What are your “favorite no longer used apps?”

Software
1

Over the years, I have purchased or tried many excellent apps I no longer use for various reasons. Here is a partial list, in no particular order, of my “favorite no longer used apps”:

  • Omnifocus
  • Things
  • Ulysses
  • Craft
  • Obsidian
  • NotePlan
  • MindNode
  • Evernote
  • Instapaper
  • Papers (reference manager)
  • Goodnotes
  • Byword
  • TextExpander
  • Day One
  • Alfred
  • CleanMyMac X

What are your “favorite no longer used apps?”

Here is a list of apps I’m using:

  • Writing: Pages and Scrivener
  • Plain Text/markdown: Drafts (free version), iA Writer
  • Presentations: Keynote
  • Notes: Apple Notes
  • Spreadsheets: Numbers*
  • I occasionally and begrudgingly use MS Office, but my employer pays for that subscription.
  • Email: Apple Mail
  • Calendar: Apple Calendar
  • Automation: Shortcuts, Keyboard Maestro
  • Mind Mapping / Ideation: FreeForm and SimpleMind Pro
  • Outlining: OmniOutliner
  • References: EndNote
  • Research Archiving and file conversion: DEVONthink
  • PDF reading, annotation, management: Apple Preview, DEVONthink, PDF Expert
  • Weather: Apple Weather
  • Podcasts: Apple Podcasts
  • Bible Study: Logos
  • Book reading: Kindle app
  • Photos: Apple Photos
  • Photo editing, design, and publishing (Affinity Photo, Designer, Publisher, and Pixelmator Pro)
  • Recipes: Paprika
  • Exporter
  • Downie
  • Bartender 5

It has taken a while, but I am almost application subscription-free. I have only three remaining app subscriptions:

  • 1 Password
  • Grammarly
  • Backblaze

If Apple’s new password app meets my needs, which I expect it will, I’ll drop the 1PW subscription. Likewise, once Apple Intelligence is released, I may drop Grammarly if AI sufficiently meets my needs for grammar and style checking. This would leave me with one subscription, Backblaze. I’m still contemplating dropping Backblaze if I’m comfortable with my backup routine to external drives being sufficient.

I am not including services such as domains, cable, Apple One, and the like.

I have two app subscriptions paid for by my employer: *MS Office and Express VPN.

5 Likes
2

Scrivener is probably my favorite I’m no longer using. From the Windows days, MyLifeOrganized.

1 Like
4

To be “favorite” and “no longer used” there must be a good reason why I no longer use it.

  • TextExpander – realized that Alfred snippets does all I need. One less app to deal with.
  • Circus Ponies Notebook and Aperture – I used both of these heavily but they were abandoned and no longer work on recent macOS releases.
  • Final Cut, Compressor, iShowU Instant – when I stopped teaching 9 years ago, I no longer had any use for these.
1 Like
5

What are you using in its place?

6

Oh, I forgot about TE. I’m not using it any long either.

7

OneNote: By far, my favourite no longer used app. I have notes that are over ten years old in there, including the notes for my master’s. Obsidian still wasn’t a thing pre-pandemic, it was released just as I was completing it. Were it not for poor export options, I’d still be using OneNote daily (also a major reason why I don’t use Apple Notes). It’s great for cross-platform work, and it was great on the iPad already years ago.

Dashlane: It was good until they started messing with discontinuing this or that version, including the desktop app, only to bring it back… got tired and moved to Bitwarden.

Bear: I still keep some siloed notes in there, which I am fine with living on their own, but grew tired of waiting for v2 early last year. Moved everything into Craft, and I’m pretty happy with some of the major updates Craft got this year. I’ve not cancelled Bear as I’m on the old and rather cheap plan. Bear v2 is great, but as I’m using Craft and Obsidian now for different things I have no desire to commit to Bear again, nor a use case presently.

Overcast: I recently dumped it for known reasons. I’m exceptionally happy with Pocket Casts and how I was able to set it up to match my podcast listening habits.

