The HomePod isn’t a complicated device to use. In fact, it can be frustratingly simple. My initial setup met my expectations for all new Apple hardware. It’s elegant, simple, and it feels like magic when it works. With that first juice of electricity, a new HomePod quickly latches onto an adjacent iPhone. Its first moments of life are a bit pedestrian, which is a relief from most of my other technology.

Let’s see if I can do a Dave Pell style post. I actually liked Snow Leopard more than Leopard, so a year of improvements is just fine by me. 2018 feels like the year of “sorry we ruined your family life” from Apple. I still don’t want a HomePod I actually kind of want a pair of HomePods. I wouldn’t say no to a series-3 Watch but I’m also not saying yes until I see Overcast for Apple Watch Siri actions will enable the most productive, dumbest assistant I’ve ever worked with Great, now I need to pretend I don’t know how to do group FaceTime just like I pretend I don’t know how to do group messaging Please, oh please don’t let game makers use tongue detection.

I immediately turned on iCloud storage for Messages with the latest iOS update. I liked this succinct summary by Paul Horowitz over at OS X Daily. That’s a lot of storage moved to iCloud.

Another update to iCab that makes me wish it was my full time browser. Dark mode is a terrific new option with iCab for iOS. It renders pages in something like an inverted color scheme but it’s more clever than that. Backgrounds are dark, text is light, and graphic elements are still readable. There’s a handy preset that will automatically render different sites with one of the dark mode options. Such a great idea.

Affiliate: This basically converts Amazon and iTunes links on my clipboard to affiliate links. It’s simple but it works. Default Folder X: The “Save as…” window is so much better with this app. The menu bar app provides a convenient way to navigate to recent and favorite locations. I don’t use it often but it’s nice to have access to. Path Finder can also provide this option but I think it’s too noisy.

One of my character flaws is that I obsess about weather apps and forecast services. Maybe it’s because I don’t follow any sports so that only leaves weather to make small talk in elevators. Whatever the reason, I own a lot of weather apps. I fell out of love with Dark Sky predictions several years ago when it felt like they were consistently wrong. I moved to Weather Underground wherever I could, including in CARROT Weather.

As of last week the single largest use I had for Dropbox was DEVONthink syncing. I have 10 active databases all syncing thousands of documents between my Mac version and the iOS version. With DEVONthink’s encrypted sync, I rest pretty comfortably knowing that my data is guarded against Dropbox. I’d still like to stop paying for Dropbox if I can. I’m getting closer to that goal. This week DEVONthink added iCloud syncing and I immediately moved off of Dropbox.

This is a big update for 1Password on the Mac. Not only does the applicaiton look great but one of my favorite features is getting a lot more useful: Secure notes now support Markdown formatting! I have a lot of secure notes in 1Password. I don’t just need to know passwords, I need to know the details about restarting servers once I login. I need to know details about my family that extend beyond birthdays.

Drafts 5 has been out for a few weeks and I’ve read a lot of interesting ideas about the note app. I’ve also cleaned up and trimmed down (and then expanded) a bunch of my actions for the app since I last wrote about it. Now comes a ton of new stuff in the 5.1 update. Drafts can be difficult to grok. Maybe the best way to get a feel for what it does well is to hear from people that actually use it.

FoldingText is quite the impressive text editor. It was started by the same folks behind TaskPaper and was spun out as a more powerful text editor with task management features. A post in the support forum is now talking about the future of this unique beast. 2018 might just be the year when plain text lovers have a variety of new apps to try. It’s finally the year of Notational Velocity alternatives.