Loren Stephens looks ahead to the apps he will be using in the new year. Great inclusions that I use but didn’t discuss in my 2020 post:

PopClip

PopClip adds an iOS-style edit menu to selected text, with the ability to customize the available actions using PopClip extensions. Brett Terpstra’s PopClip Extensions add to those available by developer PilotMoon. PopClip will format text, shorten URLs, send selected text to a search engine or tweet, create emails, parse events for your favorite calendar, and more.

Hazel

My use case for Hazel is pretty simple: Hazel moves files and folders on my ~/Desktop into a folder if they sit there too long. I wish I had Hazel for my meatspace desk. My Hazel rules are more complicated than I let on, but not much.

Two More

He also uses Keyboard Maestro, which I have purchased and tried to use but I don’t find it terribly useful. iA Writer is a great app, too; I used it as my go-to notes app for a long time, but replaced it with the also-great Bear. I’ve been writing posts for Uncorrected in iA lately, though. It was one of the first text editors to support open-in-place on the iPad, and does not require you to keep everything in an app-specific silo. The style check is useful, and while it looks like a minimalist text editor, it is a powerful writing tool.

Last year, on Christmas Eve, I posted my annual Essential Mac Software list for 2019. Here is this year’s list, which I drafted prior to reviewing last year’s.

Google Meet

Holy Shit: In March 2020, New Jersey locked down fast and hard due to COVID-19. Schools moved to full virtual instruction in March of 2020 and never came back for the rest of the school year. None of us knew how to do that.

Unmoored from a rigid bell schedule, I talked to staff face to face that I never met before for more than a moment. I hosted meetings with the pretense of providing leadership, but only to commune with people presented with an impossible task. I used humor, as I do, to diffuse difficult situations, and to encourage honest conversation. We all were searching for normalcy.

Our district uses Google’s then-named GSuite, and I embraced Google Meet as the official VOIP solution. Google Meet is dead simple to use, reliable, and effective. It’s cross-platform. Recent privacy changes are making it challenging for school districts who need to confer with non-Google-account-holding parents and guardians, and that’s a shame. I still use it constantly, though, and I appreciate its sparse interface but essential utility.

Agenda

Having many meetings, one after the other, requires an agenda. There are many ways to skin that cat (flat files, tags, and folders, for example), but I like Agenda. Agenda lets you connect notes to calendar events. [^Calendars have to be added to your Mac or iOS device through Settings or System Preferences (I.e. directly to your device); Fantastical accounts, for example, won’t work.] Agenda then drops a link to the meeting into to the calendar event details. The visual presentation is beautiful, and welcomes rich text and Markdown users alike.

Agenda

SoundSource

I calculated that I spent about $700 on video cameras and microphones to make working remotely (and supporting distance learning) better. SoundSource, like many of my purchases, was not required, but in improved every aspect of the experience.

Changing inputs and outputs. Checking levels. All from the menubar. Is dipping into System Preferences difficult to complete this task? No. But SoundSource puts it right on your menubar, with input and output levels nicely animated.

Webcam Settings

This perfectly singular purpose app allows me to create webcam presets and switch between them from my menu bar. Twilight? That’s a setting. Cloudy day? That’s a setting. Focused and useful. I wrote more about it here.

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

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.

MailMate

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.

MailMate

Spark

MailMate is for work; Spark is for everything else. It is decidedly of the newer UI design generation on the Mac, with a custom UI that looks unlike anything else. Spark syncs accounts so setting up a new device is a breeze. You can save smart searches in the sidebar, helping you focus. The paid tier helps team collaborate, but the free version has everything an individual would need. It’s my choice on iPadOS, too.

Spark

Keep It

The digital junk drawer is an app genre I am drawn to. I have a hard time sticking to one of these apps, and where I once obsessed with to-do managers, I now obsess with how to collect files vs using the Finder.

I was a longtime user of Yojimbo, and the only reason I’m not using it is because they never made a useful iOS app. I have tried EverNote and DEVONthink, and while I love the latter, some sync funkiness and their restrictive license led me to try Keep It. I like this app a lot, and shunt a considerable amount of data to it each day. Keep It deserves its own post for sure.

Folders, Collections, Tags, and OCR–with companion iOS and iPad apps that sync over iCloud–make me keep using Keep It.

Keep It

Money

You don’t really know how you spend your money. You might know if you’re up or down, but you don’t know where it goes unless you track each expense and categorize it. Money isn’t the only game in town, but it’s been around for a long time. It connects to most accounts, and you can set up rules about how to categorize transactions. Monthly and annual reporting is then effortless.

