Summary

The author discusses six innovative apps they've been monitoring throughout 2023, each with unique features and potential to enhance productivity, creativity, and research in 2024.

Abstract

The article delves into the author's experience with six applications that have caught their attention during 2023. These apps are being considered for integration into the author's workflow due to their ability to streamline processes and improve efficiency. Tana, with its supertags and live search capabilities, has been particularly exciting, despite some limitations in note-taking and mathematical functions. Capacities, still in beta, offers a blend of Notion and Craft functionalities but is held back by its pricing and lack of certain features. The author has also explored the potential of AI, specifically ChatGPT, as a research tool rather than a writing assistant. Kickstarter has provided the author with a new avenue to support creative projects, with a positive initial experience. Sunsama's approach to productivity through integration with other tools has intrigued the author, though the cost-benefit ratio is still under consideration. Lastly, Photomator, a more affordable alternative to Lightroom, is being evaluated for its continued development and potential as a one-time investment for photo editing. The author plans to continue observing these apps' development and community growth before fully committing to them.

Opinions

Tana is recognized for its innovative data querying and organization but falls short for long-form note-taking and mathematical operations.
Capacities is seen as a promising tool for personal knowledge management (PKM) but is critiqued for its beta pricing and current lack of essential features.
ChatGPT is valued for its role as a research assistant, enhancing the background preparation for content creation, despite initial skepticism about AI in writing.
Kickstarter has provided a satisfying experience for the author, who has backed several successful projects and enjoys the platform's diverse offerings.
Sunsama's integration capabilities and productivity strategies are appreciated, but the author questions its value proposition relative to other tools and manual methods.
Photomator is considered a potential cost-effective replacement for Lightroom, with its appeal bolstered by a special lifetime offer, though its capabilities are currently less extensive.

Six apps that excited me in 2023 (and I’ll be keeping an eye on in 2024)

I’ve learned over the years that continually switching apps is a surefire way of lowering how productive you are during the day as well as the quality of your work. And that’s without thinking about the cost added to your annual subscriptions.

Having said that, though, I’m always looking to try to improve my processes so if an app comes along that can help me work more efficiently, then I’m certainly interested.

Therefore, I’ve tried to find a good balance between the two. If I find a tool that I think will help me, I’ll do my research and, if I like what I see, sign up for a free trial (where I can).

However, gone are the days of impulsive decisions. If the trial goes well, I’ll keep an eye on the app for six months to view things like the development cycle, community growth and feature sets before committing to it.

With that in mind, here are the six apps currently on my watch list as tools that could potentially become part of my tech stack next year.

Tana

I’ve been playing with Tana all year, so it’s hard to put my finger on exactly why I haven’t made the jump to using it full-time.

I wrote an article describing it as the most exciting app I’ve used this year and I stand by that. Its introduction of supertags (with inheritance) coupled with its live search functionality provides an incredibly powerful and attractive way to query and display your data.

It’s also the only app that has made me see the value of a “Daily Note.” I can literally type a few words into the app, tag it appropriately and know that it has been stored away and will appear in all the appropriate searches that I’ve used in the rest of my knowledgebase.

So why haven’t I moved everything over to Tana? Well, if you’re going to push me, it’s still missing the ability to run mathematical functions, and its note-taking abilities are very like Roam Research — that’s to say, every line is a bullet point or node. That’s great for short-form notes but doesn’t lend itself to long-form paragraphs very well.

Having said that, the app seems to be going through quick development cycles — when I wrote this article, there was no mobile solution as such, which is not the case now — so I look forward to seeing how things continue to move forward in 2024.

Capacities

Capacities is an interesting mix of Notion and Craft with a sprinkle of the object-orientated note-taking approach that initially intrigued me with Tana.

While still in beta, Capacities would be an alternative destination for my PKM. There are a few things (aside from Tana) that stopped me from going all in with Tana:

Its price, given the fact that the app is in beta
The lack of inheritance in its tagging system
No querying of data

For those interested, I wrote a more in-depth article here about why I haven’t subscribed to Capacities long-term.

I’m a big fan of object-oriented note taking though so, along with Tana, I’ll be keeping a close eye on Capacities next year.

Chat GPT

I’m not the only one who is intrigued by AI and Chat GPT, specifically.

Several months ago, I thought that AI was over-rated but that was largely because I was considering apps like ChatGPT as a writing app.

While I still believe that the quality of the content something like AI produces isn’t great, what has got me excited is how it’s possible to an AI app as a research assistant.

While I still do all of my own writing, I have started to use ChatGPT for the background preparation of my content. Things like:

Content Ideas
Facts, figures and stats to back up my content
Attributions

In short, I’m using the app like a personal research system and have really been impressed by what it has been able to throw up. This is going to be another rabbit hole to dive down over the next 12 months.

Kickstarter

Kickstarter is almost as old as the internet, and yes, it has taken me ages to get into it. However, 2023 was the year that I dipped my toe into the world of backing creative ideas.

To date, I’ve backed three projects: a Keychron keyboard, a tech bag from Alpaka and an art book covering the history of app icon design on the Mac. At the time of writing, only the keyboard has actually arrived with the other two items expected to turn up in the next week or so.

I’ve been really pleased with the keyboard and enjoy the wide range of products that creators are putting up there. We’ll see how the bag and book turn out, but I’ve already found myself browsing the app more during downtime.

Sunsama

I’ve heard a lot of good things about Sunsama and really like their approach to productivity — if you haven’t read it already, their blog is a great place to spend some time with a cup of coffee.

At its core, Sunsama integrates with a range of other tools to plan and calendar block your day. It also offers well-thought-out areas for you to list your daily and weekly objectives. Having all that in one place is pretty attractive.

However, at the moment, I don’t really use any of Sunsama’s integration partners (although I’m getting into Notion), so I can’t justify the app’s high cost.

There’s also a part of me that wonders whether I’d see any kind of ROI even if I was using integration partners more. After all, it’s not offering anything that I couldn’t do with other tools or on a piece of paper!

In short, I can see another trial period being run next year once I’ve got myself sorted out in Notion a bit more.

Photomator

I wouldn’t say that I’m a huge photographer, but there are occasions when I like to take the proper camera out and come up with some good-looking photos of family events.

Due to a lack of professional skills on my part, editing the images I take is a big part of making any of my photos look good. Traditionally, Lightroom has been my app of choice but, with mobile photography being so good now I’m finding it hard to justify a subscription for my photo editor.

Enter Photomator — which has just won Apple’s Mac app of the year. It’s an app that I’ve been using on and off for the last couple of years, so I’ve been offered a special Lifetime price, which certainly appeals.

At £69.99, though, it’s still not cheap, though and the app isn’t as powerful as Lightroom. Therefore, 2024 will be about seeing whether the development of the app continues at the pace that it has done in 20203, at which point I’ll need to figure out whether I feel I edit enough photos to make a one-off investment worthwhile.

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