tech
- Messages improvements
- Notes and Safari improvements (don’t know if I can switch fully away from Firefox though)
- Journal app and Emotion tracking
- Calendar
- Reminders - only showing those with a deadline of Today
- Weather
- Fitness
- Battery
- Bear - personal notes, highlights, knowledge management. Using the 2.0 TestFlight right now.
- Micro.blog - I am using the TestFlight of the official app.
- Apollo - my Reddit client of choice. Wonderful app with tons of customization. I’ve been an Ultra user for a couple years now.
- Photography folder:
- Lightroom Mobile - Been using it more and more since subscribing earlier this year. It’s a great way to perform quick edits.
- Apple Photos - I sync all photos to Lightroom/Adobe cloud. I then backup photos and documents monthly to external hard drive. Everything else stays in Apple Photos for redundancy (for now).
- Safari - browser of choice on all Apple devices, Chrome on Windows.
- NetNewsWire - RSS reader for websites, blogs, etc.
- Artifact - been testing it for news. I like the app for the most part, but I hate the new Reddit-like features. Might just stick to RSS and Socials if they’re going to prioritize this.
- Audio folder:
- Overcast - The silence shortening is unmatched.
- Apple Music - It fills my needs and works well enough. The UI does need some work though.
- Audible - For audiobooks. I have a large backlog, but I’d prefer to move away from Audible in the future. No longer subscribe though.
- Spotify - I use the free edition to listen to some exclusive podcasts and follow a few people’s playlists.
- Dark Noise - when I need background music to sleep or for work.
- Shazam - I like the app over the control center shortcut, but I use it enough when watching shows to put it on my homescreen.
- Maps
- Transit - I utilize public transit as much as possible here in Austin. The best app for accurate schedules. Using free version currently, but have used paid in the past.
- Ring - For home security.
- Utilities folder:
- Reminders
- Files
- Pocket - I still use Pocket for my RIL service. Just works cross platform and I don’t mind their recommendations. If I stop using Artifact, I will move Pocket to its place.
- Calculator
- Wallet
- Just Press Record - good for when I’m driving and have a thought or need to remember something and can’t type it out (Don’t text and drive!). Syncs with iCloud.
- WhatsApp - to communicate with specific family and friends.
- Crouton - a lovely recipe app.
- Shortcuts - I have many shortcuts that I use with varying frequency. I prefer to have access on homescreen instead of with widgets.
- Sports folder:
- Sleeper - fantasy football
- Yahoo Fantasy - fantasy football and baseball
- MLB
- MLS
- Messages
- Phone
- Camera
- Obsidian is too complex. There are plugins on top of plugins to customize Obsidian for pretty much every single use case. I found this getting in the way too often and instead of getting things done, I was spending time learning how to make it work within Obsidian.
- While it is nice the plugins are open source and hosted on Github, it is cumbersome to go to each Github repository to learn about the plugin and how to change it to your liking. Obsidian needs better plugin support within the UI itself. This is partially on the plugin developer, but Obsidian should put an emphasis on making this easier.
- Adding files - in particular PDFs - to notes just never worked great and looked great when viewing the file. I like other productivity systems/apps handling of PDFs much better.
- Markdown support. Markdown makes sense, it is easy to learn, and compatible with more and more apps every day. I know there are ways to make Markdown work natively in Evernote, but I will miss the simplicity of having it work natively in the text editor like it does in Obsidian.
- Files sizes are small and storing everything as a .txt file is amazing. This makes it so easy to move your files from one cloud provider to another.
- Obsidian is free and has a massive developer community. This is good because there is likely someone who has the same use case as you and created a plugin for it. But for general note taking and Second Brain capturing, I just don’t think Obsidian is for me.
Excited about many things from WWDC keynote yesterday. But I just don’t think I can ever wrap my brain around why we need VR.
Excited about:
I’m not a privacy nut job, but this is a frighteningly high to me.
“When they are shopping, 66 percent of respondents said they are willing to share their data in exchange for cheaper alternatives.” -From this Yahoo article
I’m not big on AI and ChatGPT. However, I did just use it to tell my brother I am better than him at fantasy baseball. In Shakespearean English. That is quite fun.
10 years ago today, Snowden leaked his surveillance news. This is a reminder that government’s are not perfect and never will be.
Apparently Microsoft is raffling off Zune’s in response to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
I miss the dedicated MP3 player times. Zune had some beautiful software, but could never catch up to the iPod.
A scathing article on Siri’s lack of development and in-fighting amongst Apple.
Hard to say I’m surprised. Personally, I am still luke-warm on AI, but Siri is by far the worst of all the major tech companies. Another area where Apple must do better as AI technology becomes more widespread.
TIL you can pass Bear links into Apple Reminders and essentially sync your to-do lists between the two apps.
iOS Homescreen - April 2023 Edition
Inspired by a recent post of Eric’s, I wanted to take a stab at it for my iPhone. I consider myself a tinkerer of my digital workspace; constantly trying new things or ways I accomplish tasks. Apps are a large part of that, whether on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, or Windows.
Here are my homescreen apps for April 2023. There are a few folders on the right hand side of frequently used apps or new apps I want to try out. I always keep one page too, everything else can be found via Spotlight Search.
Widgets
I have a SmartRotating stack with:
1st Row
2nd Row
3rd Row
4th Row
Dock
I hope I introduce you to some new and fun apps. Let me know what you think or if you have any recommendations of your own. I’ll probably do my Mac next since there’s a bunch of fun little utilities that may be new to some folks.
Been using Artifact a few days now. It’s mostly just a better curated version of Apple News. AN provides a better reading experience in terms of UI though. I’ve always found AN horrible at curating content I want to see. Artifact does better here by miles.
Signed up for a YouTube TV trial for 2 weeks, and I’ve really only watched one show and one event. Can’t say I miss cable TV at all. Will not be continuing once my trial is up.
Just getting into photography really for the first time. The hardest part is remembering what the individual camera settings do 😅
The speed with which Ice Cubes development occurs astonishs me. Great app and developer!
I wish I could take my Audible and Kindle books with me to another service to get somewhat less reliant on the Amazon ecosystem.
Anyone using Homebrew on macOS? What are the benefits?
Things I Disliked About Obsidian
As an Evernote user I gave Obsidian a heartfelt try over Q4 of 2022. Here’s why I’ve gone back to Evernote as of this week.