TextCase

TextCase takes text from the clipboard and performs manipulations, such as changing it to title case, small case, and other options. It reminds me a good bit of of an old favorite, TextSoap, and has companion iOS apps.

TextCase

Reeder

There’s a new version. It’s not terribly different or improved from the last version but it’s good enough that it warrants your consideration. I wrote about it after it was released, and I use it daily.

Reeder

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.

NetNewsWire

Notes

It’s not better at anything that any Mac apps I use are (Drafts, Keep It), but I love the fast syncing, sharing with others, and the handwriting recognition.

MarsEdit

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

1Password

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

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.

Bumpr

Preferring Safari doesn’t mean you don’t sometimes need Chrome or Edge or Brave or another browser. As my employer is a Google GSuite house, I need to be logged into a Chrome-based browser most of the day. Setting Bumpr to your default browser allows you to choose which browser opens links you click from other sources (emails, messages, etc). It’s an elegant solution that beats cutting and pasting links.

Better Snap Tool

BST emulates and extends the Aero Snap functionality introduced into Windows 7. Like LaunchBar, I almost unconsciously use BST all day long. If it’s not running, I notice it within minutes. The base functionality is invaluable by itself, but you can extend its usefulness by assigning keystrokes and “Snap Areas,” which is a cool trick that a competitor, Mosaic, uses in a different but useful way.

Bartender

Big Sur worsened an already-vexing problem–the overcrowded MacOS menubar–by with generous padding between icons. Bartender continues to offer an elegant solution by tucking user-specified applications into a menu-bar submenu.

There Will Be Another

This list is not exhaustive; I use Excel and Google Sheets a lot, for example, and continue to use Drafts to start lots of writing. Other apps are new to me, and I’m excited to use them to see if they make 2021’s list. I recently purchased a license for Hook Pro, for example, and I’m excited to learn how best to use it to connect information from disparate applications and locations. I wrote about Filepane and Mimestream as well, and they appear to be taking up permanent residence in my menu bar and Dock, respectively.

Ezra Marcus writes about Tone Indicators for the NY Times:

Today’s tone indicators go a step further than, say, putting a winky-face emoji at the end of a sentence. They assign a narrow, concrete meaning to a statement, leaving no room for interpretation. They are not subtle and can deflate humor. (Picture a comedian declaring to an audience “I am joking” after saying something outrageous.)

Writers add a /indicator to the end of a paragraph, like /rh to signify that something is a rhetorical question or /hyp to indicate hyperbole. It’s an interesting strategy instead of simply skipping anything nuanced. I am old enough to still consider the phone the solution to anything other than a brief email exchange, because email exchanges often go so very wrong, so very quickly.

Tone Is Hard to Grasp Online. Can Tone Indicators Help?

The MacHumble Bundle sponsored by 9 to 5 Mac prompted me to buy four intresting apps this year, some new to me, with others being long-time wishlist occupants:

• Screens 4.8
• Tumult Whisk
• FireTask Pro
• Filepane

Filepane was the most unusual and interesting of the bunch, so I added it to the bundle. At its core, Filepane provides an alternative interface for moving files around on your Mac. When you start to drag a file in Finder, a small window pops up; dropping the file or files onto that window brings up a palette of actions you can choose.

Filepane moves files (and folders) from one location to another, but it also:

• attaches the file to a new email
• creates a zip archive of the file or files
• sets your wallpaper
• converts and edits images
• invokes macOS’s share sheet
• copies
• gathers files into a new folder

One key limitation of Filepane in my brief experience is that the action palette appears within pixels of the file or files you were attempting to move; Filepane’s interaction with files in the lower right-hand corner of your screen will be in that same corner. On larger displays, the action palette can be difficult to see. An option for a larger palette, and potentially one in the middle or top middle of the screen, would work better for me. (You can, however, drag an activated Filepane palette to wherever you like on your screen/

If you’re using Filepane to move files around (something as an avid user of ~/Desktop for active documents and project folders, which requires frequent attention to avoid Desktop clutter, I find tedious), the item file menu hierarchy exposed in when drilling down levels is small. It’s also entirely mouse-driven, which makes sense in that dragging a file is how you invoke the application. If you prefer to keep your hands on the keyboard, though, Filepane isn’t for you.

