When I’m at work I typically find myself with a multiple monitor setup. Currently with multiple regular shaped ones, but typically during the last few years ultra wide ones. And at home I’m either laptop screen only or with a 4k 27” screen.

When I’m on the laptop screen I typically find myself using Stage Manager and full size windows most of the time. And when I use an ultra wide screen I typically don’t use stage manager but treat it in a similar way, just more like as if it was three laptop screens in one.

But when I have a large screen, like the one I have at home, I typically find myself using differently sized windows just floating around using all the tools in macOS. Spaces, hiding, minimizing etc.

If there is one category of bugs that drive me nuts beyond anything else, it got to be buggy or unreliable notification badges.

Some of my favorites are:

• When you can’t figure out how to clear all or one of them
• When they clear when you just open the app
  • Even worse: that state is reset the next time a notification happens and you get the old number + 1
• When you have to restart the app for it to update properly, sometimes
• When in an messaging app they count number of unread “entries” not the number of “conversations” that has something unread.
  • If I send you 5 messages it would increase the count by 5

This isn’t something that happens a lot to me. Less than 5 times over the two years I’ve been medicated.

The last couple of times it has however it reminds me how large of an effect meds have on me. Because of the kind of meds I’m on and the slow process of getting to an effective dose I didn’t have a huge “wow” moment.

But when I don’t take them for a day it feels terrible, leaving me in this super unfocused anxious stressed state.

Can’t believe I used to live like this.

There are Three features of OmniFocus that I often find myself missing in Things

1. Having perspectives that just hide everything else in the app.
2. Being able to do that kind of changes with Focus Filters with Focus Modes
3. The Forecast View

The first one is kind of solvable with filtering a view by tags sometimes combined with Shortcuts to only show what I want to see, but this isn’t a real solution though, because it doesn’t affect the side menu.

The second one is the same kind of idea, hiding parts of your database based on Focus Modes. Like there are large parts of my database that I only want to see sometimes, like shopping lists or work tasks etc.

The third should have been implemented in Things a really long time ago. Just give me a fucking calendar view.

On earlier versions of iOS, iPadOS, etc there used to be this annoying difference in how it worked if you launched a shortcut from a widget versus the “Add to Home Screen” and similar options, where the former just launched it, while the rest would end up opening the shortcuts app and all of that.

Now it seems like all of them works the same way.

Weird how the changes in control center is the changes I like the most about iOS 18. Awesome for having a shortcuts launchpad.

So, I was looking at the weight of the various iPad models the other day.

I guess the short version is that I really enjoy having an iPad below or next to my Mac when I work, because it is nice to have some reference documentation there or to look in a todo manager without changing focus.

The weird thing is that it is heavy enough that I notice the difference. My iPad Pro 13 with Celluar I 685 grams, and if I got the same just the newest model it would be 582 grams, or 444 grams if I went down to the 11 inch without Celluar or 293 grams for the iPad Mini. Hopefully the next generation mini would be even lighter. All the other models are the same weight ish or heavier than my current iPad

I think that weight wise the 11 or Mini are the only ones that would have enough of a difference to matter, the mini is the most likely because I’m going to get one for other reasons. But the 11 would be the better option for this use case.

This have been a big annoyance of me for a really long time at this point. Most iPad cases, if they at all let you use them as a kick stand, only support doing so in one direction.

That is fine that each model only support on orientation, and it makes sense.

However.

Why the fuck is all of them design for doing so in landscape? Most of the time (but not always) when I don’t have my iPad attached to a keyboard I’d prefer the other way. Having a tall display close to my wider laptop or external display is a lot more useful than another wide one.

For example with a list of tasks, a web page, pdf, e-book or something like that visible.

When you have a small child, they love it, or at least mine does, when I buy the same thing for the both of us. But it is so stupid rare that I can find anything that is like that.

Ridiculous.