Then something else happened. I didn’t go back to my larger iPad. I watched it, evening after evening, sitting on the TV console, fully-charged, ready to perform at a moment’s notice, but I never picked it up. I used the hell out of my phone, because the iPhone 5 is amazing, as we all know. But I didn’t feel like picking up that iPad. Every time I did, it felt so heavy. Like a really pretty manhole cover. Rene and I did a podcast in which he extolled the virtues of the mini, while I defended (theoretically, as it turned out) the need to have a bigger, nicer screen and a little more performance for the kinds of creative apps I was using.

Then it occurred to me: I wasn’t actually creating anything anymore on my iPad. It was, as I said, sitting. I watched and listened as my friends on the internet sang its praises, selling their large iPads, saying things like “it’s the best mobile device I’ve ever used”. I started to feel crazy, like I missed something… had I been too quick to dismiss the device? No, I know what I like, and my gut is usually right about things like this. Then I asked the people in my daily life who had them. Every single person said the same thing: it’s the best iPad they’d ever used.

With this gnawing at me, I couldn’t take it anymore. Deeply conflicted and doubting my own judgment, I ordered one, a white (HUGE departure from my lineage of black) 32gb Verizon mini. I sat back, suddenly relaxed that the decision was made. A weight had been lifted. If I truly didn’t like it, I could always send it back. I was ready to give it another shot.

Then it took two full weeks to arrive.

Agony. Having made the decision, I was ready to begin my new experiment. But I couldn’t. I had to wait and watch as a seemingly prehistoric process unfolded in front of me. I’m so used to Amazon Prime shipping speeds, watching as my mini was manufactured for a week and then stagnating as it trudged around the world was excruciating. It sat in a UPS facility in Kentucky for almost three full days. Doing nothing. I’ve had a 60" HDTV delivered to me from Amazon in less than 24 hours. This was torture. I casually wandered into the Apple store at the mall while my wife and I were shopping, in the hopes that they’d have a model I could grab that would at least be close to what I ordered. I was prepared to be flexible; sure, I would take a black 64gb LTE model. No problem. But nothing. Wi-fi only, everywhere I went. The cellular models were either the hottest sellers, or seriously undermanufactured.

When it finally arrived, I opened it and wept. Not really, but I was so happy to be done refreshing a shipment tracking page, I could have. I got to setting it up, put all my stuff in place, and configured it just so. Paired it with my Logitech Ultrathin (which looks positively gargantuan next to it now). Attached the Smart Cover I ordered while I waited for it to arrive. Began using it, picking it up, making it a part of my routine.

Verdict? I’m a jackass. I learned some things about myself and what I actually value. All the lip service I’d paid the larger display was truly worthless in the end, because I wasn’t even looking at it. The mini? I can’t put it down. It’s so light, I take it from room to room. I’d never done that with the larger iPad. I read more, I play games more, I bang out email, journal entries and draft posts more, simply because it’s there and ready. Everyone said it takes a few days to get used to everything being compressed a little, and it’s true. It’s been a week, though, and I couldn’t imagine going back. I stopped seeing the pixels about two days in, which was about 47.8 hours longer than I’d given it the first time. If only I’d not been so shortsighted.

The lesson for me is not about buying more crap and filling my life with more screens. It’s about not making snap judgments anymore. I find as I get older that I think I’ve got things pretty wired; that I know myself and what I think I like. The truth of the matter is that I’m woefully inflexible in my own mind sometimes, despite my ability to adjust to things in my real life (I just had a kid, trust me, I’m getting pretty awesome at “adjustment”). I have to learn to put aside my preconceived notions about things, and explore my options, because I’ll never know what I’m missing out on if I don’t.

Seems like a grandiose conclusion to draw over a gadget, but the epiphanies that matter the most to us don’t always come down on a bolt of lightning.

App.net | Twitter

The launch of Netbot kicked the service into high gear for a while and it saw a huge spike in traffic and activity, proving a point many have made, namely that in today’s tech world, to the user, the application is the service. App.net CEO Dalton Caldwell has even said himself that the ‘out of the box’ experience for new users isn’t terrific, and while they’re working to improve that, apps are paving the way and bringing people into the fold. And we watched as Netbot’s influence stabilized and we’ve seen overall ADN conversations trickle off in our feeds. People went back to Twitter, because the conversation keeps happening there due to a massively entrenched network effect that’s undeniable.

