Contrasting examples of unlearning from Apple

examples of unlearningUnlearning is crucial for change, both personal and organizational. Here are two examples of unlearning from the Apple ecosystem: one successful, and one not.

#1 The Apple Watch Workouts app

In 2017, I purchased an Apple Watch. It has improved my life in many ways. In particular, it’s become an essential tool for supporting my desire to exercise daily. The watch’s Workout app tracks my exercise. All I need to do is to tell it what kind of exercise I’m about to start and leave the app running until the exercise is over.

To pick the right exercise, the watch shows a scrollable list. Here’s what I saw today when I tapped the app:

examples of unlearning Right now I’m living at home, and the two workouts I do most often are my daily outdoor run and yoga. So it’s convenient that these options are the first two I see.

This happens because the Workout app learns over time which workouts I use and, to quote from Apple support: “As you use the Workout app over time, the order of workouts is changed automatically to reflect your usage.

The Workout app learns my preferences and adjusts its display to show me the most likely workouts first.

My environment changes

Almost every year, I vacation in Anguilla, typically for three weeks. My exercise program there is different. I don’t run (it’s too hot for me!) but I walk daily, followed by a pool swim.

After a few days, the Workout app unlearns my most common home-based exercises and relearns my new routine, replacing the top two items on the Workouts list with the Outdoor Walk and Pool Swim choices.

For the remainder of my vacation, these two options stay at the top of the list.

Alas, all good things come to an end. On returning home, the Workout app unlearns my Anguilla routine and relearns my home routine.

And if my exercise regime changes over time, due to circumstances or location, the Workout app will continue to use its learn-unlearn-relearn routine to display the most likely choices first.

I’m sure that Apple has incorporated other examples of unlearning into its products, but this is one I’ve noticed. Small thoughtful touches like this have helped Apple products and services become market leaders in a very competitive industry.

#2 Apple Mail

Apple doesn’t always get things right, unfortunately. Apple’s Mail program provides a classic example of what happens when unlearning is not an option.

Apple Mail allows you to file messages in folders, a useful way for me to organize the 94,000 emails I currently store. Trying to be helpful, the program learns where you tend to store specific kinds of messages, and after a while, right-clicking a message will pop up an option to move it to the “learned” preferred folder.

This is a generally helpful feature — except…

Once Apple Mail has “learned” where to file an email, it won’t unlearn that choice!

Furthermore, there’s no way to manually reset Apple Mail’s choice!

For example, let’s say you’ve been working with Marce, a client’s employee, for some time, so you’ve been moving Marce’s emails to a folder for that client. After a while, Apple Mail helpfully offers to move emails from Marce to that client folder. So far, so good. Then Marce moves to a new company, and you continue to work with them.  Now you’d like to file Marce’s emails in a separate folder for the new client. Unfortunately, no matter how many times you manually file Marce’s emails in the new client’s folder, Apple Mail will forever continue to suggest moving them to the former employer folder!

You will have to move email from Marce to the new employee folder manually every time, remembering every time not to choose the (wrong) default Apple Mail continues to suggest.

This is a drag and a product flaw.

It surprises me that the Watch software incorporates learn-unlearn-relearn into its memory-limited program space, but Apple Mail on the desktop, where program size is not an issue, only includes the learn piece.

Organizational unlearning

I’ll conclude with a few observations about the wider value of unlearning in organizations.

Most organizations need to innovate constantly, due to changing circumstances. Innovation doesn’t just involve coming up with new ideas. Innovation also requires a willingness and ability to cannibalize or destroy existing products or services; i.e. to unlearn what used to work and relearn what is now relevant.

Building and supporting an organizational culture that incorporates learn-unlearn-relearn is, thus, essential for the organization’s continued relevance and survival. Kodak was unable to unlearn that film was no longer a viable market for the size the company had become, or relearn how to switch to a digital imaging world. Apple, on the other hand, maker of the iPod, the most successful music player, poured energy into the development of the iPhone, a whole new product area that, while eventually cannibalizing Apple’s iPod sales, made far greater profits than if Apple had stayed with what they first built.

Do you build learn-unlearn-relearn into your personal and professional life? Share your story in the comments below!

