2024 was another year of great change, driven in part by the sudden viability and desirability of Windows 11 on Arm. But it's not just that: After an incredibly disruptive 2023, I surprised myself by making a similar number of changes to the apps, services, and games I use this past year too.
Windows
This year, I adopted several new apps on Windows.
Typora. I spent much of 2024 moving back and forth between different writing apps, most notably Typora, a long-time favorite I'd paid for years ago, IA Writer, which is dramatically better on the Mac than is the case on Windows, and even Microsoft Word, in part to test various de-enshittification configurations. But in the end, Typora won me over--again--and I've grown to really like how much more efficient it is than other apps. (For example, to turn a text selection into a hyperlink in Word, you type Ctrl + K, then Ctrl + V to paste in the URL, and then press Enter. In Typora, you type Ctrl + K. That's it. You're done.) What I found was that I missed Typora when I wasn't using Typora. And so here we are: I now use Typora for all non-book writing, and I use Markdown for all my writing. (I use Visual Studio Code for books.)
Proton Pass. In the process of testing various password managers this past year, I landed on Proton Pass and ... that was that. Like Typora and Notion, I miss it when it's gone, and while Dashlane and 1Password are both great too, Proton Pass nails the experience with seamless, error-free authentication and portable passkey support. This one is on all my PCs and all my mobile devices. And the experience is so good, I've been experimenting with Proton VPN, Proton Mail, Proton Calendar, and Proton Drive too. Maybe one or more of those will stick in 2025.
Clipchamp Premium. Clipchamp saved the day for me in mid-2023 and I've been using it ever since. This past year, I started paying for Clipchamp Premium, which costs $12 per month and adds 4K exports, more stock media, filters, and effects, and, most important to me, content backup/sync to the cloud, so I can move from PC to PC and not worry about having all my assets locally on each device. I keep wondering about using a more "professional" video editor, but Clipchamp does exactly what I need and it's easy to use.
Affinity. In March, I paid for an Affinity V2 Universal License, giving me a perpetual license to use Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher version 2.x across Windows, Mac, and iPad. I use Affinity Photo 2 every single day and love it--and you can try it for yourself, for free--and will never go back to Adobe full-time. But I am surprised to say I've also been using Affinity Publisher 2 a lot over the past two months, tied to some book work (for both Eternal Spring and the Window 11 Field Guide). More on that soon.
Notion. I use Notion every day and for all kinds of things. And I've written about how good this app is. And how I don't understand why they don't charge me to use it. That day will come....
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