Lots has been said about the potential of ADN, and how it really needs to do something special to continue to grow. It won’t beat Twitter at its own game (admittedly, that’s been stated as not a real targeted objective anyway), but it’s got to do… something.

I’m starting to believe all of what we’ve seen is merely prelude to something more. I’ve been bullish on the service since making the decision to back it and I’ve watched it with great interest. I finally got around to listening to the official ADN podcast a few days ago too, and it’s basically Dalton talking about the API development and answering questions from users. The thing is, in hearing him talk about their progress and plans, I’ve started to realize something – two things, actually.

1. The Twitter-like feed tool we currently see as “App.net” is but one face – the starting point – of a much larger idea
2. It’s not just about making that tool better – the long play is to build an extensible communication platform not just for Twitter use cases, but for a myriad other outlets

I’d considered other ways in which the service might become valuable, but I’ll admit, I kept coming up short until I heard him talk about their plans. I thought about how it might be used as an external comment platform for blogs, linking threads and conversations back to a post via the service. I could see that being kind of cool, and I think it would definitely (given the price to enter the service) at least preliminarily solve a part of the “commenting problem”. Users willing to pony up some money to be part of a service like this might be less compelled to be dicks on people’s blogs. It’s a long shot, but you can see where I’m headed.

Listening to the podcasts, though, something else became very clear. The private messaging API is going to be the catalyst behind this entire thing. Dalton described how their focus on releasing a capable first iteration of this aspect of the service took great importance as they worked this past few months. He mentioned the concept of the “internet of things” – all the interconnected devices that are filling our lives with notifications and (in some cases) noise. He talked about the immense success platforms like BlackBerry Messenger and WhatsApp have had in the mobile space, and pointed out that no matter how large public messaging is, private messages (SMS and the like) outweigh it by orders of magnitude. He also reinforced the fact that ADN is not rushing to do much of anything – they’ve created a sustainable business model for the time being, focused on user features, and their goal is to continue developing the service, strengthening the hooks to outside applications and enabling developers to create new and interesting things by delivering working code examples with updates to the API.

Most importantly, he mentioned that with his previous company imeem, the final face of the service was drastically different than its first one. As with any software, the users will in large and small ways influence the ongoing development, and discover use cases that the devs hadn’t even considered. This is the core piece that as a market, we’re unable to see yet. We see a Twitter competitor, and one that feels like it’s faltering as Twitter continues to swell its userbase. We see something that we want to succeed, but we’re not seeing the endgame yet. I’m mentally reinvested in the entire idea after listening to him on the podcasts – not because he’s compelling users to foment revolution – but because he’s seeing past the market perception of what the service is supposed to be. It’s only been five months since the blog post that kicked this off, and four since funding. I don’t know many web services that declared victory in any capacity in that timeframe, and it’s worth keeping that in mind.

I highly recommend checking out the podcast if you’re even marginally interested in this at all. It’s changed my thinking; you may discover the same.

Thoughts? App.net | Twitter

For starters, I don’t use my OS X home folder for anything, if I can help it. Everything important lives in Dropbox. I can’t move my Library in there, but if I could, I would. If I lost my MBP tomorrow, I could be back up and running 90% of the way just by logging into Dropbox on a new machine. That makes me feel good. Now, onto some more specific things.

1Password: The alpha and omega of all my Dropboxing. 1Password is the single most useful app on any of my systems, and my world lives inside it. Security’s no joke, and 1P makes it easy. Constant updates, communicative and friendly developers and a willingness to always improve make it my number one app, anywhere.

Notes, Reminders: Notes are stored as plain text files and kept in a folder called Notes. I point the awesome Notational Velocity fork nvALT at this folder on the Mac, and whatever app I’m currently using on iOS at it as well. Right now, that happens to be Elements by Second Gear. It’s clean and fast. Reminders are a different beast. Currently I’m back using Appigo’s Todo, which I’d purchased a million years ago, but which has seen some pretty decent updates. My tasks sync in a Dropbox folder and appear on all my devices. This could change by the time you read this, but that’s what’s great about Dropbox. Another one of my favorites is TaskAgent, although it’s more for lists and doesn’t have reminder functions built in. If you just have one list, you might check out Due, which is also great.