Event Design is how it works

A black-and-white image of Apple's Steve Jobs with the caption: "Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works."“Design is how it works” is the favorite thing Apple software engineer Ken Kocienda heard Steve Jobs say.

Here’s Steve:

“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it [a product] looks like. People think it’s this veneer—that the designers are headed this box and told, “Make it look good!” That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
—Steve Jobs, The Guts of a New Machine, 2003 New York Times interview

If only we applied Steve’s insight to event design.

Good event design is not just about look and feel. It’s not just about novel venues, decor, food and beverage, and productionDressing up standard conference process with razzle-dazzle glitz isn’t good event design either.

Good event design is about how a conference works.

This implies that good event design requires thinking about issues like:

You always have a choice. Keep on dressing up the same-old same-old in different clothes. Or think about designing what happens at your events.

Because event design is how it works.

HT to Ken Kocienda for sharing the Steve quote in his excellent book: Inside Apple’s design process during the golden age of Steve Jobs [Page 187]

Learning in community at conferences

an illustration containing 20 icons, all of which convey people connecting and learning in communityLegendary Apple designer Jony Ive explains how learning in community helped Apple make the iPhone:

“When we genuinely look at a problem it’s an opportunity to learn together, and we discover something together. We know that learning in community is powerful. It feeds and supports momentum which in turn encourages a familiarity and an acceptance of challenges associated with doing difficult things. And I’ve come to learn that I think a desire to learn makes doing something new just a little less scary.”
——Jony Ive, Apple designer Jony Ive explains how ‘teetering towards the absurd’ helped him make the iPhone

At conferences, we also learn better when we learn in community. At traditional events, expert speakers broadcast content at attendees. But today our minds are increasingly outside our brains. Our ability to learn effectively now depends mostly on the quality and connectedness of our networks, rather than what’s inside our heads.

Two factors govern how we learn in community.

Uncovered learning
First, to optimize participants’ learning networks, modern conferences need to use uncovered learning. Uncovered learning occurs when we use process to uncover and take advantage of the knowledge and resources in the room. Such process increases active learning and incorporates all the expertise and experience available.

Building and supporting a community of practice
And second, learning in community is an ideal way to build and strengthen a conference’s community of practice. Peer conference process provides the opportunity for anyone to contribute, thus encouraging and supporting meaningful connection. Learning in community fosters cooperation and collaboration, creating a community of practice bridge between these two core forms of connection.

How could/do you support and encourage learning in community at your events? Share your ideas and experiences in the comments below!

How the Apple Watch improves my life

An Apple Watch Series 3 with the Milanese watch bandWhile exploring the New York City High Line for the first time in November 2017, I High Linestopped for lunch in the Chelsea Market, passed the Apple West 14th Street Store, and on impulse went in to take a look at the Apple Watch Series 3 which had just been released. Though impressed while watching the original Apple Watch launch two years earlier, I was still wearing an inexpensive watch I’d purchased years ago in Zurich. This time I liked what I saw. Within 30 minutes I was the owner of a space gray 42mm aluminum Series 3. I added a space black Milanese Loop but passed on the cellular option.

As I write this, two months later, my Apple Watch has hardly left my wrist (you’ll see why later). Frankly, I’m surprised at its positive impact on my life. Let’s list the ways…

Fitness

From interviews conducted since the Apple Watch was released it’s clear that, originally, Apple had no firm idea about how it might be received or used. Today, the Series 3 upgrade and recent improvements to watchOS make it plain that Apple believes that fitness tracking is the key reason people buy their watches.

I am no fitness fanatic, just a guy in his sixties trying to slow down the effects of old age. But the Series 3 has significantly improved my ability to consistently carry out the modest fitness-maintaining activities I’d previously struggled to do on a regular basis. These days I walk, do yoga, and stack and carry a few cords every year for our wood-burning stove.

How it works

The Apple Watch’s basic indication of the amount of these activities is a set of colored rings that concisely display your desired daily levels of exercise, movement, and standing (i.e. not spending hours sitting in a chair without a movement break). Adding these to your customized watch face allows you to notice your progress every time you glance at your watch. The continual reminder, with the subtle motivation to close all the rings by the end of the day, really helps me to stay faithful to my modest daily exercise goals. Although I rarely have a problem taking breaks since my adoption of Pomodoro, I love how the watch buzzes my wrist with a little reminder on the rare occasions I’ve been too couch potato-ey (which means at 10 minutes before the top of every hour when it senses you’ve been inactive for 50 minutes).

