halide – barilo.me

Timery

Just when the pandemic hit, I’ve decided to try out time tracking as a concept. And now I recommend everyone to do it.

Just to be clear — I hate when work tracks how much time you spend working. If there is need for this, I think there are some deeper problems and tracking your employees won’t help. But time tracking for me was eye-opening. There were tasks I thought took a lot of time when in reality those were very minor and the opposite — some tasks that I thought I don’t spend a lot of time on, were taking a considerable amount of time.

Based on this information I made changes in my work. Moving some tasks around in the day, delegating others etc.

For time tracking I’ve used Toggl, which is free for individual use, but its iOS app is not good. That is why I’m using Timery. I’ve tried the free version and after about a week I paid for a yearly subscription, as I think it is very much worth it. The app is simple and has great widgets for iOS 14.

Halide Mark II

This year Halide published an amazing update to their app, which bring some education and also subscriptions. Although as someone who paid for the app before I got a free year, I still signed up for the subscription right away just to support the developers of my favourite iPhone photography app.

It is simple, yet powerful and with Apple ProRAW support and the addition of Instant RAW (which develops your RAW shots right inside the app) it is mandatory for iPhone photo enthusiasts.

I’ve set up Shortcut that opens Halide and now when I tap back of the iPhone 3 times it opens the app. Very helpful, especially during winter with gloves on.

Tot

The app actually came out in 2020 and at first I thought it was a bit crazy to buy it for €20. But after some consideration I decided to try it out (European laws on refunds help a lot in those kinds of situations) and I loved it. So much so, that since day one it is in my iPhone dock.

It is perfect for small things to write down. Thoughts, ideas. It delivered on a promise of Drafts, which I tried to use a couple of times because of a “where the text starts” tag line, but it was too geeky and overpowered for me.

Ulysses

This is where I type all the posts for my blog. Before I was all over the place, but now my blog starts here, in Ulysses. I even learned Markdown, so that I can use it to the fullest and actually enjoy it.

I like themes, integration with WordPress and new feature of text revision, which shows the most common stylistic mistakes. What I don’t like is the new update, which cut up the perfectly usable sidebar into 4 tabs which don’t occupy the whole height of the screen.

Reeder 5

I was using the previous version of this RSS reader or even the one before and didn’t think much about the update, but after reading MacStories review, decided to give it a try. It is every bit as beautiful as they describe. This app just feels nice. It is a pure pleasure — animations, speed, typography. It is simple to use.

I decided to try out the read-it-later service inside the app and so far, I like it. Of course Pocket was better in some places (I think just because of the experience), but I never liked the app itself. With Reeder 5, those things are not dealbreakers and the app is amazing.

📚 Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech by Geoffrey Cain

“Fuck Steve. He’s dead and we were right. Samsung was right.” – this quote says quite a lot about Samsung culture. The story told in this book shows what happens when a company becomes too big to fail. When the whole country is depended on Samsung doing well.

If you’ve never been to jail, you’ve probably not worked hard enough – could be the mantra of Samsung management.

There are very interesting anecdotes and stories. But by the middle of the book you realize it’s mostly stories about mistakes, investigations, corruption charges etc. and less so the story of the company. I don’t like Samsung as a company, never owned a Galaxy phone, because I felt like they were just copying Apple, but even for an Apple fanboy, this book is a bit too much.

After finishing it, I was not sure on the history of the company, but I sure as hell knew that the dynasty has fallen.

📺 Drive To Survive – Season 1

“To finish first, first you have to finish”

Great documentary with an outstanding access to the drivers and teams, in the middle of the season, I’ve had a longer review written here, but can’t recommend it enough. And I’m already looking for ways to watch F1 season when it comes back.

📺 The Last Dance

Another great documentary I’ve finished this week. Again, never watched basketball, but enjoyed it so much. It’s about personality, team and most importantly leadership. Very different in style from Drive To Survive. It talks about the history, while Drive To Survive is more similar to the reality TV.

🎙 Dithering Podcast

Two of my favorite people in tech blogging got together and created a podcast. I had a little bit of doubt before subscribing as it is a paid podcast and there is no “demo” or even one free episode, but decided to try it out, I can always unsubscribe if I don’t like it and loose just $5. But of course I liked it. I’ve now listened to all the back catalogue and am listening as the episodes get out – three times a week. If you know John Gruber and Ben Thompson, you probably will have a feeling what a podcast is about and it will probably be correct.

This paid podcast model is very interesting and the first one I’ve tried. Almost all of the podcasts I listen to are ad supported with some help from listeners in form of Patreon or something similar. This though, paid up front subscription with no ability to try it out before is something I didn’t see before. The one time I’ve paid for a podcast was with a No Agenda show, which is totally listener supported (they even call listeners producers), but it is optional. They call it “value for value” model and I like the idea of it.

📰 Halide – Year 3

I started using Halide long time ago, probably as soon as it got released and it was on my home screen ever since. And I love reading their blog. It is interesting and honest. Reading about the struggles that current situation has brought (who would have though that nobody is traveling and using photo capturing app) made me realize that I can’t even fathom the real impact the virus had on all of us.

📸 My Photo From Thailand

This week my photo (at the top), got picked by the editorial team of Unsplash and my stats got crazy for a couple of days. More than 300,000 people saw it and some of them even saved it. An amazing result which gives the motivation to take more photos.

Tag - halide

2020 Year In Review — Apps