A return to stock apps? chrisjwilson.me

@ChrisJWilson I’m a big fan of the stock iOS apps and find it very difficult to move away from them. The only thing I don’t use is Podcasts because it just doesn’t work. The other apps work excellently for my needs.

@jasonekratz the sync doesn’t work for me. Podcasts I’ve listened to pop back into the feed like they’re new etc. It’s the only stock app that is this flakey for me.

@jasonekratz I’m sorry. My message came across far worse than I intended (I wanted a “well, I guess we’re different.” But instead it reads “shut up and leave me alone.”) but even with the best intentions it’s still not great. I didn’t really understand your response as you seem to acknowledge my situation (I’m not using all the features from these third party apps so I might as well go simpler) but then say it wouldn’t work for you…which is fine, but it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be fine for me. One true point in your response is Apple’s apps (looking at your reminders) can be more buggy especially when you push them. But the other side is Apple still does favour its own apps. Once again apologies for the short reply the intentions weren’t right and the execution was worse.

@ChrisJWilson I’ve been reviewing my apps lately as well, mostly in a drive to cut down on subscriptions. I’m giving the built in calendar a shot over Fantastical and have been considering reminders over Things.

Since iOS 16 I’ve gone back to the default weather app, but podcasts never works reliably for me.

@ChrisJWilson I need to sort out snipd, readwise and obsidian... this is my new future workflow but I need to get off the hamster wheel first, so I am hanging onto extra apps just in case... But I think I need to sit down and optimise my pipelines...and stick to them 😂

@jasonekratz really appreciate your response and views and you weren’t blunt, I was. Also, using yourself as a reference point is totally sensible, heck I was! There can certainly be a stock app smugness or a “I don’t need fancy tools” elitism and maybe I’m buying into that a bit. I can see four fancy apps where I on paper I like their fancy features but in practice I’m not using them (at all!) - Snipd (okay maybe a bit but it saving moments feels a bit like performative highlighting to me at the moment. ) - fantastical (literally don’t use any of the feature and “natural input” seem to be worse than when I first got it 10 years ago) - Omnifocus (I’m using a bullet journal lite system more!) - spark (especially with the new mail improvements)

The second brain part and critiquing obsidian did grate me the most and I touched on it in the post. I don’t use obsidian for all my contacts, tasks, recipes, etc which is more what i think CJ is against…but I could be wrong. Still, it got me thinking about the value I am/am not getting from my system at the moment.

@philbowell hummm not great about podcasts. The founder of Pompom surprised me by being a stock podcasts user. I couldn’t really get that but there you go! And subscriptions can pile up. (Also weather apps, I’ve lived in four countries and I swear each one had a better weather service/app for each! I.e. Google was terrible in Spain! Dark sky was awful in Poland. )

@adamprocter technically it works very well from my experience. Snipd tends to save AI generated chapters which are about 2-7 minutes long and that can be really handy, but Airr was more refined and usually shorter snippets. But I just found Airr too buggy (Snipd isn’t the most reliable either, especially when not connected to the internet).

@ChrisJWilson I use a lot of stock apps, but (like you) Carrot has to stay. I also use Overcast for Podcasts. Other than those, I use the first party apps for mail, notes, browsing, calendar, reminders, maps, etc.

@Mtt I think podcats might well be another area that I have to go for a third party choice. But I'm willing to try it at least. Maps I suspect too. I used Apple maps for a few years but I had some terrible directions on some trips and left it. But it might have improved since then... Worth a try I guess!

@ChrisJWilson I had horrible luck with Apple Maps for the first couple years, but it has greatly improved since then in my opinion.

@Mtt In Malaysia, Apple Maps’s data is 3-4 years out of date and nobody uses it here to update it manually.

I’m a fan of Podcasts (and was a longtime Overcast user). I still prefer Things over Reminders. I’ve been trying Notes over Drafts, but the sync often doesn’t work.

@KyleEssary @mtt I’ve actually had some bugs with drafts sync recently. Had to log out of iCloud on every device then log back in (and of course forgot the laptop which meant I had a user generated bug!) it seems solid since then. I also don’t really think of drafts as a notes app (although it totally could be) but a writing scratch pad. I know that could just be a notes app to (most?) people but it’s different to me. In theory, I could just use notes 😬