App Focus: Best Apps Apr '16 Edition

App Streaming

What will be the future of apps as we know it? Ever since Apple debuted the concept of an App Store in 2008, apps have been deemed the way to browse and explore content natively from our smartphones. Want to book a flight? Or shop stuff? Or hail a cab? Or just about anything you can think of? There's an app for that! While that remains the status quo even now, there are a couple of problems with this app-centric approach. First up there's this problem of getting users to install their apps.

In fact a recent article in The Verge highlighted this very aspect, stating "a fatigue is setting in among customers. There are now more than 1.5 million apps in the App Store (Android users have 1.6 million to choose from), but by 2014, the majority of Americans were downloading zero apps per month. And it turns out people simply don't use most of the apps they do download. According to ComScore, the average person spends 80 percent of their time on mobile devices using only three apps."

Then there is the problem with discoverability, wherein the content that sits within an app are not searchable or viewable from a typical web browser. Which means you have to download the app, and at times for better or worse, register in order to even give it a preliminary once-over. Which brings us to the very question of what it means for an app to be cross-platform. Does it being available on Android and iOS, the two dominant app platforms, a worthy enough criterion to be called so? No. Not unless, in my opinion, the said service is available on the web too. Which is why Google, the indexer of the web, is taking enough pains to stream entire app content via web, instead of you having to even install it in the first place.
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The Most Dangerous Writing App (Web only) - This web-only take on the iOS writing app Flowstate is the place you want to be if want to write something sans any distraction. All it takes is five seconds of no progress to erase all you have written!

EarthViewer (Android only) - A beautiful Material Design-ready wallpaper app that lets you explore Google's Earth View images from your Android smartphone.

ProtonMail (Android/iOS/Web) - Founded at the birthplace of the modern internet aka CERN in 2013, ProtonMail aims to offer an additional layer of security through a feature called client-side encryption by employing a second Mailbox password that's used to decrypt the user's electronically encrypted mailbox at client-side (which is your PC browser or app depending on where you are logging in).

Today (iOS only) - A very polished and visually pleasing habit tracking app. Worth giving a check if you haven't invested by now in other similar tracking apps like Momentum, Productive and Streaks.

Basket (Android only) - While I'm surprised that Google Chrome still doesn't have a reading list feature that allows for offline reading when not connected to the internet, it wouldn't be surprising in the least if Google drops something in time for its famed I/O event scheduled next month. In fact there are some unmistakable signs already, like this Save to Google. But if you don't prefer Google keeping track of what you are marking for later reading, your best bet is Pocket, or Basket.

Encode (Android only) - Learn the basics of software programming with this delectably designed coding app Encode.

Hub Keyboard (Android/iOS) - You know the one feature that's lacking in both Android and iOS default onscreen keyboards? A built-in clipboard manager. And I'm glad Microsoft is addressing it, even if the keyboard in itself has lots of room for improvement. Interestingly, the clipboard history feature is available only on Android.

Boost for Reddit (Android only), Beam, Narwhal (iOS only, paid) - Reddit is where I spend some of my free time, catching up on news, books, music, jokes and whatnot. However my experience on mobile has been more miss than hit, despite tons of third-party Reddit clients out there. Very recently Reddit announced its own native apps for Android and iOS, but if you are in the mood to try out a beautifully designed app, you could do me a favour and give these third-party apps a once-over.

Wordsnap (iOS only, paid) - Use your smartphone's camera to instantly look up words and their meanings.