OmniOutliner 6

Ken Case, at the OmniGroup blog, announcing version six of the company’s venerable outliner:

One of the interesting problems we’ve been pondering is how best to link to documents in native apps. We’ve spent some time refining our solution to that problem, Omni Links, which are now shipping first in OmniOutliner 6. With Omni Links, we can link to content across all our devices, and we can share those links with other people and other apps.

With OmniOutliner, these powerful Apple Intelligence language models are fully under your control. Like all language models, they’re not perfect oracles by any means—and they’re not fundamental to using OmniOutliner. But sample plug-ins leveraging Apple Intelligence are ready for immediate one-click installation, and plug-in authors can integrate these language models with OmniOutliner in all sorts of creative ways.

Two great tentpole features, and a clutch of improvements.

Introducing OmniOutliner 6

Sunday Serial: Callsheet, ExtraBar, and Georges DuBoeuf Beajoulais Nouveau

There’s nothing like the last Sunday at the end of a vacation to inspire the Sunday Scaries! Here’s a list of things to check out to ease your re-entry into the world of work, if that awaits you. I kept up my exercise routine but I do need the routine to keep me on track!

Today’s Joey’s 21st birthday too!

Joey and Aaron
Joey and Aaron

Callsheet

I was enjoying Upgrade’s Upgradies episode over the break, and they mentioned Casey Liss’s Callsheet, which I had tried a while back but never really took to. The truth is, though, that like books, I do need a place to park a kind of TV Show/Movie wishlist. I’ve been trying Sofa for a number of years, and I like it, mostly, except it doesn’t lend itself to the most obvious setup for my use case: a list of things I’d like to watch, and then an archive of things I have watched. Sofa has branched out from TV and Movies to books, restaurants, and all manner of other interests.

Sofa for macOS
Sofa for macOS

Callsheet is a more focused app, showing you popular television shows and movies, which you can pin for later viewing. Callsheet will help you find where to watch a show or movie, and you can dig deep into an actor’s oeuvre if you’re curious about where you saw what’s-his-name before.

Callsheet for iOS
Callsheet for iOS

Interestingly, Mike and Jason crapped on Tapestry, which is an app category that, too, initially found mystifying, but found myself returning to time and again. As I’ve written, I’ve set up the New Reeder and subscribed to it, as it’s a lot less expensive than Tapestry and I still love the original Reeder.

ExtraBar

I’ve really been enjoying Amerpie by Lou Plummer; his tech-focused blog is an endless stream of app recommendations. He highlighted ExtraBar, which proposes an alternative to utilities like Bartender, Ice, and Barbee.

There’s no way to test drive the app, which seems a little scummy to me. I did buy one seat to try it out, and it’s not a simple swap from, say, Bartender to ExtraBar. You have to know a bit out apps that support links, such as OmniFocus, to start setting things up.

This is one of those apps that I’m going to want to get a lot of use out of, but will struggle to find a place for. Just a hunch.

ExtraBar for macOS
ExtraBar for macOS

Georges DuBoeuf 2025 Beaujolais Nouveau

I coworker gifted me a bottle of this just before the holiday, and I was terribly excited to try it after many years. I do believe this varietal was my introduction to red wine, and it really is a great place to dip your toes into the sea of red wine. It’s not to be drunk aged, just glugged after bottling. It’s a lighter, fruitier red, without being a sweet wine. We had some with our grilled chicken thighs last night in fact. Such a fun wine.

Georges DuBoeuf Beaujolais Nouveau
Georges DuBoeuf Beaujolais Nouveau

RSS Reader Shootout

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, remains the backbone of digital newshounds across the web. Podcasts, too, depend upon RSS for distribution. Google used to maintain one of the most popular and best RSS readers, Google Reader, but scuttled it in 2013. Via Nicolas Magand, here’s Cory Doctorow on RSS:

Your RSS reader doesn’t (necessarily) have an algorithm. By default, you’ll get everything as it appears, in reverse-chronological order.

Does that remind you of anything? Right: this is how social media used to work, before it was enshittified. You can single-handedly disenshittify your experience of virtually the entire web, just by switching to RSS, traveling back in time to the days when Facebook and Twitter were more interested in showing you the things you asked to see, rather than the ads and boosted content someone else would pay to cram into your eyeballs.

If you ever bristled at how your social media feeds have targeted the content you see, you should check out RSS instead. The Mac and iOS/iPadOS ecosystem remains a great place to use an array of RSS reader apps.

Here are some of my favorites.

NetNewsWire

NNW is the GOAT! I remember using NetNewsWire Lite back when spending money on software was extravagent, and discovering that you could make your own CSS sheets to style the entries. That was a long time ago; NetNewsWire disappeared for a while after Brent Simmons sold it to NewsGator, where nothing happened to it, but he resurrected it after gaining the rights back to it (NewsGator sold it to Black Pixel).

NetNewsWire on iPad Pro 13”
NetNewsWire on iPad Pro 13”

NetNewsWire is a great RSS reader, and it’s free; Brent won’t even take money for it. It supports a number of RSS feed reader services, but also supports local-only accounts and iCloud sync. It looks like a Mac-assed Mac app, with a menu of feeds to the left, articles list in the center, and the articles themselves on the right side. This layout makes pretty good sense on a Mac, but it’s not necessarily the best option for smaller devices (or form factors). If your preferences in RSS reading are to focus on the articles list and article bodies only, or even just swiping from article to article, you can set up NetNewsWire that way too.

Unread

Unread, since its debut, has always been an iPad and iPhone-first product. It places a premium on look and feel, and presents your feed to you in a clean list, but once you click in to a story, it feels very natural to page from article to article instead of returning to the articles list. It’s a tap- and gesture-based interface, which makes perfect sense on the iPad (which is how I first started using it). The larger the screen, though, the less sense Unread makes. 13” iPad users take note.