Camera Uploads: This is a service that’s now provided directly through the Dropbox app. Before it was offered, I used many different iOS apps to get my camera roll into Dropbox, and I still use one called CameraSync because it uses geofencing to determine when to activate and upload your pics, taking the manual process away entirely. I set it up for the office and my house, and when I go between them, I get a notification that my pics are uploading. It’s like magic. (I also have Photo Stream turned on as a fallback, but I like that they’re also in Dropbox automatically as well, for obvious reasons – Photo Stream has a 1,000 pic/30 day limit).

Byword: My favorite writing app for Mac and iOS. Hook Byword up to your Dropbox, and your works in progress are everywhere. I store them as plain text (.txt) files for portability into other writing apps as well.

Day One: My journal of choice. Byword is for things I intend to put somewhere on the web, Day One is just for me. A gorgeous Mac and iOS app, with tons of features and improvements. If you’re not using this app, you’re seriously missing out on a flagship writing experience. Again, I choose to store the data file in Dropbox, because I want to be able to pull it apart if I feel like it (or need to) and iCloud’s data container doesn’t sit well with me.

Scanner Pro: A great quick utility by Readdle. If I need a PDF of something I’m looking at in the real world, I grab my phone or iPad, take a picture, and Scanner Pro converts it to a great looking PDF and drops it into my Dropbox for me. Easy.

Drafts: Quick capture and instant dumping into a variety of iOS apps. I keep a “Drafts” folder hooked up to Dropbox and have it set to capture text notes that I intend to file away in my large note file. Hazel watches this folder and drops .txt files into the other one for me.

TextExpander: Super time-saver. TextExpander takes snippets of keys you assign and drops giant chunks of text in their place. I keep the settings synced with Dropbox between my systems.

Paper: My favorite sketching app. Although I don’t use Paper all that much, when I do, it exports my journals right into a Dropbox folder. I end up using this to quickly diagram things for clients sometimes. It helps to have a picture to go with what I’m saying, and if we’re all in agreement, I can save it, export it and refer to it when I go to create a formal wireframe document or something like that.

Software: I keep a master repository of all kinds of .dmg files and installers in Dropbox. I’ve been a Pro customer for years, and recently had my storage space doubled to a massive 200gb, so this is even less of a problem now than before. Super convenient when you’re managing multiple systems in an office environment and the Mac App Store isn’t how you plan to do it.

System: I keep a folder called System in my Dropbox, and the purpose of this folder is to preserve app settings and things like that. If I can, I’ll install an app and configure it so that its settings automatically go there, but if not, I can always manually copy/move some things around or set up Hazel rules to duplicate these settings/files. Alfred is a good example of an app that runs out of this folder – all my extensions and tweaks are synced between my Macs into Alfred from here.

What else?…

Sharing: throw things in a Dropbox folder, get a quick link. Better than email for giant files, and usually works ok for everyone.

IFTTT: there’s all manner of cool automated things you can do with IFTTT, a web service that aggregates other web services to do some nerdy heavy lifting for you. I’m currently pulling all my Instagram shots in automatically, as well as Facebook pics I’ve been tagged in. I also have something set up to automatically forward a document from my iPhone to a folder specified by me in Dropbox, but I don’t really find myself using it. Still, it’s cool and it’s just scratching the surface.

iPhoto: I wouldn’t recommend trying to point multiple machines’ iPhoto installs to one library you keep in Dropbox (seems to have issues, YMMV) but if you only have one machine on which you use iPhoto, it’s an easy way to back that giant file up (if you have the space).

I could go on and on. When I record podcasts, they dump directly into a Dropbox folder from Audio Hijack. I keep a folder just to sync stuff between my MBP and my Mac mini server at home if I need to. A different folder to share things with my wife and her MBP. The possibilities are nearly limitless, and growing every day. It’s a fantastically reliable and functional tool I’ve grown to rely on. I’d hate to go back to computing without it.

