The Forma is here, and I have a few comments:

• The Forma is about 15 grams lighter than the Paperwhite; wider-but-thinner form factor makes it feel downright wispy.
• The hardware quality isn’t up to Kindle snuff. The sleep/wake power button barely depresses, while the page-turn buttons wiggle in their seats. Not a deal-breaker though. And hey: page-turn buttons.
• The Kobo interface is simple and accessible, but there’s an inexplicable use of italics in the menus that looks terrible.
• The screen auto-brightness adjustment goes through many shades and levels of brightness before settling in one place. It’s not a show-stopper but it feels half-baked.
• Text on screen looks great.
• Calibre works just fine for installing books; you can de-DRM your Amazon purchases and move them over to your new device.

In all, unless you’re married to the Kindle and Amazon’s ecosystem, the Kobo Forma is a great ereader. I’d snap one up, as the Sage is more expensive and has, to my mind, superfluous features if you don’t want to mark up PDFs on your book reader.

Behrouz Bakhtiari, writing on “Towards Data Science:

Based on the results of this study, if used as the first word, the word Aries can correctly identify the existence of approximately 2.07 letters on average and the correct spot of approximately 0.6 letters, on average, will be correctly identified.

A word on Wordle

Andy Slavitt’s excellent “In the Bubble” podcast recently featured noted vaccine expert Paul Offit. Some of Offit’s comments:

• Booster doses give you increased protection from serious illness for 3-4 months
• In children, almost all hospitalizations occur in unvaccinated kids
• “breakthroughs” are not mild cases–mild infections are expected and desirable outcomes compared to the alternative (serious illness)
• you are less likely to suffer serious illness having been infected or vaccinated than you are to experience serious reinfections of the flu

Worth a listen.

Inbound is a Kobo Forma e-reader. The Forma is not the latest and greatest large-size e-reader from Kobo, but the last generation of this particular size. It’s selling at a better price¹ than the e-reader I have been coveting since I purchased a Kindle Paperwhite some five years ago, the Kindle Oasis.

I decided on the Kobo after reading a few articles my Jason Snell, who reads way more books than me. He lauds Kobo’s typography and price, two things that could be improved from the Oasis. It also has better Libby/Overdrive support.

Changing platforms and devices always involves due consideration, and moving from Kindle to Kobo means moving from Instapaper to Pocket.

Instapaper, created by Marco Arment, employed an ingenious service whereby it would send an ebook digest of articles you added to Instapaper to your Kindle. At the time, Amazon’s Whispersync service was a defining feature of the device; this allowed for purchases–and Instapaper downloads–without a costly data plan attached to the Kindle.

Even under new ownership, Instapaper still sends digests to your Kindle , and it’s amazing. In fact, I don’t see a particular reason to use Instapaper outside of it, since most major browsers support a full screen, distraction-free version of the article you’re reading.

To be clear, this feature by itself isn’t enough to make me choose one platform of the other, although it did occur to me–after having ordered the Kobo–that my Instapaper flow would be disrupted. There’s no Instapaper support on Kobo.

But there is Pocket on Kobo.

Pocket is an Instapaper-like read-it-later service. I knew I had tried Pocket out; I reset my password and my saved articles were still there. It was late 2011 when I did. What was I reading?

• Joe Kissell’s review of Nisus Writer Pro 2²;
• A bleak, poignant essay by David Rakof about cancer screening and the human interactions that fail to soften the blow of the seriousness of the undertaking;
• Lodging for a friend’s wedding;
• A funny but embarrassing video of a college acquaintance, drunk, who has publicly become both sober and fit;
• an article on fiscal austerity;
• How not to Kill a Cyclist;
• An argument against using test scores to measure teacher effectiveness;
• How to use Launchbar;
• An article about Obama’s popularity;
• children of hoarders;
• and article on ODD

There was more, but they’re all interesting to me, even now.

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But that wasn’t my way as a school psychologist; I worked alone, doing my own thing, and my reports were my own. Everyone used the district-issued Windows box, while I carried a Mac around. I have written about this before, using Nisus Writer and even LaTeX to keep things interesting.

I don’t use Nisus at all these days, although I would were I writing psychological evaluation reports.

This year’s Upgradies on the Upgrade podcast turned me on to Noir, a 2.99 USD Safari Extension that enables a dark mode view of any website that doesn’t offer one (when your device is in Dark Mode). It’s a cure for bright white websites that blind you when you’re browsing in bed. Worth the purchase, and then some.

This deceptively simple extension offers a host of configurable options, including iCloud sync for settings, the ability to dim images, and a keyboard shortcut for toggling Noir. Mac and iPad/iOS.

Noir

I’m late in getting this out, but each year I like to list new software that I’ve been using and call out the evergreen mainstays. Instead of my best of list from the past year, I’m calling this my essential list for the new year.

The Newcomers

Newcomers are apps I either discovered this year or haven’t highlighted in previous posts.

Brave

Working in a school district, for many, means using Google’s ~~GSuite~~ Workspace for Education. Chrome is the obvious choice, but Chrome is bad. Microsoft Edge is better, and Chromium-based, but Brave is a nice choice, with less window (ahem) chrome, tab search, Brave shields, and the ability to make standalone apps from frequently used sites.