For more precise tracking (not a high priority for me), the Apple Watch contains a good variety of fitness “workouts”. These monitor your efforts once the watch knows what kind of activity you’re doing, like walking, running, cycling, elliptical, and swimming (yes it’s waterproof). I do a lot of walking while typing at my treadmill desk, which means that the standard watch walking workout would be inaccurate since my arms aren’t swinging and my position doesn’t change. For fitness activities not included in watchOS, Apple has “Other” workouts that I can custom label (e.g. “treadmill”) and treat as if I was taking a “brisk walk”. (Apple recently introduced GymKit, which obtains accurate exercise information from certain next-generation gym equipment — i.e. not my ancient treadmill.)

Heart monitoring

A friend of mine was feeling under the weather recently. He finally went to the doctor where they discovered that his heart was beating abnormally fast — 130 beats per minute (BPM) at rest. He needed urgent treatment. The Apple Watch has an accurate continuous heart monitor that can be set to notify you if your heart rate remains above a given BPM while you’ve been inactive for 10 minutes. Graphs of your daily heart rate are available. They’re interesting to occasionally peruse and it’s unlikely that I’ll find myself in my friend’s situation without knowing about it right away.

In addition, I joined the (free) Apple Heart Study conducted by Stanford Medicine, which monitors my heart rate and rhythm. If an irregular heart rhythm (arrhythmia) is identified, the app will notify me. I’ll receive a free video consultation on my iPhone with the study’s board-certified, licensed primary care providers for further analysis. “In some cases, the doctor may recommend a BioTelemetry electrocardiogram (ECG) patch for additional monitoring. The patch will be mailed to you at no cost and should be worn for seven days. The ECG data gathered over this period will be used to determine whether atrial fibrillation (AFib) or another type of irregular heart rhythm is present.”

I appreciate the heart health monitoring that my watch provides.

Informing me unobtrusively via haptics

The watch generates different kinds of haptics. These are sensations created by tiny motors at the back of the watch that deliver real-time tactile feedback on the skin below. Haptics can feel like a gentle tap on the wrist or something more complicated. A consistent haptic indicates distinct notifications and situations. For example, if you’re walking to a destination in an unfamiliar city, Apple Maps can guide you there. Your watch can tell you when you need to turn left by playing two taps three times in a row, turn right by playing twelve steady taps on your wrist, and that you‘ve arrived at your destination by using a long vibration.

Unlike the beeps, rings, and loud buzzes from other mobile devices, haptics are unnoticeable by anyone except the watch wearer. Once I’ve set up my destination in Maps, I can walk there without ever touching or viewing my phone. If I’m eating dinner with friends I can choose whether or not to ignore a tap on my wrist. And if I want to see a notification, a discrete turn of my wrist towards me turns on the display. This is usually unnoticed by my companions and certainly less obtrusive than dragging my phone out of my pocket or staring at it on the table.

Haptics is a subtle new way to communicate. It has its limitations, but I find it a great improvement over the obvious intrusions of pre-Apple Watch digital devices.

Meditation

Last week I watched Walk With Me, a documentary about the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. I learned that his Plum Village monastic community rings “bells of mindfulness”. When residents hear one, they stop all conversations and whatever they are doing and bring their awareness to their breathing. I like to meditate, and the Apple Watch includes a simple app named Breathe that reminds users every five hours (default) to take a moment to relax and take deep measured breaths. You can ignore the reminder or take a few minutes to bring attention to your breath, guided by a lovely haptic that provides a sequence of graduated speed taps to synchronize with your in-breath.

Breathe

The default Breathe session is one minute of seven breaths. However, the iPhone Watch App can easily adjust this to remind a user to breathe mindfully as often as every hour and fine-tune the number of breaths per minute and the number of breaths per session. During a Breathe session, a pattern on the watch face expands and contracts to indicate in and out breathing, but I find the haptic feedback sufficient to meditate on my breath with my eyes closed.

