Apple Is Not the Reason I’m Buying Apple Products - These People Are

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In the court cases against Epic, this round of regulatory scrutiny from the EU, and other more, Apple has made their sense of entitlement abundantly clear. Every piece of business that happens on their platforms, is to their credit. And developers are lucky to be able to pay them almost a third of their revenue for the privilege of being on their platforms. If Apple understands that their relationship with developers is reciprocal, they’re hiding it well.

I like all my Apple hardware. Heck, I even love some of it! I also like the operating systems, the general focus on privacy, and the way the different parts of the ecosystem work together. But I think I could enjoy a Framework laptop, Asus phone and some Sony earbuds as well! The things Apple makes and does isn’t the main reason I keep buying Apple products. It’s all the fantastic third-party developers, mostly indie, who make great software for the Apple platforms.

I know that Apple makes some great tools, APIs and frameworks to make this happen — so I’m not saying they shouldn’t get anything for their trouble. But this idea that it’s a one-way street, where only Apple gives other companies business, just feels so wrong to me.

So even though I know neither Tim Apple nor any other Apples, will read this post, I feel the need to shout: Apple, you need to wholeheartedly thank (among others) the following great developers - because they give you a lot of business:

Great third-party software

Most of these apps are what I would call indie apps — but not all of them. ¹ And I think most of them are only available on Apple platforms currently — but they might be available on, or on the way to, other platforms as well. I’ve tried all of them, but don’t necessarily use them regularly — but I do use many of them! ² I’ll also try to give social links to the devs I know — but you are welcome to contact me if some are wrong and you know who I should tag! I’d also love to get more tips to people and apps who should be on this list!

A stock Mac, without utilities like these, feels broken to me:

Answering the question «Is macOS good?» is kind of hard. Because I really don’t like it out-of-the-box — but it’s terrific with third party software…

• Bartender, by Surtees Studios, keeps my menu bar tidy and good-looking,
• and Default Folder X, by St. Clair Software upgrades my open and save dialogs.
• My trackpad becomes much more useful thanks to BetterTouchTool by Andreas Hegenberg of Folivora.ai,
• and all my keyboards do the same through Karabiner-Elements by pqrs/Takayama Fumihiko,
• and Keyboard Maestro by Stairways Software.
• Paste, by a small team based in Denmark, is my favourite clipboard manager,
• but Tapbot’s Pastebot, is also great. (Give Paul, Mark and Todd a follow!)
• But I would probably be able to live with just using the integrated clipboard manager in Raycast, an outstanding launcher with a rich extension ecosystem.
• But Alfred, by Andrew and Vero Pepperrell,
• and LaunchBar, by Objective Development is also good!
• I do use Raycast for window management, though. However, if I didn’t, I would’ve been well served by things like
  • Magnet (Crowd Café),
  • Moom (Peter Maurer and Rob Griffiths of Many Tricks),
  • Rectangle (Ryan Hanson) ,
  • Amethyst (Ian Ynda-Hummel),
  • or Yabai (Åsmund Vikane)!
  • (And John Siracusa makes some apps for the particular of us.)
• Rafael Conde makes some neat little tools (and recently joined the team making Sketch)
• Noodlesoft’s Hazel keeps my files tidy,
• Anybox holds my bookmarks,
• my board game collection is in Classifier by App Deco,
• and my digital games are in GameTrack.
• Menuwhere (Many Tricks again!) makes sure the top menu is always within reach,
• and my screenshots looks great thanks to CleanShot X (and Apple Frames by Federico Viticci)
• PopClip by Nick Moore
• and SnippetsLab by Renfei Song help me manipulate text,
• Photomator manipulates photos,
• and what the geniuses over at Rogue Amoeba can do to manipulate sound, is simply remarkable
  • (I especially like SoundSource and Audio Hijack!)

Some do wood working as a hobby — I do development

• And even though I’m very far from being at a professional level, I really like the Zed code editor by the team behind Atom.

• Panic also has some great software, in

  • Transmit,
  • the Nova editor, and the new
  • Prompt terminal.

• iTerm , by George Nachman is also good,

• but my favourite terminal app is Warp.

