If there’s anything thats going to kick start my blog it’s a trend talking about app’s. I first saw a post from Matt Birchler a couple of weeks back and it turns out it’s inspired by Hemispheric Views 097 – Duel of the Defaults! with Robb Knight going above and beyond tracking a list of people taking part.
Anyway, on with the list:
- ✉️ Mail service: Gmail
- 📬 Mail client(s): Mail.app
- 👨🏻💼 Contacts: Contacts.app
- ✅ Tasks: Todoist
- 📰 RSS service: Inoreader
- 🗞️ RSS client: Reeder on Mac, Fiery Feeds on iOS
- 🚨 News: BBC News, The Guardian, Apple News+ and Artifact
- ⌨️ Launcher: Raycast
- ☁️ Cloud storage: iCloud
- 📷 Photo shooting: Camera.app
- 🌅 Photo library: iCloud
- 🤳🏻 Photo editing: Photos.app and Adobe Lightroom
- 🌐 Web browser: Safari and Edge (work)
- 💬 Messaging: iMessage, WhatsApp, Messenger, Signal
- 📆 Calendar: Calendar 366
- 🧮 Calculator: PCalc
- 🔗 Bookmarks: Raindrop.io
- 📖 Read Later: Omnivore
- 🌤️ Weather: Carrot Weather
- 🎙️ Podcasts: Overcast
- 🎶 Music: Apple Music
- 🔐 Passwords: 1Password
- 📃Word Processing: Word
- 📊 Spreadsheets: Excel
- 🎯 Presentations: PowerPoint
- 📝 Notes: Notes.app and OneNote (work)
- 📘 Journaling: Day One
- 🧮 Code Editor: Visual Studio Code
- 👨🏻💻 Terminal: iTerm 2
- 🐘 Mastodon: Ivory
- 💁🏻♂️ Social: Mastodon and Threads – fuck X
- 🍿 Media discovery/tracking: Letterboxd and Trakt
- 📺 Media Playback: Plex and Infuse
- 🎮 Gaming Service: Xbox primarily and then Steam followed by PlayStation
- 🕹️ First game I play each morning: Wordle
- 🖼️ Screenshots: CleanShot X
- 🔎 Search: Google
- 📦 Package tracking: Parcel
- 🌍 Navigation: Google Maps
The takeaway for me is I use many more default Apple services than before and I’m looking at Apple Podcasts to replace Overcast and Keychain/iCloud Passwords as the enshitification of 1Password continues. iCloud replaced Dropbox in the last 18 months, Apple Mail instead of Spark although Word, Excel and Powerpoint are safe as Apple’s office tools have never clicked for me. So why the shift?
App subscription fatigue is definitely a factor as there’s only so many subscriptions that I’m willing to do that deliver value. There’s also a narrowing of capability over time and ease of use just using defaults when you’re all in on one ecosystem. If only friends could actually use just one messaging platform!
If you do like trying out new apps the full list of participants is a mine of information…and I’ve found quite a few new blogs to follow. Good old RSS. Next up, I really should setup an uses page to make this easier to reference.