I’m excited to try this out over a longer period of usage; whatever your final opinion of Filepane is, it is an intriguing reconsideration of a well-understood metaphor for organizaing your data. I still do a log of clicking and dragging, although my preferred way of moving files around these days is using Launchbar.

Jack Holmes, writing for Esquire:

This was all by design. His party had matched his rhetoric in the run-up to Election Day with action, as Republican legislatures in key battleground states—like Michigan and Pennsylvania—held fast to a policy, even amid the expected pandemic surge of mail ballots, that officials could not begin counting those votes until Election Day. That made it all the more likely the counting would not be done by Election Night—and that, in the days after, the president could yell that the remaining ballots were fraudulent, and dispatch his lawyers to various courts to ask Republican-appointed judges to throw them out.

The President Is Focusing His Towering and Shameless Mendacity on One Last Job

Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin of the NY _Times_:

Much of the uncertainty hanging over the election arose from the inconsistent or patchwork array of state-level policies hurriedly put in place to enable voting amid a public health disaster. In a number of states, like Pennsylvania and Michigan, local Republican officials blocked Democrats’ efforts to make it easier to count ballots cast before Election Day, raising the possibility of a drawn-out count in some of the most important battlegrounds — the very occurrence Mr. Trump protested Wednesday morning.

As America Awaits a Winner, Trump Falsely Claims He Prevailed

The administration didn’t just object to counting ballots past Election Day, it worked to require that districts couldn’t begin counting them until then. Talk about squeezing from both ends.

My Logitech Bluetooth mouse was notably flakey yesterday, not working worth a damn after sitting idle for even a few seconds. I poked around online and found that turning off Handshake can make the problems go away:

If your Mac’s Bluetooth connectivity to peripherals is flakey, it’s worth a try, only takes a few seconds, and doesn’t require any tinkering or messing around with system files. Simply open up your System Preferences, select General, look for a setting called Allow Handoff between this Mac and your iCloud devices and make sure it’s un-checked.

This Trick May Solve Your Mac Bluetooth Connectivity Issues

Maureen Down from the New York Times interviewed Sacha Baron Cohen:

 “In 2005, you needed a character like Borat who was misogynist, racist, anti-Semitic to get people to reveal their inner prejudices,” he said. “Now those inner prejudices are overt. Racists are proud of being racists.’’ When the president is “an overt racist, an overt fascist,’’ he said, “it allows the rest of society to change their dialogue, too.”

Sacha Baron Cohen: This Time He’s Serious

Silvio Rizzi has released version five of his RSS reading app, Reeder. Reeder was the first great RSS reader on the iPhone. Version 5’s marquee feature is iCloud syncing across macOS and iOS devices, which obviates the requirement for an intermediary sync service, such as Feedbin or Feed Wrangler. It still supports such services, however.

Some people will howl that Reeder 5’s only real new feature is iCloud syncing. And if you don’t need that feature, you could probably stick with version 4. (I might argue that the new icon is a good enough reason, as is supporting a developer who makes great software for a very specific kind of newsmonger).

But if you do, in fact, rely on a sync service, you’re likely paying way more than 4.99 USD (it’s $9.99 on the Mac App Store). I pay $4.99 monthly (happily, I will add) to Feedbin, and supported both Feed Wrangler and Feedly before that[1]. So even an annual release at these points would save you money. For the record, I purchased Reeder 3 in August of 2018 and version 4 in May of 2019.

Reeder supports a great custom UI on iPadOS, if that’s your thing. It’s super-smooth on an iPad Pro, too:

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[2] I used Feedly’s free tier for a long time, but it bothered me… I grew to feel that if something is important enough to you, it’s worth paying for. And I missed Google Reader so much after it was retired that I didn’t want to go through that again. Is paying for Feedbin a guarantee of that? No. But I can’t blame myself if it does.

Michael Kummer, with a great Finder feature I didn’t know about:

To try it out, just open Finder and right-click on any file or folder. What you will get is a context menu that allows you to execute certain functions on the selected item, such as copying it. Pay close attention what happens to the Copy “ITEM” menu entry when you press the OPTION key. It changes to Copy “ITEM” as Pathname.

How To Copy the Path of Any File in Finder

I have long harbored a distaste for the phrase “it is what it is.” I have called it a cliché, or more often, a tautology wrapped in a cliché. Most recently, our illustrious president used the phrase it perhaps its most nefarious, organizational-speak usage. In this case, it refers to a situation the speaker deems unchangeable.

