There are Always Other Apps

Using apps to make our lives easier has been something that has revolutionized how we use computers, phones, and even go through our lives in general. They have allowed us to become more efficient, healthy, organized, and overall entertained in our day to day lives. The problem is that like everything else; they need to be maintained. I’m not just talking about doing updates, although that is very important. I’m talking about updating the apps from the app developer side and maintaining the app’s ability to work correctly.  

If you have ever watched the Apple Townhall where they introduce new products, they will typically talk about a couple of gaming apps which they claim are “optimized for their newest iPhone.” This means that the developer has done some programming to make it so that the app works as best as it can on that particular phone. If they don’t do the programming that I’m talking about, then it’s possible that the app will not look as good as it could or will not function properly on the newer phones. If the company that supports that app is unable to perform or continue, then the app that the company is putting out may no longer receive support. if this happens then, the app itself will stop working.

This happened to me once. I’m not entirely sure whether it was the company not working anymore or the app not being supported anymore. No matter what reason was there was a game that I would play all the time while commuting to work (on the subway…I should specify, I wasn’t driving) that I loved to play, and one day it stopped being able to open at all. While I did enjoy playing the game, there were others, so It wasn’t a significant loss.

Another thing that could happen is that Apps break on your device. This can be because you don’t update them or never shut them down. For those of you with iPhones, if you double click your home button (or swipe up and hold for the X users), you will see all the programs you have open. You can close them properly by swiping the program up. If this is new information to you, then I would close all the programs you have open and aren’t using….if there are a lot of them this could take a while. I remember a year, or so ago I was using a specific workout app. I liked using it because I loved the look and feel of it, and it gave me interesting data when I worked out. Unfortunately, there came a time where it just stopped working. Either it would freeze halfway through a workout, or it would start a workout all by itself, and I would halfway through the day realize that I was four or five hours into a “workout” while I was sitting at my desk.

I felt a bit conflicted by the fact that I needed to change apps, oddly enough. Sure there were other apps that I could use, but I liked that particular one. I decided to go through the motions and see if my simple fixes would make it work properly again. “The motions” being that I would uninstall the app from my watch (which is where I primarily used that app) and when that didn’t work, I deleted it from my phone and reinstalled on both my watch and phone.

Unfortunately, that didn’t work and the app that I liked started going from an app that I could rely on to an app that I had to try and fix and force to work correctly every time I used it. That’s when I started considering other apps.
I eventually landed, oddly, on the native Apple Workout app. Partially because I already had it but also because it was already integrated with the rest of my health apps. This meant that there was no configuring required, I just started and worked out and everything was done in the background for me. It was great.

There are so many different apps that do so much that were are entirely spoiled for choices. The benefit of this is that if and when our apps break down or stop working we have options to move to something else so that we can continue to do whatever is it that we’re doing. For sure there will be times when you may lose some settings, and you will have to re-set things up, but in the long run, you have the ability to choose the look and feel of the apps that we use, so you will be able to customize your experience to be exactly what you need.

What apps do you use in your day to day life?

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