Unread on iPad Pro 13”
Unread on iPad Pro 13”

Unread is available as a free version, and it’s incredibly full-featured in its free mode as long as you’re connecting it to a third-party service, such as FeedBin. You can use the free version to sync your RSS subscriptions between devices, but if you want to take advantage of read-it-later service integration, change the icon, and have a faster (cached) reading experience, the subscription is a good option. Plus, you’re supporting an independent software developer.

Navigating in Unread is a gesture-rich experience, full of swipes between panels instead of buttons and controls exposed in the UI. With Unread, you swipe from screen to screen (folders, feeds, articles), and to get to share menu items , adding subscriptions, searching, and settings. It’s a touch-driven interface in a way that’s uniquely iPad and iPhone. It can feel a bit mysterious swiping around for preferences or other controls, but it’s a great way to read on an iPhone or smaller touchscreen. The interface does not scale well to 13” iPads, though.

I have been a longtime Unread user and favor it on the iPad. Its interface allows the reader to effortlessly focus on one article at a time, and it stands apart in terms of look and feel.

Interestingly, there’s a Mac version of Unread. Contrary to the iOS version’s strong opinion on design and presentation, Unread for the Mac is more standard experience compared to the iOS version. For this, I am glad: what makes Unread work on a touchscreen would make it weird on a Mac. It has the most interesting theme collection of any of the Mac apps in this post, and I do find myself using it on the Mac. (I will confess, though, that I don’t read RSS on the Mac very much.)

Unread on the Mac
Unread on the Mac

Even if you don’t use Unread, the share extension is incredibly useful. If I am on a page that offers an RSS feed, I can use the extension to subscribe in Unread, and even file into the FeedBin tag or tags for focused reading.

ReadKit

ReadKit, when it came out, put me in mind of Vienna when it first came out. It was pretty bare bones at first, and I didn’t give it much of a spin before bonding it for other applications. But version 3 on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad is great, with a tasteful theme implementation and support for lots of third-party services. ReadKit has the cleanest minimal layout, and is my favorite on the iPad mini.

ReadKit Icon Themes on iPadOS
ReadKit Icon Themes on iPadOS
Readkit on macOS
Readkit on macOS

Reeder

There’s a new version of Reeder out for Mac/iPadOS/iOS that varies from what is now known as Reeder (Classic); the latter app is a great version of an RSS reader, and was one of the first killer apps for iOS. I can’t ignore Reader Classic in this article, as it’s still supported and available, and possibly my favorite on iPad.

Reeder Classic was one of the first must-have apps for the iPhone for nerds. Developer Silvio Rizzi has continued to update the app, and offers Mac and iPad specific versions that are excellent.

Reeder Classic on iPad is a delightful whoosh of animation in the user interface. Of the apps featured here, it’s the most bespoke in its use of custom animation. Compared especially to NetNewsWire and ReadKit, Reeder has a design language all its own.

Reeder Classic iPadOS
Reeder Classic iPadOS

Reeder Classic only has light and dark modes, with some toggles in between to customize your experience; you can tweak font and font size and a few other details, but unlike ReadKit or Unread, themes are less transformative.

Reeder Classic on macOS
Reeder Classic on macOS

A word about Reeder’s new incarnation: it is looking to be more than your RSS reader. It wants to be your hub for everything you read on the internet. And I think that’s a laudable, if lofty, goal. Going to one app to see all of your news and interests is compelling in theory, but that app has to be feature-rich and be a preferable way to consume said content. Reeder will grab all of the links you throw at it and treat them as a bookmarking service, read it later service, RSS service, YouTube aggregator, and Reddit aggregator. It doesn’t do this using your accounts, however; you point it towards a favorite subreddit, for example, and browse the postings. You can’t interact with the content using the platform’s affordances (ie upvoting Reddit posts). If you’ve tried Icon Factory’s Tapestry, you are familiar with Reeder’s feature set.

I think this new version of Reeder shows a lot of promise. It’s not for me by itself right now (I don’t think it’s a better RSS reader than either NetNewsWire or Unread), but it’s an exciting rethinking of what a news reader can be. One of my favorite features is being to shunt content (such as links) using a share sheet action from Safari to drop articles into Reeder for later review.

New Reeder on iPadOS
New Reeder on iPadOS

Fiery Feeds

Fiery Feeds is an interesting RSS reader. Like the others mentioned, it supports Feedbin and other backend services. It offers its own smart searches recipe system as well, and a couple of the demo searches–“Hot Links” and “Low Frequency”–are interesting presentations of your feeds.

Fiery Feeds on iPad mini
Fiery Feeds on iPad mini
Fiery Feeds on macOS
Fiery Feeds on macOS

Fiery Feeds has some of the most interesting layout options available on the iPad, and for that reason alone, is worth a download.

Actions and Extensions

Finding a new feed is always exciting, and adding it to your RSS readers is, ideally, a low-friction event. The manual way–long-pressing on the link and copying the URL, switching to your RSS reader, and pasting in the URL–is a fine way to collect new feeds, but some of the RSS apps I’ve been using include either Actions or Extensions to automate the process.

Both NetNewsWire and Fiery Feeds reveal their application as a Favorite in the Sharing Actions list when you long-press on a feed URL; Unread offers to subscribe to the feed for you using a share extension. Unread will also allow you to save an article to its read it later service, which requires a paid subscription. Readkit offers something similar, but I don’t use read-it-later services in my RSS applications (I like Safari’s just fine).

Themes

Unread brings its iOS-style color themes over to the Mac; there are a bunch of dark and light themes with different colors to suit just about any taste. NetNewsWire and Reeder use macOS’s light and dark themes, but NetNewsWire supports separate themes for the article pane (where you read an article). This invokes the original’s support for CSS and fond memories of goofing off during meetings cobbling themes. Inspecting the .nnwtheme package reveals that this is exactly what they are. The other readers feature a variety of color schemes in their appearances panes, but they’re more subtle than Unread’s visual overhauls. Fiery Feeds stands out, however, not only because of the themes supported (you can create your own or download themes from their directory), but because of the number of inventive layouts you can specify for your device. It’s a great affordance to scale from larger devices to smaller devices.