Dr. Liane Gabora, writing for Psychology Today, took a look at “it is what it is.” Her takeaway is upbeat and faithful:

But then I realized that the phrase “it is what it is” is itself in a state of potentiality. In some contexts, it can indicate acceptance of complexity and ambiguity. In other contexts, it can indicate acceptance of limitations. It’s a phrase that may well have yet other shades or meaning, or be evolving new shades of meaning as I write this. It’s not one static thing. It is what it is.

This gets to my understanding of the phrase, when I would hear a superior steer a conversion away from something that the group was complaining about. “It is what it is,” and as such we shouldn’t spend any more cycles on it because we can’t change it.

I was listening to an episode of Upgrade with Jason Snell and Myke Hurley, and they were discussing the increasingly pitched battled between Epic and Apple over Fortnite’s inlcusion in the App Store. Jason, in describing the App Store, said that “it is what it is ” around the 32-minute mark. Of the Store, he noted that “Apple made it… its of a piece… it is what it is… It’s not hardware, it’s not software.”

In this case, it’s not necessarily a state of potentiality nor even ambiguous. But it is, by Snell’s conception, greater than the sum of its parts, and it defies easy analysis in a conversation such as what popped up around the Epic v Apple battle.

An article on Pain in the English posits an interesting hypothesis for the provenance of the phrase, suggesting that it may harken back to a phrase used by black Americans referring to systemic forces they saw as, in the immediate term, insurmountable. In common parlance, however, the writer offered this critique:

I dislike the vagueness of it, especially because wen [sic] people say it, they seem to imply it explains something, which it does not. It seems to be a weak vulgar shrug uttered by those who don’t know what else to say, and are baffled or confused themselves.

In addition to pointing out that “It is what it is” was USA Today’s cliché of the year in 2004, Guff Magazine critiques the hopelessness the phrase not only expresses, but inspires:

The effectiveness of “it is what it is” is that others can’t argue against it. No one can refute it. It stops short any constructive communication right in its tracks. If you ask a person why something can’t be accomplished and his or her response is, “It is what it is,” then there is no moving forward. It is an invisible, immovable barrier stronger than the Death Star’s deflector shield, and one that no Jedi can disable.*

Peter Economy, writing for Inc, describes its use in military and organizational applications:

It is what it is is an admission that the problem is too hard and suppresses the attitude that leads to creative, unseen solutions. Even if a leader racks his brain for a solution to the challenge, yet can’t find one…he should realize that his team contains a wealth of unique experiences and perspectives to contribute. It is what it is negates their value.

But what did Trump mean? He was referring to the deaths in the United States associated with COVID–19. In his usage, it was something that had passed. Those lives, sadly, have been lost. There’s no point discussing it, to Trump’s way of thinking, because it can’t be fixed. It is what it is.

So in the organization usage I referenced, and Trump’s usage, “It is what it is” is an argument to abandon hope. If something is what it is, it’s done. Over. At the very least, unchangeable. Can that be true? I suppose. Should you assume it’s true because someone in a position of power says so?

No.

President Trump has coronavirus:

Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus defines his presidency. He downplayed the severity of the disease, misled the country repeatedly about it, tried to pin the blame on local governments, did not “take responsibility at all” for the anemic American response, held massive rallies against scientific advice, hammered on states to re-open before it was safe, rejected easy safety measures, and undermined trust in our public-health institutions. Trump was never going to protect the country from the virus. But ultimately he could not even protect himself.

Now What

I found Webcam Settings after running into some issues with the Razer Kiyo I purchased for the office (as opposed to the home office); the Kiyo, for some reason, will not autofocus correctly when plugged into my Mac, and I thought it was because it wasn’t supported on the Mac by Razer. That’s not actually the issue, but I digress.

The challenge I face in working from home is lighting in my home office, which doesn’t lack for natural light–a good thing, normally. The problem is, the light comes in hard from the southeast in the morning, and as it travels across the sky throughout the day, is never less than anything but directly shining on the right side of my body. A better situation, of course, would be to have the light in my face, and then to mediate it with shading.

Here’s the default situation, even with a desklamp shining in my face. The foreground is too dark, while the background is well light by natural light:

Webcam Settings lives in your menu bar and provides access to a number of settings. From the drop-down menu, you can switch cameras and choose from profiles (default and any you’ve saved). There are basic and advanced settings within the panel, including exposure modes, brightness, white balance, and frequency. Just being able to override the default brightness settings improved my exposure.

