Well, it’s been over a year since I last talked about my defaults (even though I tried to update it along the way).

A lot has changed in that year, so I’m going to go over it again. To make things easier, I’m reusing the old list with previous defaults and will let you know if and how they have changed.

📨 Mail Client: Mail.app on both iOS and macOS; for work, Mimestream (Google accounts only). Because I’ve shifted most of my day-to-day activities to a Windows machine (I managed to get a BEAST with 64GB of RAM and a 4TB SSD for under $1,000), I now handle most of my mail in the browser—Fastmail in Vivaldi (personal) and Gmail in Chrome (work). On any of my devices (I use Android personally now, while my iPhone is mainly for work), I use the Fastmail and Gmail apps.

📮 Mail Server: Fastmail for personal use and Google for work. No changes here!

📝 Notes: Obsidian, Tot, and Day One. Day One is still here; I have a streak that’s about 300 days long now. For regular notes, I’ve settled on the free version of Standard Notes. When I moved away from the Apple-only ecosystem, I needed something that worked across all OSes, and Standard Notes does.

✅ To-Do: Akiflow and Things. Akiflow is still going strong; I even paid for five years of it since I’m not planning on dropping it anytime soon. I use it solely for my work calendar and tasks, and it’s made a huge difference for me. For personal tasks, I use Google Tasks. It just works: I add tasks with dates, and they show up when needed. I no longer need the complexity of something like Omnifocus, and it felt great to let go of that.

📷 Phone Camera: I previously used the Camera app on iPhone exclusively. Now, I take most of my photos with a Google Pixel 8a. The camera on the 8a is amazing, and I love having that 2x zoom button in the camera app.

🟦 Photo Management: Lightroom—still going strong! Lightroom is fantastic.

📆 Calendar: Previously used Calendar on iOS and Akiflow on Mac; now it’s Akiflow on PC and the Fastmail app on Android.

📁 Cloud File Storage: iCloud + Backblaze B2—still my go-to. I’m not using Google Drive yet, and honestly, I don’t know if I need to archive many actual files. Most of my “files” are Google Docs, Sheets, and photos. I have some archives, but it’s only a few gigs of data. I may copy it to Google Drive for access on my Pixel, but I haven’t really needed it in the past year.

📖 RSS: FreshRSS with Reeder. Since I moved to Android, I now use Read You with FreshRSS. It works well, and I don’t miss Reeder!

🙍🏻‍♂️ Contacts: Same as before. I use whatever is default on Android.

🌐 Browser: Arc Browser on Mac and Arc Search on iOS. Arc has gone downhill in recent months, and their Windows app never took off. I dropped Arc entirely and switched to Vivaldi. It works as well as Chrome without actually being Chrome. I don’t care as much about browsers anymore, so Vivaldi it is.

💬 Chat: Telegram, Signal, and WhatsApp—still the same, though I’d rank them differently now: Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram.

🔖 Bookmarks: Browser.

📑 Read It Later: Good Links. I’ve stopped using “read it later” tools. If I need to save something for later, I send it to myself via Signal or email. But honestly, I only did that a few times over the entire year. Another thing I let go of!

🤖 Mastodon: Previously used Ivory and IceCubes. Now, it’s mostly in the browser, and if I’m on my phone, I use Moshidon.

📖 Blog: micro.blog and Day One.

⌨️ Launcher: Raycast. I don’t use macOS that much anymore, but when I’m on my MacBook (like right now), I still use Raycast.

📜 Word Processing: Obsidian. I can’t even remember what I meant by “Word Processing” originally, but I mostly use Google Docs now.

📈 Spreadsheets: Google Sheets.

📊 Presentations: Google Slides.

🛒 Shopping Lists: Previously used Reminders; now I use Google Tasks.

💰 Budgeting and Personal Finance: YNAB.

📰 News: RSS.

🎵 Music: Spotify.

🎤 Podcasts: Pocket Casts.

🎮 Gaming: PS5, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, and Anbernic RG35XX.

🔐 Password Management: 1Password.

👨🏻‍💻 Terminal: Previously used WebSSH; now I use whatever Windows provides—usually PowerShell or something similar.

