With Fridays dedicated to sharing some of my favorite free apps, I’m going to use Wednesdays to share some of my favorite paid apps. That said, let me get this out of the way: paying $12.99 for an app you use multiple times a day shouldn’t be considered “expensive” by any measure. The free app economy made bad guys out of those looking to get paid for their work, but think about that for a second: shouldn’t these app developers be rewarded financially for making the apps we rely on and enjoy using everyday, and if so, isn’t a one-time purchase of $12.99 rather negligible?
There are some fantastic paid apps out there these days, showcasing the efforts of a very talented and creative bunch of app developers. Supporting the app development community financially is the best way to insure great apps are developed in the future – and that’s important to us all.
Editorializing aside, here’s the debut of Worth It App Wednesday, or #WAW if you’re into the whole hashtag thing.
Worth It iOS App of The Week
A better iOS calendar – That’s Fantastical 2 in a nutshell.
Integrating seamlessly with your existing iOS calendar data, Fantastical 2 puts a slick new face on one of the most used features of all our iPhones and iPads. With natural language data entry for appointment and to-do creation “Lunch with Gary noon Tuesday at sushi” will be converted to a complete calendar event. Fantastical 2 works equally well with recurring events “Soccer every Saturday at noon for next three months” will create individual calendar events for “soccer” exactly as described. This makes event entry incredibly easy, and works with reminders too.
It looks great, it works well, it has everything you could want in an app you’re going to use multiple times each day. This functionality, and a whole lot more, is going to cost you $4.99 for the iPhone version and $9.99 for the iPad version. Not bad for an app you’ll use several times each day. Click on the download links below to learn even more about Fantastical 2’s capabilities and functions from the App Store.
Worth It Mac App of The Week
As a Quicken user dating back to 1988, I’ve certainly seen the app have a wealth of ups and downs over the years, and perhaps no “down” was deeper in the abyss than Quicken Essentials Mac released several years back. Not only was it a functionally and visually lousy application, it was also, for a time, the only game in town for long-time users. Late last year Intuit upped their game with the release of Quicken 2015 for Mac, adding back in a number of features that were missing from QEM, updating the interface, and generally providing an app that reflects the Mac OS in 2015.
If you’re looking for an exceptionally robust app to track your business financials, Quickbooks 2015 for Mac (also from Intuit) is a well-matured, steadily developed business accounting option that’s hard to beat.
One of the most powerful examples of Quicken incorporating modern technologies is the ability to sync transactions with an iOS device via a Quicken.com account. Just download the Quicken iOS app (free) and you can begin sharing data with your desktop Quicken instantly.
At $74.99 Quicken For Mac 2015 certainly isn’t cheap, but if staying on top of your finance is important to you, and the legacy versions of Quicken aren’t cutting it for you anymore, it’s money well spent.