If you’ve got a great way to use Dropbox, I’d love to hear it.

Twitter | App.net

It’s… not for me.

The short version: between heavy-handed interfaces and iCloud flakiness, I gave up because I felt that I was neither gaining relief from the productivity improvement demons nor was I focused on my work. Instead, I was waiting for the other iCloud shoe to drop (data loss) and talking myself into the idea that this was good enough for me, when the truth of the matter was that it really isn’t.

I’ve been reliant on Dropbox for so long I can’t even remember or imagine a world without it. Many apps take great advantage of the APIs Dropbox has in place to both sync settings and data with moderate to high levels of success based on the app and its implementation. There are two reasons I feel better about this path:

1. Dropbox exists in a tangible way on multiple computers I own as well as in the cloud
2. Flexibility between interfaces

The first one is easy. I don’t trust iCloud fully yet. Every time I saw three copies of a single note appear in the Notes app or a reminder re-add itself to a list after completion, I added a tiny tick mark to the wall in my mind. Which is not to say that Dropbox sync services are without folly; certainly they can and do fail from time to time, however I always have the opportunity to throw my data into another app and test the waters elsewhere. I can easily see my data in Dropbox, which is important not primarily for sync settings, but for things like my plain text notes, which might be transitory and not long-term in nature as I’d discovered, but important to see and preserve as I saw reason to take the information down and capture it. Seeing duplicate notes appear was the flip side to the coin where notes suddenly vanish, and I’m not comfortable with that.

Second: Apple’s UI choices are polarizing if nothing else. There are many choices I enjoy and find delightful, and many at which I continually level disgust and contempt. With the relief provided by giving up my tinkering ways to Apple’s choices comes a compromise I’m unwilling to make right now – I’m stuck looking at yellow paper that formats plain text in obnoxious ways and parchment lists that while functional, are hardly the optimal way to organize (in my mind, at least) the tasks and efforts I need to complete. By using apps that plug into Dropbox, I’m afforded a variety of ways to look at the exact same data. Sometimes I need that variety, and it comes at the price of my inability to sometimes stop myself from exploring other apps and interfaces. I look at these screens entirely too much each day to be unhappy with what’s staring back at me. I can work at leaving well enough alone with regard to fiddly bits, but I can’t work at liking a UI I simply don’t.

The fundamental truth I learned about myself, which I mentioned in the first sentence of that other post is that I am a tinkerer. I like to try different things, break stuff, put it back together, and start from scratch. It’s something I can’t really turn off entirely, nor do I want to. It’s a curiosity I’ve had since I was a kid, and I hope my daughter expresses the same interest in exploration, whether it’s with software or any other interest she’s passionate about. I try new apps and add layers of complexity because I need to. It’s an evolving little puzzle I do with myself, like a game of Jenga in reverse. Occasionally I find something rock solid and leave it working, but there’s always something else to move on to, some new thing to play with, some new web service to leverage to make the mental machine run a little more smoothly. Understanding this about myself means I don’t feel guilty anymore about trying a million different ways to do a simple thing because I can rest a little easier knowing I’ve ruled out the ways I didn’t know before.

So, back to plain text, back to Dropbox, like a favorite pair of jeans. Sometimes you buy new jeans, sometimes you wear a suit, and sometimes the jeans sit in your drawer for a few weeks. But they’re there, and you know it, and it makes you happy.

Page 1 of my mom’s bill.

A bill, asking her to return her equipment. Which she was in fact charged for.

So… yeah. My folks are still assessing the damage to the house. I don’t know if the box is there, ruined, or otherwise. But regardless, she was not supposed to be charged, and she’s already received this.

Comcast Cares™.

Glassboard is a private social network for groups. You create a board, invite your participants, and everyone can post and read into that board. You can add photos, reply with comments to posts, and receive push notifications when others update the board. The thing that really worked for us was that the service is available as an iPhone app, an Android app and a web app (still in beta, perfectly functional). This meant that across all our staff, everyone would be able to use it in some capacity – those who had cell service but no home connectivity could use the apps, and those with home connectivity and no cell service could use a browser.