If you have a Mac but your webcam isn’t supported with third-party software, Webcam Settings is worth the small fee.

Update: I added a shot below from work, taken using the Razer Kiyo with the LED ring light on. At the office, I have a full complement of windows that face north, so there is plentiful natural light, which never streams directly into the room. Zero rigamarole.

Inspired in part by Michael Lopp’s “Good Meetings are Jazz,” I started looking at my audio setup, such as it was, on my home computer setup. As we moved from providing school in meatspace to a virtual model during the third and fourth marking periods of the 2019–20 school year, I upgraded my setup by adding a Tandberg Precision HD webcam, which I paid too much for due to demand, but which offers silky-smooth 30 fps video (if only at 720p) [1]. I already had a microphone, and it seemed to serve me well, sitting on my desk. I eventually added a mic stand, because I need as much desk space as I can get and it also think it looks cool.

Tandberg Precision HD Webcam

The issue of audio quality was nagging me some, though. No one said anything about my mic, which was a Best Buy Insignia NS-PAUBMD8 I bought to record myself while I was taking classes online and needed to complete an assignment, but it sounded a bit muddy to me when I recorded some segments in Audio Hijack so that I could hear where best to position the mic, and what impact the window unit air conditioner had on the input. And I will say that the first thing that sends me running from a podcast is noisy, poor quality audio. I thought that if my setup sounded better, it would come across as more professional. I am part of the leadership team, after all.

Best Buy Insignia Mic

This happened to coincide with me cleaning up my old-but-still-great Washburn MG401 Mercury Series II electric guitar, which played fine but crackled a lot and suffered a number of cut outs when amplified. Having disassembled the thing and finding that there was nothing wrong with it, I sprayed the pots and selector switch with electronics cleaner, and played it on the clean channel of my son’s tiny (and cheap) practice amp.

Washburn MG401 Mercury Series II

Here I was reminded that while I (still) had a nice guitar, I had no effects: I sold them all when the kids were little because I wasn’t playing much and mom wanted to stop working and stay home with the kids. Being a fan of digital solutions, I figured some way of integrating my iPad or Mac into my gear instead of buying a bunch of stomp boxes and plugging them into barely audible amplifiers would be preferable.

Lopp’s article helped me understand that what I needed was a digital audio interface for my Mac and/or iPad. I did some reading and found the Scarlett Solo, which was priced just right and perfectly suited to what I needed: it works using USB C (no adapters needed for either my iPad Pro or my Mac Mini), offers XLR input for a microphone, and an input for my guitar. So I could hypothetically play my guitar through Garageband or Amplitube by night, and enjoy crisp, clean, podcast-quality audio in Google Meet by day.

FocusRite Scarlett Solo USB Audio Interface

But what mic? I found a lot of information online, and a variety of prices. I googled “directional mics.” I googled “best zoom microphone.” I googled cardioid mics. I made a list.

I Digress

Do you often head over to Lowe’s or Home Depot when you need to fix something, and you look for someone to help you, but you can’t find anyone? Or you try to search for a solution yourself but find yourself overwhelmed by choices?

I have, and that’s why, despite slightly higher prices, I go to my local hardware store. There are enthusiastic people there who immediately try to help you, and they know a thing or two. I think that’s why they work there.

Narrowing the Field of View

So after a brief bit of online browsing, I decided to call up my local music shop. They guy who answered the phone asked, “What are you trying to do?” Enthusiastically, I might add. I explained my use case, and he recommended three mics that they had in stock. He didn’t need to look anything up in the computer; he just dished. Here they are:

• SE V7
• PVM 480 Peavey
• SE XIS

None of these come up in “best mic for Zoom meetings,” mind you. I read a few reviews of these mics and headed over to the store to see them for myself. I was pretty sure I wanted the X1S and that’s what I decide to buy. It looks spectacular.

SE X 1S XLR Mic

I thought it would be interesting to compare some audio samples from the Insignia and the X1S, and a third and later entrant to the race, my MacBook Pro 16“ from work.

• Insignia Audio Test
• SE X1 S Audio Test
• MacBook Pro 16” Audio Test

While I’m still learning about where to position a mic and things like gain/input level, the X 1S sounds better–way better–than the cheaper USB Insignia, and the considerably-improved-for-a-built-in-laptop mic on the MacBook Pro. The Insignia has a ton of background noise in an otherwise quiet (but not soundproof) room, despite being about the same distance from my face as the X 1S.

But why?

