Defaults

The Hemispheric Views podcast that I was on the other week had a fun Duel of the Defaults episode last week.

Do you use the default stuff that comes with the computer, or something else?

I definitely feel like mine has tended more to the default over the last five years. Here it is.

• Mail Client: Mail.app.
• Mail Server: Migadu. Love Migadu, 💯
• Notes: Bear, sorry @canion.
• To-Do: Scrap of paper and pencil; Reminders for longer-term, remind-me-on-a-day.
  • Though I never use Reminders.app: stuff gets in there via Siri or Fantastical, and Fantastical tells me it’s due.
• iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera, from the Home Screen button.
  • I wish I could turn off the swipe, I only do it by accident and I realise when my phone sets on fire in my pocket.
• Photo Management: Photos.
  • It’s just a decade of chaos in there worth 200GB of my iCloud storage. Mostly photos of whiteboards.
• Calendar: Fantastical/iCloud.
• Cloud file storage: iCloud, and the Synology under the desk.
• RSS: NetNewsWire sync’d with iCloud.
• Contacts: Contacts.
  • Which I brought to the first iPhone from my Nokia, and have never deleted a single one, and they’re all immaculately tagged with the label and the international number format, and I have 1,690 — the vast, vast majority of which I have no idea who they are any more; but if I’ve ever met you, you’re in there.
• Browser: Safari, even for development; I switched to its dev tools last year, they’re terrific.
• Chat: iMessage/Discord.
• Bookmarks: Safari, although I don’t really keep bookmarks.
  • The trick is to set your history to never expire (Safari > Settings > General > Remove history items: Manually), and then every site you’ve ever visited will autocomplete, so why bother with bookmarks?
• Read It Later: null, don’t use; is that -1 points, @canion?
• Word Processing: Pages, or VSCode because I need Vim keybindings.
• Spreadsheets: Excel.
  • Sorry Numbers but nah.
• Presentations: iA Presenter. Lush OMG.
  • Worth downloading for the video that plays when it launches; the only video in all of history that I ask to play again the next time.
• Shopping Lists: A Field Notes notebook and a Mitsubishi 9850 pencil.
• Meal Planning: I keep recipes in Mela.app which is amazing.
• Budgeting & Personal Finance: null unless you count my bank’s iPhone app?
• News: after doom-scrolling Covid for the entirety of 2020 I stopped reading all news as of 2021. I haven’t been to a news site since then. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done for my mental health.
  • Of course, I get news. I see Lucy’s screen; she tells me things; people send me links; we put the radio on. This isn’t a religious thing … I just don’t browse it, myself.
• Music: Apple Music.
  • Typing this listening to Texas’ 1989 (?!!?!) - album ‘Southside’ because it was suggested.
• Podcasts: Overcast.
• Passwords: 1Password.

There’s now 98 99 of these that Robb Knight has collected here.