I’m someone who, over the last 30 years, has surrendered his soul to Apple not once but twice - I had an affair with Ms. PC for a decade or so, but the university made me do it, m’lud.
I’ve seen many apps come and go and tried many apps for various periods of time, some of which have stuck whilst others haven’t. I’m forever looking for the perfect app for a particular application (as I am the perfect briefcase, the perfect omelette, the perfect lip balm and the perfect sweet-pea fragrance). I should also add that I don’t have a problem with paying a reasonable price for software and apps nor do I recoil from subscription models when they are sensibly priced and present good VFM. Everyone has to live, even developers!
The fun is in the journey of exploration and as an app becomes a favourite and relied upon tool, one that rarely gets in the way and, overall, makes life richer and easier, then so it sticks.
A few of the sticky apps on my iPhone:
Evernote - a bit expensive and with formatting issues that still make it a bloated piece of crap ™ I wouldn’t be without this. Brilliant for researching, dumping into and organising stuff, and the web clipper for all of the common browsers alone makes it worth the price to me.
Account Tracker Pro - probably my most used app. Ever. Simple and intuitive to use with just enough bells and whistles. I would be bewildered and soon bankrupt without it.
Dropbox - despite going off the rails a bit in recent years, shifting away from a brilliant and totally reliable personal file sync service to more of a business/teams product, Dropbox is rock-solid, faultless and keeps everything of mine available everywhere all the time. Also a bit expensive but you only live once. 1st world problem, right.
LastPass - I’ve always used this in preference to, say, 1Password. When it comes to password and bank card storage and form-filling I can be uber-conservative (with a small ‘C’). LP has always worked quite well enough and kept everything safe. Of late it has become slower and slooowwwwer working with Safari on the Mac (presumably because Apple keep adding more security layers in Safari itself and to their latest release of macOS) but it still works fine on Chrome and Firefox, and on iOS Safari too. A solid product that’s always proved good value for money for me.
Informant - having tried most calendar apps and separate task managers over the years I’ve always returned to Informant as the combined calendar and task manager that rules them all. Works for me - everything in one place and with enough complexity and customisation available on the back end to satisfy even the most discerning nerd. If Fanatic Software ever go bust then my life is over as we know it, Jim.