Much of 2024 was me flirting with being a Windows user, and trying out software in that ecosystem to make the most of the platform. That was a lot of fun, and there are both delights and challenges on that side of the hobbyist platform. But I love the Mac, and by extension Apple’s mobile devices. Here are some applications I lean on every day and expect to be using in the new year.

OmniFocus: I moved back to OmniFocus after using Todoist for a year. I really like Todoist, but for me OmniFocus is the example par excellence of both what a to-do list manager should be, and an argument for using native apps over web-based solutions.

Apple Notes: As with to-do apps, the notes category of applications is rife with challengers. There are a thousand ways to take notes on your device, many of them good to excellent. What does Tiago say? Pick one. Narrow your focus, as the stoics say. Living with Windows meant embracing OneNote, and I learned that with windows, often the official solution was the best. That’s the case with the Mac, too, in some solutions. And for iPad, it’s Notes. Yeah, writing on the screen hits the battery hard, but smart script is amazing, and while it lacks some of the coolest features of apps like DEVON and Craft and Obsidian (flesh out), it’s a great app, fast sync, smart script, and more. Things it needs…

Soulver : where some people open a spreadsheet for quick math, I always reach for Soulver. I calculate expenses and divy up bills. It’s Excel for the markdown generation.

Ulysses: When an idea comes to me, I open a sheet in Soulver. If it’s an idea that would be made more clear by writing, I start a sheet here. The real reason I started using Ulysses was that I needed something to post to WordPress from iPadOS that supported posting images. Ulysses is secondarily a writing tool, in this regard; I was happy using iA Writer or another Markdown app, but happily, Ulysses is a great one and fun to use. There are some strange UI things going on, and I’m hesitant to engage another database app into my work flow, but there it is.

MindNode Next: I’m really late to the mind mapping game; I like them and find them helpful sometimes, but their usage hasn’t always stuck. MindNode, though, is such a nice app that I’ve always gone back to looking for uses for it. Recent updates have more tightly integrated the relationship between mind mapping and outlining, and as an inveterate outliner, I was happy to use MindNode as an outliner, and then eventually as a mind map. I love the confluence of these two very seemingly different ways to categorizing knowledge.

FoodNoms: during the week between Christmas and new years 2022, I’d resolved yet again to cut back the size of my nightly martini and subsequent wine consumption prion. I had a coupe of goals: sleep better, feel better, and maybe get down one pants size. One year later, during the week between 2023, I enjoyed the fact that I’d lost close to 80 pounds and had gotten down 4 to 6 pant sizes.

Despite this evident success, I worried constantly about gaining it back. Was it a ruse? Was it all a happy accident?

But in the same way I’d found Reframe helpful in logging my drinks, I thought to look for the food equivalent. I wanted to know what I ate and how I did it. How I’d lost the weight.

Apps like Foodnoms help you realize pretty quickly that weighing your food is the best way to really know. I do that now, when I can, and while I could write more about the internal struggle that comes even with successes like mine, I’ll just wrap up by saying that Foodnoms did exactly what I needed it to do, and I continue to learn about nutrition by using the app.

Health: Apple like FoodNoms and ErgData write to the Apple Health app, which serves as a database for your health information, but also a personal health dashboard. I can track my daily activity, sleep, heart rate (resting and otherwise), and other stats. My use of the Health app corresponds directly to my efforts to improve my health, and I look at it multiple times a day.

Fantastical: My go-to calendar on all of my devices. Native on Windows on ARM, no less. I started using the proposed meeting dates feature recently and that, by itself, is worth the cost of the subscription.

ChatGPT: LLMs got big during my Windows phase, so my first real blush with this implementation of AI was through Microsoft’s Copilot app. I liked using copilot a lot, and the Mac and iOS apps were good too. Eventually, though, Microsoft made the app on windows a web app, which I don’t prefer. I could go into the app ecosystem on Windows at this point, but that’s for another post.

Waiting for Siri to catch up, I installed the Chat GPT app on my Mac and other devices. I like it a lot, use it constantly, and am excited to try out newer integrations, including how it works with Notes. It sounds a bit like Microsoft’s long-delayed Recall feature, and I’m excited to take this step. I’m good at capturing info, but organizing and searching are always challenges. Search should, and will I suppose, rule your Mac anew.

ErgData: I row every day pretty much. I use this app to track my stats and recommend interval efforts for me. I got back into rowing using apple fitness, but I haven’t used that in over a year. I got really competitive with myself and a little stats obsessed, but that has calmed down and now I focus on lots of base mileage and zone 2, and toss in intervals to train VO2 max. It’s not an entertaining app by any stretch, but it is crucial infrastructure.

