I've also been enjoying NotePlan. I stumbled upon a system I like for managing my work in Obsidian at work using some plugins, and then found NotePlan is basically an app designed around the exact system I cobbled together, with some added quality of life improvements. My data is in plain text files, so that makes it future proof (to a degree), which I also like. - https://noteplan.co
Merry Sky is another. A spiritual successor to Dark Sky, since Apple bought it and shut it down. It's not as nice as Dark Sky was, but hopefully it gets there. It's nice for seeing the upcoming week of perception forecasted in one visual view. - https://merrysky.net
I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words in iA Writer over the years. It’s the only way I can get any writing done, I find every other writing app too distracting. Somebody on HN called it an “overpriced minimalist lifestyle app” in a reply to one of my comments, not realizing that the minimalism is a real feature for those of us who have brains that work differently.
In the same vein, the only task management app I can use without tearing out my hair is Things. It makes a distinction between the start date for a task and the deadline, which very few other apps do. I might want to start working on my presentation on Monday, but it might not be due for another two weeks. Those two dates are different! I don’t understand why few other apps allow you to do this. I feel a sense of physical anxiety when all my tasks in Apple Reminders show up in red because that app is just the worst.
MindNode and Bike Outliner are great “tools for thought”, if you like to brainstorm digitally. I’ve tried infinite canvas apps like Freeform and Muse for this, but I personally prefer the structure of an outliner or mind map. MindNode is my favorite app to fire up when I need to break down a big idea into smaller chunks, or when I need to drill down into the specifics of a problem, or when I want to impose some structure on the chaos of the problems I’m dealing with at work.
These are the apps I miss when I use Windows or Linux. If I ever switch to a non-Apple computer as my primary machine, I might get irritated enough with what’s on offer to build clones of these apps. Nothing like them exists on Windows or Linux, despite my attempts to look for equivalents every few months.
- Protonmail
- Proton pass and aliases are amazing. No more spam emails or unsubscribes.
- Apple Podcasts. Really enjoy CoRecursive, Darknet Diaries, and Advent of Computing
- Goodreads
- Flightradar helped me get over a massive fear of flying (I would check flight radar for every plane flying overhead and it literally fixed me)
- Codewars has been really fun for programming challenges
- Svelte was fun to play with
- Ultrawide curved monitor, amazing for dev
- Switching from Windows, to Linux, to Mac has been great
I’m really grateful for the web itself. I like Librewolf for browsing. Grateful for browser extensions, they are fun and annoying to build at the same time
I’ve been enjoying Microsoft Learn lately for learning C#. C# is quite fun to use.
HackerNews is a great community and happy to have moved to it from other communities
I also appreciate Firefox, Thunderbird, Libby (by Overdrive, for accessing public library materials), Calibre (for epub management and sometimes reading, often for easily looking up cooking recipes thanks to full-text search), and KOReader (my child needs the text bigger than the stock Kobo can do; KOReader delivers, on this and other features). Oh and Steam, for making it easy to keep up with friends via videogames despite having ditched Windows.
For instance, Apple Mail—mine has a stark layout[1] with just two panes and no tools visible (nothing)—I learned the shortcuts as a muscle memory so I can get lots done. When I forget, I remember the keystrokes to fire up the panes, toolbar, etc.
What I use and swear by now are physical Pen(s) and Notebook(s). For notebooks, Midori[2] stationery is “my precious” for now. I shuffle between a few fountain pens (Lamy, Kaweco, looking for more) and a bunch of gel, sketch, and felt roller pens (Rotring, Parker, and the like). Midori is expensive to buy in India. I need to get a bunch while traveling next time.
1. https://cdn.oinam.com/img/oinam/brajeshwar-apple-macos-mail-...
- Ebookdroid and PDF & DJVU Reader (for reading books and papers. Have great features that seems obvious yet absent from other apps)
- Lithium (best EPUB file reader)
- Antennapod (best app for podcasts)
- Obsidian, Simplenote (for notetaking)
- Raindrop (for bookmarking)
- Sketchbook (for drawing)
- Fedilab (for connecting to the Fediverse)
- Feeder (FOSS RSS reader app)
- Flora Incognita, Plantnet (use AI to recognize plants and flowers)
- Sweech (opens up a wifi file server)
- Xplore File Manager (THE best file manager app for android)
- 8 bit Wonders (Emulates old computers like Commodore 64)
- Poe (for different LLM chatbots)
Some dev apps: MicroREPL, Termux, X11-BASIC, notin, Sensor Server, ntfy, nRF Connect, gFORTH
Although released in 2012, My use case is mainly to listen to audio books (m4b) and music. Of course there are smartphones these days that also could play them well, but in my opinion nothing comes even close to the user experience of this device:
- Size: This device is SMALL
- Durability: Still works fine after 10 years
- Battery life: Lasted for days with 220mah, after some years of course it decreases a bit
- Connectivity: Works fine with bluetooth
- Usability: Decent UI with remote support (4 different ones)[1], Sleep timer, etc.
- Versatile: Podcasts, Audiobooks, Music, Sports and even Video (kind of limited though)
Of course there are some drawbacks (no linux support, no wifi, hard to repair, proprietary connector, no FLAC, "unhackable" except [2]), but I'll take it together with the benefits.
I desperately tried to replace it with other (Android) devices, such as:
- Unihertz Jelly 2
- Fiio M6
- HiBy M300
but they are all to bulky, slow, miss important features or just feel bad to me.
I love terminals, and to have one on the go is a godsend. I use it for all kinds of things like password storing (my own custom little program[1]), `dict` for looking up some english words, reading man pages during long train rides, managing my VPS through ssh, `ncdu` for clearing up some storage space. I use aria2 cli to download big files often 10 times faster than standard android download system.
If I have to write a small code snippet - I have python and nim installed and always at hand with almost full ide support in neovim. I use completely configurable custom keyboard app[2] with full set of keys[3], so coding on it is a breeze.
[1] - https://codeberg.org/Archargelod/brewpass
For me, RememberTheMilk is a great task app. I mean, I still have problems getting things done, but at least I know they're there.
A more pedestrian app: Bring!, the syncing shopping list app. Great stuff .
Hardware, my jailbroken Kindle Paperwhite. I've used the same device nearly everyday going on about 7-8 years. Still works great and battery life on airplane mode lasts a good 3-4 weeks. I keep airplane mode on permanently, and transfer whatever I need with Calibre.
The developer's also like... super responsive on GitHub, and frequently pushes updates to make it better. Great stuff! :-)
example: x wkp extract 'Apple M4' | @gemini 'Apple M4 release date'
Search for extract about Apple M4 on Wikipedia and parse it using Gemini AI
Things. So simple yet powerful.
Basecamp is incredible for collaboration.
Obsidian. SublimeText.
Recently started using n10.app and it does help with focus.
Ruby is such a beautiful language. I feel grateful every time I use it.
CraftCMS is small and perfect.
Been using for a year mostly for reading, now I can't go anywhere without it. Large screen, reasonably good to view sites or read a book.
https://hw.leftium.com (https://hackerweb.app + https://hckrnews.com + α)
And
Mind mapping software freeplane (open source)
