Revisiting the free tools that come with devices and operating systems

We often forget about all those apps that come with our devices and operating systems. We also find a tool and stick with it, never going back to see if the latest update to an OS now has features that make our extra apps that we pay for no longer needed.

Some thoughts in this episode on going back to the free tools that come built-in and saving money and some times, the pain of managing 3rd party applications.

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What is PW Podcast?

Join me on a journey exploring the ups and downs of being a creator. I make things across many mediums including apps, games, and podcasts. Along the way, I take the side roads to motivation and inspiration. Navigating the winding paths that try to stop us from achieving our dreams and goals.

Peter: 00:07

What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the PW Podcast. In this one, I am gonna be talking about using first party tools compared to third party tools. And let's start by explaining what I mean by that for those of you who don't know. So in general, a first party tool is something that's built into, you know, the operating system that you have on your machine compared to a third party, which is, you know, one made by someone else.

Peter: 00:36

I'll give you a really good example, a really obvious one here. Using your built in text editor compared to, say, something like Microsoft Word or Open Office, those kind of things. Right? That's that's the difference between a first party and a third party. And lately, I have been trying to get back to using more first party tools to see if they can now be replacements, essentially, for the replacements that I have been using.

Peter: 01:05

And the reason I say this is I have been using third party tools for so long now that sometimes it's easy when new operating system versions come out that you forget to go back and see, you know, do these tools now do what I need? Now, why does this even matter? Right? Well firstly, it's one less application to maintain and update and upgrade and worry about. Secondly, it's just there.

Peter: 01:34

You don't have to install it. And thirdly, a lot of the time it'll have better integration with your system compared to some third party tools where they essentially have to build that process into the tool for you. Let's talk about a couple of the tools I'm going use here. So one is some kind of note taking application. I think it's fair to say probably most, if not everybody, uses some kind of note taking tool.

Peter: 02:03

Now there are millions of these and I have used quite a few of them. My favorite one for the longest time was bare notes. And in many ways, it still is. It's just a fantastic tool. It just works.

Peter: 02:18

It works on all the platforms I need it to. And, you know, it's very reasonably priced. And it's got a great interface. But this year, I decided, okay. You know what?

Peter: 02:29

Instead of doing the renewal for the subscription on that, which was very cheap, by the way, I'm gonna use the built in application on my Mac and iOS and and those platforms. And, yeah, it's a lot simpler, but it does what I need. And I think that this is key. Right? A lot of these third party tools have really great features that we all think, oh, I'm I need this.

Peter: 02:53

I'm gonna take advantage of that. That's cool. That's great. And then most of the time, we don't. Right?

Peter: 02:59

Now that said, one thing I really like about BareNotes and so many of these third party note taking tools is the ability to add tags and do fancy searching and everything else. But I realized that I actually don't use them that much. Not as much as you would think. Right? Primarily note taking tools tend to be for gathering input.

Peter: 03:23

And then at some later point, you just search for whatever it is you're looking for. And the built in Apple Notes app does all of that and more. And so I just realized, you know what? I don't need these extra features. As great as they are to have them there, it doesn't matter.

Peter: 03:42

I'm going to force myself to do more searching in these notes app. And that works out just great. Now, the one area I still think it falls down on is organization in the sense of I like to use folders as opposed to, you know, some other systems. I don't really want to see all of my notes in one place. And whilst you can create folders in notes, it's not nested.

Peter: 04:10

And it doesn't really work as well as I need it to for maintaining like a massive project and things like that. So there are still some downfalls. But I am now successfully using notes, and it's working just great for me. The longest part arguably was transitioning from third party data into the first party app on notes. But I got there in the end.

Peter: 04:34

Right? And that's key too, is once you've done it, you've done it. Another great example is, you know, how many third party calendar applications have you seen out there in scheduling and things like that. And the truth is most of people don't need some large scale project management app. They don't need to project timelines into the future and plan things like that and maintain them and all the overhead that comes with it.

Peter: 05:04

A lot of the time, all you need to do is put in some reminder that says this person's birthday is on this day or I've got some appointment at that time and set it to recur it every year. And that's pretty much about the extent of it. And yet we have all these third party tools that do lots of wonderful things, but we really don't need them. And again, you know, a lot of them these days tend to be subscription based. So you're paying for a tool that arguably the one you have that comes free with the operating system does maybe 80 to 90% of what most folks need.

Peter: 05:44

So I'm putting those out there. I just wanted to give you something to think about. Try it. I'm willing to bet you can probably replace some of your third party tools with some of these built in ones. Now on the flip side, me as a software developer of course I want you to use third party tools and I want you to support these companies but do it realistically right.

Peter: 06:06

If it's not something you need a tool for then just use the built in one is what I'm saying. And if you need to go to the next level or you just want to, fine. Go go get a third party tool. There are plenty of them out there. So, you know, please, we need these applications and we need especially the developers to stick around so support them if you need it.

Peter: 06:28

But like I say for the average user most of you probably don't need all the extra stuff that comes up with these tools including the nightmare and overhead of managing them, managing the data, syncing it across devices and platforms, and keeping them up to date, let alone the security issues we have to be worried about these days. That's it, folks. If you've got thoughts on this, reach out to me, peterwitham dot com, and let me know what you think. See you later.