Reddit: there’s a lot of shit on the web. And there are a lot of “experts” writing listicles about topics they know very little about. The same is absolutely true of Reddit, but if you’re looking for how someone solved a particularly familiar itch you have, someone on Reddit probably shared it. It’s fun to help people who are having a problem you already solved, too. I like Reddit a lot.

Carrot: we were on our annual ocean city NJ vacation many, many years ago, and the rain that had kept us cooped up for a few days was still hanging around. We decided to brave the elements and drove north up the island to an area near the boardwalk. The rain continued, but I remembered hearing about Dark Sky on a podcast, and how hyper-specific and accurate it was. I downloaded it from inside our car and learned that the rain was to stop in five minutes. That actually happened, just as Dark Sky forecast, and we went on to enjoy our day.

Since then, I’ve always taken note when tech cognoscenti coalesce around their affection for a weather app. In Apple’s ecosystem, Carrot gets all the love. It’s a great, flexible app, with a strange sense of humor attached to it. I don’t have the same feelings for it that I had for Dark Sky, and to this end, both Apple’s weather app and Carrot vie for my attention (and widget space).

Readwise: Less app, more service, Readwise allows me to review information that I’e highlighted from a variety of sources. Highlights from Kobo and Amazon ebooks, web articles, and other sources are collected in Readwise and only lead to my using it for a few minutes each night while I brush my teeth. I get five highlights to review from my past readings, presented in a schedule I can only describe as random. It’s a great way to revisit information you read and thought worthy of a highlight somewhere. Readwise has a strange and somewhat scattered landscape, but I think the developers’ dream of creating a catch-all for your digital errata is right-headed.

Safari: Using Windows found me trying to stick to one browser for just about everything; I cycled through Brave, Firefox, and Edge, generally using Edge the most. One of the reasons I used to always run two browsers on the Mac was that I’d use Chrome, signed in to my work account, and then Safari for mostly everything else. Edge prompted me to try using Microsoft’s implementation of profiles, which work like they do on Chrome but with an unsurprising Microsoft twist: they require you to have separate Microsoft accounts for each profile. One Microsoft account is plenty, thanks! Can you imagine having to create multiple iCloud accounts to use profiles in Safari? But reengaging with Safari led to my discover that Apple’s implementation of profiles is pretty much like Googles, which is the way it ought to work.

DayOne: I like to write, and especially post here on Uncorrected. I don’t know how most people feel, but reading and thinking make me want to write, and to share what I’m thinking about and writing. I suspect it’s a lot like musicians, who aren’t content to keep what they’re doing confined to the bedroom or basement. But not everything is fit to print, and that’s what DayOne is for: thinking, private thoughts, quotidian journal entries, and things that could, at some point, become a post here. I like being able to text to DayOne, too, for quick thoughts on the go.

Photos: I take a lot of pictures. I use the Photos app all the time to view and edit my pics. As with writing, I like to share them, too.

Other Stuff:
– 1password
– OmniOutliner
– Drafts
– Acorn and Pixelmator
– Pastebot
– TextExpander
– NetNewsWire and Unread
– Shortcuts

Chris Lawley featured this app on a recent YouTube post, and it sounded a bit like creating search indices in Launchbar, but something that would work on iPadOS. Which it does!

Usually, switching search engines means changing the setting for your browser, or navigating to the search’s homepage. The advantage of using something like Launchbar or Raycast to conduct searches is you can switch the engine with a couple of keystrokes.

Xsearch is a Safari extension that interprets characters inputted into the search bar as switches. Depending upon how you set it up, this can search google:

G what’s a good book to read?

Will search google, while

ddg what's a good book to read?

Will search the same in Duck Duck Go. It’s very cool and cheap to boot. It makes me wonder what else you might be able to do with this kind of extension.

Here’s a quick video of what it looks like on iPadOS:

Xsearch on the App Store

I’ve been making coffee at home using this Melita pourover cone with no. 4 papers forever. It’s perfectly serviceable and makes great cup after great cup.

I’ve always fancied a Chemex, however, and even went to some lengths to fashion my own. I did finally get the real deal when I switched jobs in the spring of 2024. I really love making coffee in the office using it, and thought I’d bring it home for the break and see if we prefer one over the other. So far, I find the Sawmill brew from nearby Endgrain a bit toasty for my taste, but I’m curious to try a pot of Melita and see if I feel the same way. I might be grinding a little tight.

