After looking at Apple One I decided to go in with a monthly subscription to test whether it would be worth it but I’ve already cancelled.
Removing the individual services I don’t need and just moving to Apple Music and iCloud is still the best option for me.
On looking at the individual services and removing them I laughed out loud when I saw £9.99 for News. In the past day of testing across my iPad and iPhone it’s a terrible experience.
The main feed serves the worst kinds of ads, there are news suggestions you can’t opt out of, the magazine list is less than the last time I used it and I’ve never got it working properly on my iPhone.
Great ad! Feels like buzzfeed or my local newspaper Here’s what happens even after lots of restarts and debugging on my iPhone
I honestly can’t work out how Apple are charging £9.99 a month on top of making money from those terrible ads.
I’m thinking a lot about the devices I currently use and it’s got me thinking about cross platform apps again.
I’ve been pretty settled on Apple Notes, Mail and Reminders but am I locking myself into an ecosystem?
The obvious benefit of using cross platform apps is that I can use them regardless of the device I’m using. I’m not liking my iPhone 13 and may even give the Pixel a go but Reminders and Notes wouldn’t work on it. I could switch back to apps like Google Keep and Todoist to make sure I’m not locked in.
I’ve taken a few breaks from Twitter over the years but most recently I see a trend – it’s where people complain. Now I’m guilty of this too, when I’m annoyed at a particular company or service my instinct is to jump on Twitter and complain. I’ve curbed this over the last couple of years (I think!) but looking at my timeline it’s 70% talking about things people don’t like about a particular TV show or app or product.
I try not to complain about TV because I don’t want to take the enjoyment from other people that liked it but I’m guilty of other complaints especially around apps or services.
I’m going to do my best to stop and if I don’t have something nice to say I won’t say anything at all on Twitter in a bid to put out a big more positivity.
Ah, the eternal question of if we’ll ever see a weather app on iPad. This link goes off to a nice concept but trying not to be skeptical I don’t see Apple giving us a weather app on iPad, as logical as it seems I don’t see them having a focus on it.
I’ve used NOWTV to watch F1 this season but I’ve recently cancelled my account, all for one reason – their iOS apps.
I started to watch it on Apple TV and ads aside (losing the audio, which isn’t a bad thing) it worked ok but their iPadOS might be one of the worst apps I’ve experienced. For example I missed FP1 today so wanted to catch up, I was presented with the never ending waiting loop as seen in the image above. This happens about 70% of the time on any of their streaming – it’s not really acceptable when they charge £30 a month. This was the final straw for me and I’ve cancelled my account until they show some focus on their mobile experiences.
I’ll listen to it on the radio for the rest of the season I think unless I see some improvement.
I’ve been using Apple Music for ages now and I like it, it’s my favourite music streaming service but there’s one area I’d improve – discovery.
When looking at the app this morning I’m struck with how difficult it is to find all the new releases from my favourite artists.
Correct me if I’m wrong here but I don’t see any way to show me a list of all artists in my library that have a new release.
Is this really the case?
That’s an area Spotify does better, it feels a bit more of an active service and I’d always be in new music whereas Apple Music feels a bit more like just listening to your favourite music – if this makes sense.
I’ve been using Apple Reminders for a little while now in parallel with Things 3 and Todoist as a test and I have to say that Reminders is more flexible.
I’m able to add a URL, Notes and Images to a task and it’s available from the share sheet in all of the places I care about. It adheres to the system font and zoom settings making it one of the most accessible, which is one of my main gripes with apps like Things that doesn’t consider accessibility.
It’s also free, which in this current economy cutting back on apps and subscriptions isn’t a bad thing to start to do and if you’re on an iPhone then you don’t need to look much further than Apple’s own apps to get 90% of what you want.
Since the refresh of Apple Reminders I’ve been using it more and more, I’ve now just kept on using it. It’s a simple app but does everything you’d want in a to do app.
I’ve kept things pretty simple as you’ll see from my lists above. I split my main focus down to lists and then just set due dates on items. I also have a sub folder for my creative projects, that’s it.
I like Reminders for it’s integration with the iOS share sheet, adherence to the larger system font I use, widget and ability to add details like a URL to the task.
What I don’t like is the amount of clicks it takes to set details on the Mac but I don’t really use it much on macOS so it doesn’t stop me using it.
I use the widget on my home screen to keep on top of things when they are due. If they are really important I’ll set a due time so I get a pop up reminder.
I don’t use tags, I recommend you don’t either. Keep organisation via lists rather than tags, it makes it a lot easier visually to see how the tasks break down.