Default apps 2023
After sharing a list of the places I’ve been, time to join in with another popular blogging topic which involves people sharing the default apps they currently use.
As you’ll see, I score pretty highly on my dependence on the ‘default’ default apps, and so the less said about my reliance on Apple’s offerings, the better.
- 📨 Mail client
- macOS Mail.
- 📮 Mail server
- My Mythic Beasts server. In the past I’ve considered going all in on iCloud now that you can use a custom domain name, or using a service like Fastmail or Proton Mail, but transferring my mail archive would be a lot of faff with risk of data loss all for little gain. Never Gmail.
- 🙍🏻♂️ Contacts
- macOS Contacts.
- 🗓️ Calendar
- macOS Calendar.
- 🗒️ Notes
- macOS Notes.
- ✅ To do
- macOS Reminders. Having tried many times to avoid keeping to do lists in Notes, this year I’ve finally managed to start using Reminders. Of all the apps bundled with macOS, this is by far the worst. Bloated with features, fiddly to use, and not that nice to look at, either.
- 💬 Chat
- Messages ideally, but in most cases WhatsApp. Not by choice, this being the one reluctant exception to my otherwise successful boycott of
Facebook’sMeta’s products. - 🌐 Web browsing
- Safari… though I’m edging closer to giving Arc a try.
- 📷 Photo shooting
- Fujifilm X-S20 (iPhone 11 Pro through gritted teeth).
- 🎞️ Photo organisation
- macOS Photos. Having been burnt by Adobe enough times over the years and weary of their monopoly over creative apps, I won’t use Lightroom. This means begrudgingly relying on Photos which redeems itself thanks to its iCloud integration. Aperture remains sorely missed.
- 🌅 Photo editing
- Pixelmator Pro which all too often fills the gaps in Photos lacklustre editing tools.
- 📖 Feeds
- NetNewsWire, synced using iCloud.
- 📑 Read It Later
- In theory I have an Instapaper account, but in practice it doesn’t matter. I’ve stopped saving long-form articles to read later and instead leave them unread in my feed reader.
- 🔖 Bookmarks
- Pinboard? Again, I’ve stopped managing bookmarks as I realised that I rarely return to them.
- 🔐 Password management
- macOS Passwords.
- 📄 Word processing
- iA Writer – points awarded for its Micropub support.
- 📈 Spreadsheets
- I enjoy using Google Sheets for work, even more so since experiencing the embarrassing shit show that is Microsoft 365. For personal stuff, its Numbers.
- 📊 Presentations
- Typically Keynote, but I created my presentation for UX London using iA Presenter and it was a revelation.
- 📰 News
- No apps, just visiting websites such as The Guardian, The Verge…
- 🎵 Music
- Apple Music.
- 🎤 Podcasts
- Overcast – a rare divergence from Apple’s default.
- 📐 Design
- Sketch and the GOV.UK Prototype Kit. Never Figma.
- 👨🏼💻 Code
- Visual Studio Code – though I’d really like to say Nova.
- 📁 Cloud file storage
- iCloud Drive, with Transmit used to access my FTP server.
- 🐘 Mastodon
- The beautifully designed Elk on my desktop, and the equally lovely official Mastodon app on iOS which people unfairly criticise and I have no idea why.