I was looking at my Forecast view in OmniFocus this morning, and the list was fully expanded. Because I use defer dates a lot, the expanded Forecast can look pretty intimidating. I can never remember the key command to collapse and expand, so I end up manually doing it in the GUI. I thought this might be a good use of AppleScript, especially since OmniFocus has a scripts folder that you can use to store scripts and then drag them into the toolbar.

I asked ChatGPT to write a script to first collapse, and then another to expand, and then realized I should ask it to make the script toggle the state based on whatever state is currently active:

tell application "OmniFocus"
    tell front document
        tell content of front document window
            set theTrees to trees
            if theTrees is not {} then
                set firstTreeExpanded to expanded of item 1 of theTrees
                set newState to not firstTreeExpanded -- Toggle based on the current state of the first tree
                repeat with aTree in theTrees
                    set expanded of aTree to newState
                end repeat
            end if
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

Here’s what it looks like:

applescript-of-expand-collapse.mp4

It’s in the toolbar too:

This isn’t anything that should have surprised me, but I was making a quick list of things to do for tomorrow and I wondered if I could drag a text list into an OmniFocus project. You’ve been able to drag text all over the place in the Mac forever, so I figured it might work. I opened up a quick Stickies note, made a list of things we need to gather for an appointment, and dragged them into an existing project. Voilà!

Here’s a quick video of what it looks like:

I don’t remember where exactly, but if I recall correctly John Siracusa discussed setting Finder windows to look more like classic Mac OS windows. A pretty typical Finder window, invoked anew in Mac OS 9, would look like this:

I grew to prefer list view in OS X, which is my default these days. I also like column view, but never use icon view. List view isn’t new to the Mac; it looks like this on OS 9:

The macOS Finder still handles the same tasks as the original Finder, but it has changed considerably ever since the OS X Public Beta. There’s a Toolbar that expands the size of a Finder window greatly; it includes a sidebar and a customizable set of actions and options.

I don’t generally have any objection to the macOS Finder; early iterations were slow, and then the icons got kind of big and horsey looking, but the slow march of progress has generally improved Finder.

The podcast or wherever I heard about turning off all of the options that make a new Finder a new Finder window, in comparison with the

I’ve been playing around with Keyboard Maestro again recently, and I found an old action I’d been messing with that was intended to turn off the additional Finder settings, leaving me with a classic Mac OS-style window. You can easily turn these off via macOS’s GUI in Finder:

This would be three clicks of the mouse or three keyboard shortcuts executed each time you wanted to toggle. It’s the repetitive kind of thing that begs for an AppleScript or Keyboard Maestro utility. Or both.

Keyboard Maestro is an obvious choice; I figured I could pick one master keyboard shortcut, and have that key sequence active all three of the Finder shortcuts. But then I thought, recalling something that Jason Snell said on a recent MacBreak Weekly, ChatGPT is really good at AppleScript.

So I asked ChatGPT, “write an applescript to hide the Toolbar off in the finder if it’s visible.”

I got this:

tell application "Finder"
    activate
    try
        tell application "System Events"
            tell process "Finder"
                -- Check if the toolbar is visible
            if value of attribute "AXToolbar" of window 1 is  true then
                keystroke "t" using {command down, option down}
            end if
      end tell
   end tell
on error errMsg
    display dialog "An error occurred: " & errMsg buttons {"OK"} default button 1
end try
end tell

I went through a few iterations of this, realized that this needs to be a toggle (ie, if there’s no active Finder window open, one should be opened and set to my notional classic Finder window style; but if there is a modern macOS Finder window open already, the same keystroke should set that window to the Classic look). ChatGPT was fast and accurate all along the way. Here’s the final script:

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

Here’s a quick video of the script working:

Living in southern NJ, we don’t get much snow, especially in December. I’m a sucker for a white Christmas.

When I turned 21, a friend of mine at Ursinus, Mike Walter, took me out to a quirky bar in Kutztown, PA. They had Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale on tap and we had a few pints. It was a memorable night for me; it was a warm, dim bar, with a low-slung ceiling and a fire going. It was a cold night on an otherwise quotidian turn of the calendar make special by companionship and ale.

Our local pizza haunt, Villa Fazzolari, has Celebration on tap right now. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it on tine beer list; the waitress even had to check with the bartenders. But have it they did, and I had two. It was great; piney, resinous. I suspect I it will hang around.

One downside of digitally whoring around from notes app to notes app is a trail of digital knowledge, much of which may be errata, but some of which may remain useful.

Case in point: I help with the newsletter for a professional association. I must have been using Workflowy when I started, because that’s where the style sheet is. This by itself isn’t a big deal, but when you scatter bits of info across a half-dozen or more apps without being able to (or willing) to export and import everything from the old app to the new app… well, you know.

