Tech Tips: Mobile Organization iOS vs Android

One thing that has always been important for me is syncing. Between different computers and devices, I want to be able to easily access certain information anywhere. That grocery list is much easier to make on a laptop, but that’s not a very useful place for it when actually at the grocery store. That is why it is so important to have apps that support this workflow.

Evernote is an app that is fantastic no matter what operating system you’re working with. It is an excellent place to store links, notes, patterns, gift lists (very useful at this time of year), recipes and many other items. You can also add attachments to the notes, in case you need that image or pdf later. But I’ve discussed it before, so let’s move on to tasking.

On iOS, there was one tasking app that was actually the main reason it was a very difficult leap for me to switch to android. It is very oddly named “Things”. You make tasks, you organize them however you want, they show when they’re due and you can complete them. It supports repeating tasks and projects. This may not sound like much, but I have yet to find an app (even for android) that does tasking as well as Things (although I have heard that OmniPlan is very good). 

When I switched to android, it took me months to find a tasking app that could even compare. In the end, I had to wait for a particular one to release its 2.0 version before I found a satisfactory solution. That solution is Wunderlist. Impressively cross-platform, like Evernote, it works very similarly to Things. Except for one major difference: tasks show up in the “Today” folder when they’re due, and there is no other way to put them there. On the one hand, it means that if you want to be 100% sure that task is going to show up when it’s due, it’s wonderful (I had a bad experience with a different app where that didn’t always happen). On the other, if you have something that you’d like to do today, but isn’t necessarily due today, you’ll have to employ other tactics like flagging. If I went back to iOS, I would definitely consider moving back to Things, but for now, I love using Wunderlist. 

For calendars, I’ve always liked keeping it simple. On iOS, I used the built in calendaring, synced with iCal on my computer. On android, I use google calendar, synced with the built in calendar app on my devices. And honestly, there isn’t much difference between the two workflows. While the ability to subscribe to my google calendar in iCal on my computer so I can see my calendar at a glance is great, it is an inconvenience having to do all my events either in a browser or on a device. 

That’s how I stay synced. How about you?

Sarah Allen | fp. Software Engineer