Happy Sunday! Here’s this week’s list of things to check out:
Scratchpad
On the /macapps subreddit, Sindre Sorhus’s apps are often recommended for a variety of use cases, but also due to their high level of design quality. I recently read about Scratchpad on MacStories, and while it didn’t necessarily resonate as something I needed immediately, the gushy review gave me pause. I have, on many occasions, tried a simple text or markdown document on my desktop as a quick place to jot notes, a quick inbox for latter consideration. There is no shortage of solutions like this: Stickies, Drafts, Notes, and even your favorite text editor.
Scratchpad, like Tot, enforces some limitations that are likely for the good of parsimony: it’s one window, and one window only. It’s plain text. It runs on all of your Apple devices, though, so unlike something like Bike, which would be a great use case for such an outliner, you can open Scratchpad on any device and be right back where you were the last time you used it. It’s so simple that it threatens to be useless, but I suspect I’ll end up using it all the time.
Another note: Scratchpad is another inbox. In GTD, you should use as many inboxes as you need, but no more. I’m circumspect about adding any more, but again, I have flirted with this idea so often that I suspect I’ll get a lot out of Scratchpad.
Cool features include iCloud sync, translucency (toggle-able), and theme switching. I set the font to IBM Plex straight away.
Apple Polishing Cloths
As with black input devices, Apple is known for comically high prices on items that raise eyebrows. Case in point: Apple’s polishing cloth. The notion of paying $20 for a polishing cloth is at once laughable and curious. I’ve always been pretty happy with the black microfiber ones they bundled with their kit for a while, and like to scrub my screens when I’m talking to someone in my office.
Woot recently had them up for sale for $6.99, so I bought three, almost entirely out of curiosity. They came yesterday, and I opened one for Rhonda and wiped her iMac screen with it, and then opened a second for myself, which I used on my 32” Samsung attached to my Mac Studio, and then my iPad.
I don’t think I’d pay $20 for one, but after using it, I’m more likely to pay that much than before. They have a structural rigidity to them that I didn’t expect, and a thickness that allows you to wipe without putting quite so much pressure on the screen.
Spring
March has always been a vexatious month, teasing with occasionally warmer temperatures of April and May, but mercurial in its expression, with cold, windy days preponderant. I dislike the extremes of summer and winter, and appreciate the moderate weather of spring and fall. Spring especially resonates in our collective unconscious, inspiring a feeling of hopeful rebirth and thawing of our wintered, cloistered selves.
I remember talking to my grandfather, late in his life, and he said, “I made it through another winter.” There is something about winter that calls for survival; it’s surely connected to our evolution as a species and culture. Our bodies remember that this was a time when survival was not a matter of sweaters, scarves, and one-pot dinners, but rather a time when things might get both scarce and hostile to our mortal, but no less clever, selves.
Whew: all of that to say that I’m excited Rhonda put up some Easter garland. I love the pastel colors.
