On calendars, I have two main “sets” - “Planning” and “Action.” My widgets on the phone, iPad, and watch all display the “action” set - these are the commitments that I have (meetings, pre-planned time blocks, etc.). But when I open Fantastical, it opens to the “Planning” set, which includes all sorts of things that I don’t have to act on but which would impact my scheduling of other meetings. Figuring this out has helped me tremendously in terms of keeping on top of things.
-Eric
“Novell”…now that’s a company/product/tech I haven’t seen mentioned in forever!
This. As a unix sysadmin my work tooling is primarily unix shell and TUI applications with a couple of web apps for collaboration with the rest of the IT team.
But the tools I use for managing my personal life are primarily ipad apps & mostly apple default apps. Since my job revolves around managing computing resources & critical infrastructure for my employer I’d prefer not to do the same thing outside of work.
As I’ve gotten older and am approaching retirement age I’ve begun to adopt this as a philosophy as well. In the past I’ve spent countless hours customizing my desktop computing environments, but now tend to stick closer to the defaults. The freedom of being able to wipe and reinstall without losing my world is more valuable to me (and my time) than constantly tweaking things.
Was going to make this point. I always amend it to “THE” …
“I am THE sales administrator!” 
I work in a casino as a Change Manager, which means I help/advise/guide execs with comms and stuff to enable the people side off the business come to terms with technology, process and systems changes. So, basically: “herding cats, lining up ducks!” 
We are locked into M365 and I’m fine with that. One benefit of MS not having a massive app store there is little else to choose from. And I’m okay with MS products in general. They work. Not fancy perhaps. To the point I may get a new Snapdragon laptop. Just to save the mental space of OS changes when I switch from work to home. I do little creative work but I know I’d miss MacOS if I did that.
I will rant a little on how MS releases stuff though. They have released the “new” Outlook and it has lost some fundamental functionality (opening in calendar and not Inbox for one). I hate being a beta tester for software that loses functionality under the guise of MVP.
In Education so I am cursed with a Frankenhybrid of the Microsoft and Google Suites, though I use my iPad in the classroom to do notes and annotations. One of my unrealistic wishlists is for Apple to get aggressive in the Education and to make iCloud.com School friendly and/or iWork Apps for Windows. Pages remains my favorite word processor.
I also got started using Goodnotes for annotations of my schoolwork on my iPad. Notes has become a vital family management tool and I love the Readdle Suite of apps (Spark, PDF Expert, Calendars). I also have been investing more into the Proton Suite of apps for added privacy. If I ever leave iPhone it will be for a more personalized private experience.
I’ve been retired (electrical engineer in product development and part time college instructor) for 8 years. Since retirement I’ve used Scrivener, Eazydraw, and Arduino IDE to write six books on microcontrollers.
In the engineering job I had to use Windows because the programs were mostly Windows only and the corporate project management software, while web based, required Windows Explorer. I did however sneak in an old Mac mini that I used for documentation and to maintain a reference library because searching is so much better on a Mac. My manager did require me to back up my work to a corporate server, which I did via a Chronosync task that would run automatically during lunch.
For teaching I used my personal MacBook Pro with Parallels for more pesky Windows only EE software. I recorded all my lectures (screen capture plus a camera aimed at the white board) and edited them into videos I posted online for students. I used FinalCut and Compressor for this. Course handouts (using Pages), slides (using Keynote), and gradebook (using Numbers). I also used Eazydraw for general illustration and Omnigraffle for flowcharts.
Edited: I forgot to mention my extensive use of Circus Ponies Notebook for project notes in my engineering job and course notes for teaching.
