I’m becoming increasingly interested in an emerging line of Eink devices that intentionally do less than other devices in the same category. Of course, the oldest and most widely known device is the Amazon Kindle, which my wife still claims as the best gift I ever gave her.

It’s thin, and about the width and height of a paperback book, but light enough to throw in her purse. The battery lasts for weeks and she devours books on it. It is a single-purpose device that excels at that purpose, even though there are other tablets that can do more, and are similar in size and price. They do more, but they don’t do the one thing she wants to do with the device quite as well.

The next logical step up from the kindle is reMarkable, “the paper tablet”. An Eink tablet dedicated to being an electronic notebook, and only an electronic notebook. The reMarkable comes with a special purpose stylus that lets you write and draw on the tablet, including marking up PDFs. There are no “apps” for the tablet, no internet access, just the tablet, the stylus, and your thoughts. If the price point for the tablet were not so high, I’d consider getting one myself, but at $600 it’s still a bit steep for me. But… maybe.

If I were to decide on getting a reMarkable, I’d most likely also back the Light Phone II.

This is a phone that intentionally only does a small handful of tasks. Phone calls, texts, a contacts list, and an alarm clock. The original Light Phone was meant to be paired with your smartphone, this one is intended to stand alone. It’s been a few years since I went without an iPhone, and I honestly have mixed feelings about the possibility of going back. But the Light Phone doesn’t feel like going backwards, it feels like the next step forward.

Moving forward, like this calendar concept from Kosho Tsuboi Design.

A beautifully conceptualized calendar intended to hang on the wall of your home. Unfortunately, we can’t go out and buy this calendar just yet. I believe we are still waiting on the technology to advance sufficiently for it to be a reasonable purchase. But, the concept behind it is in a similar vein to the previous three items. A dedicated device that does one thing, does it very well, is low power, low maintenance, and just blends into the background of your life. It becomes the invisible computing goal I’ve been pursuing for the past fifteen years.

For the longest time I thought Apple was going to be the one to deliver on invisible computing, and I still think they’ve got a foot in the door. However, I can’t help but think how much better an Apple Watch might be if it had an Eink display and was dedicated solely to fitness tracking and telling me the time. What would a MacBook with an Eink display and an arm processor look like? A dedicated writing machine with a battery that lasted for weeks? If nothing else it’s an interesting thought experiment.

Dieter Rams applied the phrase “less but better” to his approach to design, I apply it to what I want out of life. Less busyness, less junk, less drama, better relationships, better activities, better adventures. In the same way that I want to own less things, but better things, I want the devices I own to do less, but to do it better than their multifunction counterparts. Most of all, I want the devices we own to respect the humanity in our lives, not exploit our psychology for corporate greed. There’s truth in what these projects are doing, but will it be enough to be successful?

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After some years spent traveling the world, NetNewsWire is now back where it started! It’s my app again.

This is great news, I’m really happy for Brent and one of my all time favorite apps. NetNewsWire was one of the first apps I ever used on a Mac, and I’m glad it’s going to get new life as an open source labor of love.

I loved Yojimbo for many years. I still think it’s the most “Mac-like” app for taking notes and storing data. The best thing about it was that when capturing data with the hotkey, it would look at your clipboard before presenting you with a UI, and customize the UI for the data. It was fast, fit in perfectly with the Mac, and was rock-solid reliable.

But, time passed, things changed, the iPhone changed computing forever, and Yojimbo just didn’t keep up. it didn’t adopt a widescreen view, it didn’t offer iCloud sync, it didn’t have an iPhone app, it didn’t adopt the new UI widgets for the toolbar, it didn’t adopt Markdown, etc…. It still works, but it feels old and stagnate.

I’ve talked to the devs a few times, and they always give the same feedback. No future plans for an iPhone app. No plans to change anything, just to keep it running as is. So, I too started looking elsewhere.

DEVONthink

Great app, really, but holy cow is it deep and complicated. It can do so much, whenever I spend a significant amount of time using it I start to feel overwhelmed and start questioning how much I really need a single app to do everything when there are individual apps that do things better. Like the text editor, and the PDF markup. Hazel can automatically file things for you, although not based on AI, but it does a good job.

The ability to capture text and web archives is good. And if you really need deep textual analysis of your data, this is the way to go. If not, there are other alternatives.

Evernote

Did you know Evernote use to be an app that was just one long page? That might have been an early beta or something, I don’t know. Anyway, again, for capturing text and web content, it does a great job, but it’s not really Mac-like, and it’s still a bit of a roach motel for data. Also, I’ve run into weird limits on things when I really start digging in. For me, I’d rather my data stayed on my Mac in a format that I can move around. Except…

Bear

My current favorite for managing text, some images, and some captured web content. It doesn’t save web archives, but the Safari plugin will grab the text of the page you are looking at and try to extract the text to Markdown. It does a fair job. Great for storing bits of code and random pieces of information that I know I’ll need later.