One can, of course, simply meditate in the traditional way with no gizmo telling you when to mindfully meditate. I like the Breathe app’s periodic gentle reminder to check what I’m currently experiencing and the opportunity to center myself and help bring me back to living in the present. Rather like the bells at Plum Village.

Little things that Siri makes easy and routine
Siri is so easy to use on my watch that I now routinely do useful things that were too cumbersome when I had to find and talk to my phone. For example, I’ll lift my watch and say: “Hey Siri, start a treadmill workout for 26 minutes”. Or: “Hey Siri, how cold will it get tonight?”

Messaging “hands-free” has become possible while my phone’s still buried in my pocket. I say: “Hey Siri, send a message to Celia”, and dictate it after the “What do you want to say?” response. Siri’s voice recognition is very good so there’s rarely a transcription problem with simple messages. The first time I did this while driving, Celia was alarmed until she discovered I’d never touched my phone!

Setting timers and alarms

I frequently need triggers (aka timers and alarms) to remind me of future things I need to do. For example, take a break (as per the Pomodoro practice mentioned earlier), go to the post office before it closes, check the wood stove that I left on updraft, make a phone call, etc. I used to use small digital timers to do this. But with Siri on my wrist it’s simple to say “Hey Siri, set a timer for ten minutes”, or “Hey Siri, set an alarm for 12:30 pm”. Siri faithfully reminds me with a haptic tap when my timer or alarm is due. I can stop it with a single tap or pause/snooze it with a slide and tap or a Siri command.

Setting triggers via Siri is so easy that I set many more reminders than I did before. This enhances my imperfect memory and improves the likelihood that I’ll actually be doing what I’ve agreed to do when I need to do it.

Sleeping

I wear my watch pretty much all the time, including while I sleep. No, the watch has not become a fetish object or a substitute teddy bear, but I’m taking advantage of a sleep app Pillow to monitor my sleep. It’s a fully functional free app, though you can pay $4.99 (which I did) to unlock a few extra features. As I age, my sleep quality has declined (at least it feels that way). Pillow provides an interesting window into my sleep, allowing me to explore the effects of bedtime routines, medication, etc.

I’ve learned, for example, that I don’t sleep as much as I thought I did. Also, I hardly snore (the app includes optional recording of sound via the watch microphone). The pretty graphs of my sleep state aren’t totally accurate — I sometimes know I was dreaming when I woke but the app doesn’t think I was in REM state. But day-to-day comparison is enlightening and helps me improve my sleep hygiene.

Ergonomics, comfort & ease of use

I’ve owned quite a few watches over the years. Whenever I’ve looked for a new one I’ve had a hard time finding a watch face I like. My criteria seem simple. An analog face that shows all the numerals, a second hand, and a readable day of the week and date. Sounds straightforward, but less than 1% of conventional watches supply this combination.

This isn’t a problem with Apple watches, which come with plenty of customizable faces. I quickly created exactly what I wanted (see the screenshot). You can have multiple faces for different circumstances available with a swipe. The one I use handles what I need at a glance.

The Milanese Loop

After years of wearing leather bands that eventually distort and fall apart, I love my Milanese Loop. It’s the first comfortable metal band I’ve ever worn. The infinitely adjustable magnetic metal closure is brilliant and works perfectly. I bought the Apple version. Some of the imitation bands that cost a fraction of Apple’s price have good reviews.

Charging

The watch is charged magnetically and charging is quick. I pop the watch on the inductive charger a couple of times a day for 20-30 minutes. Even though I’m wearing the watch almost constantly (see above) I’ve never come close to a low battery situation. While we’re on the topic, the $7.95 Spigen S350 Apple Watch Stand creates the perfect travel alarm clock as long as there’s power near the bed. I say “perfect” because the stand holds the watch vertically in Nightstand mode, where the time display turns off until it’s tapped or detects even the slightest motion/sound, and you can easily set an alarm with Siri.

Ways to interact

There are multiple ways you can interact with the Apple Watch (tap, slide, force touch on the watch face; press, rotate the Digital Crown; press the side button; “Hey Siri”) that initially felt complicated. However, getting the watch to do what I want has become fairly intuitive, though I occasionally fumble for a moment.

