For the second year running, here’s a complete list of the apps I wrote with during one day — plus half a dozen I particularly recommend.
LINKS:
Support 58keys on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=86274276
Join the Writer’s Mailing list too: http://eepurl.com/gQTqTT
MAIN APPS:
CleanShot X: from $29 https://cleanshot.com
Hookmark: from $30 https://hookproductivity.com
MarsEdit: $60 https://redsweater.com/marsedit/
Logic Pro for Mac: $199 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/logic-pro/id634148309?mt=12
Final Cut Pro for iPad: $49/year https://apps.apple.com/us/app/final-cut-pro-for-ipad/id1631624924
CleanShot X and Hookmark are also on Setapp: https://cleanshot.com
RELATED PREVIOUS 58KEYS EPISODES:
One Day, X Apps, Y Mugs of Tea 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3xdbaW_g1M&t=168s
CleanShot X: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XAnUUxuEfI
Hookmark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaYbJhYg8qQ&t=185s and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4IVK7wBGEA
MarsEdit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RwFhdRHxas
ALL APPS:
Apple Watch alarm https://www.apple.com/watch/
EuFy camera https://amzn.to/3Nn8Yq3 (US), https://amzn.to/3qFHV0j (UK)
Drafts https://getdrafts.com/
MarsEdit https://redsweater.com//marsedit/
Apple TV app https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-4k/
Widgets on macOS Sonoma https://www.apple.com/macos/sonoma-preview/
Safari https://www.apple.com/macos/sonoma-preview/
1Password https://1password.com/
Airtable https://airtable.com/
Apple Notes https://apps.apple.com/us/app/notes/id1110145109
Numbers https://apps.apple.com/us/app/numbers/id409203825?mt=12
Facebook https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/facebook/id284882215
Twitter https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/twitter/id333903271
LinkedIn https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/linkedin-job-search-news/id288429040
FaceTime Audio https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204380
Google Chrome https://www.google.com/chrome/
Reeder https://reederapp.com/
OmniFocus https://www.omnigroup.com/omniFocus
Mail https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mail/id1108187098
Apple News+ https://www.apple.com/apple-news/
Keyboard Maestro https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/
OmniOutliner https://www.omnigroup.com/omnioutliner
Pixelmator Pro https://www.pixelmator.com/
TextSoap https://textsoap.com/
Stream Deck https://amzn.to/42QLqhX (US), https://amzn.to/42Ccdy4 (UK)
Final Cut Pro for iPad https://apps.apple.com/us/app/final-cut-pro-for-ipad/id1631624924
Photos https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/photos/welcome/mac
Logic Pro https://apps.apple.com/us/app/logic-pro/id634148309?mt=12
Where to? https://www.futuretap.com/apps/whereto
Fantastical https://fantastical.app/
Amazon https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/amazon/id335187483
Kindle https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amazon-kindle/id302584613
Hookmark https://hookproductivity.com/
Shortcuts https://apps.apple.com/us/app/shortcuts/id915249334
Siri https://www.apple.com/siri/
TextExpander https://textexpander.com/
Hazel https://www.noodlesoft.com/
HBClock https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hbclock/id417586530?mt=12
Apple Music https://www.apple.com/uk/apple-music/
Slack https://apps.apple.com/us/app/slack/id618783545
SCRIPT:
– INTRO
– Right then, as I record this, it’s Sunday and I’ve just finished an hour-long live 58keys writing sprint session – if you’d like to know more, follow the links to my Patreon page – but I want to talk to you about Friday, June 9, 2023.
– For this reason. I’d like to recommend a whole bunch of Mac, iPhone and iPad apps to you but rather than it just be some random collection, here’s everything I used — in sequence — last Friday.
– TITLES
– Hello, I’m William Gallagher and this is 58keys, which as ever, as always, is for writers like you and me who use and write on Macs, iPhones and iPads. Do subscribe, because there is so much to talk about.and this time, slightly less than I expected.
– It seems this One Day in the App Life has become an annual thing and for this second-ever one, I had plans. I was going to show you action shots, such as this:
– CLIP FROM SECURITY CAMERA (IN BLACK AND WHITE)
– Please don’t look too closely at that, It was early Friday morning but overnight I’d had an allergic reaction to something and my top lip ballooned out. So I could forget shooting anything in Filmic Pro Legacy and using the Filmic Pro Remote, so that was two fewer apps than I expected.
– But while I couldn’t film me using them all, I still had to use the lot. So let me tell you that for 2022’s version of this, I used 36 apps and for this one day in 2023, I used… 44.
– This is the list, but we’re not going to go through them all because it’s coin toss whether you’d nod off first or I would. Instead, look at these.
– Four apps that were entirely new to me this year, and one that has a new name. Let’s examine those. And in the case of two of them, examine them very quickly.
– STING
– First up, CleanShot X. This has to be quick because there is already a 58keys edition devoted entirely to this screen-grabbing tool. You know that you can take screenshots of whatever’s on your Mac screen, you know you can do this with any Mac right out of the box, but CleanShot X does it better — and does more.
– Specifically, scrolling capture. You have a loooong web page, it’ll grab the lot.