Apple Notes

Rich text formatting leaves something to be desired, but syncing is solid and Notes does a good job of being a reliable place to put data. If Apple merged the best of Notes and Bear we’d have a winner. That stupid textured background always annoys me though.

Eagle Filer

A lot like Yojimbo, but it gets updated far more often and keeps data in an open format. Unfortunately it also suffers from the same drawbacks in sync and iOS companion apps. And it also looks dated to my eyes :man_shrugging:t2:.

Everything Else

Let’s not forget crowd favorite Simplenote + NVAlt, which I suppose is still a thing but I’m not sure Brett is ever going to release that updated NVAlt replacement. Then there’s Microsoft’s OneNote, which Circus Ponies blames for killing their Notebook app. If you’re into Microsoft, I guess that’s another way to go. There’s Keep It Together, which I think was renamed just “Together”, and I think abandoned. There’s StickyBrain, which became SOHO Notes, which is now Notelife… I guess? Oh, and let’s not forget the new hotness of Agenda, which combines Notes and a Calendar.

The Finder

Overwhelmed? Me too. That’s why I just went back to the Finder. I feel your pain, I really do. I’ve tried every application, method, and system out there to manage my data, and I still don’t have a perfect system. If Yojimbo was modernized and an iPhone app created, I think I’d have it, but as it is, Bare Bones just doesn’t have the motivation to work on it.

For years now I’ve wanted a simple way to encrypt or decrypt a file in macOS, so this morning I built it. This takes five to ten minutes to setup, and provides the encryption service as a right-click menu item and a pair of folders with folder actions enabled. Here’s what I did.

First, I installed the command line utility ccrypt with Homebrew: brew install ccrypt.

Next, I added a hidden config file containing my secret key in ~/.ccrypt and saved the key to 1Password.

Then, I created two new services in Automator with a single action of “Run Shell Script. The services accept files or folders in Finder, and have the “Pass input: “ setting of the Run Shell Script action set to “as arguments”. The Encrypt File service looks like this:

EXTEN="cpt"

for FILENAME in "$@"
do
	if test "${FILENAME#*$EXTEN}" != "$FILENAME"
	then
		echo "Already encrypted."
	else
		/usr/local/bin/ccencrypt -k ~/.ccrypt $FILENAME
	fi

done

And the Decrypt File service is only slightly different:

EXTEN="cpt"

for FILENAME in "$@"
do
	if test "${FILENAME#*$EXTEN}" != "$FILENAME"
	then
		/usr/local/bin/ccdecrypt -k ~/.ccrypt $FILENAME
	else
		echo "Already decrypted."
	fi

done

The first line in the script sets the EXTEN variable to “cpt”, which is what the ccrypt executable adds as a file extension when it encrypts a file. Next I setup a for loop to cycle through all of the selected files, and then do a test to see if the file being looked at already has the “cpt” extension or not. This is especially important when setting up a folder action, because when the file is encrypted it will drop in as a new file in the folder, which will then attempt to encrypt it again unless this check is preset.

After saving these two Automator services you should be able to right click on any file in the Finder and encrypt it, and then the same again to decrypt. I’ve also added the two scripts as folder actions to two folders name “Encrypted” and “Decrypted”, so if I’d rather move and encrypt the files, I can just drag and drop them on the folders.

All in all, this gives me a little more peace of mind about saving files in iCloud and syncing them between my two Macs. They won’t be available in iOS, but for the types of files I need on both machines, that’s not a problem.

I like to think about the future. I’m an optimist, so in my mind, the future looks pretty great, more “Meet the Robinsons” and less “Bladerunner”.

While Apple is busy making “memojis” and other ridiculous features no one asked for, Samsung released a phone that actually looks like what I want. It just doesn’t run iOS. This is the first time I recall seriously being drawn to an Android device as my next phone. The Samsung Galaxy Note9 looks like the embodiment of what I’ve been expecting computers to become for several years now, I’ve just been waiting for the hardware to be powerful enough to do what I want it to do.

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Samsung DeX gives you what you want from a PC experience: a big screen, a full-size keyboard and a mouse. Just connect your phone into an external display to use apps, review documents, and watch videos on a PC-like interface.

I’ve been using, and subscribing to, Ulysses, Bear, and Day One for a while now. It seems a bit silly, especially since they all do basically the same thing. On the surface they are all writing apps, but once I start to think a little deeper about them I can see where the differences lay.

Ulysses

Ulysses is for writing, the act of thinking through ideas and putting them on a page. That’s what it’s designed for, and that’s what it’s best at. That’s why the first draft of my book is in here. In long-form writing and exporting text into multiple formats, Ulysses excels. Even the little features, like daily writing goals, are geared towards helping you be the best writer you can be.