Syncing

All of the RSS readers I’ve tried support syncing with a number of popular RSS services (I use Feedbin) if you like to use a back-end service. iCloud sync is also included. If you wanted a completely free solution across all of your Apple devices, NetNewsWire and Reeder Classic will do the trick.

Freemium

ReadKit only allows you to subscribe to up to 20 feeds on the free tier. Unread offers a wealth of customization options with a sub, but it’s very full featured without one. You can’t pay for NetNewsWire even if you wanted to, and while that would normally give me pause, knowing the developer, Brent Simmons. I suspect it will be around for a long time.

Feature NetNewsWire Unread Reeder ReadKit Fiery Feeds
Sharing Action or Extension Action Extension No No Action
Hookmark Yes No No Yes No
iCloud Sync Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Mac & iOS Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Pricing Free Freemium Free Freemium Freemium
Themes Yes (Articles) Yes Light/Dark Yes Yes
Timeline Sync No No Yes No No
Widgets Yes Yes Yes No Yes

Conclusions

I ultimately don’t like any one RSS reader more than another enough to declare One Reader to Rule Them All; I do like NetNewsWire on the Mac best of all, but Unread’s Mac version is a solid implementation of a more traditional Mac app interface, too, and I often find myself using it. On the iPad Mini and iPhone, I probably like Unread the most, because it’s the most expressly designed for a touchscreen, but on a larger iPad, I find myself gravitating towards Reader Classic; on a large screen, Unread doesn’t scale and there’s a lot of wasted space. ReadKit is solid on any iOS screen.

The New Reeder is perhaps the most interesting and adventurous design in that it supports more than just RSS. It is, it a sense, a post-RSS reading app: it’s designed to be a central hub for a variety of information sources, including Reddit and YouTube in addition to RSS. It’s a more manual curation process of disparate streams you want to follow; it breaks out of the mode of consuming content via singular apps connected to specific services.

Sunday Serial: The Week Between 2025

It’s been a quiet few days since Christmas here in our bucolic corner of South Jersey. Friday was just lazing about, and yesterday was a quick trip to Bellview for some wine and cheese before sushi with Aaron (Joe was working). My morning have been punctuated by reading a bit and then farting around with my Mac before exercising. We’re going to cook our “free” ham from Shop Rite today, since we didn’t need the turkey when we qualified for that.

Fishwife Slow-Smoked Mackerel with Chili Flakes

I’ve been grabbing all manner of canned fish for our winery trips; it’s a chance to pile on some protein and avoid some of the carbs that might otherwise tempt me. I’ve see this Fishwife brand at ShopRite a bunch of times, and while the art on the box is fetching, the price has put me off. They’re on sale right now and I grabbed a can of the mackerel and the sardines; Aaron and I split the mackerel yesterday at Bellview while Rhonda watched in horror. Simply the best canned fish I’ve had to date. I’m going to stock up today when we run over for some provisions.

Fishwife Tinned Mackerel and Sardines
Fishwife Tinned Mackerel and Sardines

Apple Fitness+ Yoga

I have an estranged friend who used to swear by yoga for both fitness and mental health. I tried it a few times by awkwardly watching workouts on my iPad in the basement, and I liked it enough to get a cheap yoga mat. I tried a few workouts back in 2022, and the idea hit me a couple of weeks ago–this would be a nice diversion from the usual rowing grind. I tried a 40-minute workout and loved every second of it.

I recalled being impressed at the reported calorie burn back in 2022 when I tried some Yoga workouts, and was disappointed with the report from my most recent workouts. Maybe being 230+ pounds makes that kind of exercise more calorically intensive. Still fun though.

Fitness app screenshot showing workout sessions and calorie burn for December 2022 and November 2022.
Fitness app screenshot showing workout sessions and calorie burn for December 2022 and November 2022.
Fitness app screen showing workout sessions and calorie burn for December 2025 and November 2025.
Fitness app screen showing workout sessions and calorie burn for December 2025 and November 2025.

Melty Brie Plates

Rhonda’s been making these melty brie plates since we had one at Cedar Rose winery not long ago. It was our favorite at Bellview until they stopped serving it. We got some brie at Bagliani’s yesterday, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we had one later today.

Brie Plate
Brie Plate

Essential Software for 2026

Looking back at the applications I rely on for work and personal things, here’s at list of the Mac, iPad, and iPhone applications I see myself using going into 2026. I’ve been cobbling these lists together for years! Stalwarts and new apps abound.

Ulysses

I tried Ulysses again after a couple of trials that never resulted in me subscribing. I realized that it’s close to perfect for my needs for writing here on Uncorrected. I resisted the idea of a database-based app instead of just using whatever I wanted (iAWriter, Typora, BBEdit) organized into folders in the Finder, but it does a good job of posting with pictures to WordPress. I had to learn the hard way that something breaks down on the trip from Ulysses to WordPress if I don’t reduce the file sizes, a problem I don’t have using MarsEdit on the Mac. There’s a Shortcut I discovered that I can use to get photos out of Photos and resize/covert them for WordPress. Pretty great. Ulysses also looks awesome and feels at home on the Mac and the iPad. It has useful organization features. I love this app from tail to snout.

Notes

So. Many. Notes. Apps. I’ve tried so many: Bear, iAWriter, DevonThink, Drafts, OneNote, EverNote, Alternote, Editorial, NVAlt… Along wit to-do apps, notes apps are their own entertainment industry masking as productivity. That’s not to say a good notes app can’t help you be productive; they absolutely can. Commitment is the key.

I tried Notes’ Smart Script out when it debuted on one of the iPadOS 18 betas and, while I had embraced (or resigned myself) to using Onenote after moving back to the Mac from Windows, Smart Script compelled me to make the move. It turns out, Notes is great in a lot of other ways, too: there’s a wiki link-like function now, and the formatting is limited but focused.

