Cory Bohon

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.

We’ve finally bid 2020 goodbye, but the repercussions of 2020 will linger for a bit longer. We’re still masking up, socially distancing, and trying to live and work the best that we can while being safe to both ourselves and our neighbor.

As the new year approached, I do have some wishes, some resolutions, and things that I want to tackle in the new year (albeit, a bit changed since the pandemic started). As with tradition, I’m picking three areas of my life that I want to work, get better at, or just generally improve.

Side projects and learning new development techniques

Over the past several years, my side projects (specifically the apps that I make myself and release on the App Store) have fallen by the wayside. A lot of this was due to the fact that they didn’t receive many downloads and it was difficult to keep releasing updates and new versions of apps when they just don’t get much traction. Another was that after a busy day at work, the last thing that I wanted to do was sit down and work again.

This year, however, I’m looking to release a few new apps to the App Store and also release an update or two to my years-old apps as well.

I feel that my side projects are really where I learn a lot more about my craft than I do sometimes at work, simply because many clients want what’s cheaper and more efficient solutions rather than what’s shiny and new. I’m hoping to really dig into SwiftUI, Combine, and many of the newer iOS APIs that I haven’t yet gotten a chance to do.

Reading

Last year, my reading goal hit an all time low — I was planning on reading about 20 books, but only managed about 7 (we’ll blame Animal Crossing, the PS5 launch, and just being exhausted from everything surrounding the pandemic).

This year, I’m planning on attempting my 20 book goal (follow my progress on GoodReads), and so far have already read one book, and starting on two additional ones. One of my favorite books that I’m starting is one that I received from a friend as a Christmas present, “The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation,” which covers from conception to design to production how Disney animates their movies.

I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to increase this 20 book reading goal as the year progresses, but leaving it here so that I can account for any surprises that may pop up during the year.

Exercise

In 2019, I started exercising religiously with an open goal to just “lose some weight.” By the time 2020 ended, I’d lost 40 pounds through regular exercise and small diet changes. This year, I’m hoping to continue my goal and lose an additional 30 pounds to get to my target weight, then start figuring out ways to maintain that target weight going forward.

It’s amazing how much healthier and better I feel now that I’ve lost weight and continue to exercise. One of the things that launched last year that’s helped a ton in just the past few weeks to kickstart my 2021 exercise goals is Apple Fitness+. This new service has been fantastic since it launched about 3 weeks ago and has shown me various ways to get more out of my treadmill, rowing and strength workouts, but has also opened the door to new exercise routines such as yoga, dance, and more.

I cannot wait to continue using this service into 2021 and seeing what new changes it can bring about as I work towards a healthier me.

Stopping and smelling the roses

It feels like 2020 flew by. It’s like the meme goes: It’s March 230, 2020. I honestly feel like I missed most of last year through just the constant barrage of work, exercise, and sleep routine every day. It felt like nothing much went on outside of those activities. This year, I’m hoping to take some time and just stop and enjoy things — and document them through journaling. Looking back through my camera roll last year, I didn’t document much (in fact, I captured the fewest photos in the past decade ever last year), so I’m hoping to change that going into 2021.

I’m hopeful that 2021 will bring about more normalcy in our world (surely we won’t be fully back to normal any time soon, but small steps are certainly welcomed).

Here’s to 2021 and a Happy New Year.

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.

Being stuck at home most of 2020, I’ve been finding different ways to occupy my listening time, especially while working or exercising. I typically listen to music while exercising or working, but I’ve found with the lack of a lot of new music, most of my playlists and radio stations would simply repeat the same songs — which was rather annoying.

Instead, I’ve been turning to podcasts more and more as a way to get new content that I can occupy my listening time with. Some have become shows that I anticipate each week and cannot wait to listen to.

The podcasts

In alphabetical order, here’s my favorite podcasts that I’m listening to at this moment in time. The list doesn’t really change that much, and I started with a handful, but that’s quickly blossomed into more and more.

• All Consuming
• AppStories
• Automators
• Connected Pro (Subscription)
• Core Intuition
• Mac Power Users
• MacStories Unplugged (Subscription)
• MacStories Unwind
• The Rebound
• Rocket
• Same Brain
• The Talk Show with John Gruber
• To The Best Of Our Knowledge
• Under the Radar
• Ungeniused
• Upgrade
• The Vergecast

You’ll notice that there’s quite a few from the [Relay.fm] network, and I’ve liked the majority of their shows and continue to listen to them time and time again. I definitely have to give them a shoutout for their episode quality, content, and amazing hosts.

How do I listen?

I was using Apple Podcasts, which was my podcast player of choice a few years back, but has honestly gotten very lackluster with the syncing capabilities and playback capabilities with the latest releases.

A few years ago, I remembered trying [Castro] and really liked it, so I decided to give it another go and have really liked it as I’ve gotten back into listening to podcasts. It’s a little on the pricey side as far as subscription apps go, but it’s a great podcast player with a great watchOS app, customizations, and great playback controls and notes features.

Halloween is one of my favorite fall holidays, and one of my favorite holidays second only to Christmas. I always enjoy giving out candy and just the general spirit of celebrating the beginning of fall and all that it brings: Cooler weather, and of course, family gatherings. This year is a bit different though.

In lieu of celebrating Halloween in person with family and trick-or-treaters (don’t worry, I’m still leaving pre-packaged candy lined on the sidewalk for trick-or-treaters to take in a socially distanced fashion), I’m instead celebrating by watching some of my favorite Halloween movies.

Here’s my list of movies that I’m watching this year leading up to Halloween:

1. The Nightmare Before Christmas
2. Hocus Pocus
3. The Haunted Mansion
4. It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown (now on Apple TV+ for free)
5. The last 10 years of “Treehouse of Horrors” from the Simpsons