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Hi!
Iāve been conducting an experiment for a couple of weeks. It involves using default offerings, as in apps that come pre-installed, rather than the often recommended alternatives. This isnāt the first time Iāve talked about giving default apps a go, and Iām sure it wonāt be the last.
Whatās interesting, however, is how some of these default apps are seeming to stick. I did not expect that.
Letās dive in, shall we?
Iāve said that Spark is the best email client for iPadOS (and iOS and macOS too, for that matter) in the past. Itās still great, I recommend it, but Iāve had some issues with it that I just didnāt want to turn a blind eye to anymore. Thus, I looked around, and found exactly no alternatives that were appealing to me. Some email clients want to turn your inbox into something akin to yet another chat, which just doesnāt do it for me.
So, I turned to default, being the Mail app that comes pre-installed. Itās not a great app, but itās not bad either. In fact, Iād argue that itās a better experience on the iPad than it is on a Mac, albeit less powerful in terms of rules and the like. This is one area where Apple hasnāt converged the app builds, the only real thing these versions of the app has in common, is the name and icon.
Mail lacks typical power-user features like snooze, and thereās no way to share and collaborate on an email with co-workers. Iāve enjoyed both of these features in Spark in the past, but unfortunately, theyāre not reliable enough anymore. Maybe they never were. Take snooze, for example, which hides an email from you for a determined period of time. If I snooze an email until tomorrow morning on one device, it doesnāt always sync reliably, meaning that while I might get the email in my inbox again on the original device and app, another might set it to āsomedayā. The someday snooze is a terrible idea, it just hides the email until you look in the Someday folder and interact with it. There are some sync issues going on here, and snoozing has become unreliable. Iāve forgotten to answer emails because of this, and thatās just not okay.
Collaborating on emails is a great feature. When you work in a team, it can be powerful. However, there are weird issues here as well. Sometimes, formatting got messed up between users, and it has happened that emails hasnāt been sent after it being shared. Anyway, I want to avoid bashing Spark, itās a great app, good-looking too, but I needed something else.
So, Mail then. I got to tell you, itās quite nice being back to something simple like this. Itās not perfect, but it gets the job done, and is obviously impeccably integrated into iPadOS. In fact, my biggest gripe with Mail is the macOS version, but thatās a different matter. Anyway, presently, Iām happy with Mail, and Iām sticking with it for now.
Reminders
Iāve been a dedicated Todoist user for years. Itās great, truly, so I didnāt have any real need of moving from it. I did have a want, though, and thatās proper Siri integration. Thereās some of that in Todoist too, but making it work properly with Siri in Swedish is beyond me.
Thus, I started using Reminders, in parallell at first, but now Iāve all but moved over. It was a great opportunity to clean up my lists, too. I couldāve done that in Todoist obviously, starting over just came naturally. It often does, starting from scratch ā itās a great feeling.
Switching to Reminders meant convincing my better part, whom I have several shared lists with, to join me. I wanted to avoid being split between two lists. Luckily, just showing her how to add an item to a list using Siri on the Apple Watch proved to be enough.
Reminders has come a long way since its first inception. There are some weird design decisions, I think, but itās getting better constantly. Scheduling to-dos is easy, and the date recognition input works great, but then it wonāt remove said date from the to-do title if you use it, which, I think, is a little odd. Either way, Iām happy with Reminders at the moment. Knowing me, Iāll keep looking at to-do list apps, though.
Notes, Safari, and not using Keychain and Calendar
Iāve written about Notes before. Itās a great app, I like it a lot, although there is room for design improvement.
As for Safari, itās my primary web browser, and has been for years. This matters less on an iPad, since all browsers use the same rendering engine. The surrounding services, like saved passwords and the like, is the only thing that differ between web browsers for iPadOS. However, my Safari use, outside of browsing the web, has always been limited to bookmarks and iCloud tabs. Iāve never really gotten into the Reading List feature, although it seems to have gotten some improvements as well, so I might look into that as an alternative to other read it later services.
Speaking of Safari services, the Keychain feature is tightly integrated, as is 1Password. I use the latter, and Iāve even disabled Keychain suggestions where possible. Thereās nothing wrong with Keychain, itās getting better all the time, too, but Iām deeply invested in 1Password, and use their teams feature for various vaults. 1Password obviously goes a lot further than Keychain, with support for things like server details, licenses, and so forth. You could put that in password protected notes in Notes, I guess, but since we have clients with sensitive data, I just donāt feel comfortable with that. I donāt see myself moving from 1Password, to Keychain, anytime soon, if ever.
Finally, Calendar, which I donāt use. I will give it another shot at some point, but every time I open it, Iām reminded why I use Fantastical. Calendar is just not as good, Fantastical is better in almost every way. The only thing that goes against Fantastical is the price of the premium services (itās a subscription), and that you need to set up one-time passwords to connect your iCloud account. Thatās it, everything else is superior, down to the Reminders integration. Calendar is, along with Keychain, the one furthest from getting another shot from me. Itās been stagnant for far too long, not seeing the same incremental bumps as Notes and Reminders has the past couple of years.
Thatās it for this weekās issue. Iāll see you on the website, and in your inbox this weekend. As always, feel free to reach out, by hitting reply if youāre reading this in whatever email app you prefer, or by tweeting to @tdh.
ā Thord D. Hedengren ā”
