For the third time (an annual tradition?) an update on my default app’s. Not too much has changed from 2023 and 2024 but as before, updates are tagged with a ⭐️
- ✉️ Mail service: Gmail
- 📬 Mail client(s): Spark ⭐️
- 👨🏻💼 Contacts: Contacts.app
- ✅ Tasks: Todoist
- 📰 RSS service: Inoreader
- 🗞️ RSS client: Unread
- 🚨 News: BBC News, The Guardian, and Apple News+
- ⌨️ Launcher: Raycast
- ☁️ Cloud storage: iCloud
- 📷 Photo shooting: Camera.app, Halide and Project Indigo ⭐️
- 🌅 Photo library: iCloud
- 🤳🏻 Photo editing: Photos.app and Adobe Lightroom
- 🌐 Web browser: Safari and Edge (work)
- 💬 Messaging: iMessage, WhatsApp, Messenger, Signal
- 📆 Calendar: Calendar.app
- 🧮 Calculator: PCalc
- 🔗 Bookmarks: Raindrop.io
- 📖 Read Later: GAPPED ⭐️
- 🌤️ Weather: Carrot Weather
- 🎙️ Podcasts: Podcasts.app
- 🎶 Music: Apple Music
- 🔐 Passwords: 1Password
- 📃Word Processing: Word
- 📊 Spreadsheets: Excel
- 🎯 Presentations: PowerPoint
- 📝 Notes: Notes.app, OneNote (work) and Antinote ⭐️
- 🧠 AI: ChatGPT ⭐️
- 📘 Journaling: Day One
- 🧮 Code Editor: Visual Studio Code
- 👨🏻💻 Terminal: iTerm 2
- 🪟 Window Management: Moom
- 📈 System Monitor: iStat Menus
- 💾 Backup: Carbon Copy Cloner and Backblaze
- 🐘 Mastodon: Tapestry ⭐️
- 💁🏻♂️ Social: Mastodon and Bluesky
- 🍿 Media discovery/tracking: Letterboxd, Trakt and Callsheet
- 📺 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
- 🍔 Food Tracking: Foodnoms
- ⏱️ Time Tracking: Toggl and Timery
- 🧘🏼 Life Tracking: Exist
As predicted, I moved from Apple Mail to Spark mostly due to Mail not searching reliably. So many mails missed from simple searches that Spark or Gmail in the browser found 100%.
Browsers also saw a bit of trial and error thanks to Safari instability and Firefox going down an AI path I didn’t like. Tried both Chrome and Vivaldi and while they were OK on the Mac, on iOS/iPadOS they are pretty poor in comparison to Safari so stuck with what I know. And Safari instability was on the Mac – Tahoe was such a buggy upgrade and impacted on usability. One of the tentpole features, Spotlight, was such a resounding success that after 5 weeks of giving it a go I reinstalled Raycast and got back capabilities that I missed but also some basic features that again were broken in Spotlight…and also speed. Raycast is just better.
A couple of interesting changes – dropped Ivory and moved to using Tapestry for browsing Mastodon and Bluesky and its worked really well especially since the Mac client came out. Highly recommended. And on the iPhone, partly prompted by upgrading to the 17 Pro in September, I’ve been trying and loving Project Indigo from Adobe. Some of the images it captures are much superior to the default camera app – extra detail and more accurate (to my eye) captures thanks to different trade off’s as it does it’s computational photography – especially in night mode.
A brief comparison above using the wonderful Òran Mór. iOS Camera app on the left – over compensating the sky as it was dark and losing detail. On the right, Project Indigo with much better detail in the tower brickwork and the weather vane isn’t just a smudge as it is on the left. The halo is also captured better via Indigo.
Added AI as a category and I’ve stuck with ChatGPT as most used service although can see benefits with both Gemini and Claude – will be watching with interest through Q1 26 and Apple’s revised Siri. AI on Apple platforms only works thanks to third parties.
I’ll close on one potential change and thats Todoist. They’ve announced an increase in pricing from $29 to $60 a year and while I’ve been grandfathered in to a legacy pro price of $29 I don’t get any new features going forward so I’ll be looking at the default Reminders app and also TickTick as options alongside sticking with what I know.