Default Apps in 2023

Found via a toot by Chris Hoyer, this list of default apps. Started by the folks from the Hemispheric Views podcast in an episode dubbed Duel of the Defaults! to find out which person uses the most default apps. After listening to the episode while Zwifting I decided to jot down my own list.

  • 📨 Mail Client: Mail
  • 📮 Mail Server: iCloud
  • 📝 Notes: Notes
  • ✅ To-Do: Reminders
  • 📷 iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera
  • 🟦 Photo Management: Photos
  • 📆 Calendar: Calendar
  • 📁 Cloud File Storage: iCloud Drive
  • 📖 RSS: Innoreader. Very similar to Feedly, which I ditched after they started using AI for all the wrong reasons.
  • 🙍🏻‍♂️ Contacts: Contacts
  • 🌐 Browser: Firefox because of uBlock ad blocker.
  • 💬 Chat: Discord. Have encountered some great folks on the members only Escape Collective Discord. If you’re into cycling, please join us!
  • 🔖 Bookmarks: Firefox because it has bookmark tags. If only Safari had better bookmarking support…
  • 📑 Read It Later: Pocket
  • 📜 Word Processing: Pages
  • 📈 Spreadsheets: Numbers
  • 📊 Presentations: Keynote
  • 🛒 Shopping Lists: Paprika. Our favorite app to store all our recipes. The bookmarklet to import recipes is fantastic. The option to scale recipes to any portion is life saving (specially when dealing with silly imperial system). All the ingredients for a recipe can be added to a shopping list
  • 🍴 Meal Planning: Paprika.
  • 💰 Budgeting and Personal Finance: Wealthfront for both Cash & Savings and Automated Investing. Set it and forget it.
  • 📰 News: RSS + a bookmark folder in Firefox filled with Dutch and English news sources. Would love to use News but the horrendous ads make it impossible to use.
  • 🎵 Music: Music
  • 🎤 Podcasts: Overcast, but may switch to the Podcasts app. In fact, I listened to the Duel of the Defaults! episode in the Podcasts app.
  • 🔐 Password Management: 1Password, but have been in the process of migrating to Passwords this year already.

So if we go by Hemispheric Views’ extremely scientific scoring system I would end up with ~36 points. Not even close to the winner, Martin Feld, who ended up with 33 points.

For 2024 I’m going to be training hard (by switching from Firefox to Safari), which should put me in the lead with 30 points. I’m coming for that Mr. Default crown Martin!