Last year I promised that I would update everyone on how my Craft Notes deep dive went. Well, it’s been nearly a year, and I think we’re overdue on an update.

Craft Notes has a lot of great features, and I really appreciate the straight-forward approach the company takes to announcing new features (nearly every week) to users, and generally keeping everyone in the know with where the product stands. Not many company’s take this stance, and it’s a breath of fresh air when users who like and back your product are kept up to date.

Last year I migrated everything over from Apple Notes to Craft Notes. I really enjoyed the ability to link notes to other notes, and the ability to design very nice notes almost like designing a web page to house your thoughts. The general design and feature set was great, and I was able to successfully transfer my nearly 1,000 Apple Notes over to the Craft app.

I never could fully wrap my head around the block editor, and more often than not the experience ended up being more frustrated than fun. If I had an option to disable the block-based editing, I would have immediately. I understand the power that could come with block-based editing, but it just wasn’t for me.

The disadvantaged of block-based editing really came full circle when copying and exporting — often times I’d find that pasting copied blocks of text would paste in reverse order, be missing formatting, or have other major issues. All of these things added up to just additional frustration and often times kept me from even taking notes.

To give Craft credit; however, they continue releasing regular updates, have fantastic support, and their apps are great on all platforms. All of my issues added up, coupled with limited export options, left me no choice but to choose another note taking app, unfortunately.

I do still like Craft notes, however, especially the recent addition of the ability to create notes based on calendar events, and I hope that the exporting and editor functionality can be improved in the future and I can revisit the app.

I alluded that I’m no longer using Craft notes, so what did I end up going back to? Well, I finished the migration last month back to Apple Notes. Honestly, Apple Notes has most of what I need in a notes app: It’s got an inline editor, it’s got Apple Pencil support, it’s got scanning support and file integration, and I can encrypt specific notes that I choose. I also enjoy using the Quick Note feature on iPadOS and macOS that, unfortunately, can only be used within Apple’s own Notes app.

The things Apple Notes is missing are the things that made Craft so great: I’d still love the ability to link to specific notes within other notes, have better designed notes with more graphics and customization options, and I’d love the ability to create notes based on specific calendar events (though I do have a workaround using a Shortcut I created that I’ll share eventually).

All in all, there’s no perfect notes app, but the one that comes built-in is pretty great. If you’re using Apple Notes, however, and it doesn’t have enough features, and you’re looking for something else, then be sure to give Craft notes a try — I doubt you’ll be disappointed and they are continually improving the product.

Header Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash.

The April 2021 Apple Event yesterday knocked it out of the park for me. It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve been excited about new Mac hardware. The 2021 iMac using Apple Silicon is the first new Mac designed around the M1 chipset that Apple is developing in house, and the new design is sleek and reminiscent of the first iMacs in terms of their personality.

I’m so glad to see Apple design brining back some personality into the products (and a lost sense of design and aesthetic that I’ve not seen since the 2000s) and embracing color in new and exciting ways that we haven’t seen since the late 90s when it was all on the line for Apple. The Mac has played it safe over the past decade and has gotten more boring and corporate looking with every new shade of gray released. These new Macs, however, breathe new life into the Mac ecosystem and make me very excited to see what the future holds for the Mac.

The M1 chip is changing the heartbeat of the Mac, making it smarter, faster, and stronger against competition. I’m waiting with eagerness (and eager money) for a 16” MacBook Pro and an iMac or other desktop computer that can support developers and the full power and ports it requires.

My current Mac setup includes a 2016 16” MacBook Pro and 2013 Mac Pro that has seen better days, and the new M1 chips smoke every computer that I currently own in performance and battery life.

Apple’s event yesterday was just plain fun, and I’m glad to see that after one of the most devastating years in recent history. There’s not a single product that Apple announced that I questioned: They’re all fantastic and the teams that designed and developed these products deserve to be applauded.

Besides the iMac, I’m certainly excited about the AirTags and the possibilities it brings for being able to track items, bags, and more. I’m already planning to order a 4-pack of these tags for my computer bag, my Nintendo Switch, keys, and more.

I’m also really excited about the iPad Pro. For those that don’t know, I use an iPad Pro daily as my main computing device when I’m not doing development work. I write the overwhelming majority of articles for TechRepublic.com on there, and I also do some Swift Playground work when I don’t want to sit down at my Mac.

The power and performance that Apple is able to pack into the iPad Pro with the M1 chip is astonishing, and I cannot help but think there’s another motive with bringing 16GB RAM to the iPad Pro and the M1 chip (Hello Xcode for iPad Pro? … hey, one can dream can’t they?).

All in all, the Apple event yesterday was a success from my point of view, and it’s hard to believe that we still have WWDC around the corner, then late summer and fall announcements as well. It’s shaping up to be a packed year for Apple and Apple fans everywhere, and I cannot wait to see what else is released in 2021.

I’ve been using Apple’s Notes app on my macOS and iOS devices for years to synchronize bits of text and things that I think I will need to remember in the future.