Farmer/Programmer here. I “retired” from work for other people over 25 years ago. Now I work half time, and I can usually choose which 12 hours it is. The businesses are the farm, software development, rentals and some limited consulting. In all cases I have full authority to use whatever tools I wish. For the folks that I’m hiring to do work I do have a few requirements, no Microsoft products, no company stuff on cloud servers except Obsidian sync for our shared vault that is the project management system and design roadmap. We’ve standardized on Libre Office for all spreadsheet and word processing needs. I use Android Studio and PyCharm for development but one person uses VS code. The repos are on GitLab and everyone, including me, does merges to the Develop branch. We’re exploring ways to do more automated testing, integration and releases but nothing implemented so far. There are really only 4 of us doing all the coding so not a big team. We do publish on Google drive for the public but not yet in Play Store apks and executable desktop systems.
Do you use Android device(s) day to day or just develop for them?
I’m an academic director of a degree in data science and a director of a healthcare research lab. I need to deal with a lot of office files and spreadsheets, so I need to index many filetypes. This makes Devonthink essential to me and I use iWorks for all my personal work (because I prefer it to Office 365). I need to use Teams, which I hate with a passion.
I also work as a researcher and freelance developer and I have lots of tools for that. My favorite are the JetBrians suite (WebStorm and PyCharm in particular), Docker and Anaconda. For research, Nvivo is my must have application.
I’ve been a freelance translator for over thirty years, and being freelance I’m able to choose the tools I use. This means that I have been able to avoid using Word (except when I’m sent a file to check). I used to use Nisus for word-processing and was so wedded to Nisus that I put off upgrading to OSX for two or three years. When I did eventually move to OSX the new version of Nisus was unusable for me, and I discovered Mellel, which I have been using ever since, although for draft translations I now use Scrivener, with its split screen mode.
My other indispensable application is Logophile, which I initially discovered in its earlier incarnation called Jamming. It’s a sort of browser for all manner of dictionary files, and it revolutionized the way I work. It hasn’t been updated for ten years, but fortunately it still works in Monterey. My iMac can’t be upgraded beyond Ventura, and so I’ll be sticking with Monterey for as long as this iMac allows me to since I can’t imagine working without Logophile (although for all I know it may still work with the latest operating system).
I use Fanurio to keep track of time spent on projects and FileMaker to manage the financial side of my work, and recently I’ve started using Obsidian for a research project.
I am a priest for the past 11 years so far.
I use the Logos app for Bible Study, Sermon Preparation, Talk/Retreat etc. I do all my writing for those areas specifically into Obsidian. At times, if I can’t think of what to write, I will develop ideas in Drafts or in MindNode. Matter is used for saving articles I come across. I archive various documents into DevonThink. I have been thinking whether to archive/index Obsidian vault into DevonThink. All tasks and projects go into Omnifocus. Calendars and schedules are held together by Fantastical.
GoodNotes for anything on the iPad, taking notes during a meeting, etc. Craft for creating dashboards, planning, coordinating and sharing retreat items. Notion is a new one on the block for me, as of right now, mainly using it to keep track of people I speak with, have meetings, etc.
Pastor for the past 14 years, plus some web dev.
I use Logos and Accordance for Bible Study. MS Word for sermon writing which is in a template that allows me to PDF the file and copy it on to my reMarkable from which I preach/teach. I also use a Kindle Scribe to read and make notes.
Mailmate for email, TheBrain for knowledge management and church management. BBedit for text manipulation (regex). Pinegrow for web dev having moved from Rapidweaver which used to be great. Todoist for tasks. Hookmark for links.
Churchwise we use Google Workspace. I’ve replaced my iPhone with a Google Pixel. We also use Word docs and Excel spreadsheets. We’ve also acquired a dumb phone for the church for public facing calls.
I use a Moleskine page-per-day pocket diary, Baronfig pen and reporter’s notebooks for daily notes.
I used to switch apps a lot, but realised the apps were never the problem. I tend to be pragmatic and will use the cheaper option if it will do. I’ve recently had a challenging health diagnosis which has caused me to evaluate my time use more ruthlessly and which has helped me begin to streamline my computer, software, and paper uses.