Excel and Sheets

I’ve never called out Excel in any of my previous articles, but the truth is, I use it for work, and constantly. I use it to scrutinize data, count students per program for scheduling, and many other similar tasks. Zi make prodigious use of pivot tables. Likewise, I use Google Sheets and work for smaller tasks, and share (and collaborate) with others. I like Numbers plenty, but simple things that I can do easily in Excel and Sheets are needlessly complicated in Numbers.

Workflowy

Workflowy is an outliner that you can use for notes, monitoring to-dos, outlining procedures, planning vacations, and anything else you might use an outliner for. Backlinks and mirrors, tags, and date support make this a personal knowledge information manager. The iOS applications are not up to snuff with the web or Electron Mac version, but they’re good enough if you fall in love with Workflowy, as have I.

Arq

I wrote about Arq when I set it up as an offsite backup strategy for my home Mac Mini. On the one had, I don’t use Arq daily in the sense that I interact with it (in fact, I barely ever launch it). Instead, every night, Arq backs up my data and reports any problems. I’ve had a couple of failures which I attribute to flaky internet. Otherwise, it just works.

MimeStream

MailMate is for work; Mimestream is for my home Gmail account. It looks like a Mac app, but understands Gmail in all the weird ways Gmail expresses itself. Mac-assed Mac app features like dragging messages out of the application window and onto the Desktop don’t work, but it’s in beta (and free, for now).

Hook

Hook is more plumbing than an app you interact with, but what it does should be an essential feature of all software: it copies links to files or data within files, and puts a link on your clipboard. This notion of working dispenses with the need to choose one app to rule your workflow, or to use apps that generate files that you can organize by folders. There’s plenty to say about Hook, and I took a quick look here.

Mosaic

I am a longtime user of Better Snap Tool, which does one thing that I like: emulates Windows’ Aero Snap. Mosaic puts a useful spin on the design, with drag areas

The Evergreen

Evergreen apps are not new to my software arsenal, and I have likely written about them in my annual essential post. They merit inclusion, though, for being stalwarts that I count on.

Fantastical

Fantastical makes adding Google Meet data to my work schedule seamless. Part of Fantastical’s allure is purely aesthetic, while other features–calendar groups and event proposals–are interesting but not useful to me. I did finally subscribe after sticking with the features from version 2 for a time. Across all three device class in the Mac ecosystem, it’s the most integrated and elegant calendar solution.

OmniFocus

Nothing new here: OmniFocus is the where everything I have to do or have to remember goes. The review is crucial, and OmniFocus integrates this into the software like no other task manager. I’ve been running the iOS and iPadOS betas of version 4 and OmniGroup are showing proving their commitment to thoughtful, useful changes and crowdsourcing suggestions.

MailMate

Still the king: Mailmate pairs a spartan UI with a powerful email engine. I rely on its search and smart folder functionality. MailMate is a Mac-assed Mac app for email.

DEVONThink

Keep It is gone, and DT is back. Version 3’s UI is refreshed and beautiful. Sync uses iCloud and is fast. Backlinks and translocations tick all the right PKM checkboxes. Markdown support is mature, and stylesheets let you move from editing in plain text to rendered beauty. You can fiddle, indefinitely, but it’s a valuable workhouse from a venerable developer in the Mac app space.

Drafts

I use Drafts on all of my Apple devices; it most cases, it’s where I start something that I will move to another application: OmniFocus, iA Writer for a post, MailMate, or DEVONThink. I often clip something I see that I want to post here on Uncorrected on my iPad, reading later at night or early in the morning, and then push it to MarsEdit once I’m done with it. The current version supports color themes, and the file type support includes both Markdown and Taskpaper. It’s I can, for example, start a Taskpaper list in Drafts and move it over to OmniFocus when I’m done thinking and writing out the steps to the project. It’s a great app, and an affordable subscription. I suspect that I could, without much effort, replace many of the applications on this list with Drafts. It’s that good.

NetNewsWire

Mac-assed Mac app emblematic of an era I miss very much. Competes with Reeder, of course, but the Smart Folders alone are worth a spin. Plus, it’s free.

MarsEdit

I don’t start writing in MarsEdit, but I publish most of my posts to Uncorrected using this Mac-assed Mac app.

iA Writer

Outside super-short posts that begin in Drafts and roll over to MarsEdit, this is where I write longish posts. It even helps me omit needless words.

1Password

Evergreen: The first thing installed on any device. I don’t know any passwords except for one, and I don’t use any other password manager.

Launchbar

Evergreen: LaunchBar is probably number 2 on my installation list for a new Mac, and I use it all day, every day. It is one of the examples I would cite about why I prefer working on the Mac over iPadOS day in and out. Does it launch apps? Sure. But it’s my clipboard manager, app switcher, file manager, and the place I go to initiate a web search. I love LaunchBar.

Bartender

Evergreen: Bartender makes your Mac’s menubar manageable. It’s great, it’s simple, and worth every penny.

TextExpander

I use this so much less than I used to, but I keep it around. It’s an example, in my mind, of an application that hasn’t gained much utility since moving to a subscription model, and in this case, the sub model works well for the developer, but not so much for me.

AnyList

Web app AnyList is what I use for storing recipes. It parses webpages for recipes, makes shopping and planning easy, and helps you resize your recipes. It’s not a great Mac app, which is a ding, but it’s a great cross-platform service and iOS app. The sub is cheap, too, and it benefits from regular, incremental improvements.