it with aplomb. You can add individual episodes or subscribe
to the entire podcast and have new episodes automatically
available. There are several audio balancing and playback op-
tions to fi ddle with that make it easy to play to your liking.
Weather Underground
The stock Weather
app is fairly accurate,
but when you want
hyper-local weather, you
need to go for the best
of the best. Weather
Underground has been
around for decades as
a standalone website,
bringing you some
of the most accurate
predictions you can
possibly fi nd, sourced
from thousands of local
weather stations. It’s
chock-full of great infor-
mation, like forecasts
for a particular activity
you’re planning to en-
gage in such as running,
biking, and outdoor photography; air quality readings; real-time
active radar; and forecast summaries.
Flipboard
Flipboard is a fun
app, giving you a daily
rundown of ten curated
articles directly from the
Flipboard team, as well
as news and articles
targeted to preferences
you set the fi rst time
you loaded the app. You
can change your prefer-
ences at any time, and
the algorithm for recom-
mended articles keeps
getting better the longer
you use the app. The in-
terface is reminiscent of
Instagram or Pinterest,
allowing you to visually
navigate the stories you
want to read and letting
you quickly skim or skip those you’re not interested in. If an
article catches your interest and you want to read it later, you
can “fl ip” it into a magazine, and you can organize those mag-
azines however you wish.
Any.do
Let’s face it: the Ap-
ple Reminders app is
not that great. That’s OK
though, because you
have a lot of great ones
out there to choose
from! If you’re already
using Evernote or Sim-
plenote, those will work
in a pinch, but if you
want a dedicated Re-
minders replacement,
I’ve been loving Any.do.
It’s easy to use, with
tasks separated into
four categories: Today,
Tomorrow, Upcoming,
and Someday. You cre-
ate tasks by clicking
the plus symbol, then
fi ll in the details, like when the tasks need to be completed.
You can also organize the tasks however you wish, and with
the premium subscription ($3/month), you can do much more,
like set location-based reminders and collaborate with other
users.SHAKE UP YOUR ROUTINE
You can’t go wrong with these replacements for the stock
apps! Every one of them improves on Apple’s stock apps in
multiple ways, and most are faster and more intuitive than the
original. By installing these apps, you’ll help yourself to be-
come more productive, better informed, and more effi cient.WEATHER REPLACEMENT
NEWS REPLACEMENT
REMINDERS REPLACEMENT
Kenneth Boshell is a freelance writer who lives in Florida. His fi nely honed skills include
fi nding great taco eateries, petting random cats, and hunting for the most delicious
chocolate bar in the world. He has a ridiculously large pile of books to read, which he’d
get to if he could just put down the Black Company and Harry Potter for a moment.