This is compounded by Workflowy’s being web-based/ an electron app. If you don’t use the app on your machine for a while, you’re prompted to log in. This requires you to receive and paste in an access code, which I don’t prefer to running a native application on my machine locally.

I’m working on the newsletter now and I knew to head to Workflowy for the style sheet. Once I had the style sheet up, I wondered to myself what kind of file formats at export Workflow supports. Happily, OPML is one of them.

It makes perfect sense that Workflowy would support OPML as an export format, but good on them for doing so.

OPML means that OmniOutliner can open the file and save it in their native format. So that’s what I did. I now have a file called “Workflowy” on my Mac that won’t ask me to log in all the time.

I even made it look like the original.

Last year, my mom was kind enough to surprise us for an overnight stay in historic Cape May, New Jersey. This is a nearby destination that I had just really never been too. We stayed and dined at the Washington in, and had a great time. We returned this summer for dinner at Peter Sheilds Inn, and we enjoyed our dinner. We got to talking one night that it was our anniversary and my 50th birthday, so maybe we should stay somewhere.

And so we did. I was able to book Room 7 at Peter Shields and make a dinner rez for the same night with no problem. We took the opportunity to do a little Christmas shopping Saturday night, so we found ourselves at the Lobster House for a drink and some apps. We had a Manhattan and a Martini each, the escargots, and some Cape May Salts oysters. Everything was excellent. It’s a weird old place that’s probably been run the same way forever. We hated the giant line of people waiting for a table at four pm (they don’t take reservations).

The area around the Washington Street Mall was so crowded that we decided to get a bottle of wine and check into the room. We glugged some chardonnay while we waited for dinner. Dinner was amazing, just like in August.

We started off with their excellent bread and the whipped butter, which is so good, I ate a whole timbale of it myself at breakfast. We shared the homemade cavatelli and the shaved Brussels sprouts salad. I had a NY Strip, while Rhonda ordered the short ribs with mashed potatoes. We finished with salted caramel cheesecake and the apple crumble. More wine, too; Cape May chardonnay, which was so good we stopped on the ride home to pick up a bottle for home (got some rosé, too).

This morning was breakfast at the Inn and then some shopping. I nipped out early because I was up for a few things at Wawa, and found (thankfully) my Apple Pencil just behind my car in the street parking. No damage either. I turned on FindMy right away. I thought about where it might be all night long.

We stopped, as we do, in the Peanut Butter shop, and I had some awesome samples. We got a jar of this stuff. I won’t eat it but it was delicious to try.

We just blew in from Cape May, and I have some things to write about that trip. In the meantime, here’s this week’s list of things to check out:

Image Playground

iOS 18.2 dropped for me Saturday morning, and with it came Image Playground. I’ve been pretty excited about Image Playgrounds for two reasons. First, my inner prankster was dying to create a Christmas elf from a picture of Rhonda and show it to her. Secondly, and more seriously, is that I like to use these image generators for written communications in lieu of stock art. I have never done any kind of work for anyone with a stock photos account, and I find this more satisfying than looking for images without watermarks or worse. I do have a device with an 18.2 beta on it, and so while I was able to try out Image Playgrounds late Friday night, the official release is much more polished.

And interesting direction Apple took with Image Playgrounds is that you have to start with an image from your photo library: it won’t create an image of a person based on your written (or spoken) input. On the other hand, Image Playgrounds takes your input–no matter how innocuous or impersonal–and translates it so profoundly that it doesn’t much resemble the starting image. This jibes with Apple’s public statement on photos, which is that they are digital representations of something that happened.

Smart Folders in Notes

I’ve taken to using Notes for all of my note taking again; essentially, my setup always involves some kind of task list manager, a notes app, and an email application (not webmail). There’s a lot of ancillary software and utilities that I run, too, but that’s the core of my setup.

I recently noticed the Smart Folders feature available in Notes, and I was excited to use them to good end (showing the notes I’ve edited over the last couple of days, irrespective of filing). But they bring me a touch of nostalgia, too, for they remind me of the smart playlists in iTunes. I still have a bunch of them that don’t auto-update anymore.

The Johnny Decimal System

I read about this digital file system organization scheme on Reddit. I’ve been using the Para method to organize my digital files, and I like it plenty, but I have found organizing by Home/Work/Professional to be a challenge in that the structure tends to want to impose itself everywhere within Para if you use it in one place. This system reminds me a bit of the very cool Dendron projects I adopted for a while.