– Do take a look at the full video just about that, link in the show notes, and a warning that I gush over it. That was just exactly two months ago and I use it even more now, despite having been away for one of those two months.
– STING
– Next, the name-change one. This, too, has a full previous 58keys, in fact it has a couple of them. One when it was just called Hook, and another when it became Hookmark. Let me explain if you haven’t found it already, that Hookmark lets you link everything together.
– The example I use most often is a magazine that I might edit every other quarter or so. I can be in Affinity Designer, laying out the page, when I realise the client asked for something specific in an email. Two clicks and I am in that email reading it. And then back in the page layout app, or now in a folder with all the content, or now in Pages writing rejection letters for all the articles in this other folder.
– You take a moment to gather all of these places together, then you fly between them. It gets so you don’t understand why Macs wouldn’t just work this way already.
– Watch the Hookmark video because it’s actually an interview with the developer and he talks you and I through what it does.
– STING
– Another entirely new one – ish. It wasn’t on last year’s list but I have dabbled in it, I just go through stages where I dabble more. It’s Logic Pro, an audio editor.
– So last Friday, I started around 7am doing writing a Self Distract blog in MarsEdit, then making some a plan for an event in OmniOutliner, making some notes in Drafts, yeah, yeah, then from 10am to about 6pm I was booked writing for AppleInsider dot com and that came with a bunch of other apps I needed to use, then the very last thing I did in that day was write the AppleInsider Daily podcast — in OmniOutliner — then record it in Logic Pro.
– I would bet money that if you haven’t used Logic Pro or any other audio editor, that you would say it isn’t a writing tool. Because you’d be right. But hold that thought for a minute.
– I adore Logic Pro and I am a bit daunted by it. I’ve seen amazing work done in that app by musicians and I have never and doubtlessly will never get to that level. But every time I use Logic Pro, I come away giddy with how good it is.
– But let me be clear. In this case, I mean Logic Pro for the Mac. That’s what I have, that’s what I was using, and until about a month ago, there wasn’t any other version of it. Now there is, now there’s Logic Pro for the iPad, and it was launched alongside the last of my apps for the year, Final Cut Pro for iPad. And I want to talk to you about that.
– STING
– That thing I said about Logic Pro being and not being a writing tool, I think it is and I think the reason for it goes at least as much for video editor Final Cut Pro.
– Video and audio editing uses the same mental muscles you and I have to have with writing. They can all be painstaking jobs, but more than that, these tools are for communicating, you need to think about what you’re saying, how you’re saying it. You need to think about rhythm and pace. Just the way you might spend an embarrassingly long time making fine adjustments to a sentence, you spend that on a scene or a track.
– And to me, video and audio editing are both so satisfying — and so, educational. I once shot a long 58keys episode from a script I thought I’d honed down, but when I came to edit the filmed version, I was able to totally cut out twelve minutes.
– Twelve minutes of me yapping on.
– And I’ve been steadily learning from this, how to know just what must be said and what doesn’t have to be, what’s superflouous.
– But.
– I believed I learned that a little from Logic Pro on the Mac, and a very great deal from Final Cut Pro on the Mac. I adore Final Cut Pro.
– So when I was on holiday and I saw a headline about Final Cut Pro finally coming to the iPad, I was wide-eyed with excitement. I mentioned Patreon earlier, I went on my Patreon page and asked people, would it be mad to do a 58keys about a video editing app?
– Everyone was very nice.
– I suspect they also realised that they could just skip that episode.
– But, it turns, out, there won’t be a 58keys about Final Cut Pro — on the iPad.
– Because I’m cancelling my subscription. Cancelling it before the trial period ends.
– Look, it is very, very good. I love that Final Cut Pro is on the iPad and I enjoyed editing a whole 58keys on it — except it couldn’t be a whole 58keys. Without boring you with the details, there was this tiny last thing I just could not do without coming back to Final Cut Pro on the Mac.
– There are tiny things missing on the iPad version, there are some big things missing too. Those will come, I’m sure, and I expect I will end up using it a lot in the future. The ability to just pick up a pane of glass and do all of your work from writing to editing, it is now close to irresistible and it will surely be whole irresistible soon.
– Maybe, if you’d indulge me, I could do a whole 58keys about Final Cut Pro for the Mac. There are better editors than me, obviously, but I could try showing you why I think it’s – I think it might not be a writing tool, but it is a writers’ tool.
– Unless I’ve just said everything such an episode would say.
– Anyway. I did use Final Cut Pro for the iPad on Friday, I used Logic Pro on the Mac to make a podcast, and there were these forty-odd other apps.
– Just for completeness, I used them across ten devices or pieces of equipment. This lot here.
– And for very completeness, for some reason last year I did also count how many mugs of tea I drank during the day and it was a surprising — to me — four. Only four.
– Whereas for this one day in 2023, I drank… three.
– But look, my lip was swollen. I’ll do better in June 2024.
– In the meantime, that’s it for this edition of 58keys. All of the links for the apps and prices for the main ones are in the show notes. But for now, thank you for watching, take care of yourself, write more, and I’ll see you soon.