An inspiration for narrowing and focusing, reducing options:

Freedom grants the opportunity for greater meaning, but by itself there is nothing necessarily meaningful about it. Ultimately, the only way to achieve meaning and a sense of importance in one’s life is through a rejection of alternatives, a narrowing of freedom, a choice of commitment to one place, one belief, or (gulp) one person. –Mark Manson, the Subtle Art…

One thing I hate about Notes is the general indifference to folders. You can next notes up to five levels deep, but Notes won’t search for a folder if you organize that way. It’s terribly painful to file notes if you let them get out of hand for a while. I hope they make it easier one day. I hold up DEVONThink’s filing capabilities in my mind as the gold standard for how you should be able to file in an application.

Safari

In the same vein, I don’t really browser hop much, but I have tried to employ more of Safari’s affordances. First on the list is the Reading List: It’s ubiquitous across your Apple devices, and offers a great reading mode. Using Profiles has made keeping work and home stuff separate. And it’s still fast. I have Shortcuts and AppleScripts and more that automate Safari for me. It’s always running. I confess to having great affection for the old Camino browser, which was I think the first Cocoa browser to debut on Mac OS X back in the early days, when we longed for non-Carbon, pure Cocoa experiences on our Macs. But it eventually went away, and happily, Apple debuted Safari.

Focus Modes

Not an app, I know, but a macOS/iOS feature: in combination with luminaries like Safari, OmniFocus, and Fantastical, I’m able to narrow distractions and, ahem, focus depending upon my context. I have a work focus, personal, weekend, vacation, and sleep focus, all of which I use daily. I’m hoping MailMaven will soon support focus modes.

Focus Modes allow you to set application-level restrictions on notifications you get from applications depending upon the time of day, location, or other criteria. I can make sure that I don’t see work email notifications when I’m on vacation, and likewise hide personal notifications when I’m at work. I can hide my work to-do list in OmniFocus on the weekends, but make sure work items are front and center during the work week. The only thing about Focus Modes that I don’t like is that I waited so long to use them.

MailMaven

I cancelled my Mimestream subscription in June because I was pretty sure that I was going to move to MailMaven. I have been using it for just about everything, home and work. I do still love MailMate, and despite the lure of having all of my email in the thoughtfully crafted MailMaven, I don’t see myself moving away from it for work email. But there’s a lot to like with MailMaven, and I keep it running on my desktop Mac all day.

Moves

I try a lot of Mac utilities when something looks like it would scratch an itch. I tried Moves with little expectation that it would stick, but I have to say, I really miss it when it’s not running (which is never), and one of the first things I miss when I use my iPad docked is Moves.

Moves lets you move and resize windows on your Mac using the trackpad and a keyboard shortcut: no more click and hold to drag and resize. It doesn’t sound like it, but It’s surprisingly useful. Essential, no less.

Kagi Search + Assistant

I knew well before I ran out of “enough searches to get you going” that I liked Kagi enough to consider a subscription. What I didn’t anticipate was how much I like the AI assistant. You can switch AI models, and it is blissfully free of the obsequious compliments Copilot was buttering me up with. I made a shortcut of the URL and saved it as an app on my iPhone and iPad Home Screen, and things are just ducky.

Yoink

I don’t care if it’s been on the list year after year: Yoink is infrastructure for me. I constantly drag files to the shelf and share or otherwise move them. I just love it. I wish I could figure out how to make use of it on iOS and iPad, but it’s enough on its own on the Mac.

OmniFocus and Planned Dates

My strategy with OmniFocus, for a long time, was to flag tasks that I considered most urgent, and ideally to be completed during the week, and the defer those I didn’t think I’d be able to work on that day.

That didn’t always happen, but that’s not the point. A new feature introduced this year, Planned dates, let me continue this practice, but further winnow my list (using a Perspective) by assigning planned dates instead of (mis)using defer dates. OmniFocus users have always known that using defer dates this way was a hack, but it did its trick. Planned Dates rescue the otherwise-useful defer date feature, preserving its utility.

Planned dates aren’t due dates; there’s no suggestion that this task must get done today. It’s exactly as it sounds: I’m planning on doing this today. If I don’t? I can move the Planned date. It’s a great way to plan your day and your week, and you can easily create perspectives that show you your planned tasks, separated by the day you plan to do them. You can hide everything except for your today list, and poof: suddenly, you have the OmniFocus you’ve been wanting for years. It’s such a small thing, but emblematic of the purposeful, thoughtful way that OmniGroup iterates on its applications.

I’ve tried Things, Asana, and ToDoist, to name my most notable digressions, but I always come back to OmniFocus. Planned dates make it hard to imagine leaving ever again. It’s an app that harbors lots of things I don’t necessarily want to do, but am obliged to do; OmniFocus brings peace of mind when you feel overwhelmed, and its a joy to use every day.

TabTab

One of the things I liked about using Edge and Chrome during my Windows phase was tab search; you tap a key command, and either browser will give you a vertically oriented list of your open tabs, which you can search.

Safari has the same feature, but I don’t love it; it shows a tile board of tabs, which takes up way more information than I need. I really just need to see the title of the URL, and a dense list works just fine.

There are a handful of ways to recreate the Chrome or Edge experience in Safari, if that’s your browser of choice, but I really like TabTab the best. You get way more in your search results than just Safari tabs, but it looks great and the search works. It’s got a great animation upon being invoked.

Glass

I signed up for Glass years ago but never subscribed. With my renewed interest in taking pictures and sharing them online, I thought that I should check out Glass again. I love the idea of Glass and its effectiveness of keeping a lid on the photo shitposting you often get with social media. Glass users seem to pick some of their best work to share, and the service itself offers you a chance to see photos categorized (wide angle, landscape, long exposure, for example) without the user necessarily having to tag his or her samples. You can even view pics organized by camera models or lenses, which can be helpful if you’re curious about how a lens or body might meet your wants and needs.