Notifications are convenient and completely customizable. I appreciate the automatic “do not disturb” feature at night. It’s easily turned on with a slide and tap while meditating or doing yoga. Even the watch’s “flashlight”, though dim, has been useful far more than I expected.

Limitations

The watch requires you to own an iPhone. Most functionality is only available when the phone is within Bluetooth range. This is rarely a problem for me, since I tend to keep my phone in my pocket, but might be inconvenient for some. (The LTE cellular model adds phone-free calls and messaging, but battery consumption is understandably high if used extensively and, of course, there’s an additional monthly carrier fee.)

There are many other apps available for the Apple Watch besides the ones I’ve mentioned, but I barely use them. Yes, it’s impressive that I can squint at a weather radar map on my watch, but the small display area really limits its usability to viewing limited information, like a short message or tweet. It’s also quite hard to pick a rarely used app from the cloud of icons; it’s easier to have Siri do it (provided I can remember the app name).

Conclusion

The Apple Watch Series 3 is a fantastic device that has had many unexpected positive impacts on my life. I hope sharing them will help you decide whether a device like this is valuable for you.

22 great Apple apps for event professionals

great Apple apps for event professionals

Two years have passed since the last update of my great Apple apps for event professionals. Apps continue to be born, evolve, and, sometimes, die—so it’s time for my latest list of event professionals’ great apps!

Read the rest of this entry »

Facilitation tool: Capture sticky notes with Post-It Plus

Two iPhone screens showing (on left) a photo of a set of sticky notes on a wall, and (on right) showing each note recognized by the Post-It Plus appWhen facilitating, I often use sticky notes as a flexible tool that allows movement from individual work => small group work => a visual summary for an entire group. 3M has just released a useful free tool for iDevices running IOS 8, Post-It Plus, that organizes and documents the results of such activities, which otherwise tend to end up as untidy rolled-up sheets of flip-chart paper or hard-to-categorize digital photographs.

I ran a quick test of the app on a year-old flip chart sheet with stick notes scattered hither and yon. Post-It Plus quickly identified all the notes (it superimposes a checkmark on each one it recognizes.) If a note is missed, you can tap on it to expand it and adjust the edges. Tap Done, and the note will be added to the collection. Once you’ve captured all the notes, you can create a Board that holds them.

But that’s just the start. Each Board can contain multiple Groups. Tap and hold a note to move it to a new Group. When you’ve categorized notes as desired, you can name your Boards and Groups appropriately and share them via iMessage, email, Twitter, and Facebook. You can also save them to your photo library or export them to pdf, PowerPoint, Excel, or as an image. If you link the app to your paid Evernote account, you can use Evernote’s OCR capability to make all your notes searchable. Integration with other apps, like Dropbox, is also possible, though I didn’t explore this.

Before digital photography, sticky note process was essentially an in-the-moment facilitation tool. Today, even though it’s simple to capture images of a group’s wall work, manipulating the ideas shown afterward is tedious and rarely done (well, to be honest, I have never taken the time to do so.)

Post-It Plus makes further categorizing and analysis of notes post-session just about as simple as possible. The sharing and export functions make it easy to communicate uncovered themes to others. Use this app to extract more value from the rich information exposed by group sticky note process. Post-It Plus is a tool with great potential—and you can’t beat the price!

Want to try out Post-It Plus? Download the free app here.

13 great iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch apps for event planners

I’ve had my 3G iPad for two weeks, and it’s already changing how I work. And not just when I’m away from the Mac Mini and MacBook Pro in my office. Here are 13 great Apple apps for event planners, most of which are free. (Unless specifically mentioned, you can assume that all apps work on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.)

simplenote_largeSimplenote, free, premium version $8.99/year
I purchased Pages for the iPad but haven’t used it yet. I rarely need elaborately formatted documents. What I do need is a simple text editor that imports ASCII, RTF or HTML files, backs up my writing safely, and synchronizes it across my mobile and office computers.

That’s exactly what Simplenote, combined with copies of Notational Velocity (free, open source) on my office computers do. Anything I write in Simplenote on my iPad is saved and backed up to the Internet cloud (on a free account at Simplenote). When I open Notational Velocity on an office computer, my notes there synchronize. Similarly, any notes updated on my office machines synchronize to the iPad when I open Simplenote. In addition, Simplenote encrypts all communications.