Casting aside rampant consumerism and the occasional tech obsession as possible explanations, I refer to Lopp:

So, yeah, I’m investing a lot of time and money in working to make this box we’re all stuck in a little more humane, a little more connected, and a bit more fun. I consider this a critical investment.

The iPhone 4 was introduced alongside Apple’s first official phone case: the bumper case. Rather than wrap their phones in a plastic coffin, Apple saw fit to design a case that would provide drop protection around the edges without spoiling the device’s visual asesthetic. The demand for these cases was such that they were hard to get after the device launched (although Antennagate found them giving them away to any aggrieved party who asked for one).

I was able to score one early after the 4’s launch because I knew someone who worked at an Apple retail score. That case provided effective coverage until the rubber gap that allowed the bumper to stretch to fit the phone started to lose its elasticity, and the case no longer fit snugly.

Apple never made another bumper case. Starting with the 6 Plus, I have wrapped my phones with Apple’s own leather cases. Despite my affection for these leather cases, I’ve always fondly remembered the bumper case.

My newest phone, the green 11 Pro Max, has a back worth looking at. The red leather case I bought when I got the phone provided a peek at the green color between the lenses, but otherwise you have to pry the case off to enjoy the frosted glass and sage green backing. Every other phone I’ve had has been black or space gray: they looked good, but it was all shades of gray. The green on the Pro Max, on the other hand, is really nice on the eyes.

My son asked for a bumper case that we saw on amazon for his XR, and I’ve admired the minimal wrap every time I’ve seen it. So here’s my 11 Pro Max, with a matching green bumper case.

In the bumper, the device feels minimal and sleek, without feeling dangerously naked. It weights 10 grams less than the leather case, so the phone drops from 250 to 240 grams in the bumper. On the other hand, there are edges where the Apple case was smooth and rounded. So while the phone feels smaller, it doesn’t feel better. It looks great, though.

There is somethig to be said for Apple’s leather cases: ‘Busage. They look fine out of the package, but they age well. I’ve never once retrired an apple leather case without a note of regret, because it was this thing that traveled a journey with me, and bore the scars to prove it.

I wrote before about the 20k photos I have in Photos (and more accurately, on some servers somewhere in iCloud). I’ve been trying to clean up my collection, mostly organized using a mix of albums and smart albums. I noticed that I had been in the habit of making smart albums for each phone I had: iPhone 3G, iPhone 4, etc. I added my last two phones as smart albums and took a look at the totals. So here’s the big picture:

	iPhone 3G	iPhone 4	iPhone 5	iPhone 6	iPhone 7	iPhone 10	iPhone 11 Pro Max	Total
Photos	972	1780	2048	1974	1802	2122	838	11536
Videos	0	268	135	27	57	47	17	551
Months in Service	10	23	24	23	23	19	6	128

The big picture is that I take about a thousand pictures a year. Because I tend to keep my phones for about two years, that’s around 2k pictures a year. My first iPhone was an exception: I only took about 1000 pictures in the time that I had it. I don’t remember being especially judicious with it. Apple must have added the device information to the photo metadata at some point in the iPhone 3G’s lifetime, because the earliest pictures include “Apple iPhone” in the file metadata, while “iPhone 3G” doesn’t show up until mid-September of 2009.

My shutterbugging reached a peak with the iPhone 5, then dipped a bit again until the X came out. You can say that each phone offered a greatly improved camera, but the X really blew me away. Until I got the 11, of course.

And the 11 is interesting to look at. I’ve only had it for about a quarter of the life that I typically keep an iPhone, but I’ve already taken 800 photos. Assuming that I keep up that pace, I will be adding about 2400 photos over the lifespan of the device.

Videos are a different story, and here the data surprised me. I was apparently smitten with the ability to take video with the iPhone 4 (I took video because I could), but my interest waned to a nadir of 27 with the iPhone 6 Plus, and leveled out to about 50 per device ever since. In terms of file space, though, video accounts for around 20 GB of my Photos library; this represents about a third of my 60 GB library.

There are photos and videos from other sources, too. I was adding pictures to my iPhoto library for almost nine years before I got an iPhone. And since April of 2013, I’ve taken over 5,000 photos with an Olympus E-PL5 mirrorless camera, which I still take with me when it’s feasible (I blame Shawn Blanc’s review for inspiring the purchase). It’s hard to believe it’s seven years old and still takes amazing pictures (thanks in no small part to a pricey but Panasonic Lumix F1.7 prime lens, with which I’ve taken over 2000 photos).