Perhaps we should stop thinking of the USA as a country to look up to.

Americans, what the hell

ChatGPT search is crazy

iPhone wants me to use MacOS and be enclosed in Apple ecosystem, but Android let’s me do my shit anywhere - and I didn’t know that I value this but I do.

Chill out please

Apple Music working better on Android wasn’t on my bingo card but yet here we are

5 icons in a row are better than 4 icons in a row. I don’t make the rules but I do.

To use an iphone is to use a phone in slow motion. This is how it feels like

Android apps are good enough that I don’t miss any particular app. Even if the iOS app was better, the Android version of it (either because there’s the same app for Android or there’s a different app that does the same thing) is most of the time good enough to not care because it does the job done.

And this is when I found out that Reeder can be replaced.

And today on Android I’ve installed Sum Up and now all of my chat messages get summarised. This is happening on a $300 device, for free. I have an assistant that allows me to ask even the trickiest questions and I can do stuff like circle to search.

Two weeks with my Pixel. That was quick! Still is my main phone.

Since I have moved onto the Pixel I find myself using Gemini a lot. I do it a couple times a day and my questions are mostly about small things. Yesterday I asked what the hell is baba ganoush, today I have asked what does “habibi” actually mean. We were picking new heaters and I wasn’t actually sure how do we calculate the wattage and it just answered me. MOST of the times I did fact-check and it was actually right!

This is a big change to my daily workflow. Because whenever something comes to my mind - I can (and I am!) ask about it and learn something new.

There are moments in which I’m missing my iPhone, sure. I do have these thoughts daily, but my sim card remains in the Pixel for about week and a half. Whenever I think about the iPhone, I remind myself that this tool has better assistant, better screen, does the same job and have OUT OF THIS WORLD notification system. And - that was new to me, seriously - these are to me worth more than iOS ecosystem? And the funny part of that is because I’ve moved from Apple to more open Google (evil, but a bit more open) - I can still access my photos and messages on my Mac. Because they are available in the web.

Crazy experience. I know we said these things about Apple, but they just figured some nice things out. You’re getting to bed and plugging up your phone? It’s getting darker and black & white, so you go to sleep instead of scrolling. Someone’s calling you and you can’t answer now? Flip your phone screen down and it will be silenced because obviously.

So, if anyone asks - I do like Pixel 8a.

After a week I’ve got used to the bigger border or fingerprint scanner (I found out that using a bit more force on it actually improved my finger readability). The only thing that right now is frustrating is the slow charging speed. Everything else is fine.

That’s my home screen after a week with Pixel 8a. My iPhone is being left, untouched since last week.

Pixel shots are good enough to post, without ANY touches.

Powązki. This is that golden autumn everybody was talking about. 🍂🍁

This is just crazy. I love it.

BuzzKill and Hurry for Android are worth every cent.

Warsaw being pretty.

Just to add to the point of iPhone feeling more expensive/premium and 8a feeling cheaper - I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, because I feel safer and have to be less careful with Pixel. I love glass, don’t get me wrong, but iPhone with case feels chunky and without one - very slippery.

Few random thoughts about iOS vs Android:

• I like Apple Pay experience more,
• the assistant on Android (the normal, non-Gemini) is so much better than Siri,
• I still have to keep around an iPhone because of smart home (thermostats are HomeKit only) - at least until we move in the new flat,
• I love Android back gesture and I miss it a lot on the iPhone,
• Android feels playful, but not in a way that makes me addicted to it,
• omg proper file system, I missed that!
• build quality on 8a vs 14 Plus is no match, iPhone feels expensive and 8a feels - unfortunately? - cheap,
• iPhone has better vibration motor but it doesn’t bother me that much, what bothers me is lack of very important notifications on the wrist, missed a couple calls already (can be fixed with getting a smartwatch what will happen eventually because my Apple Watch is getting old.

First time getting an update on Android day 0.

iOS notification system is like 0.1 version of what Android has. Seriously. I’m SNOOZING one notification to come back and notify me in an hour. SNOOZING.

I feel a bit more understood by this phone. It does interesting things and is very helpful with the assistants.