Dec 25, 2017 - Check out our other picks for iPhones, Android phones, PCs, and Macs. We've also listed our favorite games for iOS and Android from this year,. There are plenty of must-have apps you’ve probably already downloaded because you’re aware of their benefits. If you like to buy things online, Dashlane is a must-have app for you. It automatically saves payment and confirmation info that would have otherwise been lost in your email.

With the transition to iPad Pro as my primary computer and not surprising anymore, in 2017 I turned my attention to three other key areas of my life: working with the MacStories team, managing my time, and finding my favorite apps among many competing alternatives. For the first time in several years, I didn't publish a story the iPad and iOS in 2017.

In many ways, that's a closed chapter of my career: the iPad Pro has convinced millions of people that it can be a suitable a Mac; with iOS 11 and, Apple only cemented that belief. While part of me misses arguing in favor of the iPad against widespread skepticism, I felt it was time to move on from explaining the 'why' of the iPad to helping others get the most out of the device. For this reason, I spent the better part of 2017 covering iOS 11 (first with, then with an ), discussing, and creating.

As much as I like to write in isolation, MacStories is also a team that requires a direction and a business that begets further responsibilities. Learning how to balance the multifaceted nature of my job with my hobbies and personal life (which got busier thanks to two puppies ) has been an interesting challenge this year, and one that taught me a lot about allocating my time and attention, as well as the kind of writer I am and aspire to be. There has been a recurring theme that has characterized my relationship with iOS in 2017: I've made a conscious effort to try as many new apps and services as possible, ensuring I would have a basic knowledge of all the available options on the market for different categories. As I was settling on a routine and set of apps that worked well for me, I realized that I didn't want to lose the spark of excitement I used to feel when trying new apps in previous years.

My job is predicated upon writing about software and having a sense of where our industry is going; while finding something that works and using it for years is great, I don't want to become the kind of tech writer who's stuck in his ways and doesn't consider the possibility that better software might exist and is worth writing about. Even though my experiments didn't always lead to switching to a different app, they made me appreciate the state of the iOS ecosystem and helped me understand my app preferences in 2017. Thus, I'm going back to basics for my annual roundup this year. In the collection below, you'll find the 75 apps I consider my must-haves – no, just apps for iPhone and iPad. Apps are organized by category and, whenever possible, include links to past coverage on MacStories.

As in previous years, you'll find a series of personal awards at the end of the story. These include my App of the Year and Runners-Up; this year, I also picked winners for Feature, Redesign, Update, and Debut of the Year. Table of Contents • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Work Essentials.

For long, people believed that mac cannot be infected with computer viruses and malware. Later it turned out to be totally irrelevant. Back in those days, Windows was the most popular OS and thus hackers were only inclined to developing malware which easily infected this operating system. As we talked about in last week’s Working Mac, you may have been led to believe that you don’t have to worry about computer viruses on your Mac.And, to some extent, there’s truth to that. How to check my laptop for viruses mac. See my Mac Malware Guide for information on how to protect yourself against malware and what anti-virus software to use, if any. Note that I would not recommend any BitDefender product, as BitDefender did not perform all that well in my Mac anti-virus testing 2014. Purchase antivirus software such as McAfee VirusScan for Mac. This software costs money but does a great job of detecting viruses on Macs. The software can be downloaded onto your computer where you can use it to run a virus scan.

I, and, even after considering dozens of other options, I always come back to this app. Ulysses offers a combination of two unique features that no other text editor has: a beautiful reinvention of inline Markdown editing. I love writing and editing longform stories in Ulysses: the app simplifies management of elements such as footnotes and links with that abstract Markdown's syntax; in addition, I can use my custom theme and the typeface I prefer (currently, I'm editing with ). Ulysses and SF Mono.

Ulysses plays an essential role in the creation of Club MacStories content: thanks to its advanced URL schemes, we've come up with workflows that extract cards via the Trello API and turn them into sections in Ulysses sheets. None of this could be done with other iOS text editors, and it's saved the entire MacStories team several hours this past year. Ulysses truly is one of a kind: thoughtful and minimalistic, yet powerful and extensible. While Apple Notes is my general purpose note-taking app, I realized a few months ago that I was missing a Markdown app that could hold my thoughts and reference material before turning them into drafts for Ulysses. This is why: I can start outlining a story by adding links and a few images while I'm still taking notes about a topic. Later, when I'm ready to go from note-taking to actual writing, I can send a Markdown version of a note from Bear to Ulysses, which will keep all formatting and attachments intact.