New Reeder

If I recall correctly, the new Reeder came out before Tapestry. I tried it and even subscribed before cancelling the subscription, and then when Tapestry came out, I tried it, too, and realized that it was pretty cool that the developer of one of my favorite RSS readers had come out with a rev to the venerable Reeder before IconFactory released Tapestry.

Both apps enable you to add feeds of many stripes to the app: RSS feeds, sure, but Reddit feeds, YouTube feeds, and more. It’s a more manual configuration experience, but it’s a great way to curate different kinds of feeds. It hasn’t replaced RSS for me, but it’s a cool distillation of RSS feeds and other content I don’t want to miss. Reeder is a steal compared to Tapestry, so I went back and hit the subscription button

Bike

I will always have a text editor of some stripe running on my Mac. I generally try to use Notes for this type of writing, but there are times when I need to start writing from left to write, top to bottom, and a text editor seems like the way to go. It’s been BBEdit, it’s been TextMate, it’s been Drafts… there have been many. Recently, it’s been Bike, because I love to use outliners, but Bike will let you ignore that mode of writing and just scrawl away in rich text. I just love it and I use it all the time. I find Jesse’s stuff fascinating and inspiring and simple.

Typinator

I don’t have a good reason to switch from TextExpander; it’s a fine app. I have an old subscription at the intro rate, back when Smile bought them and suffered the umbrage of a thousand raging nerds who couldn’t believe it went from free to subscription. Smile surely knew what they were doing moving away from it being solely a Mac app (and I appreciated that it was available on Windows when I started using Windows 11), but I don’t feel the same affection for it as I used to. I got Typinator on sale and it’s essentially the same feature set, but it has a Mac-ish feel to it that I appreciate. There’s a beta out now and potentially an iOS version (although I don’t think it will work in a way that’s useful to me).

Hookmark Pro + Hookmark Pal

I’ve been using Hook (now HookMark) for years; It’s a great way to link files, notes, and tasks together. One pain point, though, was that all of the linking I’d do on my Mac disappeared once I was using my phone or iPad. This year’s release of Hookmark Pal changes things, such that links I’ve created on the Mac work on my other Apple devices. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but it’s been a nice addition to an otherwise essential feature.

Cleanshot X

I purchased Cleanshot X about a year ago when it was featured in a Bundlehunt deal. I didn’t think, at first blush, that the features would justify switching away from macOS’s default screenshot features, but after using it over the past year, I’ve come to rely on it. I love how screenshot previews hang out in the corner of your window, instead of vanishing just before you get to mouse over it for use, and the editing and markup features are handy.

Fantastical + Cardhop

Fantastical has been my calendar app on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone for a long time. In my current job, I love being able to send meeting proposals to groups of people and let Fantastical sort out the details. Its support for Focus Modes is excellent, allowing me to tune out work when I need some time away, but show my professional obligations based on my when and where.

I wasn’t much of a Cardhop user, but its Google Directory integration is better than Apple’s Contacts app, so I use it all the time to find the email addresses of colleagues and other professional contacts in the organization.

Anylist

Since I’ve joined Rhonda in weekly grocery shopping, I appreciate Anylist more than ever before. The meal plan feature helps me keep track of our dinner plans for the week, and prompt me when we forget about meals we’ve had (or not had) recently. And while we have availed ourselves of the pickup service, which shortens our trips to (and, generally, frustrations with) the grocery store, the grocery list feature is a godsend when we pop into the store to pick up a few items that we like to choose ourselves. It has great Siri integration, too.

Foodnoms

I’ve written a fair amount about losing weight since December of 2022. I lost most of it without logging my food, but my fears of putting it back on let me to understand more specifically how many calories I was eating so that I could get myself back on track. I use FoodNoms to track my calories every day, and measuring my food has helped me understand some larger principles I can apply when I can’t log my calories.

Wallaroo

Searching for iOS wallpaper isn’t a chore, per se, but it’s nice to have an app prompt you with high-quality wallpaper from an accomplished developer with bespoke taste. Wallaroo, from IconFactory, provides a small number of wallpapers according to season, holiday, popular culture, all for a cheap subscription.

Jetpack

Jetpack isn’t exactly exciting; it’s WordPress infrastructure. It’s helpful for seeing the hits on your site and for repairing some goofy damage if you tried to upload some too-large photo assets.

Tally

Related to FoodNoms: I use Tally to summarize my snacks and wine when I’m out so I can log them later on. It’s such an open app, deceptively simple, but infinitely configurable.

Plate Calculator

I got back into weight lifting this summer, just adding squats and the benchpress in on the weekends. This simple app lets me figure out how many plates I have to add to the bar. I still use Wendler 5/3/1 but with a Numbers spreadsheet instead of an app. It’s fun.

Tripsy

You can absolutely plan a trip using Notes, or Craft, or PDFs in a folder, or whatever other version of organization suits your fancy. I love how Tripsy organizes everything for me, and even sucks reservations out of emails and puts them on my calendar. It’s fun to lavish over the details and throw everything at Tripsy.

Preview

Preview has been one of my most used apps on the Mac forever; I use it to read and mark up PDFs all the time. I’m super happy to have it on the iPad now; PDFs were viewable natively only using the Files app, and that never was a good user experience.

Calcbot

Calcbot has been my go-to calculator on iPhone for years. It’s fine for basic calculations that I need, but the conversion features make it a must-have. I miss having it on the Mac.

Sunday Serial: TineeOwl Arctic Case foriPad Mini, FastScripts for macOS, and Bellview Winery’s San Marco ’23

There’s a slow, steady fall of snow outside today: it’s a dense, heavy snow. Rhonda and I enjoyed dinner at Greenview Inn Friday night; I had the duck. Yesterday, we check out Bellview’s December cheese plate, which was “Santa and Friends.” We supplemented with some salami from Bagliani’s and some sardines for me.