My Notes app has blossomed into several hundreds of notes, some of which have no titles, and I really don’t know why I kept some of them around. In the mix is also several important notes that I want to keep and hang on to for future reference. For those notes that had some importance, they received a title and were stored away in folders, but accessing them was more than a little difficult.

Over the past week, I’ve been taking time to clear out old notes that I no longer need, or are no longer relevant; however, this left me wondering if there was some better way to store and surface these important piece of text, snippets of code, and other short form documents in a way that could be easier to find and recognize in the future.

I’ve been hearing a lot about two different tools: Obsidian and Craft. I’ve been using Obsidian and Craft for a little over a week in an attempt to better understand these platforms and to see which can provide me the best solution for what I want to do.

So far, Craft is winning the debate only because it has an iOS app, and the macOS app version isn’t an electron app; however, Obsidian at the same time being an electron app, does have the upside of storing documents in Markdown format at rest. This is good for archival because it means that I can easily retrieve the text at any time in the future regardless of if the app has gone the way of the dodo.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be trying to make a decision about which platform I’m going to stick with when it comes to notes, and I’ll keep the blog updated on the solution that I come to choose and the reasons why I choose it.

Do you have any recommendations for note apps or have experience with Obsidian or Craft? I’d love to hear what you’re using and why you’ve chosen it. Drop me a line on Twitter.

I’ve had my Apple Watch series 6 for a little over a month now, and I can honestly say it’s the best Apple Watch that I’ve ever owned (well, besides the White Ceramic model that I adored, but Apple skipped that material in this years version).

This year, I decided to go with the Apple Watch Edition in Space Black Titanium after spending two years with the Apple Watch Series 4 Stainless. While I like the stainless, it doesn’t hold up well to scratches, dings, and abrasions over time and can look rather beat up after two years of daily usage.

I really upgraded my watch for three main reasons: Blood oxygen tracking, sleep tracking, and the speed of the new versions of the Apple Watch. Let’s check in on each of these and see how I feel about them a month later.

Blood Oxygen Tracking

I was really stoked about Apple adding this feature, which couldn’t have come at a better time with the COVID-19 pandemic raging here in the US. When I first got my watch, I was manually checking my O2 levels a few times a day, but then the newness of this feature faded. Now I’m just letting my watch monitor my O2 levels in the background as I work, as I exercise, and when I wear my watch sometimes when I sleep (we’ll get into this more in the next section). Then, when I’m feeling curious, I’ll check my levels in the Health app on my iPhone, which lets me instantly see high and low O2 levels for any given day, or delve into the day view and see the exact times it checked and what the levels were.

I really like this feature, and think that is has great usefulness, especially when paired with workout or sleep tracking; however, I think it could be improved in two ways. The first is that I’d like to see my O2 levels when I finish a workout activity in the summary screen and then be able to also see those levels when I pull up my activity history in the Fitness app. The second is that whenever I wake up in the morning and get the summary screen, I should also be able to see my overnight O2 levels at a glance. I feel like surfacing this information and making it extremely glanceable would be an improvement over what we currently have in watchOS.

Sleep Tracking

Before Apple announced the sleep tracking features of the Apple Watch, I had been using an Oura Ring to track sleeping activity since the start of 2020. This small device gives a lot of information about your sleep activity, including the time spent in the different phases of sleep and can even track your temperature as you sleep, which can indicate issues with sleep quality in the Oura app.

Going into using the Apple Watch as a sleep tracker, I was expecting some great data points like what Oura can provide; however, I was a bit disappointed with the metrics that the Apple Watch tracks. It gets the basics correct, but I would like to see improved tracking abilities, such as the phases of sleep, movement tracking, quality of sleep, and detailed heart rate tracking during sleep.

The current iteration of Apple’s sleep tracking on Watch is good, but not great, and doesn’t provide insightful data that I can use to adjust lifestyle changes that can affect my sleep. I really hope that either a future watchOS update or another Apple Watch model with better sensors geared towards sleep tracking will be able to provide additional information.

Speed

My previous Apple Watch (a Series 4) was beginning to get a little slow with watchOS 6, so I was looking forward to seeing how fast the Apple Watch Series 6 can handle the new updates with watchOS 7.

The Apple Watch Series 6 is more than capable of keeping up with everything that I’ve thrown at it and the new animation times in watchOS 7 makes it feel even snappier on all of the Apple Watch models that support the new OS. Siri activates faster, apps launch faster, and notifications appear faster. Overall, this is a huge improvement since upgrading from a Series 4 Watch.

In conclusion, I am really enjoying the new Apple Watch and all of the features, and cannot wait to see how the features of O2 tracking and sleep improve in the future. I know that it will, it’s just a matter of time.

A few years ago, my friend and graphic designer co-worker, Cat Lo created a set of stickers for iOS of her Scottish Fold cat named “Blu.” Those stickers turned out to be a hit, and last year, I helped her develop a new set of animated stickers for iOS 13 dubbed Blu Animated Stickers, which received an update this year for the pandemic sticker pack, featuring re-creations of favorite Giphy moments and inside jokes that everyone has enjoyed.