Bear

Bear can do most of the things that Ulysses can do, but less elegantly. Bear can store long-form text, but that’s not what it’s designed for, it’s designed to be the notebook you keep in your back pocket. It’s a note-taking app. A storage space for bits of code, a Zettelkasten for keeping bits of information that I might need some day. There’s quite a bit of overlap between Ulysses and Bear, but the features slightly lean one way or the other, for taking notes in Bear, and writing projects in Ulysses.

Day One

This is my journal. Day One is a diary app, a place to record and reflect on where you’ve been and what you’ve done throughout the day. It’s my running journal, a record of films I’ve watched and what I thought of them. It’s my ongoing record of my life… travels and all. It’s also, recently, where I’ve started storing my daily work journal.

What I’d Lose

I suppose the reason I’m using Ulysses less is because I’m not doing quite as much long-form writing. If I got back to blogging regularly, and if I made an effort to work on my book, I’d have more time spent in this app. But, it seems like I need Bear far more often for my day job, and even this text I’m writing now is going to end up in Day One, or maybe on my blog.

If I moved my journaling into this app, I’d lose the end-to-end encryption and location recording that Day One does. Day One makes a note of the weather, the date and time, and address where you recorded the entry. I’d lose all that in moving to Ulysses.

If I moved my note-taking into Ulysses, I feel like I might lose some of the mental separation between my writing and my notes. I’d also lose Bear’s code blocks and syntax highlighting, which I use all the time. I’ve got a lot of little code snippets and command line scripts saved in Bear, and Ulysses just doesn’t capture code blocks the same way.

So, in the end, I’m sticking with the three writing apps. Their role is well-defined, they fit in my workflow, and they’ve earned my trust. I suppose that’s all I can ask for.

David and Katie are great, they really are. I’ve enjoyed MPU, like most of you have, for years. I’ve bought the books, the scanners, implemented the workflows, heck, my paperless workflow is still a derivative of David’s book. Most of all though, I’ve bought the apps. Lots of apps, and there’s a couple things to say about that.

For one, I like being part of the Mac community, always have, and I like supporting independent developers. Secondly, many times indie devs have more incentive to make their apps the best they can possibly be, and I’ve often found that the smaller, and older, the team, the higher quality the app. For example, BBEdit, MarsEdit, Keyboard Maestro, Acorn, etc…

However, there’s another aspect to this discussion. You don’t buy your way into becoming a power user. You become a power user by understanding your Mac and knowing when and where buying an app makes sense in your personal workflow. I’d argue that if you’re not writing code, BBEdit is probably not for you. If you don’t already know that having a text expansion tool will save you hours of work every year, than it probably doesn’t fit into your workflow and doesn’t make sense to buy it.

Having a ton of system modification apps running doesn’t make you a power user, but knowing which ones to run and why does. There are things macOS doesn’t do that you might find useful in a third party app, but understanding the what, why, and how is the key.

And finally, and most importantly, have fun! In the end that’s what this is all about. Get your work done, do it efficiently, and have a good time doing it.

Mikah Sargent:

Working with a lot of windows on macOS? Here are the tips and tricks you need to know to help keep your workspace neat, tidy, and within click’s reach!

I enjoy articles like these that dig into what the Mac can do without any third-party apps. I almost always find something new that I didn’t know about before.

Bradley Chambers:

Who’s anyone? Which teacher has time to make custom books for his or her class? One of the things I’ve become concerned about is the number of items we tend to keep adding to a teacher’s plate. They have to manage a classroom of 15–30 kids, understand all of the material they teach, learn all of the systems their school uses, handle discipline issues, grade papers, and help students learn.

When do we start to take things off of a teacher’s plates? When do we give them more hours in the day? Whatever Apple envisioned in 2012, it’s clear that did not play out.

Chambers works in education, and has been paying close attention to the market for years. He knows what he’s talking about, and his main point is that Apple hasn’t made a good enough value proposition for schools to wean them away from Google.

The optimist in me would like to think that Apple’s system would work, but people who actually work in the field are saying otherwise.

Michael Flarup:

See, I was recently commissioned to come up with a redesign of the calendar and note-taking app Opus One and I was excited to share this particular bit of work— not only because I really liked how it came out, but because it represented the sort of work I have always loved doing: Themed UI carefully crafted to create a memorable experience through textures, lighting and dimensionality. A UI that is fun, takes cues from the real world for context and aims to be delightful, simply for the sake of invoking a feeling in the user.

In other words; a skeuomorphic design.

I think this looks great, and the concept is in keeping with how I think of my devices as “digital notebooks”. The clean iOS 7 style is fine, but I do think that both macOS and iOS have lost some of the whimsical touches that made Apple design stand out. Like the wormhole background in Time Machine. Completely unnecessary, but it always made me smile.

I’m not sure Opus One is an app that I personally need, but if more design like this started making it’s way back into iOS, I’d be all right with that.