There is other software I still have that I used extensively at one point, but is now being phased out as I’m slowly migrating away from Apple as I believe it’s passed its zenith and is on a decline. The extra costs in using Apple are no longer value for money for me.
Just develop for them. AnimalTrakker® Farm Mobile only runs on Android due to the difficulty in how iOS locks down bluetooth access among other reasons. Also the cost of Apple mobile devices. When a ram or bull smashes the tablet it’s not a big deal when you can run to Walmart and get another for about $80.
There are also ruggedized Android devices built for those kinds of uses. Apple doesn’t do niche, and doesn’t allow other vendors to fill in those kinds of gaps.
Yes, and they are old and out of date devices. BTDT, My husband designed rugged militarized mobile devices for years yet he prefers the cheap replaceable ones for this use case. We’ve gotten and tested the ruggedized devices that handle what we do. They typically start at about $2500+. Some customers will need 10 of them (1 per band of 1000 ewes) plus a spare or 2. That is an unreasonable cost. We can put together full systems including commercial EID readers and label printers for about $1K each. Most of the cost is in the EID readers. But we have plans publicly available that show how you can build one for about $100. We can’t sell the kits or build them or sell them but individuals can build their own.
That’s very interesting and makes perfect sense. I think some of those cheap plastic phones and tablets can take more drops and abuse than expensive iPhones/iPads and high-end Android flagships with rigid metal frames and tight tolerances.
Since we’ve had pastor and priests…
Relatively new church minister here, perhaps showing that working in the same general area doesn’t necessarily lead to the same software, at least when you can personally choose the software. I used to work in software development and project management.
I use Logos for bible research, along with Kindle and various web resources. I write my sermons in Obsidian, and either read directly from Obsidian on my iPad (with CSS to make the font bigger) or print (again using custom CSS to make the font right). For personal bible study I often use YouVersion.
I also use Obsidian to track meetings, contacts, pastoral care, and so on, with end-to-end encrypted Obsidian Sync. I’ve played with using Obsidian’s Canvas feature for brainstorming.
I save articles in Omnivore. Its transcription of YouTube videos (under 30 mins) is very useful.
I did use DevonThink, but find Finder search does a good enough job.
I use Apple Mail for email. I’d like to use Thunderbird, but as yet I’ve not convinced the national church’s IT team to allow me to use it. The national church uses Microsoft 365; locally we tend to use Google Workspace. Tasks are in Apple Reminders and diary is in Apple Calendar. I’ve not found anything that would justify paying.
I like Apple equipment and its operating systems. However, I try to be relatively independent of the platform so I could switch if cost/practicality came into it.
My employer has found a nice middle ground. I can speak to their Mac setup. I know they have a similar setup for Windows users, but I’m not as familiar with it.
We can install anything from the Mac App Store without a problem. They also have some software installable from their self-service app (things like Audacity, SPSS, and the like; I’ve suggested adding R/RStudio and Tableau).
For anything else, there’s an app installed on all our machines called Admin By Request. As the name implies, it allows us to request adminstrator access for a brief period of time. The app asks for our contact information and information about the application(s) we want to install or the system settings we want to adjust. If the request is approved (and approval is usually very fast), we get a notice to that effect. When we click the notice, we get temporary admin privileges and can go ahead with the install.
It works really well. The one thing it doesn’t do is add the user to the sudoers file, so it’s a good thing that Homebrew is now available via package installer. 
Sounds interesting, glad it works for you. The majority of our users worked in sales or customer service so they had no need for any additional software. And, on occasion, they could be moved to another iMac on short notice so the setup on all the machines in a department were identical.
I’m a freelance designer and front-end web dev. The only software I think I’m locked into for clients is Figma and Slack. I’d choose Figma anyway, probably. Synchronous messaging platforms are a mess, but Slack seems to be the best of them.
Otherwise, nothing else is of concern to clients. Any tool works for them.