What caught my attention in week twenty-one, 2023
In continuation to week twenty, here are a few thoughts and things that caught my attention in week twenty-one, 2023:
- 🚴♂️ This week I've cycled 238 km with my bikes and walked 64 km, mainly with our dog.
- 🕵️ For the second time, Apple Find-My-Network has helped us recover an expensive item. The first time, an Air Tag was able to help recover my oldest son's stolen bike, and over the weekend, it helped us get back my younger son's iPhone that was lost on the bus. This service is really damn handy.
- 🐘 In week 19 I mentioned this awesome thread on Mastodon with "underrated" iOS apps1, and now there's an even more incredible thread about Mac and iOS apps, started by Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social). Within hundreds of replies you can find so many apps and their developers - a real goldmine.
- If you still haven't found the right movie or series tracker, there are other "newcomers" to discover, such as Movie Tracker. The app is by Simone Montalto, who is best known for his fantastic Book Tracker2. Version 2.0 of FilmNoir looks very promising, too. (There is a Testflight available.) And there is yet another one: Vid Diva (Testflight).3
- To stay on topic. Recently, version 2 of Sequel was released. Unlike many other movie trackers, the app is very clean, functional, and pretty and additionally tracks games and books. However, the lack of Trakt.tv syncing was a show stopper for me. That seems to be changed soon 🥳.
- Nano Notes: Take quick notes, and read them on your Apple Watch! looks interesting and is free to use.
- If you're interested in rockets, you might want to join the Testflight of Liftoff (@Liftoff@indieapps.space). And if your into golf, then maybe Caddieapp's Testflight might be something for you. (I don't play golf, unfortunately, and I'm not really interested in rockets, at least since you can't get around that "psychopath" in that context.)
- I was on a very early beta of Bridges (Testflight), a link formatting app. It's coming along really nice, but as long as there is no Mac version I will stick to Anybox, which BTW has a nice "Copy As Markdown with Description" function as well.
- Carlo Zottmann teased the release of his Actions for Obsidian for iOS.
- And for people who don't like the aesthetics of Up Ahead (an app that I really like), Countdown App - Remainders might be an alternative. BTW in the same vein is Yonks - Day Counter App for iOS & Android.
- For (habit) tracking things in the past, LongAgo might be something. You can join its Testflight if you want.
- Metapho: a powerful tool for photo enthusiasts who want to take care of their photo metadata is installed on my iPhone for a very long time already, and now I've discovered by chance that there is now also a version for macOS.
- I also took the opportunity to ask for a Mac version of Remind Me Faster. I really think this could be very helpful. The iOS version is definitely worth every penny.
- I've been dancing around Zenitizer, a mediation timer, for a while now. I even participated in the testflight, but couldn't get myself up to start the daily routine again. I used to practice it regularly with Headspace a few years ago, but the annual subscription was too expensive for me in the long run and at some point I stopped short and then I'm always right out of such things, unfortunately. So maybe I should just redeem the 50% discount for Zenitizer and just start using it. Like quitting smoking, just the other way around ...
- Söka: The easy way to manage your bucket lists and discover new goals looks very interesting, too. Since Corona and now with dog, we just do not get around so much. But maybe that will change again.
- Video for Ants was released as well: It helps you compress videos and is mainly geared towards fitting into the Mastodon limit right now, though it does other things too. I was on the beta and find it really helpful.
- As a Pomodoro timer I use Sessions, because it's nice and incluced in my Setapp subscription. But Focus: a feature-rich Pomodoro and time management app, looks very interesting, too.
- To see, that Ortwin Gentz is still working on Where To? made me happy. This app is really an App Store dinosaur and still very useful.
- I've downloaded SplitBill :a tiny App to snap or import a receipt photo and split the transactions. Might be handy someday.
- Arlist looks awesome, too. Happy with Mindnode (iOS, macOS) und Bike (macOS), but might play around with it if I find some time.
- Fitness Age: A simple fitness age calculator based on HealthKit’s VO2Max (Cardio Fitness) is a nice little app, that told my heart is 19 year younger than I am. I was very happy to pay a few euros for this message.
- ⏰ To find out when the WWDC keynote will take place, Elsewhen (macOS) came in handy.
- 📆 I've asked for recommendations on Mastodon for a day planer and got some great feedback. Still evaluating some apps and will probably report next week.
- 👴 generations by Scenic Route Software was finally made available on Catalog for playdate. This is a really nice game! I'm at an age where I don't like it anymore when games put me under time pressure. And this beautiful puzzle game doesn't do just that.
- 🪞 Sindre Sorhus released just another app, this time Camera Preview : Instant access to your Mac’s camera feed for quick checks before video calls or just to snap some selfies. I immediately had to think of Hand Mirror4 by Rafa and that otherwise actually Apple are the ones who sherlock other apps. Rafa definitely had the same thought and also the appropriate term for it: Sorhocked 🤣.
- 🐘 I think you'd have to have been living under a rock not to have noticed, but for the sake of completeness: Ivory for Mac was released.
- 💜 Adam from omg.lol has a promo where you can get a .lol domain for free for the first year. Of course I couldn't resist and now my Micro.blog is running under marco.tmi.lol.
- 🤘 Speaking of Adam, he launched a new service, rad.dad. Of course, I couldn't resist, and now I have two additional rad email addresses.
- 🤯 That video linked on kottke.org was really fascinating: The Fastest Maze-Solving Competition On Earth.
- 😢 No movies and no TV series this week.
- 🎙 Accidental Tech Podcast: 535: My Computer Supports Math, Accidental Tech Podcast: 536: I Reboot With Reason, AppStories: Our macOS Wishes, Besenwagen - der Radsport Podcast: Wasser im Schlauch (mit Sebastian Lang), Hello Playdate Podcast: Interview 04 - Julia Minamata, The Talk Show With John Gruber: 375: ‘No False Humidity’, With Jason Snell
- In the meantime, Quinn Nelson's video about it, which is really worth watching, has also appeared on youtube.↩︎
- By the way, a big update for Booktracker has just been released as well.↩︎
- I'm still really curious about the niche for Casey Liss' upcoming app.↩︎
- Hand Mirror I had mentioned some time ago in Week 6 and bought it directly. A really wonderfully designed and useful little app. (In the meantime it is also available on Setapp). ↩︎