This month, Cat created a fancy Lo-Fi video on YouTube complete with a soundtrack that was custom made for the video. It’s a great relaxing video to watch while you’re coding, working, or just chilling at home.

I loved the video so much, that I ended up creating a macOS Screen Saver based on it. That was a fun experience of working with Apple’s new notarization framework to get the screen saver file notarized so it would run without issues on modern versions of macOS.

The screen saver has quickly become one of my favorites, so I decided to share it with everyone with the blessing of Cat. You can download it here and install it on your own Mac.

If you enjoy the screen saver and the iOS sticker pack, be sure to give @CatLo a shout on Twitter.

2020 has certainly been a challenging year for many due to the COVID-19 pandemic that’s swept the world. Many companies are enforcing working from home as its main strategy now, and even more (rightfully so) aren’t requiring any travel. I, myself, haven’t traveled anywhere except to get essentials since at least early March, and the company that I work for has suspended all travel for the foreseeable future. We certainly don’t know when this pandemic will stop, but life has to begin to operate again at some capacity. 

WWDC 

The first sign that we saw of some normalcy in the tech community was Apple continuing their WWDC conference, which kicked off the week of June 22, 2020. This year the conference was entirely online and pre-recorded. To me, this made the conference even better, and dare I say: This was the best version of WWDC that I’ve ever witnessed in the 15 years that I’ve been watching them. The fact that the keynote was pre-recorded left Apple with an enormous creative pool from which to draw from to make the nearly 2 hour video engaging and entertaining.

The session videos also had amazing production value and were able to be shorter and more concise, even though they contained the same information as would’ve been presented on stage. A lot of this was due to the fact that they didn’t have to shuffle people in and out of a physical space, or deal with the dreded live demo bugs that crop up in seemingly every live demo at WWDC. The recorded videos were also available immediately due to the fact that Apple didn’t have to send them to post production to iron out any issues. I was able to glean information a lot quicker and begin implementing the new technology sooner thanks to the shorter sessions that had an almost “live code-along” feel.

Many may know that I’ve not been to WWDC since 2015 due to the cost and the seemingly increasing difficulty rate of actually getting a ticket to the conference. In fact, I’ve never won the ticket lottery for WWDC, and the whole exclusiveness of it is a bit off-putting — even when I was just starting out in iOS development, the sheer cost of a ticket was unimaginable for a high school and then college student. The fact that the conference was available exclusively online and free to everyone this year has surely helped keep more people from feeling excluded from this amazing developer community.

360 iDev 2020

One of the conferences that I love, but have never been able to attend in person due to schedule/travel conflicts is 360 iDev. I’ve attended their 360 iDev [min] conferences before, but not the main conference. 360 iDev is a community-driven Apple developer conference held in Denver, Colorado, that focuses on a lot more than just the technical details of how to implement a List view in SwiftUI. It delves into the impacts of tech in our world, and touches on topics that are much needed to make developers better people as well as better developers. For example, this year’s Keynote touched on the social impacts currently ongoing in the US; another session touched on how to make user interfaces more accessible for users of all types. Sessions like these set 360 iDev apart from many other developer conferences.

This year, the conference was forced to move online due to social distancing guidelines. Depsite having to accomodate this new format, the conference moved on with all 3 days filled with great content, great speakers, and lively Slack rooms filled with chatter.

The conference utilized hopin.to to handle the video streams, and even had a Chat Roulette style feature that let you meet face-to-face with conference attendees and sponsors to swap contact information, or just catch up. This was definitely a next-level virtual conference experience that left me fully engaged with the speakers and their presented content.

Wrapping up

This year has been anything but normal, but I’ve loved being able to continue to connect with the developer community, to continue to learn about exciting new tech, and grow as a community in our changing (and challenging) world. Both of these conferences have helped me to do that, and I’m extremely grateful to both Apple and 360 iDev for continuing to go ahead with their conferences this year.

I hope that if WWDC is fully virtual again next year, they follow a similar path as 360 iDev did with the ability to chat with attendees, or even have face-to-face enagement. I feel that really the only aspect I missed from WWDC was bumping into developers and being able to talk about things or catch up.

I’ve had a Micro.blog account since the very beginning. I was a Kickstarter backer, but never quite found a use for it when it launched. I could never determine if I wanted to use it to blog with, or use it as a Twitter replacement, or both.

When I was searching for a blogging platform to run my new website off of, I quickly rediscovered Micro.blog and decided to give it a go for my personal website.

We’ll see how this experiment goes, especially as I attempt to start writing a bit more (both long and short posts) on my personal website. The posts may be a bit infrequent in the beginning, but I’m hoping to start getting on a schedule that will let me post more frequently about topics that I love: technology, Apple, software development, and some hobbies that I’ve taken up over the past year like learning to play piano.

Looking forward to starting this new journey and seeing where it goes…