Fine, I’ll do a best of 2023 list, but only because there were some really great new apps released this year. My criteria? I looked at my iPhone and noticed some apps that I actually use that were introduced this year. Without further ado and in no specific order, I present you with the One True Best iPhone Apps of 2023 list.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT as we know it has made a full spin around the sun, but OpenAI’s iPhone app only appeared in May. Admittedly, I can sometimes be a New Technology™️ curmudgeon. It happens when you look too closely at the same thing for a decade. However, the redefinition of AI to mean large language models has struck a match where the spark has long been erased.
ChatGPT is far from perfect, but I’ve spent hours this year chasing my curiosities.
How old is the universe? How do we know? Are there competing origin theories to the Big Bang? What came before then? What’s the largest named number? What comes after quadrillion? What are the next 50 named numbers after that? And after that?
More recently, I’ve been really impressed with ChatGPT Voice. Just last night, my kid asked me some questions about our solar system that I didn’t know. I was in the middle of a movie so I wanted the fastest way to satisfy his curiosity. ChatGPT Voice nailed it in an engaging and conversational manner. Here’s the transcript of our voice chat. If you haven’t tried the voice feature, give it a spin.
My word, I thought this was supposed to be a list and not a love letter to our robot overlords…
Callsheet
Speaking of movies, I finally downloaded Callsheet for keepsies last night. I was watching Maestro on Netflix and wondered where I recognized the actor playing Felicia Montealegre from. I don’t like having the IMDB app installed on my phone because of how it hijacks links from the web.
For whatever reason, I decided to try the search in Callsheet instead of going to the browser. The only problem is I have a hard time remembering Callsheet and not the “flookup” title from before it was properly named. Fortunately, searching “casey liss” in the App Store delivers the goods. ATP listeners understand.
Anyway, Callsheet is good. Very good, actually. If you like watching movies and TV shows, give it a try for free then throw a few bucks a year at it and pick your favorite app icon. Callsheet is easily the most attractive and streamlined way to realize that “ahhh, that’s Carey Mulligan who played Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby from 2013″ before going back to the movie you just paused.
Threads
TL;DR Twitter is X and Threads is Twitter. Seriously, Mastodon wasn’t doing it for me as the new place to plant my social media crops. Setting aside any feelings about Meta, Facebook, and Instagram… big ask… Threads looks and feels right to me. I mostly use Threads on the Mac as a Safari-made web app, but the iPhone version is home base. I like it.
Ivory
If Mastodon happens to be your thing, Ivory by Tapbots is an excellent window into the Fediverse. Seriously, it feels like Ivory has been around for years at this point. That’s certainly because Ivory is where the spirit of the X’d out Tweetbot app lives now. Still, I had to look back at our coverage to confirm that both the Mac and iPhone app were 2023 releases. Way to go, Tapbots!
Arc
I can’t say that I’ve replaced Safari with Arc (yet), but I do appreciate the energy behind introducing a new browser in an age where everything is basically Safari or Chrome. The iPhone app launched in March and is clearly marked as a companion to the desktop browser and not a mobile Safari replacement. It sounds like the real deal is coming in 2024. In the meantime, download Arc and admire the glorious animation that appears around the address bar when a site loads.
Journal
Apple released two apps in 2023 that live on my iPhone. Classical is the app that mostly interested Apple watchers because it missed its anticipated 2022 release window. It started out as an iPhone app before eventually arriving on the iPad. It’s basically the Apple Music app with a nice serif font and proper handling of classical music liner notes and other touches that the genre requires. I made load it up with some Leonard Bernstein now after watching Maestro last night.
Journal, on the other hand, is much more of a new app than a rethinking of an existing one. It’s very bare bones for now. iPhone-only, no search or folders yet, and it feels like it barely made iOS 17.2. If Apple gives the app polish over the next year, I think the app has promise.
I like John Gruber’s framing of it as more of a social network for yourself than a traditional journaling app. As a serial deleter of old social media posts, I think Journal can scratch the itch of wanting to “share” a memory in greater context than a photo alone might. Ultimately, most photos and experiences are for me to appreciate and not advertise on Instagram or Facebook. It’s early days for Apple’s Journal app, but it has promise where polish is lacking.
P.S.
I haven’t owned an iPad for a while, but if I did I’m sure I’d love Orion, the HDMI monitor app from the folks behind Halide.
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