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First Click: The one app you can’t live without

July 23rd, 2015

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What’s the one app you can’t live without?

It’s a tough question.

Looking at my iPhone, I have five screens full of icons, or roughly 130 apps that I carry with me at all times. Several are junk apps that Apple preinstalls and won’t let me delete, but the other 100 or so are apps I purposely downloaded over the years. Usually out of want, rarely out of need.

Some of these apps, like Slack and Trello are there for business purposes. Strictly speaking, in a hunter/gatherer kind of way, I can’t live without them because they help pay the bills. But I wouldn’t say they enhance my life in a Dalai Lama kind of way.

Google Maps is definitely high on the list. It’s certainly made it easier getting from point A to B. But it’s not an app I use every day.

Having given it some thought, I’d say that the one app I can’t live without is something called Buienradar — a Dutch weather app. I live in Amsterdam and the weather here is, quite frankly, shitty, and it changes without warning or logic almost hourly. Buienradar gives me reliable weather forecasts at 10 minute increments into the future, including alerts for severe weather. It’s like Dark Sky but ugly, and I’d quickly switch just as soon as its hyperlocal rain forecasts come to my town.

Should I bring a jacket? Is it too windy to bicycle? Do I need an umbrella or a rain suit? These are the questions my weather app answers several times a day as I try to live my life in relative comfort. It’s the app that has to be in competing app stores should I ever switch platforms. It’s the one app I can’t live without.

What’s yours?


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