These are the things I’ve been using and can only recommend. If you sign up or make a purchase, I may receive some benefits at no cost to you.
What I value with my picks:
Last updated on December 22, 2023.
No-fuss email service provider that respects me and my privacy. At $50 per year, I can use it with all the domains I own, and create hundreds of aliases as I need.
Fastmail has personalized spam filtering that actually works. You can set up forwarding and filing rules based on a myriad of factors. You can also go crazy with Sieve Script if that’s what you want. It works with your email clients via IMAP or JMAP, and supports Apple Mail push.
My go-to domain registrar since 2016. It stays out of my way after each purchase. Its backend is easy to use. It doesn’t charge you for optional-but-actually-quality-of-life add-ons such as WHOIS privacy.
It’s just good business.
Backblaze backs up my Mac for a flat price, and works continuously in the background, requiring no input from me. It’s the offsite component for my 3-2-1 backup plan.
I don’t have external drives, but Backblaze backs them all up, too, with unlimited storage, so you have peace of mind knowing all of your data are backed up to the cloud.
to-do list app that needs no introduction. Quiet by design, Things helps me focus on the day ahead, not on a handful of deadlines at certain times of the day.
Things is truly the hero that keeps track of stuff as little as bill payments, chores, and errands; or as big as a home modeling or app development project.
Bear has been my personal knowledge management tool since 2019. Works on iPhone, iPad and Mac with great native app experience. It’s overdue for an update but I have found no good replacement.
It doesn’t work in a browser; neither does it connect to fancy automation tools via the web. But it’s dependable for what it is, with content available locally when you’re offline.
My favourite text editor for when I’m not working on my iOS apps (I use Xcode instead). Nova provides the best text editing experience on the Mac, and is lightning fast for the tasks I do.
It feels like a premium Atom—extensible and versatile—that’s supported by a good team and a great community, without the Electron bloat.
Ulysses helps me write human-facing stuff like blog posts or copies for my apps. It provides by far the best writing experience on my Apple devices: quiet, versatile, with the right set of features. Recent updates also brought spell and style checks for both Chinese and English.
Flighty gives me peace of mind whenever I need to travel by air. The app takes a proactive approach, letting you know about the inbound flight, gate change and even a possible delay usually way before Air Canada knows anything. And—no more paying attention to the PA system at the gate! You have all the info available in the Live Activity on your Lock Screen.
We also use Flighty among friends to track if someone’s been on vacation. Flighty is free to use, but I pay for Flighty Pro for the week or month that I need to fly.
Fantastical makes all my calendars available on all my devices. It used to be a hassle to get my personal calendars on my work Mac (via Apple ID log-in which destroys pushed changes). It was almost impossible to get my work calendar available on my iPhone and personal Mac. All these are fixed with Fantastical.
It’s also a calendar app that’s designed for a regular user: you can hide (instead of having to decline) an event; you can duplicate a personal event onto your work calendar and they show up as merged (I make my flights available on both work and personal calendars). You also get a functional calendar RSVP system.