In a matter of a few hours, we had status updates on everyone (all safe, thankfully) and were talking about a contingency plan for the office and our client obligations. Glassboard allowed us to communicate effectively and quickly across a variety of platforms, and took the guesswork and aggravation out of organizing a group of our size. It’s a great tool with some talented people behind it, and I look forward to seeing its continued development.

It’s free with optional pro account upgrades, and you should check it out. Our Iterate interview with Brent Simmons of Sepia Labs (and many other great things) will be up soon.

As you’d expect, people are sharply divided. There was a lot of support from all kinds of people who felt, as I did, that the situation was poorly handled. On the other hand, this being the Internet, there were plenty of contrarians who relished telling me how stupid I was for even bringing this up, and insisted I was being a whiny bitch for not writing about the people who perished in the storm. I was told “this is how business works” and regaled with tales of economics that fully explained (FULLY EXPLAINED) exactly why I was wrong, how I was wrong, and insinuated that I not only did not understand a free market economy, but that I should be thankful (as should my mom) that the situation wasn’t worse.

Oh, Internet.

We are thankful that it wasn’t worse. We’re not idiots; we’re grateful to have lived through this disaster when others didn’t. We weren’t hurt physically, but it’s tough to come to terms with the kind of loss my family feels, despite the fact that it’s not of the mortal variety. The post was not designed to overlook the struggles of others, nor to minimize their problems in favor of bitching about a company I didn’t like. No, I wrote it because it needed to be written. I wrote it because I do understand how business works, but if corporations get to be treated as people for tax purposes, then they should act like people in other situations occasionally as well when common sense would call for it.

It’s not about the money. I’m pretty sure my mom can afford to pay for the box. It’s about how in the face of extreme conditions and personal suffering, they had nothing better to say to a longtime customer besides “too bad”. I got a lot of shit for expecting the company to pay for my mom’s troubles, when so many others were in the same predicament. How brazen I was, suggesting that Comcast eat all that money! How dare I question their policies? Business is business, and that’s the world we live in.

Well, if you read the post, I didn’t ask them to pay for the box. What I said was that they didn’t care. They do community outreach, and plant trees, and host events, and that’s great. But when people really need them, they didn’t offer to offset the cost, they didn’t offer to delay the fees, they didn’t even offer understanding. What they offered was a big “not our problem”.

The point of the post was not to get them to pay; the point of the post was to illiustrate what I saw as a completely insane situation and request. The shore looks like a nuclear bomb hit it, but their concern is for the used cable boxes and the equipment fees they might lose out on. “Comcast Cares” is lip service, used when it suits them. It would have been not only easier, but probably more sensible to have anticipated this (the storm wasn’t exactly a surprise) and have any kind of PR statement prepared. Even if the intention was to have everyone pay (well within their right to do so) then deliver the news with a modicum of compassion. Offer to delay the charges. Offer a voucher. Offer anything. They’re going to take a huge loss on all that equipment anyway; if you think it’s not going to get written off in at least some way, then “you clearly don’t understand how business in America works.”

I was looking for a reason as to why I had to write the post I did just to get someone to give a shit. That’s the story, people. No one cared about it until I raised hell. I shouldn’t have had to bring it up at all.

My parents have two houses in Mantoloking, NJ. Mantoloking, for those who might not know, was one of the most devastated areas of the state. There was a tiny bungalow on a narrow sand street that they would rent out to friends or use as an extra place for family that visited them at the beach. That house is gone now; one of many houses that exploded or burned as the result of a gas main rupturing. There is nothing but burnt sand left for blocks. She’s upset about that – we all really loved that little place, and it had a special spot in our hearts and was beautiful.

The house they live in for half the year is two streets away. The gas main on this street is also ruptured and hissing explosive fumes into the air. The street is inaccessible by anything other than a boat and completely devastated but their house is still standing as far as we know. However, she’s been told that if the wind shifts and the fire moves, this entire area could ignite. My parents would lose everything they have there as would everyone else on that street and likely the adjacent streets. She is, understandably, very upset about this.

