying moving up the leaderboards for any of the Strava segments on my training routes.
Instagram is something that I’ve just gotten into very recently, and the app is really cool, and convenient to put up photos, especially those that I’ve taken during runs and bike rides. My glasses-wearing four year-old daughter features prominently in my Instagram profile as well, she never fails to ham it up for the camera. For aspiring app developers, you may do well digging into the settings portion of the app for an idea what kind of cool third party software development libraries that the folks behind Instagram have taken to use.
Last but not least, Swarm. This is a bit old school given that it has its roots in Foursquare. At this juncture, I’m pretty much locked in a battle to maintain mayorship of the company HQ… nothing beats some work time fun eh?
What’s the common theme among the bunch of apps? Instagram aside, location-based services and gamification feature heavily in both Strava and Swarm.