Greenview Inn’s Game Special–Duck Breast
Greenview Inn’s Game Special–Duck Breast
Bellview’s Santa and Friends
Bellview’s Santa and Friends

TineeOwl iPad mini

My general rule of thumb is that an apple-branded case or folio is probably the best for my usage; I’ve largely stuck to Apple iPhone cases (most recently, a Beats case) and Apple’s Magic Keyboards and Folios for iPads. I have a nice green Apple folio for my iPad mini, which I like a lot.

The thing about the mini is, it begs to be carried around and not stuffed in a bag. I like to keep it in the car with me, on the passenger seat when it’s empty, and put it on the counter when I’m making drinks and things.

Apple’s folio has a great texture, but you don’t want to get it wet or stain it. One of the things that make their folios great–magnetic connection to the device–keep it from being reliable protectors in the event of a drop.

Enter the TineeOwl Arctic case. It’s more of a wrap-around phone cover, a clear rubbery plastic case that protects the back and sides of the iPad, with a decent lip to keep the screen from contacting a table or desk surface if you lay it face down.

TineeOwl’s Arctic Case for iPad Mini
TineeOwl’s Arctic Case for iPad Mini

The TineeOwl Arctic has grooves for the iPad’s TouchID wake/sleep button and the Apple Pencil, so it doesn’t interfere with the Mini’s helpful touch features.

It can feel a little rubbery when you’re reading and holding the device from the side; the edge of the case will pull away from the device, depending upon how you’re holding it. That can feel cheap and one imagines serial removals of the case will one day render it too stretched out to be useful. On the other hand, in a landscape of overpriced accessories, TineeOwl’s pricing is such that you don’t worry about it.

And hey: now I can see the six-color logo sticker on the back!

TineeOwl’s Arctic Case for iPad Mini
TineeOwl’s Arctic Case for iPad Mini

FastScripts

FastScripts is a utility from Red Sweater Software (purveyor of Mac-assed Mac apps, including the excellent MarsEdit) that collects your AppleScripts and gives you access to them via Finder’s menu bar. You can set a global keyboard shortcut to expose the menu, and even per-script shortcuts, and search your scripts. I’ve tried pushing a lot of my favorite Applescripts to Shortcuts, but in cases where I’m just executing scripts via Shortcuts, why bother?

FastScripts
FastScripts

One of my favorites is this script to create what I call a “classic” Finder window: no sidebar, toolbar, nuthin.

tell application "Finder"
    activate
    if (count of Finder windows) = 0 then
        make new Finder window
    end if
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Finder"
        try
            -- Toggle the Toolbar
            if exists menu item "Hide Toolbar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1 then
                click menu item "Hide Toolbar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
            else if exists menu item "Show Toolbar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1 then
                click menu item "Show Toolbar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
            end if

            -- Toggle the Status Bar
            if exists menu item "Hide Status Bar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1 then
                click menu item "Hide Status Bar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
            else if exists menu item "Show Status Bar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1 then
                click menu item "Show Status Bar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
            end if

            -- Toggle the Path Bar
            if exists menu item "Hide Path Bar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1 then
                click menu item "Hide Path Bar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
            else if exists menu item "Show Path Bar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1 then
                click menu item "Show Path Bar" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
            end if

        on error errMsg
            display dialog "An error occurred: " & errMsg buttons {"OK"} default button 1
        end try
    end tell
end tell

Bellview Winery’s San Marco ’23

Bellview owner Jimmy Quarella said the ’23 San Marco was just bottled, but it’s not for sale in said vessel as it has to settle a bit. It is, however, on tap at the winery, and after a taste yesterday, I couldn’t help but commit to a growler to take home. It’s a dry red, medium-bodied by my tastes. I’ve had San Marco blended into other reds they concoct, but this is my first time having the pure distillation.

Bellview Winery’s San Marco ‘23
Bellview Winery’s San Marco ‘23

Thoughts on the Future of Liquid Glass After Alan Dye’s Departure

Adam Engst:

Liquid Glass can look elegant, particularly on the iPhone, but iOS wasn’t unattractive before. More importantly, I haven’t yet felt that Liquid Glass’s vaunted transparency does anything to make me more productive. Despite Dye’s departure (which appears to have been a surprise to upper management), Apple is unlikely to reverse course on Liquid Glass. We can hope that Dye’s successor focuses more on enhancing functionality to better align with the Steve Jobs quote that Apple badly misused when introducing Liquid Glass: “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Macworld:

I hope that means we see a return to the ideas that made Apple software great in years gone by. A stronger emphasis on user experience, an obsession over small details, and a renewed passion for interfaces and controls. An appreciation of the foundational ideas that helped Apple’s products reach the pinnacle of software design.

Eric Schwarz:

I actually really like how Liquid Glass came out on iOS, although it does need some tweaks to be better from a usability standpoint. I hate it on my Mac and would gladly go back to the Leopard through Mavericks era if I could—there’s so much that feels unpredictable and cluttered, despite every marketing blurb being about clarity and focusing on content.

MG Seigler:

It’s obviously insanely hard to overhaul a UI – let alone across multiple major operating systems – but I’m going to go ahead an guess that Liquid Glass will transform to be both less liquid-y and less glass-y starting in relative short order.

Louie Mantia:

I don’t expect any big changes because I don’t think he or Apple are looking at this as an opportunity to undo Jony and Alan’s influence on the company, but I do sincerely think this will all feel better with Lemay’s leadership.

I like a lot of things about Liquid Glass on iOS and iPadOS, but there are some horsey interface elements that I’d rather see gone for good. The Mac might be the least impacted of those three platforms, but it’s my favorite place to be and necessary for me to get things done, and I generally see it as, at best, as livable, and in some cases a serious regression. And OmniOutliner 6’s beta? Yuck. I’m hoping that the swole interface elements shrink and sharpen.