She called me in the midst of this chaos to tell me that she just got off the phone with Comcast. We have Comcast service at the shore; in the summer my mom turns the cable on while everyone is around at the beach, and in the fall calls to suspend it. She usually does it around this time each year.

She was trying to explain to them that they stood to lose the entire house in an explosion and that the authorities were having trouble even reaching the area to cut the gas to prevent this. She mentioned that she wouldn’t be able to return the cable box and equipment because the storm had basically destroyed the area, and the house was perilously close to being destroyed completely as well.

Comcast’s reply to her?

We’re very sorry, but the price of the equipment will be charged to your account if you’re unable to return it.

That’s right: in the middle of a natural disaster, the worst our area has seen in decades, at a time when my parents have already lost one house and stand to lose the other, as well as everything in it (remember, it’s not a rental so it’s fully furnished and they live there for part of the year – there are family keepsakes, antiques, and the like) – at a time like this, Comcast has essentially told my mom “tough shit”.

She spoke to a supervisor who echoed the same thing. Comcast was very ‘sympathetic to the situation’, but according to policy, the company must assess fees against unreturned equipment, no matter the situation.

Apparently, even in the face of utter devastation and potential loss of life, Comcast’s policy is to reclaim all equipment furnished, or issue charges against the accounts of equipment holders. You know, it’s not like my mom is lazy, or decided she didn’t feel like returning the box; she’d need to charter a boat or helicopter to even get to the house to get the box (which is probably underwater to some degree to begin with, so there’s got to be some kind of charge for that). Oh also, while she’s there getting the box for Comcast, the house might catch fire or the whole street might explode. So as you’d expect, it’s not something she’s likely to be able to do anytime soon anyway.

I can’t even begin to fathom the insane corporate decision making that led to a policy like this. This is a company for which a popular motto is “Comcast Cares”. The facts of the matter are as follows:

• Comcast does care. It cares about reclaiming equipment in the face of unspeakable disaster. And about charging fees for equipment that does not get returned, even if there is no physical way within the realm of possibility in which to do it.
• Comcast, does not, in fact, care at all about you. Not even a little. House burned down? Fuck you, pay me. House about to explode at any minute? Fuck you, pay me.

Here’s a quote from that “Comcast Cares” page I linked to above:

"It’s a wonderful thing to have people work together for the benefit of others.”

-Ralph Roberts, Comcast Founder

Unless, of course, working together for the benefit of others gets in the way of your bottom line. Because in that case, well, you know.

I just don’t even know what else to say about this. It’s unbelievable. Please share this wherever you like to share stuff. I don’t need everyone to boycott Comcast or whatever. I’m just incredulous at the response to this kind of situation. And I’m guessing my mom’s not the only person to have had a phone call like this today.

I eagerly awaited the release of v6 this year after hearing so much about the beta as people used it and said how amazingly new it all was. How could the service possibly top itself? What wizardry awaited in this new release? The launch came, and I immediately migrated my entire site to the new service.

That was my first mistake. I soon realized that none of the categories I’d created over the past few years appeared in my composition windows when I was posting. Which meant that I needed to either re-create each manually, or I had a much bigger service issue that I couldn’t possibly fix. I contacted support and spoke to a variety of different, eager-to-help representatives, but the issue went unfixed for several weeks, during which I was afraid to add content to the site, not knowing how it might affect things. It finally did get resolved, though, so I can say thanks for that.

In that same span of time, I realized that the iOS apps upon which I relied for quick posts from my iPhone and iPad were slowly becoming hobbled. I could not edit posts I’d created in the new system on iOS because of the limitations of the way the apps handled them. I wasn’t doing anything nutty; I post entirely text, with the very occasional image (almost never). Over a few weeks, I wasn’t able to even post new entries to the site at all. Two days ago, I noticed that all the buttons in the iPad app compose window do exactly nothing now. Which left me with a post in the app that I couldn’t save as a draft or publish.

I stuck with a service that I’ve used for years, because I loved the flexibility. Which recently was whittled away to literally nothing. The iOS apps are now broken beyond belief. One would assume the company would be hard at work on restoring compatibility. But instead, it released a new branded note-taking app… because that’s what its users need more. I know notes are so hot right now, but it would really be better to have the entire service work as advertised. Even on the web, I’ve experienced slowdown, hangs, and complete failure as I try to do even the most basic things.

