What Fine Apps Are You Drifting Away From?

iPersuade · March 1, 2019, 3:07pm

This deserves its own topic thread. I have literally made lists of all these apps that I have (particularly writing apps, PDF annotation tools, and note-takers) and how I use them, and pros and cons, etc. to determine how to make sense of it all.

omnifocuser · March 1, 2019, 6:53pm

TextWrangler is BBEdit’s free offering that I thought was still around, but now I see it’s been retired and merged back in with BBEdit. However BBEdit does come free with some features turned off after the 30-day evaluation period:

BBEdit offers a 30-day evaluation period, during which its full feature set is available. At the end of the evaluation period, you can continue to use BBEdit for free, forever, with no nag screens or unsolicited interruptions.

In “free mode”, BBEdit provides a modified set of features, which incorporates all of TextWrangler’s features, and offers unique features of its own. In the best tradition of TextWrangler, using BBEdit in free mode costs you nothing, while providing an upgrade path to advanced features and capabilities.

bowline · March 1, 2019, 7:00pm

TextWrangler was retired exactly two years ago.

The basic non-unlocked version of BBEdit 12 has more features than TextWrangler anyway, and gives more people a taste of what they could get by purchasing the unlock to the app. BB should have done this even earlier than 2017.

andrew.j.pfeiffer · March 9, 2019, 11:07pm

Airmail. Sync issues that caused emails to be temporarily or permanently lost. And now that OmniFocus mail drop links back to the original message (with application-independent URL schemes), I have no need for this on my iPhone (or Mac).
MS Office. I used this for ages, but Open Office works fine and is free!
Evernote. This was ages ago, but worth a mention. Using Dropbox, plain text files, etc. is just much cleaner - and accessible using Terminal! Getting all my stuff out of Evernote was a summer project, it took ages!

Robert · March 10, 2019, 10:31am

My MS Office subscription just ran out. I will try to get away without for a while. If I run into trouble I can still reactivate it.

Zack · March 11, 2019, 5:02am

For the past few years –like many people– I’ve bounced between the hottest “productivity” apps to make lists, take notes, outline projects, plan projects, etc.

But I’ve finally gone back to my one and only true love: .txt files in TextEdit

(And, of course, Notes…)

jec0047 · March 11, 2019, 6:23am

emacs!

I’d love to get rid of Office but…Excel.

Sadly, I’m about ready to let my Apple developer account go. Lack of time, lack of inspiration… My give-a-shi**er is broken almost beyond repair.

wweber · March 11, 2019, 6:02pm

I moved from iCloud Drive and Dropbox to GSuite. iCloud Drive wasn’t syncing my Lightroom library correctly. With GSuite – for about the same price as I was paying for Dropbox – I get file storage with the same functionalities and email.

iPersuade · March 11, 2019, 6:41pm

Without trying to re-start the editor wars, I’ll put in my vote for vim.

CraigW · March 11, 2019, 11:10pm

Also two words. Power Querry. I had to install Windows with Parallels for the same reason.

Lars · March 12, 2019, 5:55am

That will never end. Just had to set up some stuff on my new Synology and…vim.

TiffanyW_412 · March 16, 2019, 4:53am

You could try Visual Studio Code. Lightening fast, hackable, extendable text editor from Microsoft and it’s free.

StephenL · March 26, 2019, 2:43am

Your milage may vary, but even with a few extensions, Visual Studio Code can be a battery drain. I use both Sublime Text (90%) and BBEdit (10%).

wweber · December 5, 2019, 7:25pm

So after using GSuite for my prosumer stuff for a few months, I think I want to migrate to Office365. We use Office365 at work and it actually seems more solid and the products seem to integrate together better – e.g. OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, Planner, ToDo. Google seems to be missing the task and project management stuff. Also, Google Drive File Stream seems slow and buggy.

Am I missing something…?

vco1 · December 5, 2019, 7:49pm

I’m a BBEdit user too. But (unfortunately) its functionality doesn’t even come close to that of VSC. So if I have to do any serious coding, it’s VSC. For just editing text files (and more) BBEdit works great.

Alevyinroc · December 16, 2019, 2:42am

I have tried to use GSuite off and on for many years, but I’ve never been able to get it to “stick”. Google Docs especially just doesn’t quite work right, at least for me. Maybe because I’ve been using MS Office for close to 30 years. My office is currently split between GSuite and O365, but in 2020 we’ll be migrating to O365 entirely.

Yeah but…it’s not all smooth. Working with an Excel or Word file inside Teams (for example) is really clunky, in fact it reminds me of using GSuite. The upside, is that you have the fallback of clicking “edit in desktop” and getting the real application experience, with the document being seamlessly saved back to where it lives.