OmniOutliner 5 on ipadOS
OmniOutliner 5 on ipadOS
OmniOutliner 6, with Liquid Glass, on iPadOS
OmniOutliner 6, with Liquid Glass, on iPadOS
The Inspector Button on Tahoe in OmniFocus
The Inspector Button on Tahoe in OmniFocus
The New Reeder on Tahoe
The New Reeder on Tahoe
Drafts’ Menu Bar on Tahoe
Drafts’ Menu Bar on Tahoe
Cot Editor on Tahoe
Cot Editor on Tahoe

Sunday Serial: Black Friday & Cyber Monday Software Deals

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone, and with that, another birthday. In addition to hosting Thanksgiving, my parents took Rhonda, Aaron, and me out to Rocco’s Townhouse in Hammonton to celebrate my turning 51. It was, once again, excellent. I have some duck legs in the sous vide tank right now, which we’ll have around 4 pm before Aaron heads back up to New Brunswick for the final act of his first semester as a Freshman.

Rocco’s Townhouse
Rocco’s Townhouse
Rye Manhattan
Rye Manhattan
Big Meatball at Rocco’s
Big Meatball at Rocco’s

Black Friday is a great time to score some deals on software you’ve been ogling. The other side of that coin: It’s also an opportunity to drop some virtual coin on apps you don’t need, but want. All good! Here are some notables for you Mac nerds. I also ordered a Samsung T9 to replace Rhonda’s iMac’s spinning hard drives, which I’ll repurpose for something else.

Unclutter App Editors Choice

Unclutter has a collection of very cool utilities. It’s also a great way to update your Cleanshot X sub if you’re due soon. I grabbed Downie, which was featured on the latest Talk Show, as well as Forklift 4. I like apps like Forklift for interfacing with Google Drive instead of running the native app.

Take Control Books

Take Control Books is offering 25% titles, and 50% off their subscription-ish Premium tier (free updates to books after iterative updates). I grabbed these:
• Take Control of Photos – Ebook
• Take Control of iPhone Photography – Ebook
• Take Control of Notes – Ebook

Supasend

I tried Supasend when it first came out. I reminds me a bit of Drafts and Remind Faster, both of which apps prioritize input and quick filing to another application (in the case of Drafts, just about any app, and in the case of Remind Faster, Apple’s Reminders).

Acorn

Acorn competes in the same creative space as Pixelmator, and I’ve owned a license since it came out. It’s a photo editor for people who don’t need or want the complexity or expense of Photoshop. Developer Gus Mueller has been creating great Mac software for decades, and Acorn is his crowning achievement.

Retrobatch

I also have been trying out Retrobatch; I take a lot of pics for Uncorrected, and would very much like to streamline my resizing workflow (WordPress doesn’t like photos above a certain size). The excellent MarsEdit will take care of this for you, but I often post from Ulysses, because I like to be able to use my iPad to post as well. Retrobatch’s layout reminds me of Audio Hijack, with modules you string together into a module and save for batch processing images.

Retrobatch Workflow
Retrobatch Workflow

MailMaven

I’ve been using MailMaven since it came out in beta earlier this year, and I have a great affection for it. I can’t stop using MailMate for work email, but I do like having all of my accounts in this productivity beast. I figured I’d pay the first year introductory price and decide if I wanted to continue the subscription after that, but this price was hard to pass out.

DevonThink

DevonThink is an impossibly feature-rich document manager and note keeper. The most recent version, version 4, is available for a 25% discount. I stopped using DevonThink after moving to Windows for a spell, and now that I’m back in the Apple ecosystem, I’ve been using Notes because I love handwriting notes and Notes’ amazing Smart Script.

More Black Friday 2025 Goodies

I was peeking around in Glass for samples of pics taken with the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 7-14mm f/2.8 PRO and saw that they’ve partnered with Darkroom to advertise Darkroom+ for $19.99 for a year. So I grabbed that.

Darkroom
Darkroom

I also have been trying out Retrobatch; I take a lot of pics for Uncorrected, and would very much like to streamline my resizing workflow (WordPress doesn’t like photos above a certain size). The excellent MarsEdit will take care of this for you, but I often post from Ulysses, because I like to be able to use my iPad to post as well.

Retrobatch
Retrobatch

“Lean Into It:” Tyler Stalman Talks iPhone Photography on Mac Power Users

Digital photo expert Styler Stalman joins David Sparks and Steven Hackett on Mac Power Users to discuss iPhone photography. It’s a great listen if you know a bit about cameras and photography (or want to learn) but came to this world from your phone.

  • the ultrawide lens is 13mm, which is “beyond ultrawide” (typicallly 16mm)
  • it’s not as good in low light as the 1x lens
  • 4x is about 100mm: a standard portrait length
  • 5x is 120mm
  • Optical zoom = cropped zoom
  • Don’t pinch to zoom: “be on the numbers” due to how the phone processes images
  • He tries not to use Portrait mode when shooting due to the lack of natural blur compared to the camera’s natural bokeh (“be careful of how much Portrait Mode you use”)
  • The latest selfie camera has a greater pixel count than previous versions
  • Follow the path of least resistance: “Apple wants this to be easy for you”

Clip from MP

Sunday Serial: Kagi Search, Path Finder by Cocoatech, and Andre Agasse Reading Borris Becker’s Tongue

I mentioned last weekend that I was trying to replace the flushing components in the toilet upstairs. The problem I ran into was that I couldn’t spin the nuts off of the bolts in water tank; the metal used in the bolts was softened by all those years of submersion in water, I guess, and not even some strategic spritzes with Liquid Wrench helped.

I mentioned it to our superintendent at work (who was in the process of installing his own bathtub, which made my problem seem tiny), and he suggested using a hacksaw. I ended up using just a hacksaw blade, over a couple of sessions, to cut the bolts between the base of the commode and the tank.

It wasn’t fun but it’s done! We have a freshly refurbished can upstairs. I did the same for the downstairs bathroom years ago. So I can log another home repair to my spreadsheet. Regarding said spreadsheet, I just started it today to keep track of when I service or repair something so I can remember how long it’s been since I tangled with a wary structure, appliance, or some other thing that awaits my attention.