I finally tired of waiting for something to happen, so yesterday I migrated the site to a hosted WordPress install. I paid for ad removal and a custom URL. At least WP’s iOS apps do something (namely, work properly). The theme I chose is simple and pleasant, and I’m able to continue writing when I want to (infrequently) but when I post, it goes somewhere. I’m getting serious about dropping things from my life that don’t work for me or make things more difficult than they need to be. Sadly, one of my favorite web tools became one of those weights that needed to be dropped. I’m not beyond sweeping the leg when I need to.

No mercy, sensei.

I love this stuff. I really do. But time is fleeting lately, between craziness at work and a new tiny person with some serious demands on my time waiting for me at home. I started to wonder: can I strip away small bits of complexity from my workflows and actually enjoy what most people would consider the “Apple experience”? I’ve long crafted elaborate workarounds to avoid using the default apps that ship with OS X and iOS, but they’ve matured to a point with 10.8 and iOS 6 that I’m entertaining the idea of giving them a shot again. The place that sees the most impact (unsurprisingly) is with productivity apps, traditionally my most fiddly bits. It took some intestinal foritude to take these first few steps, but in the interest of personal self-discovery, I suppose it’s worth it.

I’ve tried dozens of task/to do apps. I go through them like tissues in cold season. I landed on using OmniFocus for tasks a few months ago. I was initially impressed with how flexible it is as a product (I’m a big Omni Group fan), and how you can adapt it to how you wish to use it. What I came to realize is that I personally wasn’t using more than a few of its terrific options, which made it akin to killing a mosquito with a rocket launcher. So I’m giving Reminders another look. With the release of Mountain Lion, a dedicated app ships with the OS, and it’s on iOS already. So far, it seems to be doing an extremely servicable job for what I need, and Siri integration is really nice.

I’ve used plain text files stored in Dropbox for basic note-taking for a long time now. I’ve long preached the flexibility of plain text as well as the fun of plugging multiple apps into a single stored location and being able to try all kinds of things. As it turns out, about 60% of the notes I take are of no value to me after a certain period of time, and so I deleted a bunch of them. This freed me up from the mental burden of thinking I needed to keep everything around. Once I cleared that hurdle, I decided to try Notes again. As with Reminders, OS X ships with a dedicated Notes app now, and I wanted to see if I could get by with it. I’ll still compose anything more than a transitory note in plain text and keep it in Dropbox, but for basic capture, I’m sticking with this for now.

I just got brutally honest with myself and realized that I never actually do cool things like converting my plain text captures into Markdown and then emailing myself HTML snippets while automating task generation. I love the idea that so many apps allow you to do so much more than the basics, but if I’m being honest, then I can’t pretend I use all that stuff. So if the Apple apps are good enough, then why the question at all?

My main hangups center on how much I trust iCloud. I feel like maintaining folders of .txt files that I can easily point to and drag somewhere else *feels* right to me. I know I can dig out the Mobile Documents folder buried in ~Library, but it’s not the same. And I could back up my OF database in Dropbox and have days’ worth of copies to fall back on should the app fail for any reason. With iCloud, I basically have to put my trust in Apple that these bits of information, upon which I rely for my daily organization are going to be there when I need them. I’m not super comfortable doing this, but at the same time, I’m trying really hard to let go of my need to grip everything so tightly. Partly because I’m tired of the endless tinkering with my workflow, and partly because I’m envious of people who don’t even have these thoughts. It’s a sickness, you know. A beautiful, enriching, crippling sickness.

The experiment’s underway. All my short-term text is in Notes, and tasks in Reminders across my devices and Macs. It’s a strange feeling, using apps now that I’ve long derided as “not enough” and realizing that they are in fact, just fine. I don’t know if I’ll stick with this – it depends on my neuroses about this data and how long I can keep them at bay – but it feels oddly freeing. Like a weight has been lifted. Fewer moving parts, fewer options and switches, and a focus on something else.

Actually doing stuff.

(to be continued, I’m sure…)