I can remember several years ago when Apple’s stock apps (notes, reminders, calendar, etc) were a punchline. If you used your phone for any type of project management, you probably weren’t using their stock apps. You were probably using something different for note taking and your todo list. The calendar was a mess and it was hard to get information into some of these apps.

Fast forward to today and things have changed. Apple has focused their attention on making some of the stock apps really good. The addition of tags makes Notes and Reminders a viable option for people to use on a daily basis. I have switched all of my task management to Reminders. It’s simple enough yet powerful enough to help me get my stuff done on a daily basis.

I have been a big proponent of Drafts and last year I wrote an article talking about trying to move from Drafts to Apple Notes. This didn’t work last year. This is something I’m looking at again, though, because Apple added the ability for tagging. I’m not sure if I’ll stick with Notes or not. I’m using Drafts still and I love it. Maybe some day I’ll discuss why I’m thinking about migrating long term notes.

I’m still using Fantastical for my calendar. There are two reasons for this. First, it’s super easy to add things to the calendar with natural language input. Second, what they offer with calendar sets is something I benefit from on a daily basis. I have a lot of different calendars and its nice to have the ability to turn them off and/or on based on location, time of day, etc. Every weekday I have a work calendar set that turns on my work calendar and personal calendar only. Everything else is turned off. When I leave work, my personal calendar turns on and work turns off. I’m trying to figure out a way to do something similar in Apple Calendar but so far nothing works.

Another thing that makes these services so great is how well they integrate with Siri. There are a lot of times I will add a reminder via Siri while driving or walking around. It’s super convenient and easy to do.

It appears that Apple is trying to make upgrades to their apps in a way that would allow people to start using their devices right out of the box without having to install a bunch of third party apps. It will be interesting to see the changes that come in the next couple of years to these apps as well as other stock apps.