The premium version of Simplenote removes small ads that appear at the top of the Notes column, and adds automatic version backups (like Dropbox, see below) and a few other features. The ads aren’t intrusive, so I’m staying with the free version for now.

Both Simplenote and Notational Velocity offer blazing fast search and support thousands of notes.

For just pure writing, safely backed up and synchronized, you can’t beat the combination of these two free apps!

great Apple apps for event plannersDropbox & Box.net, both free
What if you want to access other kinds of documents on your iPad? I’ve been using the wonderful Dropbox and handy Box.net for some time on my office Macs, and now there are iPad and iPhone clients for both.

Dropbox works very much like the Simplenote premium service described above when installed on Macintosh computers. All contents of the Dropbox folder on a computer (Macintosh, Linux or Windows) running Dropbox are automatically synced when new files or changes are detected. You don’t have to be continually online; all changes sync once your computer has an Internet connection again. You can create shared folders, allowing several people to collaborate on a set of files.

The free service gives you 2GB of space on Dropbox’s servers, which is plenty for me. A nice feature is that the server stores the last 30 days of versions of your files, so you can revert to an older version if needed. If you want more storage, you can pay $9.99/month for 50GB or $19.99 for 100GB, with these paid plans including the storage of unlimited older versions of your files.

The Dropbox app allows you to access your Dropbox files on your iPhone or iPad. Image, music, movie, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF, HTML, and text file formats can be displayed by the app. <https://www.dropbox.com/help/80> Unlike the desktop versions of Dropbox, files are not stored automatically on a mobile device but are uploaded on request by marking them as Favorites.

Dropbox also includes a web interface to your files, so you can access them (and older versions) from any Internet connected computer.

While I was writing my book, I stored all my important files on Dropbox. It gave me great peace of mind to know that up-to-date versions of my book’s many files were being automatically saved remotely and on all my office computers.

box.net_iconBox.net supplies similar functionality to Dropbox, except that it doesn’t have a desktop client. The free Box.net service has only 1GB of web-storage and a rather paltry 25MB file size limit. Paid plans are available, but they are less generous than Dropbox’s. Since Dropbox added file sharing features I don’t use Box.net much, but it offers a simple way to provide sharing of files with others and another 1GB of free web-storage is not to be sniffed at. The mobile app makes it easy to share a file via email.

great Apple apps for event plannersSquare, app free, card transaction fees extra
Square is a neat inexpensive way to easily accept card payments for small amounts (up to $60). On the iPad you can create lists of the items or services you sell. It took me just a few minutes to set up Square for selling my book three ways—paperback, ebook, or combo—at a presentation or trade show. When you sign up for the service, Square sends you a free card reader that plugs into your iPad or iPhone. You can also process cash sales and send receipts to a buyer’s email address. Square provides a complete downloadable record of all your sales.

Square charges reasonable card fees: 2.75% + $0.15 for a swiped card and 3.5% + $0.15 for a keyed-in card. These are the only charges for the service; there’s no monthly fee or minimum and no contract or merchant account required. This would be a great app for selling promotional items at events.

great Apple apps for event plannersGoodReader, $0.99
GoodReader is an inexpensive app that allows you to transfer large files to your mobile device, by Wifi or from an Internet cloud server, and reliably view them. Like the Dropbox viewer, it supports a wide range of file formats. Unlike other mobile file readers, GoodReader has no problem rapidly opening, displaying, and responsively scrolling through the 350-page ebook version of Conferences That Work and other large files I’ve thrown at it.

great Apple apps for event plannersInstapaper, free, Pro version $4.99
Overwhelmed by cool web pages that you don’t have time to read right now, but don’t want to forget? Instapaper can help! Just set up a free account, add Instapaper’s <Read Later> bookmarklet to your browser’s toolbar and click it to save any webpage for later viewing. While you’re waiting for your car repair, open the Instapaper app and browse an optimized text-version (nice) or the full graphics version of the pages you’ve saved.

The Pro version is optimized for the iPad, and adds some features I don’t need, but I’ve had no problem running the free iPhone version on my iPad.