I do a lot of these things in part to save a buck, and to avoid the hassle of trying to find someone to come out and do them for me. I feel like most of my home repairs have a very imperfect version of doneness, as I’m not the handiest of fellas, and always have something in mind I’d rather be doing. But you can’t argue with feeling a sense of accomplishment having fixed something yourself.

Next Friday is another visit to New Brunswick to visit Aaron. I found a host of places to try for dinner, including some intriguing Portuguese joints. I’m second guessing not trying one of those spots (not that it’s too late) because I met a couple at a party last night, and she was from Sayreville. I not a teleologist but I do find such moments of serendipity intriguing. I think we’ll enjoy the Metuchen Inn, though. Looking forward to the visit and the inevitable stop (stops?) at Stokelan Winery.

Do I have to tell you that we’re enjoying some spritzes in this fine fall weather? Rhonda is toasting up some nachos to accompany them using some leftovers from the week.

Nachos
Nachos

I hope you’re doing something that resonates with you from toes to dome. We only have this moment: the past is gone, and the future lies, uncertainly, in the moments, days, and years ahead.

Kagi Search

I’ve been curious about Kagi search since reading about it on Daring Fireball and listening to an interview with one of the developers. I’ve been using Duck Duck Go for a while, and Google, too, and the AI results I get with the latter really have started to bother me. I decided to try Kagi’s trial tier, and while not exciting by any stretch, I found myself very happy with the results I was getting, and when the generous demo bank of searches wore out, I couldn’t see myself going back. It seems a little wild to pay for a search engine, but as with RSS readers, the value proposition is hard to resist.

Path Finder

I’ve been trialing the Finder replacement Path Finder by Cocoatech for years now, but I never found a reason to purchase a license. It popped up on Bundlehunt so I bought a few for my Macs. It’s an interesting twist on the Finder. One of the features I really like is how it displays labels in a window; it’s much less subtle than the Finder, which I like, especially in looking at a folder organized using the Johnny.Decimal system, which I’m currently half-assing. I also really like the Path Navigator feature. Tahoe’s Finder enhancements have been welcome, though. I has a great Yoink-like feature, called the Drop Stack, that lets you move files without opening multiple windows.

Path Finder’s Labels
Path Finder’s Labels

How Andre Agassi Beat Boris Becker

Andre Agassi was a rock star American tennis player who was divisive in terms of his fan base, but was always fun to watch. He evolved, from tennis rebel to statesman, during his career. This video is great, from the tennis angle and from the how-do-I-get-better angle.

Sunday Serial: Underbrush Gum, Michael Caputo’s Six-Color Apple Stickers, and the Shacket

Now this is some fall weather we’re having! Rhonda and I were happy to get to Bellview after a couple of weeks away. It was packed but we found an iron table near the arbor and packed own provisions. The live music featured a drummer I know personally, and the singer/guitarist is Aaron’s former history teacher.

Siesta Saturday at Bellview
Siesta Saturday at Bellview
K and J at Bellview
K and J at Bellview

It’s spritzes while the ribeyes soak in the sous vide tank for a spell.

I have some research to do for our next journey up to see Aaron in a couple of weeks. I also decided to try to fix the leaky toilet in the apartment upstairs, but I can’t get the nuts spun onto the bolts that hold the tank on to shake loose. I hit them with some liquid wrench, so here’s hoping. If that doesn’t work, it’s time for delicate grinder wheel surgery.

Dipping into these kinds of projects always cause me some anxiety: I’ve fixed my share of household problems, but you’re only as good as the last thing you fixed. It’s like a domestic booby trap: one of these days, you’re gonna bite of more than you can chew. I guess it’s all in how you look at things.

Underbrush Gum

I’m generally immune to the bespoke infomercial reels on social media selling products, with one, and now two, exceptions: William Painter sunglasses, and Underbrush Gum. With William Painter, they had a comedian name James Schrader star in breezy, smart commercials for their brand, and they were engaging in the way that the Dollar Shave Club’s ad campaign was. I ended up ordering a pair of the Williams Painters, and I still rock them to this day. I have two pair, in fact.

Underbrush Gum
Underbrush Gum

Underbrush’s commercial is more serious, but I was sucked in by the hand-cut gum and the claim that it can reverse decay. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I wanted to try the gum.

One person who tried a piece said, “I don’t think I’d chew that again,” and Rhonda said it smelled like bug spray on my breath. I’ve enjoyed it, though, and I’m happy with how long both the flavor and texture last chew after chew.

Michael Caputo’s Six-Color Apple Stickers

I saw these on Reddit I think, and it scratched an itch I’ve been carrying for a while now. I’ve always loved the six-color apple logo, as a Mac user since 1993, and an Apple II users since I was a little kid. Only the Studio and phone were spared the sticker treatment.

iPad Mini
iPad Mini
MacBook Air
MacBook Air

The Shacket

Whilst trawling Marshalls for things to wear, I found “The Shacket,” which is basically a flannel shirt designed to be worn with an undershirt, and cut straight at the waist, to be worn untucked. It’s a portmanteau of shirt and jacket, which I appreciate in the vein of the spork, and which has generally been reserved to ladies fashion (a la the skort).

Me and My Shacket
Me and My Shacket

I really like the cheap-o shackets I got, and have been looking for the right weather to wear them: we’re not so formal as we used to be at work, and to be frank, I’ve ignored the dress code in favor of my own sense of what looks good. The line between what looks good vs what’s appropriate is fine, to be sure, but I reserve the right to make my own decisions, because I can. I don’t dress like a slob, and serially strive to look composed even when casual.

Anyway, I was thinking about wearing one of the Marshall’s shackets last week, but I never did. I made up for it today, though.

Kagi News

Kagi News operates on a simple principle: understanding the world requires hearing from the world. Every day, our system reads thousands of community curated RSS feeds from publications across different viewpoints and perspectives. We then use AI to distill this massive information into one comprehensive daily briefing, while clearly citing sources.

Kagi News