Shifting between apps

My defaults have shifted a bit over the years.

Currently I’m using Apple Notes for writing, Things 3 for todos, Google Maps for directions, Safari for browser, Apple Podcasts for podcasts, Apple Music for music, and so on.

I’m also using Apple Calendar, Slack, Apple Passwords, Freefrom ChatGPT, MarsEdit, and Reeder.

All these apps are part of my daily toolset.

Some I need to use because I’m part of a team, but for most of these I pick them because I’ve thought through the tradeoffs and chosen my preferred default.

Take Apple Notes. I’ve switched between Bear, Evernote, Notion, Google Docs, and a half dozen other apps for basic note taking. Apple won out because of the default integration mixed with slowly improving the app over time until it became the best or my use case.

Now that I’ve landed on this app I could end up switching again. I’m often willing to try something new. But it’d have to be quite a bit better at this point for me to change.

Apple Podcasts has been a similar journey. I’ve switched from Apple Podcasts to Overcast to Spotify to Apple, and also tested out a bunch of other players in the space. My favorite is Overcast, but because of some (now fixed) connectivity issues last year I was forced to switch. I want to go back, but I don’t want to go through the effort of getting everything synced up just right again, and so I think about it but don’t make the switch.

I’m in the midst of debating between 1Password and Apple Passwords, but the friction of moving from one to other is quite a bit. I’ve paused payments on 1P so I only have view access, that’s slowly forcing me to add all new entries into Apple Passwords.

Also, while we’re at it, just talking about Apple’s suites of apps is kind of annoying when you always have to add the word Apple to it.

I’m curious if my list of most used apps will be the same five years from now, or shift again.