TweetDeck_LogoTweetDeck, free
Until Twitter comes out with a free version of Tweetie my favorite Twitter client for the iPad is Tweetdeck. It makes full use of the iPad screen, showing two columns in portrait and three in landscape mode. The URL shortener works reliably, though I miss the tweetshrink button available in the desktop version that’s useful when a tweet is just a few characters too long.

And here are still more great Apple apps for event planners.

AdobeIdeasLogoAdobe Ideas, free, iPad only
Need to make a rough sketch? Give Adobe Ideas a whirl. What you draw is vector-based, so you can enlarge or reduce drawing elements without getting an attack of the jaggies. It’s easy to zoom the canvas too, so you can make it larger if your drawing gets more complicated than you originally expected. Separate drawing and photo layers allow you to annotate photos. This could be useful for adding notes to photos taken during a site visit. And a 50-level undo allows me to erase the frequent mistakes I make when I try and draw anything.

wifitrakWifiTrak, literally priceless!
On researching this useful app, which I purchased last year, I discovered that Apple, in March with very little explanation, removed all wifi access-point finders from the App store! (Luckily it is still available on my touch.) This is a shame, because the Wifi networks discovered by my Apple device settings are only a subset of what these devices can actually connect to. WifiTrak is able to find useable access points that my iPod Touch otherwise does not see. I hope this app will return to the Apps store so you can take advantage of its superior performance.

beath_the_traffic_appBeat the Traffic (iPhone & Touch), Beat the Traffic HD (iPad), both free {No longer available as of September 2017}
What event professional doesn’t want to avoid backed up traffic while driving in town? This excellent app provides live traffic maps, showing traffic speeds and accidents in most major U.S. cities. It even includes live traffic cam feeds in places! A touch can only use the app if Wi-Fi connected; not very practical while driving. I don’t recommend Beat the Traffic for solo use while driving. But a passenger can help you avoid traffic snarls, and the twenty minute future traffic prediction available on the iPad version can be quite helpful.

great Apple apps for event plannersEvernote, free, Premium service $5/month or $45/year [Update November 2024: no longer recommended due to big rise in subscription cost. Instead, try the free Joplin.]
Evernote is my go-to application for capturing information I want to be able to find in the future. I use it mainly for web pages, but it will also file text notes, pdfs, spreadsheets, photos, voice memos, and screenshots. Evernote clients are available for most mobile and desktop operating systems. Everything captured is made searchable—you can add your own tags if you like—and can be stored in specific categories (“notebooks”) if desired. The iPad version takes full advantage of the large screen. Your notes are stored on Evernote’s servers and locally. They are also synced to your mobile devices and Mac OS X and Windows computers running an Evernote client.

You can upload up to 40MB per month (with a maximum single note size of 25MB) using the free Evernote service. This has always been adequate for me. The Premium service raises the upload maximum to 500MB/month with a maximum single note size of 50MB, and can store any kind of file.

iTalk logoiTalk Lite, free, not officially supported for the iPad but seems to work just fine (no longer available as of September, 2021)
Want to record a conversation, a speech, or the amazing jazz quartet that’s playing at your event?
This useful app turns your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad into a high-quality recording device that’s very easy to use. There’s a iTalk Premium version ($1.99) that omits small ads and doesn’t limit the size of an emailed recording. The app includes iTalk Sync, which allows you to transfer your recordings to a desktop computer via Wifi. If you have a touch, you’ll need a microphone and I highly recommend the $25 Belkin TuneTalk Stereo which plugs in to the dock connector and provides amazing quality for such an inexpensive device.

WeatherBugLogoWeatherBug Elite for iPad, free
This is currently the best weather app I’ve found for the iPad. You see everyone on one well-designed screen: weather current conditions, forecasts, animated radar, temperature, windspeed and pressure maps, live weather cam images and more. There’s an iPhone/touch version that I haven’t tried. I tried the big kahuna app in this category, The Weather Channel. It looks gorgeous but crashes repeatedly on my iPad and doesn’t display animated maps correctly.

There they are, 13 great Apple apps for event planners. Which apps do you like? Let us know in the comments. And feel free to disagree, suggest alternatives, and correct any errors that may have crept into this review!

[Update] Want more great Apple apps for event planners? I’ve created an updated version of this post here: 22 great Apple apps for event planners!