Apple Mail: I’ve been using it on and off on my Macs over the years but a dealbreaker on the Mac for me is that it simply insists on downloading entire mailboxes with all the attachments. Now I don’t even have it set up.

Fantastical: I loved it to bits, but I’m not paying for the calendar more than for the entire M365 suite; I was priced out. Replaced with BusyCal, and I’m not missing anything.

RainDrop: Moved everything into GoodLinks in early 2022 over concerns about RainDrop’s business being located in Russia. The developer has since confirmed he moved out of Russia but GoodLinks is great both for storing links and as a read-it-later app.

1 Like
8

Interesting. I’m trying to figure out if I want to do away with TE. I’m currently at $20/year since I got a deal when they went subscription (boo! Even though I don’t need their sync service and everything was fine via iCloud syncing? TE was when I knew I’d really not like subscriptions much longer), but I do some stuff with fields and email templates. I haven’t figured out how to use it across iOS devices (I think they disabled some of that?), but I think I still get enough value out of it for the $20. However, I do try to see if there’s other stuff out there I can use instead at least a few times a year.

9

DragThing.

1 Like
10

Nothing—I’m no longer (or at least not currently) writing a novel.

2 Likes
11

MS Excel - too many years of using it but being retired Numbers does an acceptable job with no cost.

1 Like
12

Any trouble with using Keynote? I would like to use it more. I would be presenting using a USB with the keynote.

13

Things immediately comes to mind. It’s brilliantly designed but after buying it and using it a while I found that it (and GTD in general) doesn’t suit me at all.

I liked Bear a lot when I used it, but Obsidian blows it away. I still recommend it to people who just want a simple, better alternative to Apple Notes, but at this point there’s nothing I miss about it.

There’s a lot I like about iA Writer, but I find I avoid using it because the way it displays syntax highlighting and the developer’s intransigence about it annoy me every time I need to write anything that requires more than extremely minimal formatting. It’s great enough that I can’t bring myself to delete it from my system, but I every time I give it another shot it ends up pissing me off again.

3 Likes
14

How far back can we go? If to the dawn of time….

  • Ecco Pro
  • Eudora, I’ve never liked an e-mail client more.
  • WP 5.1
  • Borland C++ I don’t know what my parents were thinking but I got this for Christmas in high school and I ended up teaching myself how to program C. It’s on this list for purely nostalgic reasons.

Okay, more recent vintage

  • Drafts (subscription, feature bloat)
  • OmniOutliner
  • OmniFocus
  • TextExpander
  • GoodNotes
  • OneNote
  • Moom
  • MailArchiver Pro
  • Readle PDF Expert (I loved it, but resented the switch to subscription)
4 Likes
15

I liked Eudora as well, but boy, do I miss Sparrow. I think I had finally forgotten about it over the last few years, but now it’s flooding back and the grieving process is starting all over again.

I wonder if my strong dislike of Google stems from their purchase of Sparrow and killing it off.

2 Likes
16

In a similar way, I resent Apple buying and killing Dark Sky.

2 Likes
17

Gah! Now I’m missing Dark Sky!

1 Like
18

Apps I like but no longer used:

  • Evernote
  • Bear
  • Paper by WeTransfer
  • Goodnotes
  • VSCO

Apps I may use again:

  • iA Writer (now using Apple Notes for writing)
  • 1Password (may not want to put everything in the same basket as I currently use iCloud Keychain)
  • Affinity (I am using Pixelmator Pro for editing and Pages for simple publishing)
19

image
image3000×2000 621 KB

9 Likes
20

For me, it will be Ulysses and GoodNotes.

Ulysses is wonderful, but geared towards long-form writing which I don’t do. I had limited success in getting it to work as a note taking app. Currently using Obsidian for that.

GoodNotes, still a great app that I was using that a lot pre-pandemic in the office. Now, I am almost exclusively in the home office and find pen and paper to work at least equally well.

21

I’ve used it for at least 15 years with no issues.