• And if I had coded more on my iPad, I probably would’ve used Runestone, by Simon Støvring,

• and Working Copy more!

• Oh, and my favourite browser, is Arc by The Browser Company —

  • and if I’m there, in Safari or in Firefox, Jeff Johnson helps me StopTheMadness.

But there’s even more great ways to write notes and other texts

• NotePlan, by Eduard Metzger is both my notes app and task manager,
• but Agenda seems like a good alternative here,
• and I journal in Everlog by Wessley Roche.
• But I could very well have taken notes in Bear (Shiny Frog),
• Craft,
• Bike Outliner (Jesse Grosjean)
• or Taio
  • (by the developer who also makes MarkEdit)!
• (Quick shout-out to Obsidian
• and Logseq as well — even though they are cross-platform.)
• Text that I won’t save, starts in Drafts by Greg Pierce,
• while I write blog posts and more in Ulysses by a team based in Germany.
• (But MarsEdit, by Daniel Jalkut also supports Micro.blog!)
• And if I feel the need for a post-it note, I might jot something down in Tot, by Iconfactory,
• or do some calculations in Soulver by Acqualia Software.
• (I’d love to be able to write my emails in Mimestream — but they have got to get on that JMAP support!)

There are also lots of great calendar apps and task managers

• Since I have most my tasks in NotePlan, I don’t use other task managers as much. But I sometimes use GoodTask, as it uses the Reminders.app database, but gives a more powerful interface.
• Things 3, by Cultured Code
• and Omnifocus by The Omni Group is also great.
• If you’re a calendar power user, Fantastical, by Flexibits, is where it’s at.
• I’m not, so I really like BusyCal, by Busy Apps, that sits somewhere between Fantastical and Calendar.app.
• I also have a soft spot for n.spektor’s Calendar 366.

Most of these have good mobile clients — but here are some other mobile favourites

• Dark Noise, by Charlie Chapman, is a good noisemaker,
• and Callsheet by Casey Liss is what IMDB would be if it was made by someone who really cares.
• His ATP buddy, Marco Arment, makes the app that’s active the most hours on my phone: Overcast
• And I check the IK Start and Arsenal scores with FotMob.
• My favourite calculator, is the weirdly named SC-323PU by Thomas Öllinger,
• but PCalc by James Thomson is also great.
• If I checked the weather in other ways than finding out when I step outside, I could’ve used apps like Carrot Weather by Brian Mueller
• or Mercury Weather by Triple Glazed Studios.
• (Here’s a pro tip from me: I use the Yr app, which is a weather app paid for by the Norwegian government — and it’s pretty great, and available in English!)
• And if I saved recipies, I could use Croutonby Devin Davies
• or Mela by Silvio Rizzi.
• Silvio has also made a great way to experience RSS, with Reeder.
• NetNewsWire by Brent Simmons is another good option,
• while my personal favourite is Lire.
• iOS also has some fantastic social media apps. I still miss Apollo, by Christian Selig, and Reddit’s policies have made me more or less quit the service. But Narwhal is pretty good if you still use it!
• Gluon, by Vincent Ritter is my preferred way to browse Micro.blog.
  • (Also check out his Scribbles project!)
• For Mastodon, there’s an embarrassment of riches:
  • Mona,
  • Ivory (Tapbots),
  • Mammoth and
  • Icecubes (Thomas Ricouard), to name a few!

When Apple got a fine for unfairly competing with 20 music apps (Spotify being one of them), they wrote a very bitter reply. Here they pointed out that «Spotify pays Apple nothing», ³ even though they have apps on Apple’s platforms. But you can also think of it the other way around: That Spotify is maintaining clients for Apple’s platforms, without Apple having to pay Spotify anything. Because services I use a lot, like Tidal (trying to switch from Spotify), Telegram (the chat app with the best UX by far) and YouTube (Premium is well worth the cost) are obviously available for other platforms as well — so they don’t keep me on Apple’s platforms. But these platforms would be way less attractive for me if these companies didn’t make clients for them! And Apple doesn’t pay them anything for it.

Again, Apple does deserve tons of cash and credit — but not all of it. People like the mentioned developers are the main reason I buy Apple products — and not Apple themselves.