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Getting "Sherlocked" Doesn't Always Equal Doom

Posted by Matt Birchler
β€” 1 min read

Every year Apple adds new features to their platforms, and inevitably those are features that were already being done by third party developers. Like clockwork, articles come out talking about what apps got "Sherlocked" this time, often with calls to "pour one out" for these apps who's businesses just got decimated.

While this does sometimes happen (Sherlock decimating Watson, or Night Shift making F.lux unnecessary), very often this doesn't actually ruin companies. I can only find suggestions of this, but some suggest that this can even improve your business because people will get a taste of your feature, be frustrated with Apple's minimal version, and go looking for something more robust. A great example of this is what we saw today with an update to Camo.

So in the interest of positivity, here's a few third party apps I use and love despite Apple having a way to do something built into the system, and why I use them.

  • 1Password because it lets me share my password with my wife easily, it works seamlessly on non-Apple platforms as well, it lets me save more than just passwords securely, and I just generally like the experience.
  • Adobe Lightroom because it lets me edit photos faster, with more features, and just lets me create photos that I love.
  • CleanShot X because I take a ton of screenshots and value the keyboard shortcuts and annotation tools that I get with CleanShot.
  • Fantastical because it syncs better, and better ways to join meetings quickly, and their openings feature lets me schedule time with people easier than anything else I've used.
  • Mimestream and Spark for email because they're more reliable, have great search, sync faster, and have better keyboard shortcuts.
  • Raycast and Alfred because Spotlight is too slow and too slim on advanced features for me.
  • Matter because I want to save things from any browser, not just Safari on devices I'm logged into my iCloud account.
  • Things because it has a better UI than Reminders and lets me feel minimal friction in keeping track of my tasks throughout the day.