Hey,
It’s Pete Matheson with a new issue of Experiments in Progress.
Here's the deal: I pay for a lot of apps so I can tell you which ones are genuinely worth it.
I've gone through my most-used apps (music, weather, calendar, flights, storage, even my heating) and paired each one with the free alternative that gets you 90% of the way there.
Keep what earns its place. Ditch the rest.
The Apps I Actually Pay For (And What You Can Use Instead)
So here's my list:
🎵 Apple Music: my main music app
I'm on the Apple Music family plan, and I'm happy with it.
But if you're only paying for music, you might already be paying for it twice without realising.
Already on Amazon Prime? You get Amazon Music included. Most people forget it's there.
Got YouTube Premium? Then YouTube Music comes with it — so you're paying for ad-free YouTube and getting a full music service in the bargain.
Both do 90% of what Apple Music does for a lot of people.
📺 Apple TV: the one streaming service I'd actually defend
I subscribe to Apple TV, and honestly I think it's one of the better streaming services out there.
But here's the deal with streaming — there's no real "free" version, and stacking five services at once is how you end up paying more than an old cable bill.
So the honest move isn't a free alternative. It's rotating. Pick the one service that's got the show you actually want right now, watch it, cancel, move on.
Whether that's Apple TV, Netflix, or Disney+ depends entirely on what you're trying to watch this month.
🌦️ Carrot Weather: fun, but not essential
I pay for Carrot Weather but I'll be honest with you:
The stock weather app on your phone is genuinely fine.
Apple's built-in Weather app got a big upgrade a few years back and now pulls proper hyperlocal forecasts, air quality and next-hour rain.
For most people that's more than enough.
📅 Fantastical: brilliant on Apple, skippable elsewhere
Fantastical is my calendar app, and on Apple devices it's genuinely excellent — natural language input, great widgets, the works.
But it's a subscription, and there are strong free options:
Google Calendar — free, syncs everywhere, and it's what most people already use anyway.
Business Calendar on Android — a properly good free alternative if you want more power than the stock Google app.
✈️ Flighty: the best flight tracker (but Android's catching up)
Flighty is one of my favourite apps full stop — best-in-class flight tracking, live gate and delay info, the kind of thing that makes travelling a lot less stressful.
But here's the news for Android users:
Google and Samsung are increasingly baking flight tracking straight into the phone — pop a boarding pass in your wallet and it'll surface your gate, boarding time and delays automatically.
There's now Aviate, an app built as Android's direct answer to Flighty, if you want the dedicated experience.
So if you're on Android, you may already have most of this for free without installing anything.
☁️ iCloud storage: paying for convenience
I pay for 2TB of iCloud storage, and I won't pretend I'm going to stop — it's the price of everything syncing without me thinking about it.
But "free" is absolutely possible if you're willing to do a bit of work:
A decent external SSD for backups — pay once, own it forever.
A NAS (network drive) at home if you want your own private cloud that you fully control.
The trade-off is real: you're swapping a monthly fee for a bit of setup and maintenance. For some people that's a no-brainer. For others, the £/$ a month to never think about it is worth every penny.
🏋️ MacroFactor Workouts: there's a free one that's nearly as good
I use MacroFactor Workouts to log my training. But if you don't want another subscription, there's a genuinely great free option.
It's called Hevy (spelled H-E-V-Y), and it does a very similar job for free.
Clean interface, easy workout logging, progress tracking… For most people lifting a few times a week, Hevy covers it without costing anything. Recommend giving it a go before you pay for anything fancier.
🔥 Tado: the one that annoys me
Tado is my smart heating system.
The hardware works great, but they put some of the best features (the location-based stuff that turns your heating off when everyone leaves the house) behind a subscription.
You buy the kit, then you rent the clever bits.
You can still control your heating manually for free, and basic scheduling is there. But that automatic "nobody's home, turn it down" magic is the paid tier.
💸 Pay for it or skip it: the short version
If you're paying for… | The free move is… |
|---|---|
Apple Music | Amazon Music (with Prime) or YouTube Music (with Premium) |
Apple TV / streaming | Rotate one service at a time, cancel when done |
Carrot Weather | Your phone's built-in weather app |
Fantastical | Google Calendar or Business Calendar |
Flighty (on Android) | Native phone flight tracking, or Aviate |
iCloud storage | External SSD or a home NAS |
MacroFactor Workouts | Hevy (free) |
Tado heating | Manual control + basic scheduling |
📱 Enjoying this newsletter? Share it with a friend who’s as obsessed with tech as you are:
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