Hello, I’m Michael Sliwinski, founder of Nozbe - to-do app for modern teams. I write about productivity, #NoOffice, #iPadOnly and I believe that work is not a place you go to, it’s a thing you do.
I watched last week’s Apple Event with much enthusiasm and as I tend to upgrade my iPhone every year, I was very happy to see the cameras got slightly better as well as battery life. This year though, the difference between the pro and non-pro models is substantial so I decided I’m going back with a bigger iPhone. I’m replacing my good old iPhone 12 Mini with the iPhone 13 Pro, here’s why:
Despite the pandemic and lack of long-haul travel, I’m still using my backpack almost daily when I need to leave home. As recently I embraced the MagSafe lifestyle I decided to review everything I carry in my backpack and write it up over here so that it might be also helpful to you. Here goes:
Apart from reducing the size of the iPhone 12 last year, Apple introduced a new type of accessories for the iPhone, which have to do with charging and magnets - MagSafe. While I was a little skeptical about this, I ordered the MagSafe Wallet and gave it a try. After a while I decided to go all in on MagSafe and embrace this new magnetic lifestyle.
Now after I’ve posted the details of my iPad Pro 11” home screen it’s time to share the Home Screen of my cute iPhone 12 Mini. As I was doing my annual review I decided to also simplify and reduce the number of apps on my iPhone’s screen as well as embrace the two things iOS14 was all about - the widgets and the app directory. Here’s the result:
Every now and then it’s good to get off the screens of iPads and iPhones and just play a board game. As a father of three girls, we like spending evenings playing Catan, Carcassonne or Monopoly. Or even just a simple “Snakes and Ladders” game. But to be able to play, you need dice. And in a household like ours, dice magically disappear… so in order to be able to have them always handy, I decided to quickly build virtual dice, so that we can use the phone to throw them in a truly random fashion! 🎲🎲 Get virtual dice here.
I like journaling daily. I like planning my next day in the evening. I like tracking how my day is going and what I spend my time on. Yes, I care about all these things and to make sure I do them consistently I prepared a Siri Shortcut (iOS only, sorry!) that helps me do just that! I hope you’ll also find it useful:
It’s hard to satisfy a geek like me. I don’t like to buy many things and I’m very specific about stuff I want. And there are also gadgets that I need. Here’s the list of things I got on Black Friday or will be getting soon this holiday season (or will be telling my relatives to get for me). Hope it’s useful to you and inspires you to get something for yourself:
As I upgrade my iPhone every year, I usually go with the same kind of model, just better. Three years ago I went with the iPhone X. Two years ago I had a choice between XR, XS and XS Max. I chose the natural successor - iPhone XS. Last year I went with the iPhone 11 Pro. So naturally this year I’d go for the iPhone 12 Pro, right? Well… wrong! I went with something smaller:
On my iPad not only I can download YouTube videos now, I also created a special page to be able to watch YouTube videos without being tracked. Here’s why I did it and why I hope YouTube/Google will not find out about it:
Tomorrow I’m finally going to unbox a new iPhone 11 Pro (non-Max - it’s too big for me), Midnight Green (the new “hot” color), 256GB (who needs more space?) but before I do, I’d like to share with you some thoughts on smartphone photography with my now-retiring iPhone XS. In short - shooting photos with this thing should be considered cheating - I keep being stunned how good the photos are without any effort at all.